Trump: Carter Page surveillance applications ‘confirm’ officials ‘misled the courts’

President Trump said early Sunday that documents related to surveillance warrants on former campaign adviser Carter Page “confirm with little doubt” that officials “misled the courts.”

“Congratulations to @JudicialWatch and @TomFitton on being successful in getting the Carter Page [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] FISA documents. As usual they are ridiculously heavily redacted but confirm with little doubt that the Department of ‘Justice’ and FBI misled the courts,” he tweeted. “Witch Hunt Rigged, a Scam!”

Congratulations to @JudicialWatch and @TomFitton on being successful in getting the Carter Page FISA documents. As usual they are ridiculously heavily redacted but confirm with little doubt that the Department of “Justice” and FBI misled the courts. Witch Hunt Rigged, a Scam!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 22, 2018

“Looking more & more like the Trump Campaign for President was illegally being spied upon (surveillance) for the political gain of Crooked Hillary Clinton and the DNC. Ask her how that worked out – she did better with Crazy Bernie. Republicans must get tough now. An illegal Scam!” he said in a subsequent tweet.{mosads}

Looking more & more like the Trump Campaign for President was illegally being spied upon (surveillance) for the political gain of Crooked Hillary Clinton and the DNC. Ask her how that worked out – she did better with Crazy Bernie. Republicans must get tough now. An illegal Scam!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 22, 2018

The heavily redacted materials released by the Department of Justice (DOJ) on Saturday indicate that the FBI “believes Page has been the subject of targeted recruitment by the Russian government … to undermine and influence the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election in violation of U.S. criminal law.”

The initial application for a surveillance warrant and several renewal applications are included in more than 400 pages of documents, which have been at the heart of a controversy over alleged FBI bias against Trump and his campaign.

Page has denied that he acted improperly while interacting with Russian officials during the 2016 campaign. He told Fox News last year that he “did nothing that could even be possibly viewed as helping them in any way.”

“I’m having trouble finding any small bit of this document that rises above complete ignorance and/or insanity,” he told The Hill on Saturday following the release of the documents.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), however, said in a statement that the documents “provide clear evidence of ‘Russia’s coordination with Carter Page,’ a high-ranking Trump campaign official, ‘to undermine and improperly and illegally influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.’”

Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee in February asserted in a now-declassified memo that senior FBI and DOJ officials abused their authority to spy on Page. The Republicans argued that information from the so-called Steele dossier was “essential” to the acquisition of warrants on Page. The Clinton campaign partly funded that dossier, which includes a series of salacious allegations about Trump’s ties to Russia.

The panel’s Democrats said weeks later that the DOJ and FBI were justified in their surveillance of Page.

The president of Judicial Watch, which was one of the organizations that had requested to obtain the documents under the Freedom of Information Act, said on Saturday that the documents appear to “confirm the FBI and DoJ misled the courts in withholding info about Clinton-DNC being behind the info used to get the FISA warrant.”

Tom Fitton also called on Trump to intervene and declassify the redacted material.

— This report was last updated at 8:02 a.m.