FBI POLITICIZED, WEAPONIZED AGAINST TRUMP AND GOP

GOP memo asserts FBI surveillance abuses

By Dave Boyer and Dan Boylan - The Washington Times - Updated: 12:06 p.m. on Friday, February 2, 2018

Republicans’ memo detailing government surveillance abuses shows that the FBI would not have obtained a surveillance warrant for the Trump campaign without using information from a dubious partisan dossier, Fox News reported Friday.

“I think it’s terrible, I think it’s a disgrace, what’s happening in our country,” Mr. Trump told reporters Friday of the surveillance abuses detailed in the memo. “A lot of people should be ashamed of themselves, and much worse than that.”

House GOP investigators were preparing to release the memo Friday after President Trump approved declassifying it. Republican lawmakers have said the FBI used a dubious dossier funded by Democrat Hillary Clinton’s campaign to get permission from a secret federal Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court to eavesdrop on Trump campaign officials and transition team communications.

The president asked the House Intelligence Committee to release the memo without redactions.

Hours before the expected release of the memo that challenges FBI spying abuses, Mr. Trump criticized the Justice Department in an early-morning tweet, saying investigations have been “politicized” by Democrats.

“The top Leadership and Investigators of the FBI and the Justice Department have politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats and against Republicans - something which would have been unthinkable just a short time ago,” Trump wrote. “Rank & File are great people!”

Top Justice Department and FBI officials, including the president’s hand-picked FBI director, Christopher Wray, appealed to the White House unsuccessfully this week not to release the memo, saying it gives an inaccurate and misleading portrayal of the agencies’ actions.

Mr. Trump and his advisers reviewed the four-page document this week, and the president approved of the memo’s release.

Rep. Jeff Duncan, South Carolina Republican who read the memo prior to its release, predicted it 

“will shake the [FBI] down to its core — showing Americans just how the agency was weaponized by the Obama officials/DNC/HRC to target political adversaries.”

• Sally Persons contributed to this story.

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