Freedom Caucus Chairman Meadows leads Capitol Hill conservatives demanding release Obama FISA abuse memo

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Jan 19, 2018
Chairman of the House Freedom Caucus Rep. Mark Meadows (R.-N.C.) (File photo)

Capitol Hill conservatives are pressuring the Republican leadership to approve releasing a memorandum produced by The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on how President Barack Obama’s administration used the national security apparatus to surveil the campaign of Donald J. Trump to the American people.

The Intelligence Committee approved a motion Thursday proposed by Rep. Peter T. King (R.-N.Y.) that made the four-page memorandum and the relevant source material.

The memo chronicles how the Obama administration watched the Trump campaign and sought to use that collection to manipulate the election process, including how the administration and associated people participated in the construction and distribution of the opposition research file on Trump paid for by the campaign of the Democratic presidential nominee Hillary R. Clinton–a file known as “The Dossier.”

Throughout the day, House Republicans, like the Chairman of the House Freedom Caucus Rep. Mark Meadows (R.-N.C.) took to the House floor to describe what they could about the classified memo and express their desire for the memo to be made public.

“I am here to tell all of America tonight that I am shocked to read exactly what has taken place,” Meadows said from the House well.

“I would think it would never happen in a country that loves freedom and democracy,” he said.

Meadows said the House Intelligence Committee and its chairman Rep. Devin Nunes (R.-Calif.) have done an outstanding job resolving the confusion around the charge that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government in the 2016 election cycle.

The dossier is a narrative of this collusion and the dossier was used by Democratic operatives, members of the media supporting the Clinton candidacy and the Obama national security team to taint President Donald J. Trump as an agent of the Russian government and justify its intelligence collection operation on the Trump camp.

Obama administration officials used the ruse of tracking foreigners in the United States under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court process for permission to monitor the movements and communications of the Trump camp, after asserting that the Trump team was in a collusionary relationship with agents of a foreign power.

“It is time we become transparent in all of this and I am calling on our leadership to make this available, so that all Americans can judge for themselves,” Meadows said.

On Twitter, the hashtag: #ReleaseTheMemo has been a leading domestic and international trend and many Capitol Hill conservatives have Tweeted their own support for the memo’s release.

 

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