House panel releases surveillance memo

Dems defend decision to eavesdrop on Page

WASHINGTON — The House Intelligence Committee released a Democratic memo Saturday that defends the decision by U.S. law enforcement to start eavesdropping on a former Trump campaign adviser three weeks before the 2016 election, countering Republican charges that abuses tainted the process.

The dueling conclusions about the surveillance reflect the partisan divide on the House committee and within Congress over how to view the broader criminal investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller into whether President Donald Trump or his aides assisted in Russian meddling in the campaign or obstructed justice in the White House.

The 10-page Democratic document, which was intended as a rebuttal to a four-page Republican memo released on Feb. 2, said the Department of Justice and the FBI “would have been remiss in their duty to protect the country” if they hadn’t investigated suspicious contacts between Russians and the former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page.

Republicans accused the Justice Department and the FBI of including some opposition research in their classified application for a secret warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in October 2016, and of failing to tell the judges the opposition research had been funded by lawyers working for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

But Democrats say authorities only made “narrow use” of the information collected by former British spy Christopher Steele, which was later leaked to the media in a now-notorious dossier.

In addition, they said some of the research was corroborated by “multiple independent sources” and the judges were informed that there were political motivations behind Steele’s work.

Nearly a year of eavesdropping on Page led to “valuable intelligence,” the Democratic memo said. Although the details are largely redacted, the document said the information contradicts Page’s sworn testimony last year to the House Intelligence Committee.

The Democratic memo “should put to rest any concerns that the American people might have,” Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House committee, said in a statement. He said his party’s review “failed to uncover

any evidence of illegal, unethical, or unprofessional behavior by law enforcement.”

The Democratic memo also makes a broader case for supporting the special counsel investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign.

Page already was on the FBI’s radar before Steele’s research surfaced and was interviewed by agents in March 2016, the same month Trump named him as a foreign policy aide.

The Republican memo was championed by Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., chairman of the House committee, and on Saturday he did not back off his earlier assertions.

“The American people now clearly understand that the FBI used political dirt paid for by the Democratic Party to spy on an American citizen from the Republican Party,” he said in a statement.

Carter Page