NBC has obtained a copy of Rep. Jerry Nadler’s searing six-page letter of rebuttal to the infamous memo written by the Republican House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes. Pr*sident Donald Trump declassified the memo and released it Friday despite the objections of the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Nadler, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, labels as “deliberately misleading and deeply wrong on the law” the memo’s claims that the Department of Justice and FBI withheld key details as they gave their reasons for seeking a secret surveillance warrant on former Donald Trump adviser Carter Page to a special court set up under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Although several Democrats have commented on the memo, Nadler’s is the most detailed response thus far. It is being distributed to House Democrats today.
NBC says these are the four main points in the rebuttal:
- That Nunes’ memo fails to demonstrate that the government lacked enough evidence beyond a dossier from former British spy Christopher Steele to obtain a FISA warrant on Page.
- That Steele’s expertise on Russia and organized crime would have outweighed any concerns a FISA court would have had about the funding of Steele’s work by partisan actors — funding sources that Steele may not have even known about.
- That Nunes’ memo “provides no credible basis whatsoever” for removing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller.
- That Nunes’ memo shows that Republicans “are now part and parcel to an organized effort to obstruct” Mueller’s probe.
The memo argues that had it been pointed out that if the FISA judge had been informed about the political funding of the Steele dossier, the warrant would not have been granted. This respresents an abuse of power, the memo says. Nadler disagrees, stating “every indication that the government made its application to the court in good faith.” NBC reporter Mike Memoli writes:
“Carter Page was, more likely than not, an agent of a foreign power. The Department of Justice thought so. A federal judge agreed. The consensus, supported by the facts, forms the basis of the warrant issued,” Nadler said.
What’s more, Nadler said, is that a “well-established body of law” says that a FISA warrant could be voided only if the government “included false information or excluded true information that was or would have been critical to the court’s determination of probable cause.”
“The Nunes memo alleges nothing that would even come close to meeting this standard,” Nadler writes.
Tick tock, tick tock.
Here’s another link to the rebuttal letter.