Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., on Tuesday broke with House Intelligence Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., telling CNN there were "sound reasons" for a judge to issue the FBI's request for a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
"I don't think I ever expressed that I thought the FISA application came up short," Burr said when asked about the House Republican memo authored by Nunes alleging FBI and Justice Department abuses of the FISA process. "There [were] sound reasons as to why judges issued the FISA."
The warrant, approved in 2016, allowed the FBI to conduct surveillance on Trump's then-foreign policy adviser. Nunes in February wrote a memo claiming a scandalous but unverified dossier and a news article were some of the sources used to begin spying.
A copy of the warrant application on Page was released Friday.
It was heavily redacted and read: "This application targets Carter Page. The F.B.I. believes Page has been the subject of targeted recruitment by the Russian government."
A line was then redacted, and then it picked up with "undermine and influence the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election in violation of U.S. criminal law. Mr. Page is a former foreign policy adviser to a candidate for U.S. president."
Burr, the Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman, during his interview expressed concerns the document was released to begin with.
"I [never] cease to be amazed by how much stuff we release publicly now," he told CNN.
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