Nunes predicts declassified FISA warrants will be key to November elections

by WorldTribune Staff, September 16, 2018

President Donald Trump is close to declassifying Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants against Trump campaign associate Carter Page, the chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence said.

Rep. Devin Nunes, California Republican added that Democrats and the media are “going to be frightened by what you see.”

Rep. Devin Nunes: Democrats and the media are ‘going to be frightened by what you see.’ / AP

In July, the DOJ had released the heavily redacted versions of four FISA warrants granted against Page from October 2016 through June 2017.

Nunes said “the really bad stuff about the Trump campaign was buried in the redactions.”

Speaking at an event hosted by the Center for Security Policy on Sept. 13, Nunes, said he believes declassifying the FISA documents will show the FBI and Department of Justice abused their counterintelligence power to spy on the Trump campaign in 2016.

New details which would emerge if the documents were declassified could also be key in the November midterm elections, Nunes said, according to reports in the Washington Free Beacon and Daily Caller.

“It’s not just going to be economic growth and running on the economy,” he said. “It’s also going to be about what the other side did to play dirty, to dirty up a campaign – but not do it through campaign tactics, but do it by corrupting the FBI and the DOJ.”

Nunes said the House Select Committee on Intelligence has been conducting its investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election under Watergate-era oversight authority aimed at executive and judicial branch malfeasance.

The select committee was created in 1977 and was granted special investigative power following the scandal that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

A rule gives the panel special authority to probe both the administration and courts when those branches of government “go awry,” Nunes said.

“Without the Republican colleagues voting to exercise that rule, we would have never been able to declassify what you guys all know now was the dirt that was used, generated by the Clinton campaign, fake news stories, created and used to spy on American citizens and a Trump campaign official,” Nunes said.

Unredacted portions of the documents showed that the FBI relied heavily on the unverified dossier by ex-British spy Christopher Steele dossier to obtain the warrants.

“We should declassify the whole thing,” Nunes said.

How the committee investigation will end is not known, Nunes said. “But I can promise you this: We’re on the verge, I believe, of having full transparency in this process,” he said.

Republicans are also pressing Trump to release summaries of interviews the FBI conducted with Bruce Ohr, the DOJ official whose wife, Nellie Ohr, worked for Fusion GPS, the firm that commissioned the dossier via funding from the Hillary Clinton campaign/DNC.


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