A Republican lawmaker said he expects the release of the report by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz on alleged Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuses by the DOJ and the FBI within two weeks.
Rep. John Ratcliffe, who is a member of the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, made the declaration on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures when asked by anchor Maria Bartiromo about unreleased transcript material that GOP investigators have suggested was exculpatory evidence not given to the FISA court in applications targeting former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
“Well, if there is a transcript, I think everyone would agree, based on what you just said, if there is a transcript of what you just related, that absolutely should have been provided to the FISA court,” the Texas Republican said.
“And the good news is, we’ll get a definitive answer from the inspector general when this report gets issued in the next week or two about whether or not that was done,” Ratcliffe added, the most specific prediction for its release to date.
The presentations to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for the Page warrants have been roundly criticized by Republicans, especially the FBI’s reliance on the dossier compiled by British ex-spy Christopher Steele, who was being paid by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and the Democratic National Committee through Fusion GPS via the Perkins Coie law firm. Republicans say the FBI did not verify the dossier before using it and that the bureau hid key facts from the court, while Democrats have defended the FBI’s actions.
In October 2018, Ratcliffe said he had seen documents related to recorded conversations between FBI informants and former Trump campaign associate George Papadopoulos. He called for Trump to declassify them, saying, “It would expose certain folks at the Obama Justice Department and FBI and their actions taken to conceal material facts from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.”
Ratcliffe told Bartiromo on Sunday that he has “staked my credibility on this,” adding, “I think that the information that should have been turned over to the FISA court wasn’t, and that the FISA process wasn’t followed, and that, when Jim Comey and Adam Schiff and others say that the FISA abuse idea is a bunch of nonsense, that they’re wrong.”
Horowitz completed his investigation into the application process to obtain warrants to electronically surveil Page last month and gave a draft to the DOJ and FBI for a classification review.
Upon the completion of that process, the report will be delivered to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, who has pledged to do a “deep dive” of his own into FISA that will run concurrently with U.S. Attorney John Durham’s review of the early stages of the Russia investigation.
Trump has given Attorney General William Barr, who is overseeing Durham’s inquiry, broad authority to declassify information related to the federal investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. The president already partially declassified hundreds of pages of FISA documents related to Page in July 2018.
U.S. District Judge John Bates, who was the presiding judge of the FISA court from 2009 to 2013, said recently he expects the report from Horowitz to be “very fair” and “pretty lengthy.”
