CNN’s Chris Cuomo and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) duked it out on the network Wednesday in a heated exchange over the GOP and Democratic memos from the House Intelligence Committee.
Jordan stood by the GOP assertions that intelligence officials fraught with anti-Trump bias were using the salacious and unverified Trump-Russia dossier to apply for a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant without being transparent about where the document came from.
“The FBI doing what they did, taking a campaign document, dressing it all up as legitimate intelligence and presenting it to a FISA court, a secret court to get a secret court to spy,” he said.
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The GOP memo, which was at the center of controversy for weeks before being made public earlier this month, alleges that FBI and Justice Department officials improperly used a piece of opposition research to apply for a surveillance warrant on a Trump campaign official.
The Democrats on the committee compiled a countermemo, but President Trump decided Friday not to allow its declassification and publication citing “national security and law enforcement interests.”
The FISA application has not been made public, which Cuomo noted repeatedly during the interview, telling Jordan, “you don’t know that’s what happened.”
“You do not know what happened in that FISA application,” he said. “You keep calling it ‘secret court’ which is not fair to the American people.”
The two spoke over each other for a large portion of the segment, addressing everything from the content of the FISA application to the process by which the GOP memo was released and focusing on whether there is political bias in the FBI.
“I don’t understand why you’re willing to die on this hill, Jim Jordan,” Cuomo said. “This insatiable appetite to paint the FBI as dirty and trying to manipulate the election … it just reeks of false equivalency.”
“Everyone sees the fix was in,” Jordan shot back, bringing up emails and texts exchanged between FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, which Republicans have said proves anti-Trump bias in the investigations.