House panel memo alleges improper surveillance of Trump official
WASHINGTON —The House Intelligence Committee released a declassified internal memo that questioned the “legitimacy and legality” of methods used by the FBI to obtain a surveillance warrant in 2016 for a campaign adviser to President Donald Trump.
The memo appeared to bolster Trump’s claim that the federal probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election is politically motivated. Democrats said the document did nothing to clear him or his campaign, and the FBI called the memo inaccurate and incomplete.
The four-page memo, produced by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., charged that intelligence officials abused their authority in a successful bid to win authority to spy on Carter Page, a volunteer foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign.
Specifically, the memo charged, officials failed to notify judges when they applied for a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, warrant that an important source for their request to spy on Page was funded by Democratic interests.
That source is Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent who wrote an infamous “dossier” that examined alleged ties between Trump and the Russians. Former FBI Director James Comey later testified that the Steele “dossier” was “salacious and unverified.”
Investigators learned that Fusion GPS, an opposition research firm paid some $160,000 by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign, had hired Steele.
Before the memo’s release Friday morning, Trump tweeted, “The top Leadership and Investigators of the FBI and the Justice Department have politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats and against Republicans — something which would have been unthinkable just a short time ago. Rank & File are great people!”
FBI’s concerns
In releasing the memo, Republicans overrode concerns of FBI Director Christopher Wray, whom Trump picked for the job after firing Comey in May.
Wray had tried to stop release of the memo by issuing a statement in which the bureau voiced “grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.”
After the memo’s release, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., co-signed a letter with other Democrats that slammed Trump for releasing the “partisan and misleading memo.”
Sen. Catherine Cortez-Masto, D-Nev., a former federal prosecutor, issued a statement in which she called the memo an “assault on law enforcement and on the integrity of the investigation over foreign interference in our elections.”
Democrats warned Trump not to use the memo as a pretext to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. Mueller inherited the probe in May 2017.
Asked Friday if he still had confidence in Rosenstein, Trump answered cryptically, “You figure that one out.”
A senior White House official said later the administration expects Rosenstein to remain in his job.
Familiar names
The Nunes memo dredged up names all too familiar to followers of the controversies swirling around the Russia investigation.
Comey signed three of the FISA warrant applications, the memo noted.
FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who announced that he was stepping down from his job Monday, signed a FISA application as well. Trump had singled out McCabe because his wife received $700,000 in campaign donations through former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a close associate of Hillary Clinton.
Sally Yates, the former acting attorney general fired by Trump, also signed a warrant, as did Rosenstein.
Though the document had been classified since it deals with warrants obtained from the FISA Court, the White House declassified it Friday and sent it to Nunes for immediate release.
The memo also mentioned former Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr. Steele confessed to Ohr that he was “desperate that Donald Trump not get elected.” During that period Ohr’s wife was employed by Fusion GPS.
According to the memo, “The Ohrs’ relationship with Steele and Fusion GPS was inexplicably concealed” from the FISA court.
The GOP memo also cited the role that FBI agent Peter Strzok had in opening the FBI probe into Russian interference in July 2016. The Justice Department’s inspector general learned of copious anti-Trump text messages sent between Strzok and his then mistress, Lisa Page, who also worked on the investigation. Strzok and Page then were removed from the Mueller investigation.
Rebuttal memo
Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the House Intelligence Committee’s ranking Democrat, accused Nunes of cherry-picking information and faulted the committee for not releasing the Democrats’ 10-page rebuttal memo.
“The Republicans voted down the release of the Democratic response, which was quite breathtaking, because they said they were offering their own memo in the interest of full transparency,” Schiff told CBS.
Before the memo’s release, Pelosi launched a Twitter hashtag campaign #RemoveNunes that countered an earlier Twitter campaign, #Releasethememo, by Republicans.
After fighting the GOP memo’s release, the Democratic National Committee sent out a press release that declared the memo “a dud” that wrongly attributed the Russian probe to the FISA warrant on Page.
Former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow deemed the memo “underwhelming.” He did not understand why Republicans fought so hard to release the memo and why others fought so hard to stop its release given there was no “huge damage done” in terms of revealing sources and methods.
“The points (memo writers) tried to make, there can be explanations for them. Like they’re shocked that Steele told somebody that he thought Trump should not be president,” said Harlow. “That would not make him the Lone Ranger.”
Contact Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com or at 202-662-7391. Follow @DebraJSaunders on Twitter.
FISA Memo by Las Vegas Review-Journal on Scribd
