Democrats are pushing hard to discredit a Republican memo detailing claims that the FBI misused federal surveillance laws to obtain a warrant to spy on President Donald Trump's former campaign aide, Carter Page, White House principal deputy press secretary Raj Shah said Monday.
"I think they are getting a little overheated," Shah told Fox News' "Fox & Friends" program. "If you look at the memo itself, it raises very serious questions about how this probe has been handled from the beginning."
According to the memo, the FBI used information in a dossier written by British spy Christopher Steele to seek its Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant against Page. The dossier was commissioned by Fusion GPS, which was paid, in part, by 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
"The citing of shoddy opposition research from the other campaign" raises "real questions," Shah said Monday.
Trump tweeted over the weekend that he was vindicated by the memo's release when it comes to special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into Russian meddling during the election, but GOP Reps. Will Hurd of Texas and Trey Gowdy of South Carolina both pushed back on that.
However, Shah said the memo points to a "pattern" that has been seen in the FBI and the Department of Justice that began under former FBI Director James Comey regarding Clinton's email investigation.
Politics could influence decision making, and that continued with the decision to remove FBI agent Peter Strzok from the investigation because of the anti-Trump texts being exchanged between him and agency attorney Lisa Page, said Shah.
The bias was "so damning he had to be removed from the case," said Shah. "This citing of a dodgy Democratic dossier to be used in a FISA warrant is just the latest example."
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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