On Monday evening, the White House released an order[1] instructing the Department of Justice and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to declassify excerpts from an array of documents related to special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation[2] into Russian interference. He has every legal right to do so. But national security analysts and former intelligence officials say that such a demand isn't just largely unprecedented; it's potentially dangerous.
The Trump Administration said Monday that the disclosure was "for reasons of transparency" and was "at the request of a number of committees of Congress." The affected documents include certain pages of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act application related to former Trump foreign policy aide Carter Page[3], and a number of FBI interview reports related to the Page FISA application[4] and larger Russia investigation. President Trump has been fixated for more than a year on proving that a wiretap of Page—after he left the Trump campaign—was part of a partisan effort to undermine his candidacy.
"The damage that is done is something that’s going to continue for several years."
Jeffrey Ringel, The Soufan Group
Additionally, Monday's White House order includes the public, unredacted release of a trove of text messages "relating to the Russia investigation" sent from and between former FBI director James Comey[5], former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe, former FBI agent Peter Strzok, former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, and current Justice Department official Bruce Ohr. A more recent fixation[6] of President Trump's, Ohr's wife has worked as a Russia analyst and contractor for the same intelligence firm that commissioned the infamous Steele dossier[7].
Though the White House has demanded specific pages from the Page FISA application, its