The House Intelligence Committee has released a bitterly disputed memo outlining allegations by Republicans that top law enforcement officials abused their powers of surveillance in their probe of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
The memo was given to reporters shortly after President Donald Trump approved declassification of the memo, which was written by the committee’s chairman, Republican Rep. Devin Nunes.
A significant part of the memo focuses on Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants that permitted FBI surveillance of former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page, a businessman with interests in Russia. There had been concerns about Page’s alleged contacts with Russian intelligence agents.
The memo asserts that a dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele was an “essential part” of the FISA application on Carter Page, and that the FBI did not mention the Steele dossier had been funded by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, or that Steele had previously made anti-Trump statements
Speaking to reporters at the White House Friday, Trump described the contents of the memo as “terrible.” During a photo opportunity with North Korean defectors, Trump said, “I think it’s a disgrace what’s going on in this country….A lot of people should be ashamed of themselves, and much worse than that.”
WATCH: Trump on Republican Memo
When asked by a reporter whether release of the memo makes it more likely that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein would be fired, Trump replied, “You figure that one out.”
Rosenstein supervises the Russia probe and named special counsel Robert Mueller to lead the investigation.
Release of the memo intensifies the battle between Trump and his Republican allies in Congress on one side, and Democrats and top FBI officials on the other about whether the probe into Russian interference in the presidential election was affected by political bias on the part of investigators.
Nunes issued a statement Friday expressing hope that the actions of Intelligence Committee Republicans would “shine a light” on what he called “this alarming series of events.”
“The Committee has discovered serious violations of the public trust, and the American people have a right to know when officials in crucial institutions are abusing their authority for political purposes,” Nunes said. “Our intelligence and law enforcement agencies exist to defend the American people, not to be exploited to target one group on behalf of another.”
The minority Democratic members of the committee issued a lengthy statement lambasting Nunes’ decision to release the memo, saying it contains “misleading allegations against the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation (and) is a shameful effort to discredit these institutions, undermine the Special Counsel’s ongoing investigation, and undercut congressional probes.”
The Democratic statement accused Republicans of setting a “terrible precedent” by releasing classified information that will do long-term damage to the intelligence community for the purpose of protecting Trump against expected charges in the Russia probe.
“The sole purpose of the Republican document is to circle the wagons around the White House and insulate the President,” the Democratic statement says. “Most destructive of all may be the announcement by Chairman Nunes that he has placed the FBI and DOJ under investigation, impugning and impairing the work of the dedicated professionals trying to keep our country safe.”
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi accused Trump of surrendering his constitutional responsibility by releasing highly classified and distorted intelligence. “By not protecting intelligence sources and methods, he just sent his friend Putin a bouquet,” Pelosi said in a statement.
“Nunes’ partisan spin memo distorts highly classified intelligence in a cynical attempt to discredit our national intelligence and law enforcement agencies and the Special Counsel investigation,” Pelosi wrote. “Releasing the memo is a desperate attempt to distract the American people from the truth about the Trump-Russia scandal.
The president of the FBI Agents Association Thomas O’Connor issued a statement Friday defending the rank and file officers and their commitment to their work.
“The American people should know that they continue to be well-served by the world’s preeminent law enforcement agency,” the statement said. “FBI Special Agents have not, and will not, allow partisan politics to distract us from our solemn commitment to our mission.”
Trump earlier fired off two tweets about the memo. The first charged that leaders of the FBI and the Justice Department had politicized “the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats and against Republicans.”
The second suggests that top law enforcement officials took part in an effort to hide a move by the campaign of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton to produce misleading information to persuade a judge to approve spying on the Trump campaign.
“It’s clear from the president that this is exactly the purpose behind this cherry-picking of information that Nunes wants to release,” Schiff said. “This is designed to impugn the credibility of the FBI, to undermine the investigation.”
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley says he sees the FBI’s concern as being more political than substantive.
“Notably, the objections by the FBI have been to the memo being “inaccurate” by “omission.” That does not sound like a concern over classification. It sounds like a concern over public embarrassment or criticism,” Turley told VOA.
“It is a curious thing to see Democrats expressing outrage at the notion that the Committee would ever question the classification of material by the FBI. Agencies have long been notorious for over-classification of information and the use of classification authority to shield officials from public exposure or criticism,” Turley said.
Former CIA Director James Woolsey, who advised the Trump campaign, said it is important that the classification system works in a “straightforward fashion”. But he told CNN the president has total discretion in releasing information.
“This whole classification system reports ultimately to one individual, the president,” Woolsey said. “So it’s entirely clear that it’s his right under the process to say “I have decided this will not harm the United States and it should be released, or I have decided this would harm the United States so I do not wanted it released. That’s his call,” he told CNN.
David B. Cohen, political science professor at the University of Akron, said he sees release of the Nunes memo as part of a Republican campaign to discredit the Russia probe being carried out by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is also a former FBI Director.
“Trump seems to be laying the groundwork for further firings of high-level DOJ personnel including Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Special Counsel Robert Mueller, as well as the pardoning of key witnesses and family members, Cohen told VOA.
“By utilizing a sustained strategy of publicly criticizing and discrediting the upper ranks and career civil servants of the FBI and DOJ, Trump is attempting to inoculate his base and others that are sympathetic to his plight for when he fires Rosenstein, Mueller, and others,” Cohen said.
Intelligence Committee chairman Nunes called the FBI’s objections to release of the memo “spurious.”
“The FBI is intimately familiar with ‘material omissions’ with respect to their presentations to both Congress and the courts, and they are welcome to make public, to the greatest extent possible, all the information they have on these abuses,” Nunes said in a statement.
Trump, while attacking top FBI and Justice Department officials, tried to differentiate between leadership and the rank and file employees of the investigative agencies. In on his his tweets Friday, Trump wrote “Rank and file great people.”
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