FISA memo
The FISA memo , also known as the Nunes Memo , is a former classified document that was circulated by the Intelligence Committee in the United States Congress on January 18, 2018 . FISA is an acronym for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act .
The Republican and committee chairman Devin Nunes had the document drawn up and published on February 2, 2018 after President Donald Trump lifted the secrecy . On February 5, 2018, the committee voted to publish the opinion of the Democratic committee members as well, but President Trump prevented this by not giving clearance for the document. After a revision in coordination with the FBI , the paper was released and published on February 24, 2018, partially blacked out.
In December 2019, the explanations in the memorandum were confirmed by the report by special investigator Michael Horowitz . As a result, two of the four warrants issued were invalidated by the Justice Department.
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The almost four-page memorandum explains how the FBI allegedly used a dossier prepared at the instigation of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) by British intelligence officer Christopher Steele for payment of over $ 160,000 during the 2016 presidential election in the United States to abuse a law Special court to obtain surveillance of Trump employee Carter Page after the FISA Act. The fact that Steele worked for the DNC had been withheld from the court.
However, the Democratic Party is not identified in the document as the trigger for the FBI investigation. According to the dossier, the dossier did not bring the investigators to the connection to Russia, but rather an Australian government representative, according to Nunes' records, gave the Australians the hint that Trump's campaign advisor George Papadopoulos had given.
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According to the Republican MP and member of the judiciary committee Steve King , the scale of the scandal is bigger than the Watergate affair .
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham noted that there was nothing in the Nunes memo that since May 2017 ongoing investigation of special prosecutor Robert Mueller could weaken.
In contrast, the Republican Senator Paul Gosar saw an abuse of FISA as proven on the day of publication and immediately described James Comey , Andrew McCabe , Sally Yates and Rod Rosenstein as "traitors" and demanded that they be brought to justice.
The Democrats were relieved that the memo contained little new that could discredit Mueller's investigations against Trump. According to Senator Chris Murphy, the memo consists of “junk evidence” compiled by Republican officials on the Intelligence Committee to cover Trump in stalling Muller's investigations.
Constitutional lawyer Orin Kerr takes the view that Steele's political stance, the funding of the dossier and the FBI's failure to mention these circumstances are by no means sufficient to cast doubt on the legality of the wiretapping measure, rather it must be demonstrated to what extent this actually means credibility the source has been compromised.
In July 2018, the motion to the FISA court referred to in the Nunes memo was published. In it, the FBI explicitly stated that the Steele dossier was created with the purpose of discrediting the election campaign of "Candidate # 1". The FBI went on to say that regardless of this, the author of the dossier, Steele, was known to the FBI as the source of reliable information and that it therefore believed the origin of the information in the Steele dossier to be credible. Republicans responded that the notice was "only in a footnote". This was immediately contradicted: Judges are used to reading footnotes, that the 'footnote' filled more than one page and was created in the same size and type of text as the rest of the application.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ NY Times: Committee Votes to Release Democratic Rebuttal to GOP Russia Memo
- ↑ Michael D. Shear and Nicholas Fandos, "Trump Blocks Release of Memo Rebutting Republican Claims," New York Times, February 9, 2018
- ↑ "Democrats' Memo Released Countering GOP Account of Russia Probe" Bloomberg on February 24, 2018
- ↑ Glenn Greenwald: The Inspector General's Report on 2016 FBI Spying Reveals a Scandal of Historic Magnitude: Not Only for the FBI but Also the US Media The Intercept of December 12, 2019
- ^ CNN: Two of four FISA warrants against Carter Page declared invalid
- ↑ FISA memo: Full text
- ↑ a b c "Democrats: Nunes memo a dud" politico of February 2, 2018
- ↑ The New American: The FISA Memo: "Worse Than Watergate"
- ↑ Die Zeit: Everything for Trump
- ↑ Jennifer Rubin: "When will the GOP muzzle Nunes?" Washington Post February 3, 2018
- ↑ Christiano Lima: GOP lawmaker calls for FBI, DOJ officials to face 'treason' charges politico.com of February 2, 2018
- ↑ Lawfareblog: The Dubious Legal Claim Behind #ReleaseTheMemo
- ^ April Doss: The FISA Fiasco's Silver Lining . In: The Atlantic, July 27, 2018