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President Trump is reportedly in the process of declassifying documents related to the government's monitoring of former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page and FBI documents about Justice Department official Bruce Ohr.
Republicans in the House recently asked Trump to declassify the documents, which they say run counter to the reasons given by the FBI and the Justice Department to open an investigation into a possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
Axios reported Sunday that Trump's allies said he was about to downgrade the documents.
Sources close to Trump's thought told the Daily Caller News Foundation last week that they thought Trump was about to publish the documents.
Trump himself told The Daily Caller, during an interview given to the Oval Office on Sept. 4, that he was very seriously considering declassifying the documents. (RELATED: Full Transcript of Trump's Oval Office Interview with The Daily Caller)
A source told DCNF Sunday that it hoped Trump would declassify the documents "this week or the following week". The source originally thought that the documents would be published last week but revised this assessment for unknown reasons.
"I think these things will take longer than expected," the source told TheDCNF.
White House lawyers would be an obstacle to Trump's declassification of the documents. The lawyers have advised the Republican to declare that declassification of documents could be considered a challenge for Special Adviser Robert Mueller. Mueller investigates a possible obstruction of justice by Trump.
Republicans of the judiciary and government oversight and reform committees have asked Trump to declassify summaries of FBI-led interviews with Ohr, the former deputy assistant attorney general.
Ohr is interesting because of its links to the Steele file. Ohr's wife, a Russian expert named Nellie, worked as a researcher for Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that hired former British spy Christopher Steele to investigate Trump's ties to Russia.
Steele wrote a 35-page report alleging a vast plot of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.
Ohr was also in frequent contact with Steele before and after the 2016 elections. Republicans wondered why the FBI had relied on Ohr to channel Steele's information after the author of the case had been fired as a confidential informant just before the elections.
Republicans also accused the FBI of abusing the Foreign Intelligence Monitoring Act (FISA) process by relying heavily on the unverified record to obtain espionage warrants against Page.
The case is extensively cited in four FISA mandates taken against Page in 2016 and 2017.
Republicans in the House Standing Committee on Intelligence asked Trump in June to declassify 21 pages of the fourth and last page of FISA. Some sections of FISA have already been declassified. (RELATED: House Republicans call Trump to downgrade 21 pages of Carter Page FISA)
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