Democrats on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence omitted several key facts from their memo on the FBI and Justice Department’s use of the Trump-Russia dossier in applying for a spy warrant on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in 2016.
The Democrats’ memo, released on Saturday, claimed to refute a similar memo released on Feb. 2 by committee Republicans who alleged that the FBI and DOJ had abused the FISA system in obtaining the warrant. The Democratic memo omitted several key points.
The Democratic memo ignored Republicans’ contention that former FBI Deputy Director Andy McCabe testified in December that the FISA warrant would not have been sought without the infamous dossier, which was commissioned by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC). McCabe’s testimony was a key point in the Republican memo.
Democratic California Rep. Eric Swalwell claimed earlier this month that Republicans had mischaracterized McCabe’s testimony. However, Democrats declined to directly refute that claim in their own memo.
Republicans noted several other omissions in their rebuttal to the Democratic memo.
“The Democrat memo ignores the fact that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton campaign paid for the Steele dossier, which— as confirmed by the Graham-Grassley referral —formed “a significant portion of the Carter Page FISA application,” the Republican rebuttal states.
“Amazingly, the Democrat memo does not contain a single reference to the DNC or Clinton campaign, or acknowledge that they funded the dossier, or admit that this information was not provided to the FISA Court.”
“The Democrat memo confirms that a September 2016 Yahoo News article by Michael Isikoff was part of the FISA application. However, the memo ignores the fact that the FBI failed to subsequently inform the Court that Steele provided information to Yahoo News,” the GOP rebuttal adds. “Isikoff has publicly confirmed Steele was a source for his article about Page.”
Republicans claim the Democratic memo also “paints an incomplete picture of Page’s past activities, and omits that, in a secretly-taped statement reproduced in a 2015 federal court filing, a Russian intelligence officer called Page “an idiot.”
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Julia Nista contributed to this report
http://dailycaller.com/2018/02/25/democrats-russia-memo-omits-key-facts/
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