Also mentioned in the FISA application was former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty in October to lying to federal authorities investigating alleged Russian meddling and its possible ties to the Trump campaign.
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The memo accuses top law enforcement officials of relying on an unsubstantiated dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele to get a warrant to conduct surveillance of Page. It also seemed at odds with House Speaker Paul Ryan who said a day earlier “this memo is not an indictment of the FBI or the Department of Justice”. And that then would open the way for him to appoint someone else who could then sack Bob Mueller who’s heading up the Russia investigation.
Ignoring the advice of the FBI itself, which warned that the four-page document painted an inaccurate picture, the president gave his green light to declassify the memo drafted by the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, former Trump transition team official Devin Nunes. No sooner had the memo appeared than journalists immediately began throwing sand into their audience’s eyes. Judges, of course, found the applications sufficiently convincing to grant warrants.
Reaction from Democrats was scathing.
One memorable example was Fox News prime-time host Sean Hannity, who predicted it would be worse than Watergate and would end the Mueller investigation by proving that it rested on a faulty foundation. The memo could be entered into the Congressional Record when the House is back in session Friday at 4:30 p.m., barring any changes to the floor schedule.
The committee sent the memo to the White House on Monday night, giving Trump time to decide whether to block its release. In January, Boente became the new general counsel for the FBI. “The President is showing, once again, that he cares more about himself than the country”. “The court was not told that the Democrats actually paid for this”, Nunes said.
The four-page memo, written by Republicans on the committee, said: “Our findings raises concerns with the legitimacy and legality of certain DOJ (department of justice) and FBI interaction with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (that must clear surveillance requests)” of the permission sought by the FBI to surveil Carter Page, the operative. “It was the number-one news story in 2017, yet there wasn’t a lick of evidence”, Bozell stated.
Republican Senator John McCain, who is fighting brain cancer, released a statement from his hospital bed blasting the release of the memo.
“You can’t do a job like this without being prepared to either quit or be fired at a moment’s notice you’re asked to do something or confronted with something that is either illegal, unconstitutional or even morally repugnant”, Wray said.
“The House Republicans have gone through with their plan to release a highly misleading memo made up of cherry-picked classified information”.
As widely expected, President Donald Trump authorized the release of the controversial Nunes memo.
But Scott, a Republican, and Donovan, a Democrat, said more must be done to seek justice for Vermont residents and the communities that have been harmed. Australia relayed this information to the FBI after the initial release of hacked DNC emails by WikiLeaks in July. The Australian government tipped off the FBI to what Papadapoulos had said, according to the Times.
Papadopoulos appears nowhere in the 16 reports that Steele wrote between June and December 2016 that are now known collectively as the Steele dossier.
“The essence of their argument is that the FISA application is fruit of the forbidden tree because it was partisan motivated”. Patty Murray joining a letter by top Senate Democrats warning Trump against using the document “as a pretext to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in an effort to corruptly influence or impede” the Russia investigation.
Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz commended the release of the memo, saying in a statement it should “cause all American citizens to be outraged, regardless of political affiliation”.
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The memo also reveals that the surveillance warrant involving Mr. Page was renewed on multiple occasions, including during the Trump administration, meaning that top law enforcement officials had convinced the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that there was reason to believe that Mr. Page may have been acting as a foreign agent on behalf of the Russians.
