There was not enough disclosure by the Department of Justice regarding a surveillance warrant it sought against a former campaign aide to make a determination about how a dossier about now-President Donald Trump should have been used, Alan Dershowitz said Monday.
"There is enough in there for each side to claim support for its position," Dershowitz, Harvard Law professor emeritus, told Fox News' "America's Newsroom."
"There is that footnote in which they do say that the [Christopher] Steele dossier was organized by people who were trying to get dirt on 'candidate one,' which is President Trump," Dershowitz said.
"But there is a lot of material in there suggesting that they didn't make full disclosure about the circumstances under which the Steele dossier was authorized and also the complete credibility."
The footnote, in the dossier used to get a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant against former Trump aide Carter Page, however, did not mention the Democratic National Committee, show co-host Bill Hemmer said.
Dershowitz agreed there was not enough disclosure available in the heavily redacted documents.
"I have no doubt that the FBI should have been more forthright in disclosing everything, and they did come to the conclusion that Steele had provided them legitimate information in the past," said Dershowitz, referring to the British agent who compiled the dossier. "We would like to know about that. Was it legitimate? What were the sources of information?"
Dershowitz said he is glad the FISA application was released, and perhaps more should be released.
"The American public has the right to know how our privacy is being compromised in the name of national security," Dershowitz said.
Overall, Dershowitz said the issue confirms his oft-repeated view that a nonpartisan, independent committee should have investigated the allegations of Russian meddling and collusion from the beginning.
"We have the Republican truth, the Democrat truth, the Trump truth, anti-Trump truth," Dershowitz said. "The American public is always entitled to have the full and complete truth through a nonpartisan committee instead of appointing special counsel."
The surveillance began against Page in October 2016, after the campaign dismissed him months before, but Dershowitz said there were many people investigated.
"Manafort is going to trial," Dershowitz said. "Would he would have been brought to trial if he hadn't been associated with Trump? Maybe it's to squeeze him, sing, maybe even compose. The whole focus has been targeting people in this administration, and that's what has caused so many Americans to have distrust of the politicization of the process."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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