Representative Bob Goodlatte said Sunday that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court application for a warrant to surveil a Trump campaign associate highlights a “serious problem” in the FBI.
“There is a serious problem with the FBI presenting to the FISA court an application for a search warrant against a United States citizen” based on a “very flawed document,” the Steele dossier, the House Judiciary Committee chairman said.
The Steele dossier, written by former British spy Christopher Steele and funded in part by the Democratic National Committee, contains unverified allegations of misconduct and conspiracy between Donald Trump and Russia, and was used as part of the FBI’s basis for obtaining a warrant to surveil Page. Over 400 pages of redacted documents related to the application were released by the Department of Justice on Sunday.
The warrant application was signed by former FBI director James Comey and former CIA director John Brennan.
“We have lots of questions for John Brennan, and he will definitely be sought by the committees for an interview,” Goodlatte said. “This is an extremely disturbing thing to see both he and James Comey, supposedly impartial government officials carrying out their jobs in very important areas in intelligence-gathering and law enforcement, express the kind of extreme bias that they have shown now, which I think reflects quite accurately on what they were doing back in 2016.”
The Virginia representative has read the unredacted FISA court application, he said.
“Most of the information that is redacted in that report should easily be seen by the American people,” he stated. “It does not support the issuance of a warrant against Mr. Page.”
The FBI watched Page for a year, securing three renewals of the FISA warrant.
“I don’t believe they found anything with regard to him,” Goodlatte said.
“We’ll never know whether or not the FBI had enough without the dossier,” said House Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy on Sunday after the redacted version of the FISA application was released.
Goodlatte said the Judiciary Committee will also ask for testimony from Comey and former attorney general Loretta Lynch.
He added that it is time for Special Counsel Robert Mueller to bring forward to a grand jury any evidence he has that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia.