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The Inspector General of the Department of Justice has determined that the three extensions of the mandate of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act against former Trump campaign assistant Carter Page had been obtained illegally, said lawyer Joe DiGenova on Thursday.
In an investigation opened last year, Inspector General Michael Horowitz examines the compliance of the Department of Justice and the FBI with the legal requirements as well as the policies and procedures of applications filed with the Court of Supervision United States foreign intelligence regarding Page as part of a further counter-intelligence investigation. in the Trump campaign.
The Inspector General's investigation is expected to be completed by the end of May or June, and diGenova, a former US District Attorney, said the Capitol Hill Democrats were working overtime to investigate President Trump and the US. discredit.
"They do this as a diversionary tactic, far from the inevitable conclusions of DOJ's Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, who, by the way, has learned that the last three extensions of FISA were obtained illegally", said diGenova to Fox Business. . "The only question now is whether the first FISA was obtained illegally."
He referred to memos obtained by the Conservative group Citizens United through a pending dispute, suggesting that the FBI would have misled the Foreign Intelligence Oversight Court in the first request for a warrant on a case. not verified.
Horowitz "apparently, as a result of these revelations … which he was not aware of – the office hid these Horowitz memos – as they are doing additional work on the first FISA. the four FISAs may have been illegally obtained, "said diGenova.
The case, set up by ex-British spy Christopher Steele, contained salacious and unverified statements about Trump's ties to Russia. The FBI used it to get the wiretapping power of Page, an American who had a suspicious relationship with the Russians. The first request for a warrant was filed in October 2016, following which three renewals were made every three months, including January, April and June 2017.
The memos obtained by Citizens United and shared with the Washington ExaminerMr. Steele met with Assistant Secretary Kathleen Kavalec on October 11 and confessed that he was encouraged by a client to publish his research before the 2016 election, a sign of a possible motivation. policy. The timing of the meeting is remarkable, as it was 10 days before the FBI used Steele's untested file to obtain the original warrant for wiretaps Page.
Senate and House investigators told The Hill that they were also unaware of the documents, which had been given to the FBI and redacted by the FBI, and a member of Congress referred the note to the Inspector General of the Department of Justice. "They tried to hide a lot of documents from us during our investigation, and it turns out that's a reason for that," said Devin Nunes, a member of the House of Representatives' House Intelligence Committee. member of the House Intelligence Committee hierarchy.
In February 2018, the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign, through the Perkins Coie law firm and the Fusion Fusion opposition research group, paid more $ 160,000 to Steele to allow him to obtain "derogatory information on the links that unite Donald Trump to Russia". The memo also said that the FBI had never informed the court of foreign information monitoring of the Democratic Benefactor's record nor of Steele's anti-Trump bias when he had asked to spy on Page, who had made the subject of an investigation by the special advocate Robert Mueller about his relations with the Russians, but had never been charged.
In a rebuttal of the House Intelligence GOP memo, Democrats said the Justice Department and the FBI "respect the rigor, transparency, and factual basis necessary to meet the requirement. probable cause of FISA ".
In recent days, senior FBI officials have defended the processing of warrant applications. Former FBI director, James Comey, said Thursday at a CNN general meeting that "the most important part of the record was about" the Russians who would run in the US election " , which he said was "consistent with our other information" and "truthful." Former FBI General Counsel, James Baker, who acknowledged that he "wanted the burden to weigh heavily on me" when writing the application for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, said it would have been "free" to name the Americans – the Hillary Clinton campaign and DNC – in the documents.
Comey and Baker both stated that they were confident that the office had done nothing wrong with obtaining the warrants, although Mr. Baker admitted that the Inspector General was making him "nervous" .
DiGenova appeared on Fox Business with his wife and legal partner, Victoria Toensing. She accused FBI director Christopher Wray of "hiding" Comey's "sins".
Mr. DiGenova served as an independent counsel in the 1990s in a case involving the passport of former President Bill Clinton prior to his election. Last year, it was announced that diGenova and Toensing were joining Trump's legal team for the federal inquiry into Russia, but this plan was canceled in a few days.
He had strongly criticized Mueller's investigation of Russia, saying that Trump had been "qualified" by the Justice Department and the FBI.
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