Democrats release their declassified rebuttal memo — here are the key points, how it compares to the Nunes memo, and what matters

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February 24, 2018 9:31 PM

The House Intelligence Committee, prodded by Rep. Adam Schiff, on Saturday released the Democratic rebuttal to the GOP memo spearheaded by Rep. Devin Nunes.

Democrats released their rebuttal memo to the infamous Nunes memo on Saturday, pushing back against Republican allegations of surveillance abuse by the FBI and Department of Justice.
The rebuttal said the DOJ provided ample evidence to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court when seeking a FISA warrant to surveil a former Trump campaign adviser.
It disputed claims that the DOJ and FBI relied extensively on the so-called Steele dossier when applying for the warrant, and the Nunes memo's characterization of a key former FBI official's testimony before Congress.
It also contained material evidence that the DOJ disclosed the political nature of the Steele dossier's funding to the FISA court.

Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee on Saturday released their 10-page rebuttal to the so-called Nunes memo.

The Democratic memo was drafted by ranking member Adam Schiff, after Rep. Devin Nunes, the committee's chairman, first authored a memo alleging that the Department of Justice and FBI overstepped their surveillance authority when applying for a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant targeting Carter Page, a former adviser to President Donald Trump's campaign.

Here are the Democratic memo's key claims:

accuses

When Schiff asked Page during his testimony whether Andrey Baranov, who is the head of investor relations at Rosneft, brought up "a potential sale of a significant percentage of Rosneft" during the July trip, Page replied, "He may have briefly mentioned it."

The dossier also said an "official close to Presidential Administration Head, S. Ivanov, confided in a compatriot that a senior colleague in the Internal Political Department of the PA, [Igor] Diveykin (nfd) also had met secretly with Page on his recent visit."

According to that official in the dossier, Igor Diveykin, who is a senior Kremlin official, told Page that the Kremlin had a dossier of dirt on Clinton that it wanted to give the Trump campaign.

The allegation, Schiff's memo said, caught the FBI's attention because it appeared to align with what Papadopoulos was told by other Russian individuals in 2016.

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