By ERIC TUCKER, MARY CLARE JALONICK and CHAD DAY, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Saturday claimed complete vindication from a congressional memo that alleges the FBI abused its surveillance powers during the investigation into his campaign’s possible Russia ties. But the memo also includes revelations that might complicate efforts by Trump and his allies to undermine special counsel Robert Mueller’s inquiry.
The four-page document released Friday contends that the FBI, when it applied for a surveillance warrant on a onetime Trump campaign associate, relied excessively on an ex-British spy whose opposition research was funded by Democrats. At the same time, the memo confirms that the investigation into potential Trump links to Russia actually began several months earlier, and was “triggered” by information involving a different campaign aide.
Christopher Steele, the former spy who compiled the allegations, acknowledged having strong anti-Trump sentiments. But he also was a “longtime FBI source” with a credible track record, according to the memo from the House Intelligence Committee chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., and his staff.
The warrant authorizing the FBI to monitor the communications of former campaign adviser Carter Page was not a one-time request, but was approved by a judge on four occasions, the memo says, and even signed off on by the second-ranking official at the Justice Department, Rod Rosenstein, whom Trump appointed as deputy attorney general.
Trump, however, tweeted from Florida, where he was spending the weekend, that the memo puts him in the clear.
“This memo totally vindicates ‘Trump’ in probe,” he said. “But the Russian Witch Hunt goes on and on. Their (sic) was no Collusion and there was no Obstruction (the word now used because, after one year of looking endlessly and finding NOTHING, collusion is dead). This is an American disgrace!”
The underlying materials that served as the basis for the warrant application were not made public in the memo. As a result, the document only further intensified a partisan battle over how to interpret the actions of the FBI and Justice Department during the early stages of the counterintelligence investigation that Mueller later inherited.
Some Republicans are citing the memo, released over the objections of the FBI and Justice Department, in their arguments that the Mueller investigation is politically tainted.
A closer read presents a far more nuanced picture.
“Having decided to cherry-pick, the Nunes team picked a bunch of the wrong cherries for its own narrative,” Matthew Waxman, a Columbia University professor and former Bush administration official, wrote in an email.
The memo’s central allegation is that agents and prosecutors, in applying in October 2016 to monitor Page’s communications, failed to tell a judge that the opposition research that provided grounds for the FBI’s suspicion had been partially funded by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
Page had stopped advising the campaign sometime around the end of that summer.
Republicans say a judge should have known that “political actors” were involved in allegations that led the Justice Department to believe Page might be an agent of a foreign power — an accusation he has consistently and strenuously denied.
Steele’s research, according to the memo, “formed an essential part” of the warrant application. But it’s unclear how much or what information Steele collected made it into the application, or how much has been corroborated. Steele was working for Fusion GPS, a firm initially hired by the conservative Washington Free Beacon to do opposition research on Trump. Steele didn’t begin work on the project until after Democratic groups took over the funding.
The FBI this week expressed “grave concerns” about the memo and called it inaccurate and incomplete. Democrats said it was a set of cherry-picked claims aimed at smearing law enforcement and that releasing the memo would damage law enforcement and intelligence work.
For one, Democrats said Friday that it was misleading and incorrect to say a judge was not told of the potential political motivations of the people paying for Steele’s research.
Beyond that, though, the memo confirms the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign began in July 2016, months before the surveillance warrant was sought, and was “triggered” by information concerning campaign aide George Papadopoulos. He pleaded guilty last year to lying to the FBI and is cooperating with Mueller’s investigation.
The timing makes clear that other Trump associates beyond Page, who was part of the election effort for only a short period and was not in Trump’s inner circle, had generated law enforcement scrutiny. The memo also omits that Page had been on the FBI’s radar a few years earlier as part of a separate counterintelligence investigation into Russian influence.
The memo focuses on Page, but Democrats on the House committee said “this ignores the inconvenient fact that the investigation did not begin with, or arise from Christopher Steele or the dossier, and that the investigation would persist on the basis of wholly independent evidence had Christopher Steele never entered the picture.”
Other details in the memo could also challenge Republican claims of bias. The warrant requested was renewed on three additional occasions, meaning that judges approved it four times. One of the Justice Department officials who signed off on it was Rosenstein, a Trump appointee.
Trump, who lambasted the FBI and Justice Department on Twitter, was asked if he was more likely to fire Rosenstein and if he still had confidence in the official. The president simply said, “You figure that one out.”
The memo had been classified because it deals with warrants obtained from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The White House declassified it Friday and sent it to Nunes for immediate release.
That disclosure is extraordinary because it involves details about surveillance of Americans, national security information the government regards as among its most highly classified. The release is likely to further escalate the conflict between the White House and Trump’s law enforcement leaders.
Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray had personally lobbied against the memo’s disclosure, arguing it could set a dangerous precedent.
The memo’s release also comes amid an effort by Trump and congressional Republicans to discredit Mueller’s investigation. His probe focuses not only on whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia but also on whether the president sought to obstruct justice.
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Associated Press writers Zeke Miller, Jill Colvin, Catherine Lucey, Matthew Daly, Desmond Butler and Jonathan Lemire contributed to this report.

By MICHAEL VIRTANEN, Associated Press
BETHEL PARK, Pa. (AP) — Vice President Mike Pence stumped on Friday for a Republican congressional candidate and slammed his Democratic opponent, trying to help the GOP keep the seat in its House majority in the first congressional race of the year.
The seat is open because the anti-abortion Republican who held it, Tim Murphy, quit after his hometown newspaper reported he had suggested a mistress get an abortion when they thought she might be pregnant.
Pence addressed about 150 supporters on Friday at a community center in Bethel Park, a borough of greater Pittsburgh. He said state legislator Rick Saccone stands with President Donald Trump’s agenda, including the recently passed tax bill, but ex-federal prosecutor Conor Lamb doesn’t stand with Trump or support those tax cuts.
“And, folks, that says everything you need to know,” Pence said.
He stood onstage with Saccone, who said Trump has put the U.S. “on the right path.”
Lamb’s campaign manager, Abby Murphy, said later: “Conor wants a tax cut where most of the benefits go to the hardworking families of the district instead of the richest 1 percent.”
Pence spoke later in Pittsburgh to a gathering hosted by the nonprofit group America First Policies, formed last year by his and Trump’s political advisers. His address to Republican supporters and his motorcade to the second gathering ran late after he held private meet-and-greet sessions and photo opportunities with supporters.
Saccone, 59, is an Air Force veteran who said his sons are in the Air Force now. Pence emphasized the Trump administration increases in defense spending and Saccone’s military record.
Lamb, 33, is a Marine Corps veteran.
The congressional district, won easily by Trump in the 2016 presidential election, includes parts of four counties mostly south of Pittsburgh. The special election to fill the seat, vacated by Murphy last fall, is March 13.
Millions of super political action committee dollars are pouring in from outside groups to help Saccone, Federal Election Commission filings show.
The Pennsylvania Republican Party chairman, Val DiGiorgio, told people at the Pence gathering the nation is watching and they can reverse the conventional wisdom that they should lose midterm elections.

MILAN (AP) — Italian police say a drive-by shooting has left wounded in the central city of Macerata, and authorities are warning citizens to remain indoors.
Police did not say how many were injured in the town, which has a population of 43,000.
Italian news reports said that the car contained two people. Macerata’s mayor has urged citizens to stay indoors Saturday while the suspects remain at-large. The ANSA news agency reported four victims have been wounded while Sky TG24 put the number of wounded at two.
Sky said the shooting started around 11 a.m. (1000 GMT; 5 a.m. EST), and that students were being kept inside schools which are open on Saturday and public transport had been halted.

By MICHELLE L. PRICE and LINDSAY WHITEHURST, Associated Press
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Utah billionaire and philanthropist Jon Huntsman Sr., who overcame poverty to become one of the state’s most successful and powerful people, died Friday at age 80.
Huntsman’s longtime assistant Pam Bailey said he died in Salt Lake City but she declined to name a cause of death.
Huntsman was the founder and longtime executive chairman of Huntsman Corp., a $13 billion company that refines raw materials that go into thousands of products. He was also the father of Jon Huntsman Jr., the U.S. ambassador to Russia and former Utah governor, presidential candidate and ambassador to China and Singapore.
The elder Huntsman and his family have given away more than $1.4 billion, including donations to a Salt Lake City cancer institute that bears his name.
“Cancer is hideous and deplorable and must be conquered, and it will be, as any evil eventually is defeated,” Huntsman wrote in his 2014 autobiography. He said he would see to it that the institute continues its mission “if it takes my last dollar–and I expect that will be the case.”
In 1970, Huntsman founded the Huntsman Container Corp., which focused on food packaging and pioneered the clamshell container used for McDonald’s Corp.’s Big Mac hamburger. He formed Huntsman Chemical Corp. in 1982 and more than a decade later, consolidated his companies as Huntsman Corp., producing materials used in a wide range of products, from textiles and paints to plastics and aviation components.
Huntsman stepped down from his role in December and his son Peter Huntsman took over as the company’s leader. His father continued to serve on the company’s board of director and was named chairman emeritus.
After amassing his fortune, Huntsman gave $10 million the University of Utah in 1992 to establish the Huntsman Cancer Institute, a research center dedicated to finding a cure through human genetics.
Two years later, he gave $100 million to the institute, at the time the largest ever financial contribution to medical research.
Huntsman, who lost both his parents to cancer and fought his own battle with the disease, said he wanted the institute to help make Utah the cancer research capital of the world.
He also wielded his power as a billionaire benefactor to the center. After the cancer institute’s director and CEO was fired in April 2017, Huntsman mounted a public campaign criticizing leaders of the university and took out full-age newspaper advertisements calling the officials “inept and uncaring.” The director and CEO was reinstated a week after her firing and the school’s health care leader and president stepped down.
The billionaire and his family also gave generously to Utah’s homeless shelters as well as more than $50 million to the Armenian people after a 1988 earthquake in that country left thousands homeless.
He also played key roles in state and national politics.
Huntsman was a special assistant to President Richard Nixon in 1971-72 and briefly ran his own 1988 campaign for Utah’s governor.
Huntsman later served as a finance chairman for Mitt Romney’s 2008 presidential bid and in 2012, worked for his son’s presidential bid, giving more than $1.8 billion to a super PAC supporting the younger Huntsman.
Following his son’s short-lived race for the Republican nomination, Huntsman kept a toehold in Utah current affairs, occasionally offering political commentary to Utah newspapers and even expressing an interest in purchasing The Salt Lake Tribune.
His son Paul Huntsman purchased the newspaper in 2016 and brought his father on as the will serve in a role at the newspaper as chairman emeritus.
In the 1980s, Huntsman explored purchasing the Tribune’s competitor, the Mormon-church owned Deseret News. He met with high-level leaders with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints but faith leaders did not want to pursue the offer, Huntsman wrote in his autobiography.
A committed member of the Mormon church, Huntsman served in several high-level leadership positions with the faith and had close friendships with the past five church presidents.
The First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said in a statement that his “legacy of faithful leadership, generosity and goodness” would be a beacon for many around the world.
Huntsman said the family was exposed to the dark side of wealth and fame in 1987, when his then-16-year-old son James Huntsman was kidnapped at knifepoint from his driveway. The teenager was forced to call his father to arrange payment of $1 million ransom when police and FBI agents moved in to rescue him.
Huntsman was born in 1937 in Blackfoot, Idaho and later moved to California, where he met his wife Karen while in junior high there.
The couple later moved to Salt Lake City in the 1970s where they raised nine children, many of whom became involved in the family business.
Huntsman is survived by his wife and eight children. One daughter, Kathleen Ann Huntsman, died in 2010 at age 44 after struggling for years with an eating disorder.
Bailey had no immediate details on funeral plans Friday afternoon.

Join Jim Taddeo on Saturday, February 3, for a special edition of “Jim Taddeo’s Hometown” on 1230 WBVP and 1460 WMBA! Joining Jim this week is Sam DiMatteo from the SD Project. You can tune in, watch the live feed on Facebook Live, and participate by calling in to (724) 843-1888 or (724) 774-1888.