HOUSE MEMO STATES DISPUTED DOSSIER WAS KEY TO FBI's FISA WARRANT
A much-hyped memo that shows alleged government surveillance abuse during the 2016 campaign has been released to the public and cites testimony from a high-ranking government official who says the FBI and DOJ would not have sought surveillance warrants to spy on a member of the Trump team without the infamous, Democrat-funded anti-Trump dossier.
Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee released the memo Friday. The White House responded by saying the memo “raises serious concerns about the integrity of decisions made at the highest levels of the Department of Justice and the FBI to use the government’s most intrusive surveillance tools against American citizens.”
The dossier, authored by former British spy Christopher Steele and commissioned by Fusion GPS, was paid for by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign through law firm Perkins Coie. It included salacious and unverified allegations about Trump's connections to Russia.
The memo, which has been at the center of an intense power struggle between congressional Republicans and the FBI, specifically cites the DOJ and FBI’s surveillance of Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, saying the dossier "formed an essential part" of the application to spy on him.
Republicans have charged that the FBI used the dubious dossier, prepared as campaign opposition research for Clinton’s presidential bid, to get permission from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, court to eavesdrop on Trump campaign and transition team communications.
The memo states that in December 2017, then FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe testified that “no surveillance warrant would have been sought” from the FISA court “without the Steele dossier information.”
The memo also says Steele was eventually cut off from the FBI for being chatty with the media. It says he was terminated in October 2016 as an FBI source “for what the FBI defines as the most serious of violations—an unauthorized disclosure to the media of his relationship with the FBI.”
But even after his termination, Steele remained in close contact with then-Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr. Ohr’s wife, Nellie, began working for Fusion GPS, the firm behind the dossier, as early as May 2016.
According to the memo, Steele told Ohr that he “was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president.” But it says the FISA application process “ignored or concealed his anti-Trump financial and ideological motivations."
“This clear evidence of Steele’s bias was recorded by Ohr at the time and subsequently in official FBI files – but not reflected in any of the Page FISA applications,” the memo reads.
It also claims the FBI and DOJ used media reporting to lend credibility to the dossier. Fusion GPS, it says, briefed major American news outlets to include New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, New Yorker, Yahoo and Mother Jones on its contents.
Speaking to reporters on Friday, Trump, who has read the memo, called the contents “a disgrace.”
“A lot of people should be ashamed of themselves,” he said.
Attorney General Sessions responded to the release by saying he will “forward to appropriate DOJ components all information I receive from Congress regarding this.”
A senior U.S. official said that indicates Sessions will be referring the allegations in the memo to the Department of Justice Inspector General, which can work directly with US attorneys to build prosecutions.
“I am determined that we will fully and fairly ascertain the truth,” Sessions said.
For me, this was among the most over-hyped things since Geraldo Rivera opened Al Capone's vault, and it was completely empty.
While I think the plot against Trump by James Comey, Rod Rosenstein, Andrew McCabe, Bruce Ohr, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page really is newsworthy and a clear conspiracy against Trump, this memo wasn't the silver bullet that it was hyperbolically touted to be.
And Hannity and others who overplayed the memo to be proof that "will make Watergate look like stealing a Snickers bar" have hurt their own credibility by jumping the gun.
