President Trump called on Republicans to “get tough now,” hours after the Justice Department released top-secret documents related to the surveillance warrants used to spy on former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
In a pair of tweets Sunday morning, the president also noted that the more than 400 pages of records are “ridiculously redacted,” but argued they show special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation is a “witch hunt.”
[Byron York: FISA warrant application supports Nunes memo]
Congratulations to @JudicialWatch and @TomFitton on being successful in getting the Carter Page FISA documents. As usual they are ridiculously heavily redacted but confirm with little doubt that the Department of “Justice” and FBI misled the courts. Witch Hunt Rigged, a Scam!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 22, 2018
Looking more & more like the Trump Campaign for President was illegally being spied upon (surveillance) for the political gain of Crooked Hillary Clinton and the DNC. Ask her how that worked out – she did better with Crazy Bernie. Republicans must get tough now. An illegal Scam!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 22, 2018
In adherence to a Freedom of Information Act requests filed by the New York Times, Judicial Watch, and others, the 400-plus pages on the 2016 application for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant taken out on Page, in addition to three renewal applications, were released late Saturday evening.
“This application targets Carter Page,” the document said. “The F.B.I. believes Page has been the subject of targeted recruitment by the Russian government.”
The Page wiretap was performed over concerns that the Russians sought to “undermine and influence the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election in violation of U.S. criminal law,” the document added.
Following the release, some conservative Republican allies of Trump in Congress called for more to be unredacted. Rep. Mark Meadows, head of the House Freedom Caucus, suggested there was a “potentially groundbreaking development.”
“The Carter Page FISA docs should be declassified and further unredacted (protecting only sources and methods) so Americans can know the truth,” the North Carolina Republican tweeted. “If the previous admin was funneling campaign research toward surveillance, we need to know.”
Potentially groundbreaking development here. The Carter Page FISA docs should be declassified and further unredacted (protecting only sources and methods) so Americans can know the truth.
If the previous admin was funneling campaign research toward surveillance, we need to know. https://t.co/vWfeatCdUk
— Mark Meadows (@RepMarkMeadows) July 22, 2018
Congressional Republicans have clashed with the DOJ and FBI in recent months to obtain documents related to the Russia and Hillary Clinton email investigations and went as far as to pass a resolution last month demanding the records be released, with some lawmakers, including Meadows, warning that failure to comply could result in holding officials in contempt or even impeachment.
In response to the FISA warrants release Saturday, Democrats argued they showed federal officials took appropriate measures to investigate a suspicious target.
“These documents affirm that our nation faced a profound counterintelligence threat prior to the 2016 election, and the Department of Justice and FBI took appropriate steps to investigate whether any U.S. persons were acting as an agent of a foreign power,” House Intelligence Committee ranking member Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said in a statement. “FBI and DOJ would have been negligent had they not used all the tools at their disposal, including Court-authorized FISA surveillance, to protect the country.”
Meanwhile, Page, the target of the warrants, condemned what he said. “I’m having trouble finding any small bit of this document that rises above complete ignorance and/or insanity,” the former Trump campaign aide told Fox News.
The FBI and the Justice Department relied heavily on the now-infamous “Trump dossier” authored by former British spy Christopher Steele in obtaining the FISA warrants on Page.
Republicans have often cited the use of the dossier as misinformation used to improperly monitor Trump and his campaign during the months leading up to the 2016 presidential election.
A memo from the GOP majority of the House Intelligence Committee released earlier this year, which Trump declassified, showed that the FISA court was not informed that research that led to the dossier was funded in part by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign.
