Justice Department says it should not have continued spying on former
Trump adviser
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[January 24, 2020]
By Mark Hosenball
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice
Department has told a court it did not have enough evidence to justify
continued surveillance of one of President Donald Trump's former
campaign advisers in 2017, in a sign it believes the FBI on occasion
went too far when it investigated Russian influence in the 2016
election.
The department's assessment, made public on Thursday, came after an
in-depth review by the Justice Department's internal watchdog found the
FBI manipulated evidence and otherwise overstepped its bounds as it
explored possible links between the Trump campaign and Moscow in 2016.
The watchdog's review, made public in December, found that FBI agents
acted legally when they asked in 2016 for court approval to begin
surveillance of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. But it
determined that they left out evidence that could have weakened their
case against Page as they sought renewed approval from the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court in the months that followed.
The Justice Department has since tried to set the record straight,
telling the secretive surveillance court that in the later stages of
surveillance "there was insufficient predication to establish probable
cause to believe that Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power,"
according to a court opinion released in an unclassified version on
Thursday.
Based on that assessment, Judge James Boasberg wrote that he thought the
Justice Department no longer viewed some of the continued surveillance
of Page in 2017 as legitimate.
"The Court understands the government to have concluded, in view of the
material misstatements and omissions, that the Court's authorizations
... were not valid," Boasberg wrote.
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One-time advisor of U.S. president-elect Donald Trump Carter Page
addresses the audience during a presentation in Moscow, Russia,
December 12, 2016. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin
The Justice Department has not concluded whether its prior
surveillance of Page was justified, he wrote in an opinion dated
Jan. 7.
The Justice Department and Page did not immediately respond to
requests for comment.
The FBI declined to comment. The agency's chief, Christopher Wray,
has said he has taken steps to fix problems highlighted in the
review.
The FBI investigation was taken over in May 2017 by Special Counsel
Robert Mueller.
His report, released in April 2019, detailed a Russian campaign of
hacking and propaganda to sow discord in the United States and help
Trump defeat Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
Mueller documented numerous contacts between Trump campaign figures
and Moscow but found insufficient evidence of a criminal conspiracy.
(Reporting By Mark Hosenball; Editing by Andy Sullivan and Bill
Berkrot)
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