The move, long foreshadowed by calls from President Donald Trump's top allies in Congress, also includes an effort to reveal the details of former Justice Department official Bruce Ohr's interviews connected to the Russia investigation. | Oliver Contreras/Getty Images White House Trump orders declassification of surveillance application, release of Comey texts The move also includes an effort to reveal the details of Bruce Ohr’s interviews connected to the Russia investigation.

President Donald Trump moved on Monday to immediately release a tranche of former FBI Director James Comey's text messages and declassify 20 pages of a surveillance application that targeted former campaign adviser Carter Page, Trump’s latest offensive against a Russia investigation that has ensnared associates and has consumed his attention for much of his presidency.

The breadth of the order came as a surprise and landed amid a full-court White House effort to shore up the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, as he defends himself against a sexual assault allegation. Trump demanded that the FBI produce 20 pages of the surveillance application — which Republicans on Capitol Hill have suggested would help show anti-Trump bias at the highest levels of the FBI.


Trump also called for the release of senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr's notes related to the Russia probe. Ohr was a key conduit to the FBI for information provided by Christopher Steele, a former British spy who investigated Trump's relationship with Russia during the 2016 campaign and produced a dossier of damaging allegations — which Trump has derided as false.

Steele was hired by a firm that in turn had been tapped by Democrats to produce opposition research on Trump, a fact that Republicans have argued discredits Steele's findings and suggests the FBI relied on a partisan document to pursue allegations that the Trump campaign colluded with Russians to influence the election.

But Democrats and FBI defenders have argued that the effort to discredit the probe is part of a GOP push to undermine the ongoing work of special counsel Robert Mueller, who continued the FBI's Russia investigation after Trump fired Comey in May 2017. Mueller has secured guilty pleas for a variety of crimes from former senior campaign officials, including former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, both of whom are cooperating in the investigation.

The FBI declined to comment. But Trump's allies quickly feasted on the news as a welcome disclosure they said would shine a light on malfeasance inside the FBI.

“I can’t wait. To me it’s Christmas, my birthday and the Fourth of July all wrapped up into one,” said Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign adviser who has been questioned as part of the Russia probe.

“It couldn’t be fast enough,” Caputo said of the timing for the release of the materials

“Not only will this let Americans know how their country failed Carter Page and George Papadopolous, it will also let them understand how FISA has trampled all of our rights and never should be reauthorized again.”

One top Trump ally, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) quickly praised the president’s decision.

“My colleagues in Congress and I have requested these documents for months, but have faced lengthy and unnecessary delays, redactions, and refusals from officials at the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” he said. These documents will reveal to the American people some of the systemic corruption and bias that took place at the highest levels of the DOJ and FBI, including using the tools of our intelligence community for partisan political ends.”

House Majority Whip Steve Scalise also tweeted his support for Trump's move.

The president "made the right call. Americans deserve the truth about these egregious actions by government officials," Scalise (R-La.) posted on Twitter.

Even Carter Page, who was a member of Trump's campaign foreign policy team for several months in 2016, said he supported the president's decision to declassify the secret elements of the application that authorized the FBI to surveil him.

"After all the election meddling and abuses of power that our country has suffered, I generally think that the more people learn the better," he said in an email, adding, "I believe the U.S.A can benefit greatly from this increased transparency and accountability."

Page, whose two 2016 trips to Moscow sparked the interest of FBI and congressional investigators, has become a leading critic of the ongoing probe, siding with the president's decision to label it a "witch hunt" and routinely arguing that he was a victim of abuses by the intelligence community.

Democrats, though, warned that the president's moves could have grave consequences for national security.

"The President shouldn’t be declassifying documents in order to undermine an investigation into his campaign or pursue vendettas against political enemies. He especially shouldn’t be releasing documents with the potential to reveal intelligence sources," tweeted Sen. Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The White House described Trump's order as a move for "transparency" requested by various congressional committees. It called on the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Justice Department and the FBI to immediately declassify the surveillance and Ohr documents as well as all FBI reports of interviews connected to the surveillance warrant on Page.

"In addition, President Donald J. Trump has directed the Department of Justice (including the FBI) to publicly release all text messages relating to the Russia investigation, without redaction, of James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and Bruce Ohr," the announcement read.

While the White House statement indicated that the text messages were to be released in an unredacted form, it was not immediately clear whether Trump had directed that the other materials be released in their entirety or whether some redactions for privacy and to comply with other laws might be permitted.

A White House spokesman had no immediate comment, but a Justice Department spokesman suggested that Trump was solely setting in motion a process and not ordering the immediate declassification of anything.

“When the President issues such an order, it triggers a declassification review process that is conducted by various agencies within the intelligence community, in conjunction with the White House Counsel, to seek to ensure the safety of America's national security interests,” the spokesman said. “The Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are already working with the Director of National Intelligence to comply with the President's order.”

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nune (R-Calif.) said Trump's order to release 20 pages from the Page surveillance application "shouldn't take more than a few days." But he raised the specter that a reluctant intelligence community could delay it further. Nunes also suggested that this release of documents should be "all the information that the American people will need to see."

"This is really full transparency for the American people," he said.

"For two years we've been force-feeding this Russia Kool-Aid to the American people," he continued, adding, "I feel so bad for some of these people in the resistance."

Nunes said the documents Trump ordered released include "about a dozen" interview summaries that Ohr conducted with the FBI. He also called the notion that the move by the president could endanger national security "laughable."

A spokeswoman for McCabe declined to comment.

Some Justice Department veterans said they were stunned by Trump's order, or at least the White House's description of it.

"I’m amazed to see what it says," said Dan Metcalfe, former co-director of Justice's Office of Information and Privacy. "I think extraordinary is one word for it. You could think of a couple of others."

Legal experts said some of the actions Trump ordered — especially the release of unredacted text messages of government officials — had the potential to violate the Privacy Act, a federal law protecting against disclosure of personal information in government files.

"There is no exception for the order of a president," Metcalfe said. "Public interest is not an exception."

“There could very likely be Privacy Act implications,” former Justice Department attorney Scott Hodes said..

However, Hodes said officials might be able to work around those legal obstacles by turning over the records to Congress, which could make them public. “If they have a legitimate reason to give them to Congress, Congress is not covered by the law, so it’s not a Privacy Act violation.”

The move, long foreshadowed by calls from Trump's top allies in Congress, dramatically heightens the confrontation between Trump and his own intelligence community, while Mueller also pursues allegations that Trump attempted to obstruct the Russia probe from the outset.

“Trump has ordered the release of sensitive information into an ongoing investigation of himself and his friends —information that his own Justice Department did not want released because it would jeopardize ongoing investigations,” said former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti. “That is corrupt, plain and simple.”

