WHAT ARE THEY AFRAID OF????????RSK
Remember how hard the Justice Department and the FBI fought to not have to turn over documents concerning their pursuit of a warrant to wiretap Trump campaign official Carter Page in 2016? Remember how the House Intelligence Committee subpoenaed the documents in August, but had to deal with constant foot-dragging and excuses until Paul Ryan had to threaten them with a contempt of Congress charge to finally get access to the documents?
If you’re any sort of critical thinker, it made you wonder what they were hiding – especially since it appears they may have used the fake Steele dossier to convince the FISA court to issue a warrant to wiretap Page. That would mean a Democrat administration got permission under false pretenses to spy on a Republican presidential campaign. That’s bigger than Watergate.
FISA warrant application
Well. The House Intelligence Committee finally got to see the documents it wanted, including the FISA warrant application. So if the Steele dossier was in fact the primary basis for that wiretap warrant, the committee members are now aware of it. But they didn’t get to keep copies. They were only allowed to view them and take notes. As a result, some committee members drafted a memo summarizing the facts they learned from viewing these documents. And on Thursday, the committee voted to make these memos available to all House members.
That measure passed, but guess who voted against it. Yep. Every Democrat on the committee:
Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes also moved Thursday to release to the public his committee’s interview with Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson. Every Democrat joined Republicans in voting for that public disclosure. Yet every Democrat voted against letting the rest of the House see a memo that will list the facts about the FBI’s use of FISA warrants to surveil members of the Trump campaign in 2016. Strange. What are Democrats afraid of?
Ranking Democrat Adam Schiff has been a loud voice for accountability regarding the Trump-Russia probe, but his outrage evaporates regarding the role that Fusion GPS and its Democratic financiers may have played in persuading the FBI to seek a warrant to eavesdrop on American civilians. What were the FBI’s reasons and the evidence it used to seek such an extraordinary writ?
All of this is relevant to the House’s recent vote to extend Section 702 that allows law enforcement to monitor foreigners. Mr. Nunes provided two closed briefings to Republicans last week as they prepared to renew Section 702, and he assured Members that he’d seen no evidence that government had abused 702 powers. But he also said he had seen evidence that law enforcement misused powers involving the surveillance of U.S. citizens as part of the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign.