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House Republicans Release Secret Memo Accusing Russia Investigators of Bias House Republicans Release Secret Memo Accusing Russia Investigators of Bias
(about 1 hour later)
WASHINGTON — House Republicans released a previously secret memo on Friday in which they accuse senior officials at the F.B.I. and Justice Department of bias in the early stages of the Russia investigation. WASHINGTON — House Republicans released a disputed memo on Friday compiled by congressional aides that accused the F.B.I. and Justice Department of abusing their surveillance powers to spy on a former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page.
The House Intelligence Committee made the memo public after a week of pleading from senior national security officials not to disclose the classified details, reading it aloud on a conference call with reporters after President Trump declassified the memo. The memo, which has prompted a political firestorm, also criticizes information used by law enforcement officials in their application for a warrant to wiretap Mr. Page, and names the senior F.B.I. and Justice Department officials who approved the highly classified warrant.
“A lot of people should be ashamed of themselves and much worse than that,” Mr. Trump said on Friday. But the memo falls well short of providing the material promised by some Republicans: namely, that the evidence it contained would cast doubt on the origins of the Russia investigation and possibly undermine the inquiry, which has been taken over by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.
The memo alleges that senior government officials favored Democrats over Republicans and accuses federal law enforcement officials of abusing their authorities when they sought permission to surveil a former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page. Instead, the document confirms that actions taken by another former Trump foreign policy adviser, George Papadopoulos, were a factor in the opening of the investigation.
Democrats say it is a Republican attempt to push a narrative that would undercut the investigation into Russia’s 2016 election meddling and possible coordination with the Trump campaign. The F.B.I. and House Democrats have both said the memo is misleading because it contains both omissions and inaccuracies. The memo does not provide the full scope of evidence the F.B.I. and Justice Department used to obtain the warrant to surveil Mr. Page.
Earlier on Friday, Mr. Trump said top officials and investigators at the F.B.I. and Justice Department have “politicized the sacred investigative process.” The outlines of the memo were widely detailed in news reports in recent days. Several details from the complete memo show that it reflects a line of attack circulating for weeks in conservative media outlets, which have been amplifying a narrative that the Russia investigation is the illegitimate handiwork of a cabal of senior Justice Department and F.B.I. officials who were biased against Mr. Trump and set out to sabotage him.
The early-morning Twitter post reinforced reports that Mr. Trump, in allowing the Republican memo to be released, is seeking to clean house in the upper ranks of the F.B.I. and the Justice Department, even at the risk of losing his own F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray. Earlier this week, The F.B.I. made an unusual public plea not to release the document, which could reveal classified sources and methods. Mr. Trump declassified the memo without requesting any redactions. One of its chief accusations centers on investigators’ inclusion in the FISA warrant application of material from a former British spy, Christopher Steele. Mr. Steele was researching possible ties between Russia’s election interference and Trump associates, but the application did not explain that he was financed by the Democratic National Committee and lawyers for Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
Mr. Trump had an opportunity to block the memo, which his own top national security officials have requested because of national security concerns. The document was written by aides to Representative Devin Nunes of California, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee who has been an avid supporter of Mr. Trump. It is not clear to what extent the FISA application hinges on the material provided by Mr. Steele, though in December 2017, the memo said, Andrew G. McCabe, then the deputy director of the F.B.I., told the House Intelligence Committee that no surveillance would have been sought without Mr. Steele’s information.
In response to Mr. Trump’s Twitter post on Friday, Representative Adam B. Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said it is unthinkable that the top elected official in the United States would release classified information to attack the F.B.I. “Neither the initial application in October 2016, nor any of the renewals, disclose or reference the role of the D.N.C., Clinton campaign, or any party/campaign in funding Steele’s efforts, even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior D.O.J. and F.B.I. officials,” said the memo, which was written by committee staffers.
Mr. Schiff and other Democrats on the Intelligence Committee drafted their own memo, a rebuttal which they say adds context to the Republican document. Republicans on the committee voted not to release the Democratic memo, but did support a motion that all lawmakers be allowed to review it. Democrats disputed the memo’s characterization of what Mr. McCabe had said.
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, of Wisconsin, supports the release of that second memo “in favor of greater transparency,” Mr. Ryan’s spokeswoman AshLee Strong said on Friday. “If it is scrubbed to ensure it does not reveal sources and methods of our intelligence gathering, the speaker supports the release of the Democrats’ memo,” Ms. Strong said. That assertion is “potentially problematic,” said David Kris, a FISA expert and former head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division in the first term of the Obama administration.
Mr. Trump has consistently criticized the F.B.I. and the Justice Department while asking senior officials for loyalty. The president has also denounced the Russian investigation and called it a hoax and a witch hunt. If the warrant applications did disclose that Mr. Steele’s research was funded by people who were opposed to Mr. Trump’s campaign, even if it did not name the D.N.C. or the Clinton campaign, then the applications “would be fine,” he said, and the author of the memo and those who backed its release are trying to mislead the American people.
Mr. Ryan told reporters on Thursday that the memo was not an attempt to undercut the Russia investigation. Instead, he described it as Congress carrying out its oversight role. “To me, that appears to be the lens through which we should evaluate the honesty, decency, and integrity of the two sides here,” Mr. Kris said. “Not having seen the FISA applications, my money is on D.O.J. and the F.B.I., but presumably time will tell.”
“This memo is not an indictment of the F.B.I., of the Department of Justice. It does not impugn the Mueller investigation or the deputy attorney general,” he said, referring to Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel investigating the Russian election meddling and whether Mr. Trump obstructed justice. Among the handful of details revealed by the publication of the memo was that the application also cited a September 2016 article published by Yahoo News. Written by the veteran investigative reporter Michael Isikoff, it cited unnamed sources saying that government investigators were scrutinizing Mr. Page’s ties to Russia.
Mr. Steele was later revealed to be a source for the article, and the memo suggests that law enforcement officials’ inclusion of it in their warrant application means they were using the same source twice but presenting it as separate sources.
“This article does not corroborate the Steele dossier because it is derived from information leaked by Steele himself to Yahoo News,” the memo said, underlining the assertion.
But it is unlikely that such an article would have been submitted to the court for the purpose of corroborating that a suspect was an agent of a foreign power, said Mr. Kris.
“The idea that they would cite a newspaper article as affirmative evidence of information contained in the article strikes me as very far-fetched,” he said. “It is much more likely that they would include an article to show that the investigation had become public, and that the target therefore might take steps to destroy evidence or cover his tracks.”
In an extraordinary move, the president declassified the identities of the people who had authorized the warrant. Republican committee staff members said the initial FISA warrant for surveillance of Mr. Page was approved by James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, and Sally Q. Yates, then the deputy attorney general. The date of the original application was Oct. 21, 2016.
The warrant was renewed three times, meaning Mr. Page was under surveillance for about a year. At various points in renewals of the warrant, required every 90 days, other law enforcement officials who signed off included Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general; Dana Boente, now the general counsel of the F.B.I.; and Andrew G. McCabe, the former F.B.I. deputy director who resigned under pressure this week.
Mr. McCabe has been a frequent target of Republicans and of the president. Mr. Trump is also said to be unhappy with Mr. Rosenstein, who appointed Mr. Mueller as special counsel to oversee the Russia investigation.
Asked at the White House on Friday whether he would fire Mr. Rosenstein, the president cocked his head suggestively and said: “You figure that one out.”
Pressed on whether he had confidence in Mr. Rosenstein, Mr. Trump would not answer.
The memo has set off partisan fury in Congress and protests within the executive branch. Law enforcement officials have warned that they have concerns that it jeopardizes sensitive national security information.
Led by Representative Devin Nunes of California, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Republicans have portrayed the memo as revealing a scandalous abuse of surveillance powers by the executive branch as it launched the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and ties to the Trump campaign.
“The committee has discovered serious violations of the public trust, and the American people have a right to know when officials in crucial institutions are abusing their authority for political purposes,” Mr. Nunes said in a statement, portraying the memo as recounting an “alarming series of events” in which intelligence and law enforcement agencies were “exploited to target one group on behalf of another.”
The memo also highlights Bruce Ohr, then an associate deputy attorney general, whose wife worked as a contractor with FusionGPS, the opposition research firm that hired Mr. Steele.
Mr. Ohr’s wife, Nellie Ohr, worked on contract for Fusion in 2016 doing translations of Russian media reports and other open-source research. Her role was relatively minor, a person familiar with her effort said. Ms. Ohr was not fully briefed on the work that Fusion was doing with Mr. Steele’s research, the person said.
Ms. Ohr’s background was in open-source intelligence — information that is publicly available — and she worked previously at the Open Source Center at the Central Intelligence Agency. The center does not handle classified information, and Ms. Ohr would not have had access to highly classified secrets or programs during her time there.
The memo also notes that the FISA application mentions Mr. Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty last year to lying to the F.B.I. about his contacts with people connected to the Russian government. The memo said there is no evidence Mr. Papadopoulos conspired with Mr. Page.
Top officials and investigators at the F.B.I. and Justice Department have “politicized the sacred investigative process,” Mr. Trump said earlier on Friday.
Mr. Page was on the radar of intelligence agencies for years when Mr. Trump named him to be one of his foreign policy advisers in 2016. He had visited Moscow in July 2016 and was preparing to return there that December when investigators obtained the warrant. White House officials have described Mr. Page as a gadfly who had been “put on notice” by the campaign and whom Mr. Trump did not know.Mr. Page was on the radar of intelligence agencies for years when Mr. Trump named him to be one of his foreign policy advisers in 2016. He had visited Moscow in July 2016 and was preparing to return there that December when investigators obtained the warrant. White House officials have described Mr. Page as a gadfly who had been “put on notice” by the campaign and whom Mr. Trump did not know.