[ad_1]
WASHINGTON – In a rare retreat, President Trump overturned Friday and said he no longer demanded that documents relating to the Russian investigation be immediately declassified and made public.
Taking to Twitter on Friday morning, Trump said that instead of an immediate release, Justice Department officials would review the documents, adding that "ultimately, I can still downgrade if that it turns out necessary.
A White House statement on Monday said the president had called for "immediate declassification" of documents used by authorities to authorize the surveillance of assistant Carter Page. The president also ordered the publication of undisclosed text messages sent by law enforcement officials, both current and former, that Mr. Trump accused of being involved in a conspiracy against him.
The publication of the documents was a well-known cause for Trump's most ardent supporters on Capitol Hill and in the conservative media, who have been claiming for months that publishing the documents would help prove a Liberal plot to undermine Trump.
The brutal overthrow of the president could anger these supporters if they consider the decision as evidence of Mr. Trump's weakness by yielding to pressure from his own administration.
In his tweets, Trump said that Justice Department officials had agreed to release the unredacted documents, but also warned against what the president called "a perceived negative impact on the investigation in Russia." ".
The president also said in the tweet – undeveloped – that "the main allies" had called for him not to declassify the documents.
According to a former US official and a former British official, the UK government has expressed serious concerns to the US government about the publication of classified information. The material includes direct references to conversations between US law enforcement officials and Christopher Steele, the former British spy who compiled a case alleging links between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Britain's objection, according to these former officials, was linked to the disclosure of Mr. Steele's identity in an official document, whether or not he was quoted in press articles.
Some of the documents at issue concern the beginning of the investigation in Russia, during which law enforcement officials filed an application for authorization with the secret foreign intelligence monitoring court to proceed with the investigation. Mr Page's wiretap. Mr. Trump and his Republican allies claimed that law enforcement officials misled the court to obtain this permission.
The president's declassification order on Monday urged law enforcement officials to release about two dozen pages of the monitoring request. Much of the application has already been published, but Mr. Trump's order would make the application more accessible in an unredacted form to the public.
Mr. Trump and his allies claim that this will show that the officials misled the court by not revealing that the application was partly based on the record, which they claim should be discredited as a partisan document funded in part by the Democrats.
Little evidence has emerged to support these allegations, and Democrats have attacked Republican efforts for the publication of the documents, claiming that this political effort could lead to a dangerous disclosure of sensitive information about national security.
In his tweet on Friday, Trump also appeared to withdraw from his requests for text messages from officials, including James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, and his assistant, Andrew G. McCabe.
Text messages between two old F.B.I. Officials Lisa Page and Peter Strzok revealed critical conversations about Mr. Trump. The president's allies said they thought the publication of more text messages would show bias against Trump in the law enforcement community.
Source link
