US Russia probe hots up
CLAIMING vindication and trying to derail the Russia probe, US President Donald Trump declassified a top secret congressional memo on Friday.
He suggested it proved the investigation of his presidential campaign was fatally flawed.
Democrats said the document did nothing to clear him or his campaign, and the FBI called the memo inaccurate and incomplete.
Butting heads just as they had before the memo’s release, Trump and his critics stuck to the positions they had staked out in the weeks leading up to the hotly disputed release of the memo prepared by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee. The memo makes their case – and Trump’s – that abuses in the early stages of the FBI’S investigation made it worse than worthless.
The Democrats, having none of it, said the four-page memo merely cherry-picks Republican talking points in an effort to smear law enforcement and undercut the current federal investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller. Representative Adam Schiff, the committee’s top Democrat, said the GOP document “mischaracterises highly sensitive classified information” and its release “will do long-term damage to the intelligence community and our law enforcement agencies.”
The memo’s central premise is that the FBI relied excessively on anti-trump research funded by Democrats in seeking a warrant to monitor the communications of a Trump campaign associate and that federal authorities concealed the full details of who was paying for the information.
The disclosure of the document is extraordinary since it involves details about surveillance of Americans, national security information the government regards as among its most highly classified. Its release is likely to further escalate an intra-government conflict that has divided the White House andhand-picked law enforcement leaders.
Trump, who lashed out at the FBI and Justice Department on Friday morning, refused to express confidence in Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller and is mentioned by name in the memo.
Asked if he was likely to fire Rosenstein, and if he still had confidence in him, Trump retorted: “You figure that one out.” – Ap/african News Agency (ANA)