Chairman Nunes: “Democratic Memo Contains Many Sources and Methods”

House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., and Ranking Member Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., speak with the media about the ongoing investigation on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., March 15, 2017. (Photo: Reuters)

House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., released a statement following the decision by President Donald Trump not to release the Democratic memo until the committee and relevant agencies can make redactions of sources and methods.

“Along with other Intelligence Committee Republicans, I had warned that the Democratic memo contains many sources and methods,” Chairman Nunes said in a statement. “Ranking Member Schiff pledged to seek the input of the Department of Justice and FBI regarding the memo’s public release, and it’s no surprise that these agencies recommended against publishing the memo without redactions.”

Every single Republican in the House voted in favor of releasing the Democratic memo, while every single Democrat voted against the release of the bombshell memo prepared largely by Chairman Nunes. It revealed that officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Justice Department (DOJ) used false information to obtain FISA warrants to spy on Team Trump via peripheral, volunteer advisors Carter Page and (later) George Papadopoulos.

The two were used to gather “incidental” intelligence on bigger players to include President Trump, himself, before and after the election. The Foreign Intelligence Security Court (FISC) was not explicitly made aware that the dossiers were political opposition research funded by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the campaign for Hillary Clinton.

As People’s Pundit Daily (PPD) previously reported, the Democrat memo does not refute the main and damning allegations of abuse. It concedes the court was only told that it was “likely” the dossier authored by former MI6 British Intelligence Officer Christopher Steele had a “political motivation.”

Senators Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., sent a a criminal referral to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray to investigate Mr. Steele, citing potential violations of 18 U.S.C. § 1001, or making false statements to investigators particularly regarding the distribution of claims contained in the dossier.

The expanded “Grassley memo” released Monday revealed that there was indeed a second dossier and that Mr. Steele lied to the FBI. To be clear, Obama Administration officials at FBI and DOJ knew at the time of the applications the nature and origin of the opposition research, which was unverified, Kremlin-sourced political opposition research.

It is a crime to both mislead the FISA court and to knowingly use unverified information during the process. FBI and DOJ officials also did not make the court aware of the use of what is known as circular reporting, something the Democratic memo also will not dispute.

Circular reporting, which is a cardinal sin in the intelligence community, is when numerous reports all cite the same source. It gives the false impression that the information comes from multiple verified sources. In this case, the information came from the same unverified source — the Steele dossier.

PPD has also confirmed with multiple sources that the Democratic memo does indeed expose sources and methods that could endanger national security. Those exposures, which were intentionally added by Representative Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the Ranking Member of the HPSCI, are in the form of footnotes that are allegedly supportive of the conclusions drawn in the memo.

Mr. Schiff, unable to rebut the core allegations of the Republican memo, wanted to force President Trump into making redactions so that he later could claim the White House was hiding something.

“Intelligence Committee Republicans encourage the minority to accept the DOJ’s recommendations and make the appropriate technical changes and redactions so that no sources and methods are disclosed and their memo can be declassified as soon as possible,” Chairman Nunes added.