Donald Trump made a desperate bid Monday evening to distract Fox News watchers from the stunning success of the special counsel's probe into Russian interference in 2016. He ordered declassified certain parts of the warrant that was issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court to surveil former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
In essence, sure, every one of my campaign chiefs is either a subject/target of the probe or a convicted felon, but lookie lookie over here—Page got a raw deal! Pathetic. Mueller's gotten guilty pleas/indictments on 32 people and three companies to date, and Trump's dangling his keys over the Page FISA warrant.
Trump's House henchmen have been begging for him to declassify these documents for months. "Transparency wins," GOP Rep. Mark Meadows delighted in a tweet. Clearly he and House Intelligence chair Devin Nunes think there's something damning within these specific documents:
(1) pages 10-12 and 17-34 of the June 2017 application to the FISA court in the matter of Carter W. Page; (2) all FBI reports of interviews with Bruce G. Ohr prepared in connection with the Russia investigation; and (3) all FBI reports of interviews prepared in connection with all Carter Page FISA applications.
Of course, we’ve been down this road before—Nunes, Meadows & Co. were convinced release of the much-hyped “Nunes memo” would change Trump’s fortunes entirely. Now here we are months later with rising support for Mueller and falling support for Trump.
Trump also ordered the texts of people he considers his political enemies within the FBI and Justice Department be made public without redaction, including those of James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and Bruce Ohr.
Whatever's Trump's intent, it's completely unprecedented for a president to declassify such material in the midst of an ongoing FBI investigation. The ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, California Rep. Adam Schiff, said he had been previously told by FBI and Justice Department officials that the release of such documents would be "a red line that must not be crossed as they may compromise sources and methods."