By Dan Calabrese ——Bio and Archives--February 12, 2018
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Writing to Rosemary M. Collyer, the presiding judge at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, Nunes asked for transcripts of "any relevant FISC hearings associated with the initial FISA application or subsequent renewals related to electronic surveillance of Carter Page." The Page surveillance warrant, first granted in October 2016, and the evidence used to secure it are at the heart of the controversial memo Nunes and the White House released last week on alleged surveillance abuse. The Republican staff-authored memo claimed that the unverified anti-Trump dossier was critical for the surveillance warrant application, and that the government omitted key information about its political funding. Lawmakers have clashed over that document for weeks, and a Democrat-authored rebuttal memo could be released as early as Friday. Transcripts from the application hearings could speak to a central issue in the debate: to what extent the FBI and DOJ relied on the dossier.This information will be essential in telling us how much the FBI really relied on the Steele dossier to get this warrant, and also whether the FISA court really did its job in scrutinizing everything the FBI presented as evidence of probable cause. No one can say for sure how complete these transcripts are, but to whatever extent the capture the real discussions that took place, they will tell us:
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