Trump claims memo vindication
WASHINGTON — Even before he had read the Republican-drafted memo, President Donald Trump seized on what it could mean. And on Saturday, he claimed vindication from the four-page document, which alleges the FBI abused its surveillance powers during the investigation into his campaign’s possible Russia ties.
Trump told confidants in recent days that he believed the memo would validate his concerns that the “deep state,” an alleged shadowy network of powerful entrenched federal and military interests, had conspired to undermine the legitimacy of his presidency, according to an outside adviser.
But the memo also includes revelations that might complicate efforts by Trump and his allies to undermine special counsel Robert Mueller’s inquiry.
The document released Friday contends that the FBI, when it applied for a surveillance warrant on onetime Trump campaign associate Carter Page, relied excessively on an ex-British spy whose opposition research was funded by Democrats.
At the same time, the memo confirms that the investigation into potential Trump links to Russia began in July 2016, months before the warrant was sought, and was “triggered” by information campaign aide
The confirmation about Papadopoulos is “the most important fact disclosed in this otherwise shoddy memo,” California Rep. Adam Schiff, the House committee’s top Democrat, tweeted Saturdayin response to Trump’s assertion that the document vindicated him.
Papadopoulos guilty last year to the FBI.
The timing makes clear that other Trump associates beyond Page had generated law enforcement scrutiny. The memo also omits that Page had been on the FBI’s concerning George Papadopoulos. pleaded lying to radar a few years earlier as part of a separate counterintelligence investigation into Russian influence.
The warrant authorizing the FBI to monitor the communications of Page was not a one-time request, but was approved by a judge on four occasions, the memo says, and was even signed off on by the secondranking official at the Justice Department, Rod Rosenstein, whom Trump appointed as deputy attorney general.
Trump, however, tweeted Saturday about the memo while riding to his golf course in Florida, where he is spending the weekend.
“This memo totally vindicates ‘Trump’ in probe,” he said. “But the Russian Witch Hunt goes on and on. Their (sic) was no Collusion and there was no Obstruction (the word now used because, after one year of looking endlessly and finding NOTHING, collusion is dead). This is an American disgrace!”
The underlying materials that served as the basis for the warrant application were not made public in the memo. As a result, the document only intensified a partisan battle over how to interpret the actions of the FBI and Justice Department during the early stages of the counterintelligence investigation that later inherited.
Even as Democrats described it as inaccurate, some Republicans cited the memo — released over the objections of the FBI and Justice Department — in their arguments that Mueller’s investigation is politically tainted.
The memo’s central allegation is that agents and prosecutors, in applying in October 2016 to monitor Page’s communications, failed to tell a judge that the opposition research that provided grounds for the FBI’s suspicion received funding from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Mueller Committee. Page had stopped advising the campaign sometime around the end of that summer.
Christopher Steele, the former spy who compiled the allegations, acknowledged having anti-Trump sentiments. But he also was a “longtime FBI source” with a credible track record, according to the memo from the House intelligence committee chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., and his staff.
Steele’s research, according to the memo, “formed an essential part” of the warrant application.
But it’s unclear how much or what information Steele collected made it into the application, or how much has been corroborated. Steele was working for Fusion GPS, a firm initially hired by the conservative Washington Free Beacon to do opposition research on Trump.
Steele didn’t begin on the project until Democratic groups over the funding.
Republicans say a judge should have known that “political actors” were involved in allegations that led the Justice Department to believe Page might be an agent of a foreign power, an accusation he has denied.
But Democrats said it was incorrect to say a judge was not told of the potential political motivations of the people paying for Steele’s research.
The FBI last week expressed “grave concerns” about the memo and called it inaccurate and incomplete. work after took
Washington Bureau contributed.