Trump Orders Release of FISA Application Documents, Text Messages

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders on Monday said that President Donald Trump had ordered FISA application documents to be released “[a]t the request of a number of committees of Congress, and for reasons of transparency.”

“The documents to be declassified also include 12 FBI reports on interviews with Justice Department official Bruce Ohr and all FBI reports of interviews prepared in connection with all other applications to surveil Carter Page,” as Fox News and other outlets reported.

The release reportedly will include 21 pages of an application to a surveillance warrant against former campaign aide Carter Page.

The president has also ordered the Department of Justice to release text messages from several major players in the Russia investigation without redaction, including Ohr, former FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok, former FBI attorney Lisa Page, former FBI Director James Comey, and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, as Fox News noted.

The materials also will include declassified 12 FBI reports on interviews with Justice Department official Bruce Ohr.

Ohr formerly worked as the associate deputy attorney general before being demoted in the wake of an ongoing scandal.

He provided the FBI with an opposition research dossier that helped lead to a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to spy on Page — and thus the president’s campaign indirectly.

Related: Meadows Says Ohr Should Be Fired Unless He Was Taking Orders

Nellie Ohr, his wife, worked for Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that was hired to create the dossier.

“President Trump is absolutely right to declassify these documents,” Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) said in a statement provided to LifeZette late Monday afternoon.

“As Congress has investigated, we’ve continued to see more and more troubling evidence suggesting multiple senior level FBI and DOJ officials acted in a deeply unethical fashion during the 2016 campaign and throughout the early stages of the Trump administration. Enough is enough — the time for full transparency is now. Let’s bring the full truth to light, while protecting sources and methods, and allow the American people to judge for themselves.”

The opposition research dossier was paid for indirectly by Democrat Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

Christopher Steele, a former British spy with deep connections to Russian intelligence, was tasked with compiling it.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the president was later launched in part because of the dossier. The investigation is looking into whether the president or his associates colluded with Russian interest to sway the presidential election of 2016.

The House Judiciary and House Oversight and Government Reform committees have focused on the dossier as part of their own investigation into the DOJ and FBI. They are looking into questionable decisions the agencies made around the time of the election, including what led to the special counsel probe.

Ohr was demoted from his post as the associate deputy attorney general as his alleged involvement became revealed. He later appeared before a closed-door congressional hearing as part of the congressional investigation on August 28.

Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) said his testimony confirmed many of his fears of bias and FISA process abuse.

Related: Ratcliffe Says Ohr Hearing Confirmed His Fears on FBI Scandal

Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page gave testimonies that were cited as contradicting what Ohr said. Page was involved in the probe until she was exposed for having exchanged thousands of text messages — which showed a clear hatred for the president — with former FBI agent Peter Strzok.

The latter was at the center of the two main investigations by congressional investigators. Strzok was previously involved with an investigation into Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state. Strzok then jumped onto the special counsel probe but was eventually removed on July 2017.

Ohr isn’t the only one to have been removed from his position amid ongoing controversies. Strzok was eventually fired on August 13, nearly a year after he was removed from the probe.

Former FBI Director James Comey and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe were also fired alongside others who have been demoted or reassigned, or have since left the agency.

This article has been updated.