thank you, we ll see you back here tomorrow as well. we begin with breaking news this afternoon. nbc news has confirmed now that democrats on the house intelligence committee have released a declassified version of their russia memo. it s their response to the republican memo released earlier this month that questioned fbi surveillance practices. we re joined now by nbc white house correspondent jeff bennett and nbc s mike mamoly. the white house has sent both to the chairman and to the top democrat on the house intelligence committee a declassified version of the memo that democrats wrote in response to the memo that the republicans had written that was released three weeks ago yesterday. this is important because the devin nunes memo this has to all do with the carter page a former trump foreign policy adviser, the fisa warrant application that was submitted and approved in order to surveil on him. republicans claimed in their memo that there were not enough
ruse, that it was an effort by the white house to try and give the president cover so he could say he was vindicated. and the republican memo hit like a dud. and this memo is very clear. it establishes the truth, it corrects the record, it makes clear that the fisa application and the process was not abused. it was important to point out that with the application and the renewals you have four different judges, all of whom were appointed by a republican president. and they establish once again that it was important to provide truth. and it didn t begin with carter page, the investigation about trump s involvement with russia began with papadopoulos who was promoting the fact that the russians were going to dump e-mails, which in fact they did
more about the trump campaign, gaining influence in trump s campaign. that s a very important point here. because what the schiff memo is pointing out here is that this is more than just an isolated seeking of a warrant on somebody close to the foreign policy adviser to the trump campaign but able to see here a real pattern on the part of russians to target individual members of his foreign policy team. the other point which is interesting we have had some indications that there were that the initial fisa warrant application and the three renewals we knew occurred after the fact were approved by republican appointed judges. what this memo states specifically is that just that fact, this confirms what we had been led to believe which is that the judges who approved both the initial fisa warrant on carter page and the renewals of those were appointed by republican presidents, two appointed by george w. bush and one by president reagan. the last point which i ve been