Thread: Dems' rebuttal to GOP FISA memo is released; Trump deems it a 'bust'

Dems' rebuttal to GOP FISA memo is released; Trump deems it a 'bust'

By Adam Shaw | Fox News
1 hour ago

President Trump on Saturday dismissed a Democratic rebuttal to the GOP memo outlining government surveillance abuses in the 2016 campaign as a “total political and legal bust," claiming that it only confirms the ”terrible things” that were done by the nation’s intelligence agencies.

The rebuttal, written by Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, concluded that officials at the FBI and Justice Department “did not abuse the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) process, omit material information or subvert this vital tool to spy on the Trump campaign.”

Democrats sought to counter claims made in a Republican memo released this month that the FBI and DOJ relied on a Democrat-funded anti-Trump dossier to ask the FISA court for a warrant to monitor Trump adviser Carter Page. Democrats have claimed that the Republican memo leaves out important information.

But Trump was unimpressed by the 10-page memo.

Ranking Democrat Adam Schiff, D-Calif., countered, saying it confirmed the FBI had in fact acted appropriately.

Republicans had found that the DOJ and FBI left out the Democratic National Committee’s and Hillary Clinton's campaign's funding of the dossier, as well as the anti-Trump motivations of author and former British spy Christopher Steele in its request for a warrant. Republicans have pointed to the revelations as proof that intelligence agencies had abused surveillance powers.

The Democratic rebuttal backed the FBI and DOJ in its seeking of the FISA warrant.

“In fact, DOJ and the FBI would have been remiss in their duty to protect the country had they not sought a FISA warrant and repeated renewals to conduct temporary surveillance of Carter Page, someone the FBI assessed to be an agent of the Russian government,” the rebuttal said, adding that the DOJ met the “rigor, transparency, and evidentiary basis” needed to meet FISA’s probable cause requirement.

The rebuttal finds that the FBI had an "independent basis" for investigating Page's motivations, and that he had been targeted for recruitment by the Russians. It also claims that the DOJ "repeatedly informed the Court about Steele's background, credibility, and potential bias." It also says that the Justice Department infomed the FISA court that Stelle was hired by "politically-motivated U.S. persons and entities and that his research appeared intended for use "to discredit" Trump's campaign.

The rebuttal adds that the DOJ only made "narrow use" of information from Steele's sources and that in later FISA renewals the DOJ provided "additional information obtained through multiple independent sources" that backed up Steele's reporting. It also challenges the Republican assertion that the FBI authorized payment to Steele, saying that it neglected that the payment was cancelled.

The memo, however, does not directly challenge the Republican assertion that former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe testified to the House Committee that they would not have sought the Page surveillance warrant if it hadn’t been for the dossier.

The rebuttal was voted out of committee earlier this month but was ordered to be redrafted after the White House demanded that sensitive information be stripped out before the document be made public. The Justice Department and FBI claimed the initial draft would reveal information about sources and methods, ongoing investigations, and other sensitive information.

Schiff said the minority's memo should "put to rest" any concerns about conduct by the intelligence agencies.

"Our extensive review of the initial FISA application and three subsequent renewals failed to uncover any evidence of illegal, unethical, or unprofessional behavior by law enforcement and instead revealed that both the FBI and DOJ made extensive showings to justify all four requests," Schiff said in a statement.

The Democratic rebuttal seemed unlikely to mark an end to the ongoing fight over the FISA application and the role of that dossier. Republicans on the committee immediately responded to the memo's release with its own rebuttals to the Democratic claims. For instance, while the Democrats say that the court was given information about the political motivations of Steele, Republicans say that such a statement is "buried in a footnote" that obscures rather than clarifies his motives.

“The American people now clearly understand that the FBI used political dirt paid for by the Democratic Party to spy on an American citizen from the Republican Party," Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif. said in a statement.

"Furthermore, the FISA court was misled about Mr. Page’s past interactions with the FBI in which he helped build a case against Russian operatives in America who were brought to justice. It defies belief that the Department of Justice and FBI failed to provide information to a secret court that they had provided to an open federal court regarding their past interactions with Mr. Page," he said.

The White House called the rebuttal a "politically driven document" that fails to answer the concerns raised by the Republican memo.

"As the Majority’s memorandum stated, the FISA judge was never informed that Hillary Clinton and the DNC funded the dossier that was a basis for the Department of Justice’s FISA application," Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement.

"In addition, the Minority’s memo fails to even address the fact that the Deputy FBI Director told the Committee that had it not been for the dossier, no surveillance order would have been sought," she added.

A Republican source dismissed the rebuttal, saying that the Democrats “want the public to look at the trees, and not the forest, the big picture that DOJ and Justice relied heavily on the dossier to surveil an American citizen, and withheld from the court that the research was funded by the DNC and Clinton campaign.”

On Twitter, Trump reacted to the claim that the judge was never informed of the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign’s funding by tweeting: “Wow!”

Democrats have claimed that the Republican memo was an effort to attack FBI Director Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged Russian interference in 2016. Trump had previously said that the memo "totally vindicates" him in the investigation.

Fox News’ Catherine Herridge, Jennifer Bowman and Jason Donner contributed to this report.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018...fisa-memo.html

LOL!! It's the dud most knew it would be. Another Russa Hoax FIZZLE!!