Rep. Matt Gaetz said Friday that he wants to “extend an olive branch” to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to work together on legislation to prevent future abuses in the surveillance system.
“Let’s work together and find out why these things happened, and let’s work together to fix it so it never happens again. Because you know what? If this can happen to Republicans, maybe it can happen to the Democrats in the future, too,” Mr. Gaetz, Florida Republican, said on Fox News.
He was reacting to the memo written by Rep. Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, that points to abuses in the surveillance system. The memo says an unverified dossier was used as justification for obtaining high-level surveillance on Trump campaign aides and that without the dossier, funded by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign, warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act would not have been granted.
“I think Devin Nunes and the members of the Intelligence committee have done yeomen’s work. They’ve done great service of the country to get this into the public square,” Mr. Gaetz said.
The memo was publicly released on Friday after President Trump approved the committee’s vote to release it.
Mrs. Pelosi called for Mr. Nunes’ removal from the Intelligence Committee for pushing for the memo’s public release, arguing that the memo is biased and an inaccurate account of the source documents.
• Sally Persons can be reached at spersons@washingtontimes.com.
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