President Donald Trump said he would 'expose' the Department of Justice for abusing its power to 'spy' on his presidential campaign on Tuesday as he sought to justify his directive to the law enforcement agency to release classified communications about the Russia probe
'Really bad things were happening, but they are now being exposed.Big stuff!' he tweeted
The president referenced New York Congressman Peter King in the message that highlighted the Republican lawmaker's appearance on Fox News the evening prior
King said, according to Trump: 'What will be disclosed is that there was no basis for these FISA Warrants, that the important information was kept from the court, there's going to be a disproportionate influence of the (Fake) Dossier
Basically you have a counter terrorism tool used to spy on a presidential campaign, which is unprecedented in our history
' King did not use those words exactly.He did not call the dossier 'fake,' for instance, but did call the spying on Page 'unprecedented
' He appeared on the news network to defend Trump's order from Democratic charges that the president's demand to DOJ that it release classified and sensitive information was 'desperate, dangerous and deliberately misleading' and a 'clear abuse' of presidential power
'The President is potentially risking the lives of our patriots by compromising sources and methods, all so he can advance falsehoods and false narratives that distract from the truth of the Trump-Russia scandal,' House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said
Pelosi demanded that Trump allow special counsel Robert Mueller to continue his investigation into Russian election meddling unimpeded
'This investigation is working, and must be allowed to continue to do its job free from the White House and GOP's interference,' she said
Pelosi and her Democratic colleagues were fuming after Trump ordered the Department of Justice to release a host of documents related to the Russia probe on Monday, including texts between two former FBI officials who talked about stopping his rise to power
Trump also directed DOJ to declassify pages from a warrant from a secret court that allowed the feds to spy on former campaign adviser Carter Page and all of the interview reports the bureau prepared to go along with it
The president told Justice to publish reports tied to its interview with DOJ official Bruce Ohr, whose wife Nellie worked at the firm that put together the unverified dossier of dirt on the president, in the sweeping declassification of documents associated with the special counsel investigation
Ohr is known to have been in contact with the dossier's author, ex-British spy Christopher Steele
And in a further request, Trump called for the release of text messages relating to the probe that were sent or received by ex-FBI director James Comey, whom the president last year fired
The announcement came the same day as Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's nomination ran off the skids following a woman's claim that he and a friend perpetrated a sex attack on her three decades ago
White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders made the declaration in a statement distributed to reporters as the president was speaking at Hispanic Heritage Month event
It read: 'At the request of a number of committees of Congress, and for reasons of transparency, the President has directed the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Justice (including the FBI) to provide for the immediate declassification of the following materials: (1) pages 10-12 and 17-34 of the June 2017 application to the FISA court in the matter of Carter W
Page; (2) all FBI reports of interviews with Bruce G.Ohr prepared in connection with the Russia investigation; and (3) all FBI reports of interviews prepared in connection with all Carter Page FISA applications
'In addition, President Donald J.Trump has directed the Department of Justice (including the FBI) to publicly release all text messages relating to the Russia investigation, without redaction, of James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and Bruce Ohr
' The documents Trump requested were not immediately available.But a Department of Justice spokesperson said in a Monday evening statement that the document review process had already begun
'When the President issues such an order, it triggers a declassification review process that is conducted by various agencies within the intelligence community, in conjunction with the White House Counsel, to seek to ensure the safety of America's national security interests,' the person said
'The Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are already working with the Director of National Intelligence to comply with the President's order
' It was expected to take days, if not weeks, for DOJ to put together all of the requested materials, especially the Russia texts that Justice will have to sort through and review for each of the named targets
Trump was expected to demand the release of the documents relating to surveillance of Page, his former foreign policy advisor and Ohr, a career Justice Department official who had contacts with the author of the Golden Showers dossier, any day now
His demand that Justice release Comey's texts, on the other hand, was completely unexpected
Republicans running two key congressional panels have been pushing for the declassification of the surveillance documents and texts between Strzok and former FBI attorney Lisa Page for months, arguing that whey will reveal bias within the criminal justice system that Trump believes taints the Russia probe
Democrats on those same panels have argued that declassification would be a crass political move in advance of an election
Rep.Adam Schiff, the top-ranking Democrat on the House Intel Committee, accused Trump on Monday of a 'clear abuse' of his presidential power
Trump said on several occasions that he planned to stay out of it but hinted more recently that he was likely to exercise his authority as the nation's chief executive to guide the affairs of the agency that is supposed to be independent
Axios reported Trump was expected to take the action last week.The publication quoted conservative Freedom Caucus chair Rep
Mark Meadows of North Carolina saying: 'After two years of investigations and accusations from both sides of the aisle about what documents indicate, it is past time for documents to be declassified and let the American people decide for themselves if DOJ and FBI acted properly
' Trump has railed against Ohr, a career Justice official who ran an organized crime task force, over his contacts with Steele, who wrote the dossier alleging the Russians had compromising material on the president from his time in the private sector
Trump has regularly brought up that Ohr's wife, Nellie, worked for Fusion GPS, the political intelligence firm that contracted Steele for the dossier
Ohr and Steele also had communications during the campaign.In emails Steele wrote to Ohr seeking help identifying a contact
The since-demoted Ohr told lawmakers that Steele told him at a July 2016 breakfast that Russian intelligence believed they had Trump 'over a barrel' with the blackmail documents that he outlined in the unproven dossier
Their breakfast took place after Kremlin-backed hackers had already stolen Democratic emails as part of Russian directed interference in the presidential election
Ohr acknowledged to Congress that he didn't tell his superiors about what he learned from Steele
Trump has demanded repeatedly since that he be fired, and threatened to strip him of his security clearance
He asked in a July tweet 'how the hell' Ohr was still working at the Justice Department, after including him on a list of officials who could lose their security clearances
'I think Bruce Ohr is a disgrace,' Trump wrote.'I suspect I'll be taking it away very quickly
For him to be in the Justice Department and doing what he did, that is a disgrace
' 'Will Bruce Ohr, whose family received big money for helping to create the phony, dirty and discredited Dossier, ever be fired from the Jeff Sessions 'Justice' Department? A total joke!' Trump tweeted August 20
Ohr lost his title of associate deputy attorney last December and relinquished leadership of an Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force
Republicans have cited his meeting with Steele after the election and his failure to list his wife's work on government disclosure forms as factors that have marred the Russia probe, although there have been no indications he signed off on surveillance warrants or other materials
Ohr and Steele were both part of an effort to flip Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska to try to secure cooperation against Russian President Vladimir Putin between 2014 and 2016, the New York Times reported early this month
Their work together began before Trump was ever a candidate.In another point of contention, Democrats have said that information aside from the dossier was used to obtain the FISA warrant to spy on Page, a low-level figure inside the Trump campaign
Their version of events is backed up by a redacted version of the warrant that has already been released by the court
Trump and Republicans in Congress maintain that the FBI relied on the Steele dossier to get surveillance on Page and start the Russia probe
FBI officials have testified that the dossier only corroborated information the bureau was already obtaining
Republicans also want to unseal documents related to surveillance warrants on Page, who an investor who advised Trump's campaign
Page had lived in Russia, traveled to Moscow during the campaign, and had been suspected by U
S.counterintelligence of being a possible Russian agent since 2013.They applauded him on Monday, with Congressman Matt Gaetz saying in a statement that he and his colleagues in the House had requested those documents for months but 'faced lengthy and unnecessary delays, redactions, and refusals from officials at the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation
' 'These documents will reveal to the American people some of the systemic corruption and bias that took place at the highest levels of the DOJ and FBI, including using the tools of our intelligence community for partisan political ends
Full transparency is the best way to ensure that surveillance abuses of this magnitude will never happen again,' Rep
Gaetz said.Schiff bashed Trump as having clearly engaged in an 'abuse of power' as he took him to task for his decision to 'intervene in a pending law enforcement investigation by ordering the selective release of materials he believes are helpful to his defense team and thinks will advance a false narrative
' 'With respect to some of these materials, I have been previously informed by the FBI and Justice Department that they would consider their release a red line that must not be crossed as they may compromise sources and methods,' he said
'This is evidently of no consequence to a President who cares nothing about the country and everything about his narrow self-interest
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