By Michael Hernandez
WASHINGTON
U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the declassification of troves of documents Monday related to the start of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Russia probe.
That includes the surveillance authorization documents concerning the bureau’s wiretap of Trump campaign advisor Carter Page as well as former FBI Director James Comey’s text messages.
The extraordinary move comes amid attempts by Trump and his closest aides to discredit Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, which is probing whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 presidential election.
Trump has long taken aim at the Mueller investigation, which won a major victory last Friday when former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort agreed to cooperate with the investigation as part of a plea deal.
The White House confirmed Trump’s decision to declassify the documents in a statement, saying the president issued the directive to the Justice Department and Director of National Intelligence “at the request of a number of committees of Congress, and for reasons of transparency”.
His order covers about 20 pages of documents related to the FBI’s June 2017 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act surveillance application for Page as well as all FBI reports of interviews related to the bureau’s FISA application for Page and all of the bureau’s reports related to the interview of senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr.
Ohr was in touch with former British spy Christopher Steele, who penned a salacious memo about Trump and Russia. Ohr’s wife was part of the research firm that commissioned the Steele dossier. She is slated to testify later this week before the House Judiciary Committee.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said in a statement that in addition to Comey’s texts, the president is ordering the Justice Department to publicly release Ohr’s texts related to the Russia investigation as well as those of former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe and agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.
“The President shouldn’t be declassifying documents in order to undermine an investigation into his campaign or pursue vendettas against political enemies,” Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee said on Twitter.
“He especially shouldn’t be releasing documents with the potential to reveal intelligence sources.”
