2 Weeks After Trump Blocked It, Democrats’ Rebuttal of GOP Memo Is Released

At the conference on Saturday, Representative Devin Nunes of California, the committee’s Republican chairman, said the newly released memo showed that Democrats were engaged in a cover-up and were “colluding with parts of the government” to carry it out.

The Democratic memo underwent days of review by top law enforcement officials after the president had blocked its outright release two weeks ago, with the White House counsel warning that the document “contains numerous properly classified and especially sensitive passages.” On Saturday afternoon, after weeks of haggling over redactions, the department returned the document to the committee so it could make it public.

The release 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.

Representative Adam B. Schiff, the top Democrat on the committee, said on Saturday that the Democratic memo should “put to rest” Republican assertions of wrongdoing against the former Trump aide, Carter Page, 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 F.B.I. and D.O.J. made extensive showings to justify all four requests,” he said in a statement.

Republicans, including Mr. Trump, were undeterred. The White House dismissed the Democratic document as an attempt “to undercut the president politically.”

“The Democrat memo response on government surveillance abuses is a total political and legal BUST,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter. “Just confirms all of the terrible things that were done. SO ILLEGAL!”

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

The dispute centers on an application by the F.B.I. in October 2016 to secure a secret warrant to spy on Mr. Page, suspected by American law enforcement of being a Russian agent, as well as the subsequent renewals.

Republicans, in their own three-and-a-half-page memo, had claimed that top law enforcement officials abused their most sensitive powers in relying on politically motivated research provided by a former British spy, Christopher Steele.

According to the Republicans, the F.B.I. failed to tell a secret intelligence court that Mr. Steele’s work had been financed by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, making it all but impossible for a judge to evaluate the credibility of the information.

But the Democratic document contends that the F.B.I. was more forthcoming to the surveillance court about Mr. Steele than Republicans had let on, and that the information provided by Mr. Steele, a trusted source in the past, was only a small part of the evidence supporting a wiretap.

According to the memo, officials laid out a “multipronged rationale” for spying on Mr. Page, including his past interactions with Russian spies, and informed the court of a counterintelligence investigation then underway into the Kremlin’s covert influence campaign.

Mr. Page, a former investment banker based in Moscow, had been on the F.B.I.’s radar for years, long before his work with Mr. Trump. The Democratic memo reveals that the F.B.I. interviewed Mr. Page as late as March 2016 about his contacts with Russian intelligence agents, the same month that Mr. Trump added him to his foreign policy advisory team.

The information from Mr. Steele was about “specific activities in 2016” by Mr. Page, including suspected meetings with close associates of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia during a July trip to Moscow, the Democrats said.

The document says that the bureau did disclose to the court that it had made use of information that was gathered through politically motivated means and quotes from the application itself.

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

“The F.B.I. speculates that the identified U.S. person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit” Mr. Trump’s campaign, the F.B.I. wrote in the application.

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 individuals and organizations that had paid Mr. Steele.

The F.B.I. 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 Mr. 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 F.B.I. provided the court with information from independent sources corroborating Mr. Steele’s findings. Much of the specific corroborating evidence was blacked out.

And, according to the Democrats, the wiretap produced “valuable intelligence” for the F.B.I. that was used to justify its renewal three times. 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.

The Democratic document also rebuts claims by Republicans, including Mr. Trump, that the F.B.I. relied on Mr. Steele’s findings to open its counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016. Information from Mr. Steele, the memo says, did not reach the F.B.I. counterintelligence team investigating Russian meddling until mid-September, well after the investigation had been opened.

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

The document challenges several other prominent Republican claims. For instance, the Republican memo asserted that the F.B.I. had presented to the court a Yahoo News article from September 2016 as corroboration of Mr. Steele’s claims, despite the fact that it later emerged that Mr. Steele had been a source for it.

The Democrats said that the article, and another it did not identify, was merely used to inform the court that Mr. Page had publicly denied having the meetings in Moscow.

Republicans on the Intelligence Committee released a point-by-point response to the Democratic document, which they said only confirmed that the F.B.I. had relied on politically motivated material. In a separate document, they wrote that the Democrats had provided a “lengthy but wholly unpersuasive attempt to distract from the committee’s key findings” on surveillance abuse.

Mr. Page, in a statement, called the memo “a smear campaign” by Democrats that only made it more important that the underlying applications be released publicly.

Democrats have insisted that Mr. 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 F.B.I. to declassify the contents of the rival Republican memo, which was based on the same underlying documents.

Continue reading the main story

Share and Enjoy

Siblings allegedly held captive by parents are ‘starting to make plans for their future’: Mayor

Some of the 13 siblings allegedly held captive by their parents in their California home are “starting to make plans for their future,” Corona Mayor Karen Spiegel told ABC News today.

“Their minds are just being opened,” she said, to “having a choice and not being so controlled.”

The young adult victims are now “getting up and making the day happen for themselves, getting out of bed and deciding what they want to eat.”

David Allen Turpin/ Facebook

“They’re starting from very elementary stuff,” she said, but have “progressed very, very well.”

David and Louise Turpin are accused of abusing their children, including in some cases allegedly forcing them to shower only once a year, shackling them and beating them routinely, prosecutors said. The victims weren’t released from their chains even to go to the bathroom, according to prosecutors.

When found last month, the children hadn’t been to a doctor in over four years and had never been to a dentist, prosecutors said.

David Allen Turpin/ Facebook

The Turpins were arrested in January after the couple’s 17-year-old daughter escaped the home and alerted authorities.

All the children except for the youngest, a toddler, were severely malnourished, prosecutors said. The eldest victim — a 29-year-old woman — weighed only 82 pounds when rescued.

David and Louise Turpin have each been charged with 12 counts of torture, 12 counts of false imprisonment, seven counts of abuse of a dependent adult and six counts of child abuse. David Turpin was also charged with one count of a lewd act on a child under the age of 14 by force, fear or duress. They have pleaded not guilty.

The Turpins made a brief appearance in court today, where neither spoke. They will return for a settlement conference hearing set for March 23. Three additional charges of abuse were filed against both David and Louise Turpin today, and one new count of felony assault was filed against just Louise Turpin.

They pleaded not guilty to all new charges.

Gina Ferazzi, Pool via Getty Images

Frederic J. Brown, Pool via Getty Images

Meanwhile, the siblings are recovering in hospitals.

The adult victims have Skyped with their younger siblings as they have been separated to two different hospitals, Spiegel said, adding that they have put on weight.

Some of the siblings “didn’t really know what a toothbrush was used for,” Spiegel said.

Some of the victims had never had shoes, Spiegel said, recounting how when one boy was given his first shoes, they were too tight, but he wouldn’t relinquish them until a bigger pair arrived because he was scared he would never get shoes back.

Spiegel described the young adult victims as “so loving and warm and affectionate,” and said they appreciate the “things we take for granted.”

Damian Dovarganes/Pool via Reuters

ABC News’ Alyssa Pone contributed to this report.

Share and Enjoy