Senators Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham have asked the FBI to release the FISA applications used to obtain warrants to spy on the Trump campaign, specifically foreign policy adviser Carter Page. The senators say that in light of President Trump’s declassification of the Nunes Memo on Friday, much of the underlying information should be declassified as well.
The senators sent a letter to the FBI on Friday. They released that letter to the public this morning. It reads in part:
“Today, the President formally declassified a memorandum drafted by the majority staff of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence…Much of the information in the declassified HPSCI memorandum overlaps with the information in the criminal referral made by Senator Graham and me. That information has now been declassified and can no longer properly be deemed as classified in our criminal referral. Accordingly, I ask that you immediately review the classified referral in light of today’s declassification and provide a declassified version of it to the Committee with the declassified version by no later than February 6, 2018.”
Grassley and Graham sent a criminal referral of Christopher Steele, the author of the Steele Dossier, to the FBI last month. They asked the bureau to look into whether Steele provided misleading information to the FBI and the Department of Justice.
Congressional Republicans maintain that the FBI and DOJ used uncorroborated information contained in the Steele dossier to obtain FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign.