pro-trump house republicans have been clamoring for him for a while now. they reportedly are about to get their wish. axios.com is now reporting that president trump is about to order the declassification of a batch of documents, quote, covering the u.s. government s surveillance of trump campaign adviser carter page and the investigative activities of senior justice department lawyer bruce ohr. carter page is the trump campaign adviser who came under fbi surveillance for his repeated contacts with russian operatives. he was surveilled under fisa regulations that require the government to show that they believe the target of the surveillance is an active foreign agent. bruce ohr, on the other hand, is a justice department official whose work has made him one of the top experts in the u.s. government on russian organized crime and its ties to the
kremlin, including one dramatic instance in which bruce ohr reportedly met with a russian oligarch named oleg deripaska and tried to convince him to become a cooperate were u.s. law enforcement against the russian government. the president has been sending angry tweets about bruce ohr for weeks now. last month, house republicans summoned ohr for closed door testimony. but now we re told to expect the president to release classified information from ohr s, quote, investigative activities. joining us now is congressman jim himes who is a member of the house intelligence committee. congressman, thanks very much for being with us. hi, rachel. what is your reaction to this reporting from axios that the president is going to declassify these materials? first of all, i should mention that it s just axios reporting this. other people aren t matching this reporting. i don t know if that means they re just ahead of the story or maybe they ve caught on to something that isn t going to happen.
campaign was colluding with prussia. we do not know why he is doing that, and he is doing it with this weird i don t recall thing. we don t know why he is doing it. but here is a hunch as to how we are going to find out why he is doing this. and that is the other thing i said to watch for today and in coming days. axios.com is reporting today that as early as this week, the president is going to order the declassification of more documents about the start of the fbi s russia investigation. quote, president trump is expected to declassify as early as this week documents covering the u.s. government surveillance of trump campaign adviser carter page and the investigative activities of senior justice department lawyer bruce ohr. carter page, you remember him, we now know he was the subject of court-ordered surveillance after he left his role as an adviser to the trump campaign. and carter page really is someone who was caught up in a russian spy ring. court records from a federal prosec
by it. i m intrigued by it because of course they ve declassified other stuff that had no business being out there in the public realm. you remember the fisa affidavits that they assured us were going to show this all got started because of the steele dossier. the reason i m intrigued by it, every time they have declassified documents, it turns out that the truth, the actual documents completely rebut their point. when we got a look at the fisa affidavit, it turns out that lo and behold, it was really all about george papadopoulos who you were talking about earlier, bragging about meeting russians who were talking about having e-mails. so i m intrigued by it because documents and the truth are not the republicans friends on this issue. so i worry, quite frankly, that if they do declassify, and when i say that. it would be the president,f course, it would be done in a way that slams the truth. the truth is not their friend. who do you make of the targeting of bruce ohr in particu
doing this. this is the other thing i said to watch for today and in coming days. axios.com is reporting that as early as this week the president is going to order the declassification about more documents about the start of the fbi russia investigation. quote, president trump is expected to declassify as early as this week documents of surveillance of carter page and the investigative activities of senior justice department lawyer bruce ohr. carter page, he was the subject of court-ordered surveillance after he left his role as an adviser to the trump campaign. carter page is really someone who was caught up in a russian spy ring. court records from a federal prosecution several years ago reveal his enthusiastic engagement with three dudes who were literally charged as russian spies operating out of new york city. two of them got away back to moscow. one of them got caught and went to prison for being a russian