Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas) defended the House Intelligence Committee’s release of a memo on FBI abuses — and said the liberal media misrepresented the document while “criticizing Congress for shining a light” on official wrongdoing. He made his remarks during a Sunday interview on ABC News’ “This Week.”

“People can criticize that decision, but I think providing oversight and shining a light on these issues is important because ultimately, I do believe we’re letting the Russians win,” the Texas Republican said.

“The Russians got involved in our elections to erode trust in our democratic institutions,” Hurd added. “And when the press is criticizing Congress for shining light on issues, when Republicans and Democrats can’t agree on stuff just because it was originated by someone in the other party … and people think that there shouldn’t be oversight, civilian oversight of law enforcement can be a problem.”

The four-page memo summarized classified information describing the FBI’s use of a controversial dossier full of undocumented allegations about President Donald Trump’s relationships with Russian officials and business tycoons.

The memo — released Friday with approval from President Donald Trump — was prepared by the staff members of Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), who chairs the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Compiled by a former British spy, Christopher Steele, and paid for by 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee, the dossier was used by the Department of Justice and the FBI to obtain and maintain secret surveillance warrants against private U.S. citizens supporting Trump and suspected of having links to Russian interests.

Former FBI Director James Comey told Congress in 2016 the dossier was “salacious and unverified.” And former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe told Congress during closed testimony in December 2017 that the warrants would not have been sought had the dossier not been available to the bureau.

Congressional Democrats on the intel panel vehemently opposed release of the Nunes memo and directed their staff to prepare a rival memo refuting the chairman’s document. The Democrats’ memo likely will be made public when it completes the same review process of the Nunes memo. The review is designed to prevent inclusion of information that reveals “sources and methods” used by U.S. intelligence agencies.

When “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos asked Hurd why his GOP colleagues couldn’t wait to release both memos at the same time, Hurd said the information in the Democrats’ memo “wasn’t ready to go, and so we decided to release ours.”

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But Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the intelligence committee’s top Democrat, claimed the Nunes memo is “very flawed” and was was only made public as “a political hit job on the FBI in the service of the president.”

Schiff was also interviewed on “This Week.”

When Stephanopoulos asked Schiff if the FBI made “any mistakes” in its handling of the investigation and use of the dossier to justify surveillance of former Trump volunteer Carter Page, the congressman said, “We don’t know because we haven’t had the opportunity to bring the FBI in before the committee and ask them these questions.”

It’s not clear what Schiff meant, however, as multiple senior FBI executives appeared before the intelligence panel during the past year.

“But the goal here really isn’t to find out the answers from the FBI. The goal here is to undermine the FBI, discredit the FBI, discredit the Mueller investigation, do the president’s bidding,” Schiff added.

Schiff also said he thought it was “very possible” Nunes and his staff “worked with the White House and coordinated the whole effort with the White House” to release the memo. Schiff offered no evidence to back up his allegation.

Related: White House Denies Involvement with Creating Nunes Memo

Hurd maintained the Nunes memo controversy boils down to the issue of whether or not “unverified” information in the dossier was used inappropriately to spy on Clinton’s political opponent and his supporters.

“But this is about, for me, what kind of information should be used … to spy on American citizens. Our civil liberties are important,” Hurd said. “So we should be focused on this and … Congress should do its oversight role, even in a crazy partisan environment.”

PoliZette writer Kathryn Blackhurst can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter.