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Trump sent two tweets on Friday indicating that the Inspector General of the Justice Department had been asked to review the documents in an accelerated manner, while saying that he could finally decide to declassify the documents.
But the apparent backtrack was a significant change from his unprecedented Monday's statement calling for the declassification of the selective portions of the FBI's June 2017 request to oversee Trump Carter's former foreign policy advisor under of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
"I met with the Ministry of Justice regarding the declassification of various UNREDACTED documents.They agreed to release them but felt that this could have a negative impact on the investigation in Russia." Friday.
"Therefore, the Inspector General … was asked to review these documents quickly.I think that he will go quickly forward (and hope that others things that he studies.) In the end, I can always downgrade if that happens. " it turns out necessary. Speed is very important to me – and everyone! "
On Thursday night, Trump said that he could be changing the declassification request when he told Fox News' Sean Hannity that he had received phone calls from two anonymous "very good allies" who raised objections to the publication of the documents.
In addition to the FISA documents, the White House's Monday statement also called for declassifying "all FBI interview reports" prepared in relation to FISA applications – which usually contain highly confidential information.
The movement provoked an uproar from Democrats and former intelligence officials, who argued that the president could jeopardize intelligence sources and politicize information during an ongoing investigation into his links with intelligence agencies. Russia.
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who released the report criticizing the FBI's handling of the Hillary Clinton email survey earlier this year, is already probing the FBI and Ministry of Justice.
The White House declaration on declassification cited several congressional committees in the decision to release the documents – and Trump's Republican allies lobbied for the documents to be published.
"This could be done in the next few hours, and the fact that this is not done should be a worry to the American people," said Friday the chairman of the House Intelligence, Devin Nunes.
In an interview with Hill.TV, Trump said that he had not read the documents but said that "a lot of people in Congress" and "commentators" on Fox News, including Hannity, had him asked to publish the records.
Parts of the FISA application page have already been released earlier this year as a result of Freedom of Information lawsuits – as well as Nunes' memo alleging that the FBI abused the FISA process . But the document was heavily redacted and House Republicans later insisted that these parts of FISA's application be made public.
Trump and his allies accused the FBI of using information collected from former British agent Christopher Steele – the author of the dossier on Trump and Russia – in the FISA application. the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign, and did not disclose Steele's anti-Trump bias.
Written versions of publicly available FISA apps show that the FBI has revealed a political motivation behind the record, stating that the person behind it was probably looking for information to discredit the Trump campaign.
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