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 President Donald Trump used the release of a surveillance application on an adviser during his 2016 campaign to renew his claims of a “rigged” FBI investigation, even as a Republican senator said the request to a foreign intelligence court was legitimate. 
 
 Carter Page in 2016. Photographer: Artyom Korotayev\TASS via Getty Images 
 
 In response to public-records lawsuits, the government on Saturday released a heavily redacted version of the document that was used to apply for a wiretap of campaign adviser Carter Page. Trump and Republicans have attacked the FBI and Justice Department for relying partly on a dossier written by former British spy Christopher Steele, partly financed by Democrats, in the application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. 
 
 “As usual they are ridiculously heavily redacted but confirm with little doubt that the Department of ‘Justice’ and FBI misled the courts,” Trump said in a Twitter message early Sunday. “Witch Hunt Rigged, a Scam!” 
 
 In another tweet, Trump said, “Looking more & more like the Trump Campaign for President was illegally being spied upon (surveillance).” 
 
 Rubio Disagrees 
 
 But Democrats have said other information besides the Steele report was used to obtain renewals of the warrant on Page, and Republican Senator Marco Rubio, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on two Sunday morning talk shows that the FBI did nothing wrong in seeking the surveillance. 
 
 “I have a different view on this issue than the president and the White House,” Rubio of Florida said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “They did not spy on the campaign from anything and everything that I have seen.” 
 
 The warrant request to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in October 2016 called Page “an agent of a foreign power” and said “the FBI believes Page has been the subject of targeted recruitment by the Russian government,” according to the document as released Saturday by the advocacy group Judicial Watch. Referring to Trump as “Candidate #1,” the application also said “the FBI believes that the Russian Government’s efforts are being coordinated with Page and perhaps other individuals associated with Candidate #1’s campaign.” 
 
 Representative Trey Gowdy Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg 
 
 Page said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that while he had conversations with Russian officials, he wasn’t an agent of the Russian government. 
 
 Republican Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina said on “Fox News Sunday” that Page “is more like Inspector Gadget than he is Jason Bourne or James Bond,” a reference to two fictional spies. 
 
 ‘Will Never Know’ 
 
 Gowdy said “we will never know” if the FBI had enough information to put Page under surveillance using only information that excluded the Steele dossier. Representative Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said on Fox News that the redacted version that was issued doesn’t support the issuing of a warrant. 
 
 But the materials released Saturday “underscore the legitimate concern” the FBI had about Page’s activities, said Representative Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. 
 
 Representative Adam Schiff Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg 
 
 “While I’m pleased that these conspiracy theories are finally being put to rest, the release of these materials during a pending investigation should not have happened,” Schiff said in a statement blaming Trump for the initial decision to order the Justice Department to release a “distorted” Republican version of what the application contained while Special Counsel Robert Mueller continues to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election. 
 
 In a tweet, Schiff referred to approval of the original surveillance application and extensions by four different judges, writing, “Looking more and more like the President cannot separate fact from fiction” and “If the president isn’t compromised, why does he continue to act this way?” 
 
 QuickTake Q&A: What’s ‘The Memo’ and Why Was Washington Abuzz? 
 
 Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said on CBS that while Congress needs to closely examine the warrant process, Trump gets the issue “confused” with Russian election interference. 
 
 “Mr. President, they meddled in the elections,” Graham said. “Sit down with Congress and the administration and you lead this nation to hardening the 2018 election process before it’s too late.” 
 
 Graham also repeated one continuing dispute, a contention by House Republicans that the surveillance application on Page didn’t properly reveal that Democrats -- including Hillary Clinton’s campaign -- underwrote the Steele dossier and that the partisan connection was mentioned only obliquely in a footnote. 
 
 The footnote, though, runs more than a page in length. It says that the person who approached Steele never advised him “as to the motivation behind the research into Candidate #1’s ties to Russia. The FBI speculates that the identified U.S. person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit Candidate #1’s campaign.” 
 
 Despite such motivation for recruiting Steele to compile the dossier, the application said, the Federal Bureau of Investigation found his reporting “to be credible” based on his previous work with the bureau. 
 
 — With assistance by Larry Liebert, Miles Weiss, and Ben Brody ||||| Washington (CNN) Carter Page on Sunday called the accusations against him detailed in the foreign surveillance warrant application released by the FBI "so ridiculous." 
 
 "You talk about misleading the courts, it's just so misleading," Page said about the warrant application in an interview on CNN's "State of the Union with Jake Tapper." 
 
 "It's literally a complete joke," he told Tapper. 
 
 On Saturday, the FBI released a redacted version of the warrant application on Page, a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, after news organizations and advocacy groups sued for its disclosure. 
 
 Tapper asked Page about being a past adviser to Russia, to which Page said the term adviser was "way over the top." 
 
 "I sat in on some meetings," Page said. 
 
 However, when Tapper pressed him about his previous reference to himself as an informal adviser to the Kremlin, Page downplayed his earlier remarks, responding, "informal, having some conversations with people, I mean, this is really nothing and just an attempt to distract from the real crimes shown in this misleading document." 
 
 The release of the document is noteworthy as it marks the first public disclosure of a highly sensitive FISA request. Information included in the request had been largely reported through two declassified memos released separately by Republicans and Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, but Saturday's disclosure put the FBI's own argument in black and white for the first time. 
 
 The warrant application states as justification for seeking to surveil Page that the FBI "believes Page has been the subject of targeted recruitment by the Russian government." 
 
 "The FBI believes that Page has been collaborating and conspiring with the Russian government," the application states, adding that "there is probable cause that such activities involve or are about to involve violations of the criminal statutes of the United States." 
 
 President Donald Trump on Sunday also accused the Justice Department and the FBI of misleading the courts, following the release of a previously classified foreign surveillance warrant application. 
 
 Trump wrote in a Sunday morning tweet that the FISA documents "confirm with little doubt," that the Justice Department and FBI "misled the courts," despite the fact that the document itself acted as legal justification for the FBI to obtain the 2016 warrant. 
 
 "Congratulations to @JudicialWatch and @TomFitton on being successful in getting the Carter Page FISA documents," Trump wrote. "As usual they are ridiculously heavily redacted but confirm with little doubt that the Department of 'Justice' and FBI misled the courts. Witch Hunt Rigged, a Scam!" 
 
 Congratulations to @JudicialWatch and @TomFitton on being successful in getting the Carter Page FISA documents. As usual they are ridiculously heavily redacted but confirm with little doubt that the Department of "Justice" and FBI misled the courts. Witch Hunt Rigged, a Scam! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 22, 2018 
 
 Trump went on to allege in a second tweet that his campaign was potentially being "illegally" surveilled for "the political gain of Crooked Hillary Clinton and the DNC." 
 
 "Looking more & more like the Trump Campaign for President was illegally being spied upon (surveillance) for the political gain of Crooked Hillary Clinton and the DNC. Ask her how that worked out - she did better with Crazy Bernie. Republicans must get tough now. An illegal Scam!" Trump's follow up tweet on Sunday morning said. 
 
 Looking more & more like the Trump Campaign for President was illegally being spied upon (surveillance) for the political gain of Crooked Hillary Clinton and the DNC. Ask her how that worked out - she did better with Crazy Bernie. Republicans must get tough now. An illegal Scam! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 22, 2018 
 
 Partisan feud 
 
 The warrant has been a major point of contention between Republicans and Democrats. Republicans have charged that it's evidence of a pattern of abuse by the Justice Department and the FBI targeting the Trump campaign. They also say the warrant is tainted — based on the opposition research dossier on Trump and Russia that was paid for by Democrats — and that because the FISA warrant helped launch the FBI investigation into Trump and Russia, the whole investigation is tainted. 
 
 Democrats, however, say the FISA warrant on Page was justified because of his contacts with Russia, and they argue that the FBI and Justice Department followed proper procedure in seeking and getting the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to approve the warrant. 
 
 Democrats also argue the FBI's interest in Page predated its knowledge of the opposition research dossier and say it was not the dossier and the Page FISA warrant that prompted the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into Russia, but rather an earlier conversation that former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos had with an Australian diplomat about alleged Russian dirt on Clinton. 
 
 The last occasion that Republicans had the opportunity to revise the law outlining surveillance powers, the Republican-held Senate passed a law that upheld a key surveillance tool. 
 
 In January, the Senate reauthorized Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by a vote of 60-38. Those provisions allow the US government to collect communications, such as emails and phone records, of foreigners on foreign soil without a warrant. While the law targets non-US citizens, critics warn the government could incidentally monitor US citizens who are communicating with non-US citizens outside the United States. 
 
 On Sunday, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida defended the warrant in an interview on "State of the Union." 
 
 "I don't think they did anything wrong," he said. "I think they went to the court, they got the judges to approve it, they laid out all the information, and there was a lot of reasons unrelated to the dossier for why they wanted to look at Carter Page, and Carter Page was not a key member of the Trump campaign." 
 
 The document released Saturday, which is more than 400 pages and includes the initial October 2016 FISA warrant on Page as well as three subsequent renewals, says that the FBI "believes Page has been the subject of targeted recruitment by the Russian government." 
 
 Page on Sunday denied claims that he worked for the Kremlin, and called accusations that he had advised Moscow "spin." 
 
 "No, I've never been an agent of a foreign power by any stretch of the imagination," he said. "I may have, back in the G20 when they were getting ready to do that in St. Petersburg, I might have participated in a few meetings that a lot of people -- including people from the Obama administration -- were sitting on, and Geneva, Paris, et cetera, but I've never been anywhere near what's being described here." 
 
 Trump also continued to tweet Sunday about the document's release, quoting Fox News' Pete Hegseth and Andrew McCarthy. 
 
 "Andrew McCarthy - 'I said this could never happen. This is so bad that they should be looking at the judges who signed off on this stuff, not just the people who gave it. It is so bad it screams out at you.' On the whole FISA scam which led to the rigged Mueller Witch Hunt!" Trump wrote ||||| Tweet with a location 
 
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– Thought Carter Page was just a kooky dream you had? Not so: The FBI released Saturday a redacted version of its FISA warrant to wiretap the former Trump campaign advisor, the New York Times reports. "This application targets Carter Page," the document reads. "The FBI believes Page has been the subject of targeted recruitment by the Russian government." After a redaction, the October 2016 application continues with "undermine and influence the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election in violation of US criminal law." All old news, so far—the wiretapping of Page played out in a Republican-vs-Democrat memo war in February—which may make the release itself the biggest news item. It's the first time a sensitive FISA warrant application has ever been released. The release was triggered by Freedom of Information Act lawsuits by the New York Times and other news organizations, after President Trump declassified the applications' existence earlier in 2018. The application confirms one part of the battle over Page's wiretapping—that the FBI relied partly on information from a dossier by ex-British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, which said Page had met with top Russian representatives on a 2016 trip to Moscow. Republicans have criticized the Democratic-funded dossier, while Democrats say the FBI also got Page evidence from other sources. The FISA release is playing out along partisan lines Sunday, with Trump tweeting about a "witch hunt," Page defending himself on CNN, and Democrats saying the FBI had legitimate concerns about Page, per Bloomberg.