Republicans Authorize Sharing of Classified
Report on FBI, DOJ officials' Conduct
By KYLE CHENEY
January 20, 2018 "Information
Clearing House"
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Republicans on the House Intelligence
Committee have authorized their colleagues
to access a highly classified report that
they say details their concerns with the
conduct of top FBI and Justice Department
officials, as well as the agencies’ handling
of a controversial surveillance program.
“We have concerns — FISA concerns — that all
members of the body should know,” said Rep.
Mike Conaway (R-Texas), a member of the
committee, referring to the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act. Some of
President Donald Trump’s allies in the House
have argued that the program was
inappropriately used to surveil a foreign
policy aide to the Trump campaign.
Democrats derided the release of the report
as part of an attempt to discredit senior
leaders of the agencies leading
investigations into President Donald Trump’s
ties to Russia and whether any of his
associates aided Russia’s attempt to
influence the 2016 election.
“[T]he Majority voted today on a party-line
basis to grant House Members access to a
profoundly misleading set of talking points
drafted by Republican staff attacking the
FBI and its handling of the investigation,”
Rep. Adam Schiff, the committee’s top
Democrat, said in a statement. “Rife with
factual inaccuracies and referencing highly
classified materials that most of Republican
Intelligence Committee members were forced
to acknowledge they had never read, this is
meant only to give Republican House members
a distorted view of the FBI.”
“This may help carry White House water, but
it is a deep disservice to our law
enforcement professionals,” he added.
Conaway noted that the classified report
would probably remain off-limits to the
public, though all members of the House are
permitted to view it. But by releasing it to
other House members, it gave Trump allies
outside the Intelligence Committee a chance
to batter FBI leadership and underscore
complaints they’ve raised about the agency’s
handling of its investigation of Trump
associates’ contacts with Russia. Throughout
the day Thursday, a handful of Trump’s top
House allies began calling for the immediate
public release of the report.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) said the report
must be released to “preserve our
democracy.” Another conservative ally, Rep.
Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.), called the report
“deeply troubling” and said the Intelligence
Committee should dust off a little-used
process to reveal classified information
publicly in order to show the public. Rep.
Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.) said the report would
reveal “FISA abuse.”
“Releasing this classified information will
not compromise good sources and methods,”
Zeldin said in a statement. “It will,
however, reveal the feds’ reliance on bad
sources and methods.”
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A
source familiar with discussions between the
leader of the Freedom Caucus, Rep. Mark
Meadows (R-N.C.), and House leadership —
amid high-stakes negotiations over the
government spending bill — said Meadows
asked Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) explicitly
to authorize a vote on releasing the report.
The source said Ryan deferred to the House
Intelligence Committee chairman, Rep. Devin
Nunes (R-Calif.), who has authority over
whether to start the process on releasing
the report.
Meadows, taking to the House floor late
Thursday, said he was “shocked” by the
contents of the report.
“It is time that we become transparent on
all of this,” he said. “And I am calling on
our leadership to make this available so
that all Americans can judge for
themselves.”
Conaway, though, told reporters he’d counsel
his colleagues against revealing classified
material.
“That’d be real dangerous,” he said,
suggesting that a version of the committee’s
findings could be made public without
getting into the specifics of what drove
Republicans’ decision to share the report
with colleagues.
Another member of the Intelligence
Committee, Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah), said
he would like to release an unclassified
version of the report “scrubbed” to protect
classified information. He said that in
addition to questions about FISA, the report
would highlight concerns among Republicans
about “the judgment of some members of the
FBI or some members of the Department of
Justice.”
The report appears to be the result of an
inquiry by a subset of Republican members of
the House Intelligence Committee, the
details of which were revealed last month.
That investigation, led by Nunes, focused on
what some Republicans on the panel have come
to view as abuses of the FISA process by
senior FBI and DOJ officials, as well as the
handling of a disputed Trump-Russia dossier
by intelligence and law enforcement
officials.
This article was originally published by Politico -
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