NEW YORK_President Donald Trump claimed vindication on Saturday amid the fallout from the release of a disputed GOP-penned memo alleging political bias at the FBI.
Trump continued to attack the integrity of the agency, tweeting that the contentious document detailing allegations of surveillance abuse by the bureau and Justice Department "totally vindicates 'Trump' in probe."
It was unclear why the president, who often speaks and writes in the third person, put quotation marks around his own name.
The message was sent moments after the president left his Palm Beach, Fla., resort en route to one of his golf properties.
Trump cited the declassified congressional memo as some kind of proof that special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation is on a road to nowhere.
"But the Russian Witch Hunt goes on and on," he wrote. "Their (sic) was no collusion and there was no Obstruction (the word now used because, after one year of looking endlessly and finding NOTHING, collusion is dead). This is an American disgrace!"
Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, countered Trump's claims of exoneration.
"Quite the opposite, Mr. President," he tweeted, adding that the confirmation that former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos kicked off the federal investigation was "the most important fact disclosed in this otherwise shoddy memo."
Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI last year.
The four-page report, released Friday after weeks of buildup and in spite of protests from both the Justice Department and FBI, was drawn up by Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., the chairman of the intelligence panel and a former member of the Trump transition team.
The controversy surrounding the memo ratcheted up partisan ill will in Washington and escalated a clash between the president and the man he picked to lead the FBI, Christopher Wray.
On Friday, Wray urged his employees to ignore the sensational headlines, writing in an internal note to agents: "Remember: keep calm and tackle hard."
House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., who denied that the document would be harmful, did not respond Saturday to calls for the removal of Nunes from his spot atop the intelligence committee.
Schiff said the memo was nothing more than "cherry-picked" information.
The document accuses top Justice Department officials of improperly using information from an unverified dossier _ compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele _ to obtain surveillance warrants for former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. The FBI routinely relies on multiple sources when it obtains surveillance warrants.
And the memo makes clear that the FBI believed there was probable cause that Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power and a judge agreed four times.
Democrats, and some Republicans, slammed the president's decision to sign off on the release, claiming the memo contains sensitive and confidential information with little to no context.
They believe it could be used to undercut Mueller's investigation or give Trump an excuse to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who is named in the memo.
The federal probe is focusing not only on the possibility that the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to influence the 2016 election but also on whether Trump has tried to obstruct justice.
