Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), chairman of the House Intelligences Committee, is lashing out at President Donald Trump for directing Attorney General William Barr to declassify documents regarding the origins of the Obama Administration’s Russia investigation, claiming the order was “un-American.”
“While Trump stonewalls the public from learning the truth about his obstruction of justice, Trump and Barr conspire to weaponize law enforcement and classified information against their political enemies,” Schiff wrote on Twitter Thursday evening.
“The coverup has entered a new and dangerous phase. This is un-American,” he added.
Schiff’s accusations came hours after President Trump announced that he directed the intelligence community to cooperate with Barr’s probe into surveillance activities in the 2016 presidential election. In a memorandum to several cabinet directors, the president request officials cooperate with Barr’s probe into Spygate’s originals and authorized the attorney general to declassify information concerning the counterintelligence operation.
“Today’s action will help ensure that all Americans learn the truth about the events that occurred, and the actions that were taken, during the last Presidential election and will restore confidence in our public institutions,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement.
President Trump has repeatedly called for an investigation into the surveillance activities of his campaign. For months, Republicans such as Mark Meadows (R-NC), Jim Jordan (R-OH), and Matt Gaetz (R-FL) have called on the White House to declassify parts of the FBI’s Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to spy on former Trump campaign foreign advisor Carter Page. The bureau used portions of the Hillary Clinton-funded Steele dossier for warrants targeting Page.
In a Monday interview with SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily, Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton ripped the Trump-Russia “collusion” narrative as “the big lie,” and even went as far to describe it as an international effort to take out Trump.”
“Yesterday, you had confirmation over in the United Kingdom that that intelligence operation there — the UK’s intelligence apparatus — also knew about the dossier,” Fitton told host and Breitbart News editor-in-chief host Alex Marlow, adding “and part of that spying that took place with Stefan Halper also took place in London. The New York Times, at the end of their story, exposing that, disclosed that the UK knew about that spy operation as well.”
Fitton continued: “You had this other agency — supposedly a friend of the United States — laundering the Steele dossier that was created as a result of FBI-DNC-Clinton campaign money in consultation with Russian intelligence. It’s pretty incredible stuff, and it shows you that it was an international effort to take out Trump. It wasn’t just based her in the United States.”