President Trump continued his assault on special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russian “Witch Hunt” investigation by claiming the FBI used a controversial dossier as the basis to get a warrant to monitor one of his former campaign aides.
“So we now find out that it was indeed the unverified and Fake Dirty Dossier, that was paid for by Crooked Hillary Clinton and the DNC, that was knowingly & falsely submitted to FISA and which was responsible for starting the totally conflicted and discredited Mueller Witch Hunt!,” Trump posted on Monday morning, another in a series of tweets over the weekend aimed at the investigation.
His tweet refers to a more than 400-page, heavily redacted document released late Saturday by the Department of Justice of the application the FBI used to get a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant in October 2016 to keep tabs on Trump’s former foreign policy aide Carter Page.
“The FBI believes Page has been the subject of targeted recruitment by the Russian government,” the application said, which continued after a blacked-out section, “undermine and influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election in violation of US criminal law.”
“The FBI believes that Page has been collaborating and conspiring with the Russian government,” it added later.
And while the FBI said it relied partially on a dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, the department said it informed the judges of the circumstances surrounding the dossier, adding that it found the information it contained “credible.”
Republicans and Trump allies have attacked the Steele dossier, saying it had been financed by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
But the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news website, originally provided funding for the dossier to research firm Fusion GPS to look into Republican presidential candidates.
The research ended in May 2016 when it became apparent that Trump would clinch the Republican nomination.
The Clinton campaign and the DNC then retained the firm and that research led Steele to create the dossier.
Page told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that it was “ridiculous” that Russians were trying to recruit him during the 2016 presidential election.
“This is so ridiculous, it’s just beyond words,” Page said when asked if he was an agent of a foreign power. “It’s literally a complete joke.”