Democrat claims four Trump campaign officials targeted by FISA investigations
by Jerry Dunleavy
& Daniel Chaitin
| May 21, 2019 01:54 PM
| Updated May 21, 2019, 02:02 PM
Multiple Trump campaign officials were the subjects of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act investigations, a Democratic lawmaker said in a closed-door hearing late last year.
If what Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, says is true, the scope of the FBI's FISA efforts for its counterintelligence investigation into President Trump's 2016 campaign and its ties to Russia span far wider than previously known. So far, it is only confirmed that the FBI obtained FISA warrants targeting onetime Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
During a hearing on Dec. 19 with former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, the transcript of which was released on Monday, Jackson Lee mentioned three other individuals.
"I want to talk about the spring, summer, and autumn of 2016. Carter Page, at the time, was suspected of being a Russian asset; George Papadopoulos had told the Australian ambassador that Russians had Hillary [Clinton] emails; Paul Manafort had been named Trump campaign manager; Michael Flynn was Trump's chief national security adviser and foreign policy adviser and, just yesterday, had a continuance in his sentencing," Jackson Lee said. "One thing that all of these persons had in common was that each was the subject of a FISA Court investigation, which we now know, and all were directly connected to Trump. As attorney general, you had the authority to oversee FISA application process. Is that correct?"
Lynch replied "yes," after which Justice Department lawyer Bradley Weinsheimer cut in to say Jackson Lee's question "potentially gets into possibly classified information and also equities in an ongoing investigation."
What followed was a back-and-forth about the "lead-up" to the question about Lynch overseeing the FISA application process that mentioned Papadopoulos, Manafort, and Flynn. Jackson Lee argued that she was only sharing a "statement of facts that are in the public domain."
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https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/democrat-claims-four-trump-campaign-officials-targeted-by-fisa-investigations
