President Donald Trump committed on Thursday, April 25, to declassifying a slew of records related to the Russia probe “and much more.”
Trump said in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity that he was “glad” he waited to declassify the documents until after the end of the special counsel’s investigation.
“I thought that maybe they would obstruct if I did it early, and I think I was right,” Trump said.
Trump has for months considered releasing portions of a classified surveillance warrant application granted in June 2017 against Carter Page, the former Trump campaign adviser. He has also considered declassifying FBI notes of interviews with Bruce Ohr, the Justice Department official who served as dossier author Christopher Steele’s handler for months after the 2016 election.
Trump ordered all of the documents declassified on Sept. 17, 2018, but reversed course four days later. Trump said at the time that he decided not to declassify the documents after meeting with the Justice Department.
“Everything’s going to be declassified and more, much more than what you just mentioned,” Trump told Hannity in his first on-camera interview since the release of the special counsel’s Russia report.
Robert Mueller, the special counsel, found that Trump and the campaign did not collude with Russia during the 2016 campaign, as Steele claimed in his infamous dossier.
Steele, a former MI6 officer, was hired by Fusion GPS, an opposition research firm that worked for the Clinton campaign and DNC. The FBI relied on the dossier even though the information in it was unverified. The bureau also failed to inform surveillance court judges who funded Steele’s project.
Trump did not provide a timeline for the release of the documents.
By Chuck Ross
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