Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said Sunday the FBI did nothing wrong in convincing the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to allow the government to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
“I don’t think they did anything wrong,” Rubio told Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “I think they went to the court and got the judges to approve it.”
Late Saturday evening, the Justice Department released top-secret documents related to the surveillance warrants used to wiretap Page under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The heavily redacted documents showed the FBI believed Page was collaborating and conspiring with the Russian government.
The documents confirm the FBI based its surveillance requests to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in part on a dossier compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer hired by a research firm funded in part by former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
Republicans have accused the FBI of relying too heavily on the Steele dossier.
But Rubio said Sunday the FBI was right to be concerned about Page, based on his past relationship with Russia.
“He is a guy, even before the campaign — this is not Trump related — who went around bragging about his connections in Russia,” Rubio said of Page. “They [the FBI] knew who he was before the campaign. Then you see the guy gravitating around a leading campaign, and then other things came up on the screen, and said, ‘we’ve got to look at this guy.’ That’s what the FISA application lays out.”
[Also read: Trump calls on Republicans to ‘get tough now’ after release of FISA documents on Carter Page]
The released documents show the FBI told the court it considered Steele a trusted, reliable source. The FBI told the court it believed the source of funding for the Steele research was “likely looking for information that could be used to discredit” Trump, even if it didn’t directly name the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee as being behind it.
Democrats note the application also included evidence against Page unrelated to the Steele dossier. Rubio said he agreed with this assessment.
“There was a lot of reasons unrelated to the dossier for why they wanted to look at Carter Page,” Rubio said.
Rubio added the surveillance is “not part of any broader plot” by the FBI to undermine Trump as some Trump allies in Congress have alleged.
“The only plot is to interfere in the election by the Russians,” he said. “I don’t believe that them looking into Carter Page means they were spying on the campaign. I also don’t believe it proves anything about collusion or anything like that.”
