Democratic rebuttal to GOP House Intelligence memo released

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., acknowledged its release at his appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference, at about 4 p.m.

“It’s just posted,” he told American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp, quipping that the committee website was probably already crashing due to high traffic.

Democrats say their memo, spearheaded by ranking member Adam Schiff, D-Calif., was written as a rebuttal to provide greater context to a Republican memo that was released earlier this month, which outlines abuses by the FBI and the Justice Department against the Trump campaign, particularly in the write-up and approval of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant applications to spy on ex-Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page.

[Devin Nunes shares ‘point by point’ refutation of Democratic memo]

The Democratic memo says in its first page that “FBI and DOJ officials did not ‘abuse’ the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) process, omit material information, or subvert this vital tool to spy on the Trump campaign.”

It adds, “In fact, DOJ and the FBI would have been remiss in their duty to protect the country had they not sought a FISA warrant and repeated renewals to conduct temporary surveillance of Carter Page, someone the FBI assessed to be an agent of the Russian government.

A key point in the GOP memo, put together by Nunes and staff, claims Justice Department and FBI officials used “Trump dossier” author Christopher Steele was played an important role in the initial and all three renewal FISA applications to spy on Page. The dossier from Steele, an ex-British spy, is filled with salacious and unverified claims about President Trump’s ties to Russia. A crucial source of funding for the dossier, Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee, as well as Steele’s anti-Trump bias were also left out by the DOJ and FBI, the GOP memo alleged, addressing a major area of concern of Republicans and Trump supporters.

The Democratic memo makes the case the that agencies covered themselves appropriately.

“DOJ provided additional information obtained through multiple independent sources that corroborated Steele’s reporting,” the document says on page four about the FISA renewals.

Nearly all of the underlying details to that point are redacted.

The Democratic memo, which is 10 pages, says that contrary to the GOP memo’s assertion, the DOJ did inform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court “accurately that Steele was hired by politically-motivated U.S. person and entities and that his research appeared intended for use ‘to discredit’ Trump’s campaign.” It adds that the FBI “properly” notified FISC after it terminated Steele as a source for making “unauthorized disclosures to the media,” and that the GOP memo cites no evidence to support the notion that the FBI, prior to the initial October 2016 application, knew or should have known of any alleged inappropriate contact with the media. Also, the DOJ noted in its FISA renewals that Steele has been terminated as an FBI source along with the corroborative sources, the Democratic memo says.

Ultimately, the memo says the DOJ “met the rigor, transparency, and evidentiary basis needed to meet FISA’s probably requirement.”

Steele has since been targeted in a criminal referral made by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Crime and Terrorism Subcommittee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. The referral appears to confirm some level of coordination between the extended Clinton circle and the Obama administration in the effort to seek damaging information about then-candidate Trump.

The Democratic rebuttal does not appear to dispute the GOP memo’s claim that ex-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe “testified before the Committee in December 2017 that no surveillance warrant would have been sought from the FISC without the Steele dossier information.”

McCabe retired from the FBI in late January.

Although the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee voted to make the Democrat’s memo public earlier this month, President Trump refused to declassify it, citing “significant concerns for the national security and law enforcement interests.”

As a result, Schiff had been working with Justice Department officials to determine what must be redacted and what could remain in the memo.

The White House immediately put out a statement Saturday upon the Democratic memo’s release which said Trump supported the release of the Democrats’ memo in the interest of transparency, but claims it is a “politically driven document” which “fails to answer serious concerns raised by the Majority’s memorandum.”

“While the Democrats’ memorandum attempts to undercut the President politically, the President supported its release in the interest of transparency. Nevertheless, this politically driven document fails to answer serious concerns raised by the Majority’s memorandum about the use of partisan opposition research from one candidate, loaded with uncorroborated allegations, as a basis to ask a court to approve surveillance of a former associate of another candidate, at the height of a presidential campaign,” said a statement from White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders.

“As the Majority’s memorandum stated, the FISA judge was never informed that Hillary Clinton and the DNC funded the dossier that was a basis for the Department of Justice’s FISA application,” Sanders’ statement continues. “In addition, the Minority’s memo fails to even address the fact that the Deputy FBI Director told the Committee that had it not been for the dossier, no surveillance order would have been sought. As the President has long stated, neither he nor his campaign ever colluded with a foreign power during the 2016 election, and nothing in today’s memo counters that fact.”

Trump himself chimed in on the Democratic memo’s release, calling the report “a total political and legal bust” in a pair of tweets that also noted that the Democratic memo makes no rebuttal to the assertion that Clinton and the Democrats funded the dossier was omitted by the DOJ and FBI in the FISA warrant process.

Nunes got the first word on the memo during his CPAC appearance and dismissed its findings.

“We actually wanted this out,” he said to the crowd of conservative activists, referring to the GOP majority in his committee. “We think it is clear evidence that the Democrats are not only trying to cover this up, but they’re also colluding with parts of the government to help cover this up.”

Nunes conceded there are a lot of things in the Democratic memo that “sound really bad,” including claims about the Russia investigations, but added “what you’re not going to see is anything that actually rejects what was in our memo.”

He said the purpose of his memo was to show that FISA abuse had occurred.

Schiff disagreed in his first comments about his memo’s release.

“Some time ago, Republicans on our committee released a declassified memo that omitted and distorted key facts in order to mislead the public and impugn the integrity of the FBI,” he tweeted.

“After reviewing the memorandum drafted by committee Republicans that was made public at the beginning of this month, the FBI rightly expressed its ‘grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy,'” Schiff added in a statement, referring to the intelligence community’s opposition to the full release of the GOP memo.

The Republicans’ memo, the release of which was approved, unredacted, by Trump earlier this month, was four pages long.

Upon the GOP memo’s release, Trump tweeted that that it “totally vindicates” him in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia inquiry.

But Schiff shot back, “[q]uite the opposite, Mr. President.”

Schiff said the “most important fact” from the “otherwise shoddy memo was that FBI investigation began July 2016 with your advisor, Papadopoulos, who was secretly discussing stolen Clinton emails with the Russians.”

He was referring to foreign policy aide George Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty in October to charges brought against him by Mueller in his investigation about him lying to federal officials about his contacts with Kremlin-linked Russians.

The GOP memo concedes that the FBI began its formal investigation into the Trump campaign in July 2016 because Papadopoulos, and not the dossier.