WASHINGTON — The House Intelligence Committee released a redacted Democratic memorandum Saturday that counters Republican claims that top FBI and Justice Department officials had abused their powers in spying on a former Trump campaign aide.
The document, which underwent weeks of review by President Trump and his national security team, was intended by Democrats to offer a point-by-point refutation of what it called the “transparent’’ attempt by Trump’s allies on the committee to undermine the investigations into Russia’s election meddling and what role, if any, Trump associates played in it.
The dueling accounts reflected an extraordinary struggle on the committee to try to shape public perceptions of the credibility of the nation’s top law enforcement agencies. For weeks, instead of focusing its full energy on investigating an attack on the US democratic system, the committee has been pulled into a furious effort by Trump and his allies to sow doubts about the inquiries and the agencies conducting them.
The Democratic memo paints a more expansive and detailed picture of the surveillance of the former aide, Carter Page, than the Republican memo it was meant to rebut. It also undercuts key Republican assertions about political bias in the origins of the broader investigation into Russia’s election interference.
Trump blocked the memo’s outright release two weeks ago, with the White House counsel warning that the document “contains numerous properly classified and especially sensitive passages.’’ Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee had since been haggling with the FBI and the Justice Department over redactions. On Saturday afternoon, the department returned the redacted document to the committee for release.
The release of the Democratic rebuttal was expected to be the final volley, at least for now, in a bitter partisan fight over surveillance that has driven deep fissures through the once-bipartisan Intelligence Committee and at times pitted Trump against his own Justice Department and FBI.
Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said Saturday that the Democratic memo should “put to rest’’ Republican assertions of wrongdoing in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act process.
“Our extensive review of the initial FISA application and three subsequent renewals failed to uncover any evidence of illegal, unethical or unprofessional behavior by law enforcement and instead revealed that both the FBI and DOJ made extensive showings to justify all four requests,’’ he said in a statement.
The dispute and the dueling memos center on applications by the FBI in October 2016 to secure a secret warrant to spy on Page, a former Trump campaign adviser suspected of being a Russian agent, and the subsequent renewals.
Republicans, in their 3½-page memo, claim that top law enforcement officials seriously misled the court by failing to disclose that they were relying in part on research financed by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
The Democratic document contends that the FBI was more forthcoming to the surveillance court. It says that the agency did disclose to the court that it made use of information that was gathered through politically motivated means and quotes from the application itself.
The Democrats said that it would have been inappropriate and inconsistent with standard practice for officials to have disclosed to the court the names of American people and organizations connected with the former British spy who supplied the information, Christopher Steele.
The FBI frequently relies on sources who have agendas, whether it is a gang turncoat or a mafia informer. What is typically seen as important by courts is that the agenda is disclosed to a judge.
In the case of Page, the surveillance applications were reviewed by four different judges, all appointed by Republican presidents, the document says. Each approved of the request.
The memo also asserts that in applications to renew the wiretap, the FBI provided the court with information from independent sources corroborating Steele’s information. Much of the specific corroborating evidence was blacked out.
And, according to the Democrats, the wiretap produced “valuable intelligence’’ for the FBI that justified its renewal. The document once again offers specific examples, which were redacted by the Justice Department.
The warrant application itself remains under seal, and only a handful of lawmakers from either party have seen it. The New York Times has filed a motion asking the surveillance court to take the unusual step of unsealing it.
Page, a former investment banker based in Moscow, had been on the FBI’s radar for years, long before his association with Trump. The Democratic memo reveals that the FBI interviewed Page as late as March 2016 about his contacts with Russian intelligence agents, the same month Trump added him to his foreign policy advisory team.
The document also rebuts claims by Republicans, including Trump, that the FBI relied on Steele’s findings to open its counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016. Information from Steele, the memo says, did not reach the FBI counterintelligence team investigating Russian meddling until mid-September, well after the investigation had been opened.
Democrats have insisted that Trump’s deference to national security concerns in delaying the memo’s release was hypocritical and politically motivated. Just a week before blocking their memo’s release, the president had ignored similar objections from the Justice Department and the FBI to declassify the contents of a rival Republican memo, which was based on the same underlying documents. Trump asserted, incorrectly, that the Republican document vindicated him in the special counsel investigation into Russian election interference.
