Politically tainted?

On the probe into possible collusion between the Donald Trump presidential campaign and Russia, that’s what a Republican memo claimed. A Democratic memo spurned that argument Feb. 24, widening the red-and-blue gulf in the House Intelligence Committee.

A significant point of dispute between the memos from members of each party is if intentions regarding what is called the “Steele dossier” were sufficiently revealed to the intelligence court, PolitiFact reported.

The Republican memo lamented that though the related pursual for surveillance did signal that “(Christopher) Steele was working for a named U.S. person,” it did not designate that Steele “was ultimately working on behalf of — and paid by — the (Democratic National Committee) and (Hillary) Clinton campaign.”

However, Democrats state in their 10-page counterstatement that making cryptic individualities of people with this issue is usual procedure.

“(The Justice Department) appropriately upheld its longstanding practice of protecting U.S. citizen information by purposefully not ‘unmasking’ U.S. person and entity names, unless they were themselves the subject of a counterintelligence investigation,” reads the Democratic memo, overseen by Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House committee.

Democrats also remark that the Justice Department “provided the court with more than sufficient information to understand the political context of Steele’s research.”

“(The Justice Department) informed the court accurately that Steele was hired by politically-motivated U.S. persons and entities and that his research appeared intended for use ‘to discredit’ Trump’s campaign,” the memo states.

Featured image credit: Evan Vucci AP Images

The Democratic memo, PolitiFact pointed out, entails the pertinent passages from the earliest, Oct. 21, 2016, pursual to investigate Page:

“(Steele) was approached by an identified U.S. Person, who indicated to Source #1 (Steele) that a U.S.-based law firm had hired the identified U.S. Person to conduct research regarding Candidate #1’s ties to Russia. (The identified U.S. Person and Source #1 have a long-standing business relationship.) The identified U.S. person hired Source #1 to conduct this research,” the memo reads. “The identified U.S. Person never advised Source #1 as to the motivation behind the research into Candidate #1’s ties to Russia. The FBI speculates that the identified U.S. Person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit Candidate #1’s campaign.”

Overall, the Democrats’ memo rebuttals the Republicans’ charge that the Justice Department and FBI wrongly used their jurisdiction as they got permission from an intelligence court to investigate Page. House Democrats stated that the Feb. 2 Republican memo was a “transparent effort to undermine” Special Counsel Robert Mueller and Congress as they further investigate Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, PolitiFact reported.