The surveillance warrant and renewals against Page were approved by judges appointed by Republicans. But some Republican members of Congress have argued that the Nunes memo undermines the legitimacy of the special counsel's inquiry into the communications between the Trump campaign and Russia.ĥ. This section of the memo does not appear to rebut any specific claim in the GOP document, which mainly focused on surveillance warrants. "The best interpretation is that the administration thought it would be highly damning to know that a handful were under investigation." "It reeks of politicization," Price said. "There's really, to my mind, not a good reason to redact" the names, said Ned Price, a former intelligence officer and an NBC contributor. Some lawyers have speculated that the footnote, which appears to provide information that is elsewhere censored, may have been overlooked during the redaction process. But a footnote shortly following the redaction identifies the indictments of former Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn, former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos, former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and former Trump campaign official Rick Gates.
The subjects of the sub-inquiries have been redacted. To emphasize the point, the memo alleges that the FBI has opened sub-inquiries into multiple Trump campaign officials, as well as Page, which would have continued even if the bureau never received the Steele dossier. The Democrats' memo highlights that the Steele dossier, which came months later, played no role in the initial probe. The FBI's counterintelligence investigation into Russian election interference began in July 2016. The FBI had opened numerous "sub-inquiries" into Trump campaign associates by September 2016. Person," meaning Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson, "was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit Candidate #1's campaign," referring to then-candidate Trump's campaign.Ĥ. "The FBI speculates that the identified U.S. person and entity names."īut while Hillary Clinton and the DNC, like Trump, were not specifically named, Steele's potential biases did not go unmentioned. citizen information by purposefully not 'unmasking' U.S. The Justice Department, their memo says, "appropriately upheld its longstanding practice of protecting U.S. In their rebuttal, House Democrats say this omission is by design. Among the central claims of the Republican memo is that none of the surveillance warrants - neither the initial application nor any of the subsequent three renewals - "reference the role of the DNC, Clinton campaign, or any party/campaign in funding Steele's efforts." The memo notes that the Steele dossier's "political origins were then known to senior DOJ and FBI officials" at the time. The DOJ did not mislead the FISC about Fusion GPS's political motivations. While Steele was never paid by the FBI for the dossier, he had been compensated by the bureau for his prior work on unrelated investigations, the memo says.ģ. "Steele ultimately never received payment from the FBI for any 'dossier'-related information," the memo alleges. The Democratic response tacitly acknowledges that authorization, but says "that payment was cancelled and never made."
The GOP memo says that the surveillance application against Carter Page excludes the fact that the FBI "had separately authorized payment to Steele" for the dossier, which Fusion GPS had already been commissioned to gather by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Steele was not paid by the FBI or DOJ for the dossier. Page left the campaign well before the Steele dossier allegedly circulated among investigators in September 2016, which the memo cites as evidence that the FBI's surveillance was not sued to spy on the Trump campaign.Ģ. Page had also allegedly been interviewed by the FBI "multiple times about his Russian intelligence contacts" in March 2016 - the same month he joined the Trump campaign. The FBI had been aware of Page since 2013, when two Russian spies who tried to recruit him were indicted, the memo says. The minority's response, however, suggests that the dossier merely offered corroborating evidence of Page's alleged involvement with Russia. Carter Page was on the FBI's radar long before they received the infamous "Steele dossier." The Republican majority's memo contends that a dossier researched by Christopher Steele, a former British spy working for intelligence firm Fusion GPS, "formed an essential part of the Carter Page FISA application." Many of the dossier's allegations, including salacious ties between Trump himself and the Kremlin, remain unverified.
0 kommentar(er)
