The release of the Democratic rebuttal was expected to be the final volley, at least for now, in a bitter partisan fight over surveillance that has driven deep fissures through the once-bipartisan Intelligence Committee and at times pitted Mr. Trump against his own Justice Department and F.B.I.
Representative Adam B. Schiff, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said on Saturday that the Democratic memo should “put to rest” Republican assertions of wrongdoing in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act process.
“Our extensive review of the initial FISA application and three subsequent renewals failed to uncover any evidence of illegal, unethical or unprofessional behavior by law enforcement and instead revealed that both the F.B.I. and D.O.J. made extensive showings to justify all four requests,” he said in a statement.
The dispute and the dueling memos center on applications by the F.B.I. in October 2016 to secure a secret warrant to spy on Mr. Page, a former Trump campaign adviser suspected of being a Russian agent, and the subsequent renewals.
Republicans, in their three-and-a-half-page memo, claim that top law enforcement officials seriously misled the court by failing to disclose that they were relying in part on research financed by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
The Democratic document contends that the F.B.I. was more forthcoming to the surveillance court. It says that the agency did disclose to the court that it made use of information that was gathered through politically motivated means and quotes from the application itself.
The Democrats said that it would have been inappropriate and inconsistent with standard practice for officials to have disclosed to the court the names of American individuals and organizations connected with the former British spy who supplied the information, Christopher Steele.
The F.B.I. frequently relies on sources who have agendas, whether it is a gang turncoat or a mafia informer. What is typically seen as important by courts is that the agenda is disclosed to a judge.
Document
Democratic Rebuttal of G.O.P. Memo
House Democrats made public a heavily redacted memo that was drafted to counter Republican claims of surveillance abuses against a former Trump campaign aide.
In the case of Mr. Page, the surveillance applications were reviewed by four different judges, all appointed by Republican presidents, the document says. Each approved of the request.
The memo also asserts that in applications to renew the wiretap, the F.B.I. provided the court with information from independent sources corroborating Mr. Steele’s information. Much of the specific corroborating evidence was blacked out.
And, according to the Democrats, the wiretap produced “valuable intelligence” for the F.B.I. that justified its renewal. The document once again offers specific examples, which were redacted by the Justice Department.
The warrant application itself remains under seal, and only a handful of lawmakers from either party have seen it. The New York Times has filed a motion asking the surveillance court to take the unusual step of unsealing it.
Mr. Page, a former investment banker based in Moscow, had been on the F.B.I.’s radar for years, long before his association with Mr. Trump. The Democratic memo reveals that the F.B.I. interviewed Mr. Page as late as March 2016 about his contacts with Russian intelligence agents, the same month Mr. Trump added him to his foreign policy advisory team.
The document also rebuts claims by Republicans, including Mr. Trump, that the F.B.I. relied on Mr. Steele’s findings to open its counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016. Information from Mr. Steele, the memo says, did not reach the F.B.I. counterintelligence team investigating Russian meddling until mid-September, well after the investigation had been opened.
Democrats have insisted that Mr. Trump’s deference to national security concerns in delaying the memo’s release was hypocritical and politically motivated. Just a week before blocking their memo’s release, the president had ignored similar objections from the Justice Department and the F.B.I. to declassify the contents of a rival Republican memo, which was based on the same underlying documents. Mr. Trump asserted, incorrectly, that the Republican document vindicated him in the special counsel investigation into Russian election interference.
Continue reading the main story
Powered by WPeMatico