National security lawyer Bradley Moss sent a letter Tuesday to President Trump urging him to release the materials of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant materials used to obtain the authority to spy on former Trump campaign official Carter Page.
The letter was sent on behalf of USA Today investigative reporter Brad Heath and the James Madison Project, a group that works to promote government transparency.
“Your decision to intervene and declassify the Nunes Memo led to greater transparency with respect to national security surveillance of a U.S. citizen, a subject that is rarely subject to public scrutiny through lawful means — but one that obviously is of tremendous public concern,” Moss wrote in the letter, referring to the House Intelligence Committee memo on alleged FISA abuses spearheaded by committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif.
“You alone retain the inherent constitutional authority to take this type of sweeping, lawful and historic action to increase transparency with respect to the FISA process,” he added.
BREAKING: we are sending to @realDonaldTrump today a written, formal request that he personally intervene and declassify the Page FISA materials, thereby sparing the FBI the resource-intensive process it laid out for the court as necessary.
Mr. President, will you act? https://t.co/h1ONjNxfgu
— Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) March 20, 2018
On social media, Moss linked to a story written by Heath that shows a federal judge has given the Justice Department until July 20 to release the FISA materials. But Moss is urging Trump to “personally intervene and declassify the Page FISA materials, thereby sparing the FBI the resource-intensive process it laid out for the court as necessary.”
Trump declassified the House Intelligence memo in February, put together by the panel’s Republican majority.
The memo asserts that the FBI and the Department of Justice inappropriately obtained a FISA warrant to spy on Page. The Democrats on the panel put together their own rebuttal memo, which also was OK’d for release, but in a redacted form.
