President Donald J. Trump is putting the left on notice, basically saying, “now it’s my turn,” and vowing to get to the bottom of the “treasonous acts” that started the now concluded Mueller probe. Even though the Mueller investigation exonerated the President, during an exclusive interview on Hannity, Trump vowed to release the full and unredacted Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants and related documents used by the FBI to probe his campaign, saying he wants to “get to the bottom” of how the long-running Russia collusion narrative began.
Trump told Fox anchor Sean Hannity that his lawyers previously had advised him not to take that dramatic step out of fear that it could be considered obstruction of justice.
“I do, I have plans to declassify and release. I have plans to absolutely release,” Trump said. “I have some very talented people working for me, lawyers, and they really didn’t want me to do it early on. … A lot of people wanted me to do it a long time ago. I’m glad I didn’t do it. We got a great result without having to do it, but we will. One of the reasons that my lawyers didn’t want me to do it, is they said, if I do it, they’ll call it a form of obstruction.”
Trump added, “Frankly, I thought it would be better if we held it to the end. But at the right time, we will be absolutely releasing.”
The Steele Dossier, Treason and Mental Illness
Trump when on to accuse FBI officials of committing “treason” — slamming former FBI Director James Comey as a “terrible guy,” former CIA Director John Brennan as potentially “mentally ill,” and he branded Democrat House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff as a criminal.
Redacted versions of FISA documents already released have revealed that the FBI extensively relied on documents produced by Christopher Steele, an anti-Trump British ex-spy working for a firm funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee. At least one senior DOJ official had apparent concerns Steele was unreliable, according to text messages exclusively obtained last week by Fox News.
The leaked dossier, and related FBI surveillance of Trump campaign aide, Carter Page, kick-started a media frenzy on alleged Russia-Trump collusion that ended with a whimper on Sunday, when it was revealed Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe concluded finding no evidence of such a conspiracy, despite several offers by Russians to help the Trump campaign. Page was never charged with any wrongdoing, and he is currently suing the DNC for defamation.
“I think Brennan’s a sick person, I really do,” Trump said. “I believe there’s something wrong with him, for him to come out of the CIA and act that way was so disrespectful to the country and to the CIA. He was not considered good at what he did. He was never a respected guy.”
Citing a high-level source, Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul just tweeted that ex-CIA Director John Brennan had internally pushed the dossier.
“When I said there could be somebody spying on my campaign, it went wild out there,” Trump told Hannity. “They couldn’t believe I could say such a thing. As it turned out, that was small potatoes compared to what went on. … Millions and millions [spent] on the phony dossier, and then they used the dossier to start things. It was a fraud, paid for by Hillary Clinton and the Democrats.”
