Friday, February 02, 2018

Read: the full text of the Nunes memo

The allegations aim to call the FBI and Justice Department’s professionalism into question.


By Alex Ward and Zeeshan Aleem  Updated Feb 2, 2018, 1:28pm EST

The House Intelligence Committee just released the “Nunes memo” — and it contains some explosive allegations about the FBI.

Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee voted on Monday night to release the four-page memo, authored by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), which alleges that the FBI abused its power in surveilling Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016. The vote gave the president five days to review the classified document and decide whether it should be released for the public.

Despite objections from the FBI and Democrats, Trump authorized the release of the memo on Friday. Minutes later, the House Intelligence Committee released it to the public.

The memo makes several claims that could potentially threaten special counsel Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia investigation.

Here are the memo’s key claims:

  • The FBI used an unverified, allegedly biased document known as the “Steele dossier” to get a warrant in October 2016 to surveil Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser. The dossier, prepared by former British spy Christopher Steele, alleges the existence of a conspiracy between Donald Trump and the Russian government. The Steele dossier was partially financed by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) — which the memo argues is a major problem.
  • Senior FBI and Justice Department officials knew that the Steele dossier was indirectly funded by a lawyer for the Clinton campaign and the DNC, but didn’t disclose this in their application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court — a court that approves surveillance warrants pertaining to national security and foreign intelligence. They also didn’t disclose it when renewing their applications requesting additional time for surveillance.
  • In September 2016, Steele spoke with Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr. Steele told Ohr that he “was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president.” Ohr’s wife worked for the research firm, Fusion GPS, that hired Steele on behalf of the DNC/Clinton lawyer.
  • The head of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division Bill Priestap apparently said corroboration of the Steele dossier was in its “infancy” at the time of the FISA application.


Read more
https://www.vox.com/2018/2/2/16957588/nunes-memo-released-full-text-read-pdf-declassified

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