GOP releases memo critical of FBI
Democrats warn president against firing Rosenstein
WASHINGTON — A GOP memo declassified on Friday charges senior law enforcement officials with manipulating a foreign intelligence court in order to surveil a former Trump campaign adviser — contested accusations that intensified an ongoing battle between the White House and Republican lawmakers on one side, and the FBI and the Justice Department on the other.
Democrats warned President Donald Trump not to try to use the memo’s contents as a justification for firing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein or other officials overseeing an ongoing probe into possible coordination between Trump associates and agents of the Russian government during the 2016 campaign. Asked after the memo’s release if he might fire Rosenstein, Trump told reporters: “You figure that one out.”
Trump approved release of the memo without redactions Friday morning. “I think it’s a disgrace what’s happening in our country,” he told reporters in the Oval Office. “A lot of people should be ashamed of themselves and much
worse than that.”
The congressional inquiry that led to the memo is “an issue of great importance for the country, and concerns have been raised about the department’s performance,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said. “I have great confidence in the men and women of this department. But no department is perfect. … I am determined that we will fully and fairly ascertain the truth.”
The FBI has said it has “grave concerns” that the contents of the memo leave out important details and create an inaccurate, unfair portrait of its work.
Former FBI director James Comey reacted by tweeting: “That’s it? Dishonest and misleading memo wrecked the House intel committee, destroyed trust with Intelligence Community, damaged relationship with FISA court, and inexcusably exposed classified investigation of an American citizen. For what? DOJ & FBI must keep doing their jobs.”
Memo’s accusations
The four-page memo, written by Republican staffers for the House Intelligence Committee, said its findings “raise concerns with the legitimacy and legality of certain ( Justice Department) and FBI interactions with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC).” It cites “a troubling breakdown of legal processes established to protect the American people from abuses related to the FISA process,” a reference to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
The memo alleges that a surveillance warrant was obtained and renewed on a former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page, with information from an individual with an anti-Trump agenda.
It accuses officials who approved the surveillance applications — a group that includes Rosenstein, Comey, his former deputy Andrew McCabe and then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates — of signing off on court surveillance requests that omitted key facts about the political motivations of the person supplying some of the information, Christopher Steele, a former intelligence officer in Britain.
The memo says Steele “was suspended and then terminated as an FBI source for what the FBI defines as the most serious of violations — an unauthorized disclosure to the media of his relationship with the FBI.”
The memo argues that Steele’s contacts with reporters in the fall of 2016 “violated the cardinal rule of source handling — maintaining confidentiality — and demonstrated that Steele had become a less than reliable source for the FBI.”
The memo also says the court application “extensively” cites a Yahoo News article about Page but incorrectly assesses that Steele did not directly provide information to Yahoo News — suggesting that the Justice Department may have counted a news story about Steele’s claims as a form of confirmation of those claims.
The government website housing the memo — docs.house.gov — crashed soon after the document was posted, apparently overwhelmed by users clamoring to read it.
A warning from Democrats
The memo is not an intelligence document and reflects classified information the Republican members of the committee gathered and summarized, which Democrats, the FBI and Justice Department have criticized as incomplete and misleading. Law enforcement officials have said they often rely on information from people with grudges or agendas to begin investigations, but agents are expected to check the accuracy of any claims before seeking a warrant.
Current and former law enforcement officials said before the release that a major concern inside the FBI is that the rules governing classified information would impede their ability to respond to the memo’s accusations once it became public.
The Justice Department and the FBI did not immediately comment Friday.
The top Democrats in Congress sent a letter Friday warning the president against using the memo to justify firing Rosenstein “in an effort to corruptly influence or impede special counsel (Robert) Mueller’s investigation.”
“We would consider such an unwarranted action as an attempt to obstruct justice in the Russia investigation,” wrote top Democrats, led by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer of New York. “Firing Rod Rosenstein, DOJ leadership, or Bob Mueller could result in a constitutional crisis of the kind not seen since the Saturday Night Massacre,” they wrote, referencing a seminal event in the Watergate scandal when President Richard Nixon fired the special prosecutor investigating him.
Steele and officials from Fusion GPS declined to comment.