A controversial Republican memo charging bias in the FBI finally saw daylight after President Trump overruled top career law enforcement officials to order its release.
President Trump reviewed the controversial memo along with his advisors and sent it to the House Intelligence panel for release. He included a letter announcing his decision, Fox News reported.
House Intelligence Committee Republicans drafted the memo and pushed through its release on a party-line vote, putting the issue in the hands of Trump to give the final go-ahead.
CNN reported that Trump read the memo along with his advisors.
Trump weighed the issue for days, as FBI Director Christopher Wray and top Justice Department officials argued against the release, concerned that it could undermine intelligence and present an incomplete narrative.
But Trump made his own priorities known with a Friday tweet blasting the ‘top leadership’ – even though it was Trump who appointed Wray and elevated deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein after firing FBI Director James Comey.
President Donald Trump tweeted Friday that the nation’s top law enforcers have been biased against Republicans in their investigations
‘The top Leadership and Investigators of the FBI and the Justice Department have politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats and against Republicans – something which would have been unthinkable just a short time ago,’ Trump tweeted Friday, after his administration had already said he would allow the House panel to release the memo. ‘Rank & File are great people!’ he added.
Central to GOP complaints is the belief that Trump advisor Carter Page came under surveillance under a judge’s warrant that was influenced by the infamous Steele Dossier, a series of memos containing unverified information about Trump that concludes Russia had potentially compromising information on him.
Republicans argue that since Hillary Clinton’s campaign, through a law firm, helped fund the dossier, that the origins of the Russia probe lie in information Clinton helped obtain.
‘It’s clear that top officials used unverified information in a court document to fuel a counterintelligence investigation during an American political campaign,’ said Intelligence chair Rep. Devin Nunes of California in a statement this week as the blowup over the document escalated.
House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes, a California Republican, wrote the memo along with aides
Trump was sure to insist that the FBI’s ‘rank and file are great people,’ even as he goes after the ledaership with his acid tongue
Trump also tweeted a summary of the state of play from Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton
The memo argues that the infamous Steele Dossier was used to secure surveillance of former Trump campaign foreign policy advisor Carter Page
However, in 2015 the government already knew that Page had passed information on to a Russian intelligence operative believed to be part of a spy ring.
Page was an investment banker in Russia during the 1990s. A Russian spy tried to recruit him in 2013, the Wall Street Journal reported. Page had met with the Russian consular official, Victor Podobnyy, meeting with him over coke or coffee, according to Page’s later testimony.
In the fall of 2016, investigators obtained a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order to monitor Page.
The Russia probe has gone on to ensnare top Trump associates, including former campaign chair Paul Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates, who have been charged with money laundering and conspiracy based on earlier work.
Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his own Russia contacts. In May 2016, Papdopoulos told Austrailia’s ambassador to Britain in a boozy encounter that the Trump campaign had dirt on Hillary Clinton, the New York Times reported.
Kellyanne Conway said in a wind-swept ‘Fox & Friends’ interview on Friday that Trump doesn’t think Wray will quit
In a March 2016 interview, Trump named Page in an interview with the Washington post as one of a handful of foreign policy advisors to his campaign. Page told the House intelligence committee he traveled to Russia twice during the campaign.