A handful of President Trump’s congressional allies are getting ready to ask him to declassify documents related to the FBI’s Russia investigation.
Republican Reps. Mark Meadows of North Carolina, Jim Jordan of Ohio, Matt Gaetz of Florida, and Lee Zeldin of New York plan to ask Trump to declassify portions of the application the FBI submitted to surveil former Trump campaign aide Carter Page in late 2016 after a heavily-redacted version was released in August.
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According to a notice from Zeldin’s office about a Thursday afternoon press conference, they will also ask Trump to declassify the notes filed by Justice Department official Bruce Ohr and “other relevant documents.”
Ohr was grilled last week by the House Oversight and Judiciary committees about this relationship with former British spy Christopher Steele.
Steele authored the Trump-Russia dossier after being commissioned by opposition research firm Fusion GPS. Ohr’s wife, Nellie, also worked for Fusion GPS. The firm’s work on the dossier was financed on behalf of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
Trump and his congressional allies have long said that because Ohr passed information from Steele and the dossier to the FBI — without revealing his wife’s relationship with Fusion GPS and even after the FBI terminated its relationship with Steele — the Russia probe is tainted with bias.
[Also read: Trump shames Sessions: ‘If we had a real Attorney General,’ there would be no Russia investigation]
The dossier’s Democratic backings should have been more directly revealed in the surveillance warrant applications on Page, say Trump and Republicans.
Trump has declassified something for his lawmaker allies before. In January, Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee released a memo on the FBI’s Russia probe that revealed that Page was wiretapped by the FBI.
Democrats have accused Trump and Republicans of going after the FBI and Justice Department for bias to actually discredit special counsel Robert Mueller.
Mueller took over the FBI’s Russia investigation in May 2017.
