Turnbull - leaked Manus Island convo story - criminal charges

but it concludes alluding to FISAGATE

The Trump-Turnbull phone call transcript leak to the Washington Post rocked the usually solid US-Australian alliance, with both nations going into damage control when it was revealed the President abruptly cut short the planned hour-long call just 24 minutes in.

The transcript showed Turnbull pushing Trump to support an asylum-seeker deal struck made with President Barack Obama.

The call was Trump's last of numerous calls with world leaders that day, including Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"Putin was a pleasant call," Trump told Turnbull. "This is ridiculous."

Nunes said the eight referrals "are classified or sensitive" so he was unable to offer details.

"Five of them are what I would call straight up referrals, so just referrals that name someone and name the specific crimes," he said. "Those crimes are lying to Congress, misleading congress, leaking classified information."

The referrals also involve alleged abuse by "numerous individuals" of the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which involves surveillance warrants against suspected foreign spies inside the US.

Some Republican members of Congress allege the FBI counterintelligence investigation into potential collusion between Russia and the Trump election campaign that led to the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller was marred by lies and false information to obtain FISA warrants.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/leaked-turnbull-trump-phone-call-could-lead-to-criminal-charges-20190408-p51bty.html