The emergence of the memo, crafted by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (above), marks a dramatic new stage in the GOP’s effort to delegitimize the federal probe into whether the Kremlin infiltrated and even influenced Donald Trump’s campaign. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
‘Congress will do whatever they’re going to do, but I think it’s a disgrace what’s happening in our country,’ the president says.
Republicans on Capitol Hill, backed by an angry President Donald Trump, defied pleas from the FBI and Democrats on Friday and released a previously classified memo alleging misconduct by senior U.S. officials investigating Trump’s presidential campaign.
The memo’s emergence marks a dramatic new stage in the political war around the federal investigations into Kremlin interference in the 2016 election. Republicans say the memo exposes anti-Trump bias among top law enforcement officials who helped launch a federal probe into whether Russia infiltrated Trump’s campaign team.
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Democrats counter that the GOP is politicizing intelligence and distorting facts of the Trump-Russia investigation. And they warned Trump on Friday not to use the memo as a pretext for firing special counsel Robert Mueller or his supervisor, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
Trump himself fumed over the document’s findings on Friday. “I think it’s a disgrace what’s happening in our country,” he told reporters in the Oval Office. “A lot of people should be ashamed.”
Trump appeared to be referring to top FBI and Justice Department officials, who he said on Twitter earlier in the day had “politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats and against Republicans.” That echoed longtime charges from conservatives who allege that a “deep state” of anti-Trump bureaucrats has sought to destroy his presidency.
FBI director Christopher Wray opposed the memo’s release. But even an FBI statement expressing “grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy” was not enough to deter Republicans publicly cheered on by conservative media outlets and the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., who suggested on Twitter Friday that the memo’s findings should mean “game over” for the Russia investigation.
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, called the Republican move “reckless” and said it “demonstrates an astonishing disregard for the truth.”
“This unprecedented public disclosure of classified material during an ongoing criminal investigation is dangerous to our national security,” Warner added, saying the memo’s release would damage “our ability to protect Americans from threats around the globe.”
Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, accused Republicans of “a coordinated propaganda effort to discredit, disable and defeat the Russia investigation.”
Orchestrated by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), a Trump ally, the memo charges “a troubling breakdown of legal processes established to protect the American people” from government surveillance.
Specifically, the document alleges that an October 2016 FBI application for a warrant to monitor the communications of a former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page, relied on a controversial private intelligence dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele. Steele was paid by Fusion GPS, a research firm retained by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee to continue opposition research on Trump.
The memo notes that the government must provide “information potentially favorable to the target of a FISA application,” but charges that FBI agents “withheld” their knowledge that Steele’s work had Democratic funding, and that Steele had openly expressed dislike for Trump.
The memo also asserts that FBI Director Andrew McCabe told the House Intelligence Committee in December that the FBI would not have sought a warrant to spy on Page without the information in Steele’s dossier.
Steele’s reporting, which his associates have likened to raw, unverified intelligence findings, alleged that Page had plotted in 2016 with Russia’s top oil executive to influence U.S. foreign policy for a massive profit.
The dossier was also cited in several applications for 90-day renewals of the warrant on Page, a former energy executive who has given shifting accounts of a summer 2016 trip he took to Moscow while advising Trump’s campaign.
Three of the applications to monitor Page under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, were approved by former FBI Director James Comey and one by his deputy and successor, McCabe.
Those applications were also approved by several other top Justice Department officials — including Sally Yates, a deputy attorney general in the Obama administration who briefly served as acting attorney general in January 2017; Dana Boente, who succeeded Yates; and Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller. In each case, a federal judge who sits on the FISA court — whose deliberations are kept secret — approved the request to monitor Page’s communications.
The memo casts Steele — who once ran the Russia desk for Britain’s MI6 intelligence service — as biased and untrustworthy. It alleges that Steele told a top Justice Department official that he was “desperate that Donald Trump not get elected.” It also charges that Steele improperly shared information to the media and misled federal officials about his contacts with reporters.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said the memo “cherrypicked” information from underlying intelligence. Schiff is one of a handful of lawmakers to have seen that underlying material.
Schiff said in a conference call that the memo exaggerates the Steele dossier’s importance to the FISA warrant application for Page. He said the application only cited portions of the dossier that referred specifically to Page — and added that some of that information had by then already been corroborated from other sources.
Schiff also said the memo mischaracterizes McCabe as telling the House Intelligence Committee behind closed doors that, as the memo puts it, “no surveillance warrant would have been sought… without the Steele dossier information.”
Schiff said the FBI deputy director was emphasizing the interdependence of all elements of a warrant application.
The FBI has argued that the memo distorts underlying intelligence and omits facts about evidence the bureau used to obtain its FISA warrants to spy on Page. The FISA law is designed to make monitoring an American citizen possible only in cases where there is very strong evidence of wrongdoing, and can only be obtained when a larger FBI investigation has already begun.
Most of the memo’s findings had been leaked in the weeks leading up to its release. But one unexpected aspect was its apparent confirmation of a December New York Times report that the FBI first launched its Russia investigation in July 2016 after an intelligence alert related to Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulous — not from the findings of the dossier, which were provided to the FBI later.
The memo says that the Page FISA application contained unspecified information about Papadapoulos which “triggered the opening of an FBI counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016.” That would be consistent with the Times report that, two months earlier, Papadapoulos had disclosed to an Australian diplomat his knowledge that the Russians posessed stolen Democratic emails; the diplomat relayed that information to U.S. officials who soon initiated what has become the sprawling investigation into Russian election meddling.
In a statement after the memo’s release, Attorney General Jeff Sessions — who has recused himself from the Russia probe, said that “Congress has made inquiries concerning an issue of great importance for the country and concerns have been raised about the Department’s performance. I have great confidence in the men and women of this Department. But no Department is perfect.”
“I am determined that we will fully and fairly ascertain the truth,” Sessions added.
Schiff anticipatesthat a rebuttal prepared by Democrats — which intelligence committee Republicans declined to release simultaneously with their own memo — would discredit the GOP arguments. The White House signaled that it was open to releasing the Democratic memo as well, saying in a statement from Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders that it “stands ready” to work with Congress on oversight requests.
The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff (D- Calif.) said Friday that a rebuttal prepared by Democrats — which intelligence committee Republicans declined to release simultaneously with their own memo — would clearly discredit the GOP arguments.
“The premise of the Nunes memo is that the FBI and DOJ corruptly sought a FISA warrant on a former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, Carter Page, and deliberately misled the court as part of a systematic abuse of the FISA process,” Schiff said. “As the Minority memo makes clear, none of this is true. The FBI had good reason to be concerned about Carter Page and would have been derelict in its responsibility to protect the country had it not sought a FISA warrant.”
House Speaker Paul Ryan has said he will back the Democratic memo’s release once lawmakers had a chance to review it.
Trump critics fear he’ll invoke the memo to undermine Mueller’s ongoing investigation, which has crept into Trump’s inner circle in recent weeks. Senior Republicans including Speaker Paul Ryan have warned colleagues not to connect the memo’s findings to Mueller’s probe, but Trump’s most fervent allies in Congress have already insisted its findings are grounds for ending Mueller’s work.
Democrats warned Trump against using the memo as grounds for firing Mueller or his supervisor, Rosenstein.
“We write to inform you that we would consider such an unwarranted action as an attempt to obstruct justice in the Russia investigation,” House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, . “Firing Rod Rosenstein, DOJ Leadership, or Bob Mueller could result in a constitutional crisis of the kind not seen since the Saturday Night Massacre.”
Page has proved an enigmatic figure in the Russia investigation, a clueless naïf to some and a potential Russian agent to others. A former Moscow-based investment banker and energy executive who has argued for warmer U.S.-Russian relations, Page has denied collaborating with Russia. Trump campaign officials approved a trip Page took Moscow in June 2016 to deliver a speech, where Page now admits he also met with Russian government officials.
Unrelated court documents show that Russian spies in New York sought to recruit Page in 2013, and that he provided them with documents from a class he was teaching at the time.
Page plays a critical role in Steele’s dossier, many of whose findings have not been independently verified and are vehemently disputed by Page and other Trump associates. It alleges that on a July 2016 trip to Moscow, Page had met secretly with the head of Russia’s state run oil conglomerate Rosneft, and discussed a plan in which Page would enjoy a massive profit from the pending sale of Rosneft if he helped to roll back U.S. economic sanctions on Russia.
In a statement Friday, Page hailed the intelligence committee for revealing what he called an “unprecedented abuse of process,” and said it would be a step “toward helping to restore law and order in our great country.” Page vowed to continue legal action against the Justice Department.
Soon after the memo’s release Friday, Comey himself weighed in on Twitter, calling the document “[d]ishonest and misleading” and saying it had “destroyed trust with Intelligence Community damaged relationship with FISA court, and inexcusably exposed classified investigation of an American citizen. For what? DOJ FBI must keep doing their jobs.”
“The American people should know that they continue to be well served by the world’s preeminent law enforcement agency,” the FBI Agents Association said in a statement shortly after the memo was released. “FBI Special Agents have not, and will not, allow partisan politics to distract us from our solemn commitment to our mission.”
In recent days, a handful of Senate Republicans also pleaded with their House counterparts to use caution in its decision to release the memo. In a statement that obliquely referenced the ongoing fight, Sen. John McCain blasted “attacks on the FBI and Department of Justice.”
“Our nation’s elected officials, including the president, must stop looking at this investigation through the warped lens of politics and manufacturing partisan sideshows,” McCain said. “If we continue to undermine our own rule of law, we are doing Putin’s job for him.”
Ryan, the House speaker, earlier this week urged his colleagues not to overstate the memo’s findings, and said nothing in it raised questions about Rosenstein or Mueller.
Talking points circulated by House GOP leaders Friday underscored that point: “The Memo is NOT intended to undermine the Special Counsel” and “The Memo is NOT intended to undermine DOJ or FBI.”
Some White House aides have also privately raised concerns that the memo’s revelations wouldn’t match the weeks of breathless speculation in conservative media about its contents.
Some House Republicans struck the same tone Friday.
“Allegations in memo are serious, but must not be used to impugn the FBI or discredit the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller,” tweeted Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-N.J.), adding: “[W]e must not allow this memo to become a distraction from work we need to do.”
But many other Republicans depicted the memo as scandalous.
“FBI takes dossier to secret court to get secret warrant to spy on American,” tweeted Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). “FBI did NOT INCLUDE recorded bias of dossier author Steele when he told DOJ attorney Bruce Ohr he ‘was desperate that @realDonaldTrump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president.’”
“It is time for the people to take their government back,” said Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.). “Political bias from independent government agencies is corruption when applied to our justice system.”
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, whose staff was denied access to the memo while the House committee deliberated on its release, declined to comment.
The memo plunges Trump into deeper conflict with Justice Department and FBI officials who he has criticized as biased against him since before his inauguration.
Earlier this week FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe abruptly left his post after facing intense public scrutiny from the president. Trump had questioned McCabe’s impartiality in handling the Russia prove, citing the fact that his wife received a donation from a Hillary Clinton political ally during her failed run for state office in Virginia.
Last week the president called the missing text messages between two FBI employees accused of bias against him “one of the biggest stories in a long time.” The messages, sent between FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page, have become a rallying cry for some of the right alleging a vast conspiracy to sabotage Trump’s presidency is afoot at law enforcement agencies. Strzok and Page were formerly involved in Mueller’s investigation.
In a November tweet the president alluded to the existence of a “deep state” at the FBI and Justice Department, a reference to the conspiracy that government officials are working to undermine the White House for political reasons.
Despite his forceful Friday missive, counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway insisted that Trump held deep respect for FBI employees.
“The president has stated many times that he respects the rank and file the FBI, the 25,000 men and women who do a great job there,” Conway told Fox News.
Conservative media outlets applauded Trump and the House Republicans on Friday. And the president’s son, Trump Jr., tweeted dozens of times about the memo.
“McCabe knew that the FISA warrant was obtained using shady dossier and that all extensions were based on the original application. The Obama administration then used information that Hillary paid for to justify spying on @realDonaldTrump, the younger Trump tweeted. “If I got that right should be game over.”
But some former law enforcement and intelligence officials remained skeptical, expressing alarm at the president’s actions and rhetoric toward the FBI and DOJ.
James Clapper, a former Director of National Intelligence, said Trump’s charge that the FBI and DOJ had “politicized” their investigations was “the pot calling the kettle black,”
“Transparency is a great thing, but let’s be factual and objective about it, and this clearly is a pretty blatant political act,” Clapper added during a Friday morning appearance on CNN, rebuffing Republicans who say the memo’s release will bolster government transparency.
Voter enters a booth at a polling place in Exeter, N.H., in November 2016. (Elise Amendola/AP)
In a blistering decision that could impact the 2018 midterm elections, a federal judge on Thursday ruled that Florida’s system for barring former felons from voting is unconstitutional and potentially tainted by racial, political or religious bias.
U.S. District Judge Mark Walker blasted the state panel led by Florida’s governor that decides whether to restore voting rights to people who have completed their sentences, saying their process is arbitrary and exceedingly slow.
“In Florida, elected, partisan officials have extraordinary authority to grant or withhold the right to vote from hundreds of thousands of people without any constraints, guidelines, or standards,” Walker wrote. “The question now is whether such a system passes constitutional muster. It does not.”
“A person convicted of a crime may have long ago exited the prison cell and completed probation,” the judge continued in the 43-page order. “Her voting rights, however, remain locked in a dark crypt. Only the state has the key — but the state has swallowed it.”
The judge did not rule on how the issue should be remedied — he will hold hearings on that in mid-February — but he said the voter restoration system must be changed as soon as possible.
The lawsuit was brought against Gov. Rick Scott (R) by a group of former felons in Florida who had completed their sentences but were denied voting rights by the state’s Office of Executive Clemency. They were supported by the Fair Elections Legal Network.
The decision comes amid a wave of victories voting rights activists have scored in the past two years in court cases fighting restrictive state voting policies. In 2016, federal judges in North Carolina and Ohio struck down Republican-backed voter identification laws in those states, finding they discriminated against minority voters. A federal judge in Texas came to the same conclusion last year in a lawsuit challenging that state’s voter-identification law.
Walker’s ruling is also a forceful rebuke of Scott, who implemented Florida’s current felon restrictions shortly after he took office in 2011, reversing a more lenient policy that was in place previously, as the Tampa Bay Times has reported.
A spokesman for the governor defended the state’s practices.
“The discretion of the clemency board over the restoration of felons’ rights in Florida has been in place for decades and overseen by multiple governors,” read a statement from Scott’s communications director, John Tupps. “The process is outlined in Florida’s Constitution, and today’s ruling departs from the precedent set by the United States Supreme Court.”
Florida’s constitution automatically strips voting rights from anyone convicted of a felony, but governors can control how those rights get restored.
Under the current system, former felons must wait a minimum until five years after completing the full scope of their sentence, including probation and restitution, before they can seek re-enfranchisement. At that point they can appeal to the clemency board, a four-member panel headed by the governor. State rules give Scott, and Scott alone, “unfettered discretion to deny clemency at any time, for any reason.”
A number of factors can influence the clemency board’s decision, including drug and alcohol use as well as fuzzier elements such as “level of remorse.” In some cases, traffic tickets have been enough for the board to deny re-enfranchisement. Those who are rejected can’t reapply for at least two years. There’s a 10,000-person backlog of applicants.
The broad, uncheckable nature of the board’s power over the process made it ripe for abuse, the judge ruled, saying it “risks — if not covertly authorizes the practice of — arbitrary and discriminatory vote-restoration.” He said it violated people’s First Amendment rights to free association and free expression, as well as the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
In one withering anecdote, Walker described the case of a white man who was convicted of casting an illegal ballot in 2010. When the man went before the board three years later, Scott asked him about his illegal voting.
“Actually, I voted for you,” the man said. Scott laughed and told him, “I probably shouldn’t respond to that.” Seconds later, the governor ordered his voting rights restored, according to the ruling.
The plaintiffs identified five similar cases in which former felons were denied restoration of their voting rights because they had cast illegal ballots. Four of the five of them were African American, according to the ruling.
The judge said there were other examples where applicants “invoked their conservative beliefs and values to their benefit.” And in other cases, he wrote, people who criticized felon disenfranchisement appeared less likely to receive clemency.
“If any one of these citizens wishes to earn back their fundamental right to vote, they must plod through a gauntlet of constitutionally infirm hurdles. No more,” Walker wrote. “When the risk of state-sanctioned viewpoint discrimination skulks near the franchise, it is the province and duty of this Court to excise such potential bias from infecting the clemency process.”
Voter restoration was a faster and less demanding process for former felons under Scott’s predecessor, Rep. Charlie Crist, a former Republican who is now a Democratin the House of Representatives. During Crist’s four years in office roughly 154,000 people had their voting rights restored. In the seven years since Scott took office, fewer than 3,000 people have been granted restoration, according to Walker’s ruling.
“We’ve known this policy was unjust, and today a federal judge confirmed it’s also a violation of constitutional rights,” Crist tweeted Thursday.
We’ve known this policy was unjust, and today a federal judge confirmed it’s also a violation of constitutional rights. Justice will prevail! https://t.co/H8Op4PdgkX
More than 20 percent of Florida’s black voting-age population can’t vote, according to figures from the nonpartisan Sentencing Project cited by the judge.
Florida, Kentucky and Iowa are the only states where people convicted of a felony permanently lose their voting rights pending clemency hearings. In 2016, the Sentencing Project estimated that nearly 1.7 million Florida residents had been stripped of voting rights, as The Washington Post has reported.
A measure to restore voting rights to 1.2 million Florida voters, excluding convicted murderers and sex offenders, will appear as an amendment on state ballots in November. State officials approved the measure last week after a grass-roots campaign collected 799,000 valid signatures from voters, as the Miami Herald reported.
Echoing other recent judicial opinions in voting rights cases, Walker, an appointee of President Barack Obama, said he was “not blind to the nationwide trends” in which the right to vote “depends on who controls the levers of power.”
“That spigot is turned on or off,” he wrote, “depending on whether politicians perceive they will benefit from the expansion or contraction of the electorate.”
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that the plaintiffs were supported by the American Civil Liberties Union.
