FBI investigation of Christopher Steele memos will spill to public ... thanks to Trump and Nunes
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In his effort to fill his campaign coffers by being the most Trump-fan of Trump-fans, Devin Nunes authored a multi-page “memo” around the pretense that the information compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele was the primary facFBI investigation of Christopher Steele memos will spill to public ... thanks to Trump and Nunes
In his effort to fill his campaign coffers by being the most Trump-fan of Trump-fans, Devin Nunes authored a multi-page “memo” around the pretense that the information compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele was the primary factor behind the Trump-Russia investigation. The claims put forward by Nunes and other House Republicans, including that the FISA warrant for Trump adviser Carter Page was based on Steele’s documents and that all of Steele’s work had been discredited, were demonstrably false. But Donald Trump was eager to push Nunes’s memo, and in the process he declassified both the memos and supporting documents. This combination of actions, Nunes’s memo and Trump’s declassification, may have given Trump what he wanted at the moment, but it has another effect. According to Politico, a district court judge previously allowed the FBI to refuse Freedom of Information Act requests asking about their efforts to confirm the information in Steele’s memos. Previous statements and tweets by Trump attacking the validity of the information was ruled insufficient for breaching the security the FBI had placed around their research. But a ruling on Thursday determined that Trump’s decision to declassify the Nunes memo and supporting materials means that the FBI can no longer turn away FOIA requests on this topic. Judge Amit Mehta: It remains no longer logical nor plausible for the FBI to maintain that it cannot confirm nor deny the existence of documents. Several instances that were recounted in Steele’s memos have since been shown to be corroborated by other witnesses and documents. However, within the information are several notable events—including those surrounding Trump’s 2013 trip surrounding the Miss Universe pageant and possible events at a Moscow hotel—where any information that the FBI has picked up hasn’t been made public. But, thanks to Trump, it will be. Politico notes that applicants should not expect results of FOIA requests to start showing up right away. Some aspects of the case had already been pushed to an appeals court, which in turn has pushed those complaints back to Mehta. So additional rulings are likely before all aspects are defined and the FBI begins responding to these requests. Read more