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Sunday, February 04, 2018, 14:45
US Justice Department says Mueller probe lawful
By Agencies
Sunday, February 04, 2018, 14:45 By Agencies

In this June 21, 2017 file photo, former FBI Director Robert Mueller, the special counsel probing alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election, departs Capitol Hill following a closed-door meeting in Washington. (ANDREW HARNIK / AP)

WASHINGTON – The US Justice Department has backed Special Counsel Robert Mueller over a lawsuit filed against him by Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump's former campaign manager, and argued that the case should be dismissed. 

Manafort sued Mueller on Jan 3, saying his office's investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 presidential election exceeded its legal authority. 

The Special Counsel's investigation and prosecutions are entirely lawful. 

US Department of Justice

The civil lawsuit, filed in US District Court for the District of Columbia, accused Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller, of exceeding his legal authority to "grant Mr. Mueller carte blanche to investigate and pursue criminal charges in connection with anything he stumbles across." 

READ MORE: Trump wanted to fire Mueller, but backed down, says report

"These claims lack merit," a Justice Department filing to the court on Friday said. "The Special Counsel's investigation and prosecutions are entirely lawful." 

The department said the case should be dismissed. 

Mueller's office indicted Manafort and his business partner Rick Gates in October on charges including conspiracy to launder money, conspiracy against the United States and failing to register as foreign agents of Ukraine's former pro-Russian government. 

Trump and his Republican allies in Congress on Friday escalated a campaign against US law enforcement agencies over their probe of the president's ties to Russia, releasing a disputed memo that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) warned was misleading and inaccurate. 

Democrats said the four-page memo mischaracterized highly sensitive classified information and was intended to undermine Mueller's criminal probe into the Russia matter launched in May 2017 that grew out of an earlier FBI investigation. They warned Trump against using it as a pretext to fire Rosenstein or Mueller himself.

An intelligence memo is photographed in Washington, Feb 2, 2018. After President Donald Trump declassified the memo, the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee released the memo based on classified information that alleges the FBI abused US government surveillance powers in its investigation into Russian election interference. (SUSAN WALSH / AP)

'COMPLETE VINDICATION'

President Trump claimed Saturday complete vindication from the congressional memo that alleges the FBI abused its surveillance powers during the investigation into his campaign's possible Russia ties. 

But the memo also includes revelations that might complicate efforts by Trump and his allies to undermine Mueller's inquiry.

The four-page document released Friday contends that the FBI, when it applied for a surveillance warrant on a onetime Trump campaign associate, relied excessively on an ex-British spy whose opposition research was funded by Democrats. At the same time, the memo confirms that the investigation into potential Trump links to Russia actually began several months earlier, and was "triggered" by information involving a different campaign aide.

ALSO READ: FBI in public fight with Trump over releasing Russia memo

Christopher Steele, the former spy who compiled the allegations, acknowledged having strong anti-Trump sentiments. But he also was a "longtime FBI source" with a credible track record, according to the memo from the House Intelligence Committee chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., and his staff.

In this Feb 2, 2018 photo, US President Donald Trump walks to Air Force One prior to departure from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, as he travels to Mar a Lago in West Palm Beach, Florida, for the weekend. (SAUL LOEB / AFP)

The warrant authorizing the FBI to monitor the communications of former campaign adviser Carter Page was not a one-time request, but was approved by a judge on four occasions, the memo says, and even signed off on by the second-ranking official at the Justice Department, Rod Rosenstein, whom Trump appointed as deputy attorney general.

Trump, however, tweeted from Florida, where he was spending the weekend, that the memo puts him in the clear.

"This memo totally vindicates 'Trump' in probe," he said. "But the Russian Witch Hunt goes on and on. Their (sic) was no Collusion and there was no Obstruction (the word now used because, after one year of looking endlessly and finding NOTHING, collusion is dead). This is an American disgrace!"

The underlying materials that served as the basis for the warrant application were not made public in the memo. As a result, the document only further intensified a partisan battle over how to interpret the actions of the FBI and Justice Department during the early stages of the counterintelligence investigation that Mueller later inherited. Even as Democrats described it as inaccurate, some Republicans quickly cited the memo — released over the objections of the FBI and Justice Department — in their arguments that Mueller's investigation is politically tainted.

A closer read presents a far more nuanced picture.

In this Nov 2, 2017 file photo, Carter Page, former campaign adviser for Donald Trump, speaks with reporters following a day of questions from the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington. (J SCOTT APPLEWHITE / AP)

The memo's central allegation is that agents and prosecutors, in applying in October 2016 to monitor Page's communications, failed to tell a judge that the opposition research that provided grounds for the FBI's suspicion received funding from Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Page had stopped advising the campaign sometime around the end of that summer.

Steele's research, according to the memo, "formed an essential part" of the warrant application. But it's unclear how much or what information Steele collected made it into the application, or how much has been corroborated. Steele was working for Fusion GPS, a firm initially hired by the conservative Washington Free Beacon to do opposition research on Trump. Steele didn't begin work on the project until after Democratic groups took over the funding.

The FBI this week expressed "grave concerns" about the memo and called it inaccurate and incomplete. Democrats said it was a set of cherry-picked claims aimed at smearing law enforcement and that releasing the memo would damage law enforcement and intelligence work.

For one, Democrats said it was misleading and incorrect to say a judge was not told of the potential political motivations of the people paying for Steele's research.

Beyond that, though, the memo confirms the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign began in July 2016, months before the surveillance warrant was sought, and was "triggered" by information concerning campaign aide George Papadopoulos. He pleaded guilty last year to lying to the FBI.

The confirmation about Papadopoulos is "the most important fact disclosed in this otherwise shoddy memo," California Rep. Adam Schiff, the House committee's top Democrat, said in a tweet Saturday in response to Trump's assertion that the document vindicated him.

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