Democratic Rebuttal Calls Nunes Memo ‘Deliberately Misleading’
Image Credit: Washington Times
Original Article | Author: Mike Memoli
A top House Democrat is challenging the core conclusion of the memo released by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes on Friday, calling the allegation that the Justice Department and FBI withheld key details as they sought a secret surveillance warrant on former Trump adviser Carter Page “deliberately misleading and deeply wrong on the law.”
NBC News has exclusively obtained a six-page rebuttal to the Nunes memo from Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, which was to be circulated to all House Democrats on Saturday.
Given his senior position, Nadler is one of the small number of lawmakers who has viewed the highly sensitive documents that are the basis of Nunes’ memo.
The rebuttal focuses on four key points having to do with the legal underpinnings of the GOP-produced document:
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.
Nadler’s legal analysis represents Democrats’ most detailed public response to the Nunes memo, released Friday after President Donald Trump agreed to its declassification over the objections of his own FBI Director.
