{"id":404240,"date":"2018-02-25T09:22:04","date_gmt":"2018-02-25T09:22:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=404240"},"modified":"2018-02-25T12:47:26","modified_gmt":"2018-02-25T12:47:26","slug":"democrats-defend-russia-inquiry-memo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=404240","title":{"rendered":"Democrats defend Russia inquiry in memo"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"story-body__introduction\">Democrats on the US House Intelligence Committee have released a memo that counters Republican claims of bias in the investigation into alleged\u00a0Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential poll.<\/p>\n<p>It says the FBI and justice department did not &#8211; as the Republicans allege &#8211; abuse powers to spy on Carter Page, Donald\u00a0Trump&#8217;s former campaign aide.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Page is suspected of being an agent of the\u00a0Russian government.<\/p>\n<p>Mr\u00a0Trump\u00a0dismissed the new memo as a &#8220;total political and legal bust&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>He has repeatedly denied any collusion between his campaign and\u00a0Russia.<\/p>\n<p>The 10-page Democratic memo\u00a0was released on Saturday. Parts of the document were redacted to avoid revealing intelligence gathering sources.<\/p>\n<p>It calls\u00a0a Republican memo published by Republican members of the Intelligence Committee\u00a0earlier this month a &#8220;transparent effort to undermine&#8221; the FBI, the justice department and investigations into possible collusion between the\u00a0Trump\u00a0campaign and\u00a0Russia.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"media-landscape has-caption full-width\"><span class=\"image-and-copyright-container\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"responsive-image__img js-image-replace\" src=\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/624\/cpsprodpb\/1667F\/production\/_99857719_044410251-1.jpg\" alt=\"Carter Page. File photo\" width=\"976\" height=\"549\" data-highest-encountered-width=\"624\" \/><\/span><\/figure>\n<p>The Republican document alleged that the FBI used unsubstantiated evidence to spy on Mr Page, who was put under electronic surveillance by the intelligence agency.<\/p>\n<p>Central to that claim was the charge that, in its application for a surveillance warrant against Mr Page in 2016, the FBI had relied upon evidence contained in a dossier complied by former British spy Christopher Steele &#8211; without revealing that his findings had been funded in part by the Hillary Clinton campaign.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Democrats on the US House Intelligence Committee have released a memo that counters Republican claims of bias in the investigation into alleged\u00a0Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential poll. It says the FBI and justice department did not &#8211; as the Republicans allege &#8211; abuse powers to spy on Carter Page, Donald\u00a0Trump&#8217;s former campaign aide. Mr [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":404241,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[17355,17356,910],"class_list":["post-404240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","tag-democrats","tag-inquiry","tag-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=404240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/404241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=404240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=404240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=404240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}