After delaying the release of the memo by the minority (Democratic) co-chair of the US House Intelligence committee, REP Adam Schiff D CA, NOT MY pres drumpf/trump approved it's release to the American public. Since this memo's release there have been more developments in the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and possible drumpf/trump-pence collusion. From The Atlantic, Politico and NPR......
A Democratic Memo Undercuts Key Republican Complaints About the FBI
The document, drafted by minority members of the House Intelligence Committee, sought to rebut claims that the bureau abused its power during the election.
The Republican charge that the FBI misled a secret surveillance court in order to spy on a former Trump campaign operative seemed to unravel on Saturday, when Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee revealed the exact wording that the bureau used when applying for the order in October 2016.
In a memo drafted by the intelligence committee’s Republicans in January and promptly declassified by the White House, the majority claimed that the FBI had misleadingly obscured the origins of a dossier written by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, some of whose research on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page was included in the bureau’s application for a warrant to surveil him. “Neither the initial application in October 2016, nor any of the renewals, disclose or reference the role of the DNC, Clinton campaign, or any party/campaign in funding Steele’s efforts, even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior FBI officials,” the Republicans’ memo alleged.
Following its release, Republican lawmakers used it to argue that the FBI’s investigation into whether the Trump campaign aided a Russian effort to sway the 2016 election, and the subsequent special-counsel inquiry into the matter, were both tainted from their inception by partisan bias. Devin Nunes, the chairman of the committee, has accused the FBI of abusing its surveillance power to “fuel” a counterintelligence investigation during the campaign.
But as the original Republican memo also acknowledged, that inquiry began months before the FBI received the Steele dossier, and the FISA court appears to have been aware that Steele was an anti-Trump source. The court also renewed the FISA warrant on Page three separate times following the FBI’s initial application in October 2016, and, according to the Democrats, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe told the committee in a December interview that the bureau has worked “vigorously” to vet Steele’s reporting.
In a rebuttal memo released Saturday, Democrats included a portion of the Justice Department’s application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which described the political origins of Steele’s research into Trump’s Russia ties in 2016.
The Justice Department told the court in its FISA application that Steele had been “approached” by Fusion GPS’s co-founder, Glenn Simpson, to research Trump’s Russia ties. Fusion GPS was first hired in December 2015 by the conservative owner of the Washington Free Beacon to conduct opposition research on Trump. Perkins Coie, a law firm representing the Democratic National Committee, took over funding for the project in April 2016 after Trump won the Republican nomination. Steele was hired in mid-2016 by Fusion GPS.
An extract from the FISA warrant application, reproduced in the Democratic memo, says that despite their “longstanding business relationship” stemming from their past work on Russia-related issues, Simpson did not tell Steele about “the motivation behind the research” into Trump’s Russia ties. But the application noted that “the FBI speculates that [Simpson] was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit [Trump’s] campaign.”
Portions of the Democrats’ memo were redacted by the Justice Department prior to its release, including details about which aspects of Steele’s research on Page the FBI had been able to independently corroborate. But the redactions “were not to the detriment” of the substance of the memo, a Democratic committee source told me, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the classified nature of the material.
Republicans acknowledged earlier this month, following an outcry from Democrats, that the FBI did disclose the dossier’s political origins in a “footnote” on the FISA application. But Devin Nunes, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee who spearheaded the majority’s memo, told Fox that a “footnote saying something may be political” was “a far cry from letting the American people know that the Democrats and the Hillary campaign paid for dirt that the FBI then used to get a warrant on an American citizen to spy on another campaign.”
Republicans stuck with that critique following the Democratic memo’s release, complaining that it ignored the fact that the DNC and the Clinton campaign paid for the Steele dossier—a fact that was not explicitly revealed to the court. Democrats, however, have said the Justice Department was upholding its longstanding practice of not identifying U.S. persons and entities in highly classified intelligence reports.
Trump accused the FBI and DOJ of acting illegally in a series of tweets on Saturday, following the release of the Democratic memo.
“The Democrat memo response on government surveillance abuses is a total political and legal BUST. Just confirms all of the terrible things that were done. SO ILLEGAL!” he wrote. He added later that the investigation into whether his campaign team coordinated with Russia to win the election was “an illegal disgrace.”
Nineteen individuals and entities have been indicted or pleaded guilty in the probe so far—including Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, whose deputy Rick Gates pleaded guilty on Friday to conspiracy against the United States and lying to federal agents. Page, for his part, has been on the FBI’s radar since at least 2013 on suspicion of acting as an agent of the Russian government, and the Democrats’ memo—portions of which appeared poorly redacted— confirmed that at least three other “individuals linked to the Trump campaign” other than Page were under FBI scrutiny by September 2016.
In August of 2013, Page wrote a letter to a book editor claiming he had been serving as “an informal adviser to the staff of the Kremlin” on “energy issues,” and he was interviewed again by the FBI in March 2016—just before he joined the Trump campaign.
“As we’ve seen many times before with the felonious news leaks of the past year, this new round of misinformation surrounding efforts by Washington to illegally influence the 2016 election inflicts even more damages on the instigating perpetrators from the swamp,” Page said in a statement on Saturday night. “Today’s memo further underscores the critical importance of the immediate disclosure of all my FISA applications and other relevant documents.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
NATASHA BERTRAND is a staff writer at The Atlantic where she covers national security and the intelligence community.
Democratic memo: FBI was investigating Trump campaign associates weeks before receiving dossier
The document’s release opens a new partisan front.
The FBI team investigating the 2016 Trump campaign's contacts with Russians had already opened inquiries into multiple people connected to the campaign when it received a controversial dossier alleging illicit ties between then-candidate Donald Trump and the Kremlin, a Democratic memo released by the House Intelligence Committee revealed Saturday.
The dossier, compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, wasn't provided to the FBI's counterintelligence team until mid-September 2016, according to the memo. By then, the counterintelligence investigation into Trump's campaign was seven weeks old. "The FBI had already opened sub-inquiries into ... individuals linked to the Trump campaign," according to the findings of the committee's nine Democrats.
The committee posted the heavily redacted 10-page document Saturday after weeks of wrangling between the panel’s top Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, and Justice Department officials over the contours of classified material he hoped to release.
It's unclear whether the memo was declassified by Trump or whether the redactions advised by the FBI and Justice Department omitted any remaining classified details in the Democratic document. But it opens a new partisan front in a battle that has consumed the House Intelligence Committee and has all but derailed its efforts to probe Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
That probe has stalled even as special counsel Robert Mueller's criminal investigation into the Russian scheme has gained momentum, most starkly with last week's indictment of 13 Russians for mounting a complex operation to steal Americans' identities, stage campaign rallies in the United States and run a social media campaign that primarily supported Trump and opposed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
Trump on Saturday called the memo a "bust," tweeting: "The Democrat memo response on government surveillance abuses is a total political and legal BUST. Just confirms all of the terrible things that were done. SO ILLEGAL!"
The Democratic memorandum was meant as a counterweight to a GOP memo that Trump declassified three weeks earlier, claiming that FBI officials misled a secret court to obtain a warrant to spy on Trump camp foreign policy adviser Carter Page. The Republican memo argued that the so-called Steele Dossier was at the heart of the FBI's request for a surveillance warrant on Page — and that the agents who sought it failed to disclose to a federal judge that Steele's work was financed by the campaign of Clinton and the Democratic National Committee.
The Democratic memo, though, reveals that the FBI did inform the judge of Steele's political intentions — that he was "likely looking for information that could be used to discredit" Trump. And FBI officials indicated that Steele himself was not advised that the work he was doing was on behalf of the Clinton campaign.
Trump argued on Twitter on Saturday: "Dem Memo: FBI did not disclose who the clients were — the Clinton Campaign and the DNC. Wow!"
The memo also reveals that the FBI’s application to spy on Page — and three subsequent renewals — were approved by four different judges, all appointed by Republican presidents.
In addition, the memo suggests the FBI corroborated elements of Steele’s dossier pertaining to Page when it sought renewals. It also emphasizes that the bureau didn’t rely on the dossier’s most salacious allegations to obtain a warrant to spy on Page.
The Democratic memo indicates that the FBI’s fact-finding contradicted Page’s testimony to the House Intelligence Committee in November about his meetings with Russian officials during the 2016 campaign. The passage on elements of the dossier that may have been corroborated is heavily redacted, but it alludes to Page's contacts with Russian officials on his 2016 trips to Moscow.
In a statement, Schiff said: “The Democratic response memo released today should put to rest any concerns that the American people might have as to the conduct of the FBI, the Justice Department and the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court]."
"Our extensive review of the initial [surveillance] application and three subsequent renewals failed to uncover any evidence of illegal, unethical, or unprofessional behavior by law enforcement and instead revealed that both the FBI and DOJ made extensive showings to justify all four requests," he said.
At the time of the memo's release, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) was addressing the Conservative Political Action Conference, a gathering of conservative activists, in Maryland. Nunes has been at the center of the debate over the Republican-led memo, which Trump approved for release on Feb. 2.
From the stage, Nunes said Democrats are "colluding with part of the government to cover up" the FBI's alleged abuses.
"We think it is clear that the Democrats are not not only trying to cover it up, but are colluding with parts of the government to help cover this up," Nunes said. "As you read it, you will see personal attacks on myself and chairman [Rep. Trey] Gowdy with a lot of interesting things that sound really bad, like a lot that has been happening with this Russian investigation over the course of the last year, but what you're not going to see is anything that actually rejects what was in our memo."
In a later statement, Nunes said: “The American people now clearly understand that the FBI used political dirt paid for by the Democratic Party to spy on an American citizen from the Republican Party."
"Furthermore, the FISA court was misled about Mr. Page’s past interactions with the FBI in which he helped build a case against Russian operatives in America who were brought to justice," Nunes said. "It defies belief that the Department of Justice and FBI failed to provide information to a secret court that they had provided to an open federal court regarding their past interactions with Mr. Page.”
In Nunes' point-by-point rebuttal of the Democratic memo, he takes issue with the Democrats' claim that Steele's reporting was corroborated by the FBI. Though Democrats said "multiple independent sources" had backed up parts of Steele's dossier pertaining to Page, the most damaging aspects "remain unconfirmed," the committee Republicans noted.
Steele, the Republicans said, was the only source suggesting Page met in Moscow in July 2016 with a top Russian energy executive with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin — Igor Sechin — and senior Russian government official Igor Diveykin.
"At the time of the initial [surveillance] application, all of the Steele dossier’s specific claims about Page — including that he met with Igor Sechin and Igor Diveykin in Moscow in July 2016 — were uncorroborated by any independent source, and they remain unconfirmed," the Republicans said.
In a statement, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the Democrats' memo "attempts to undercut the president politically" but said he supported its release "in the interest of transparency."
"This politically driven document fails to answer serious concerns raised by the Majority’s memorandum about the use of partisan opposition research from one candidate, loaded with uncorroborated allegations, as a basis to ask a court to approve surveillance of a former associate of another candidate, at the height of a presidential campaign," Sanders said.
A spokeswoman for House Speaker Paul Ryan said in a statement: “The speaker has called for transparency and is glad this memo was released with appropriate redactions to protect intelligence sources and methods. The speaker has read the memo, and despite the new assertions by the minority, there remain civil liberty concerns about the way this particular FISA application was carried out. The speaker continues to have concerns with partisan political research being used for law enforcement and counter-intelligence decision making, and he believes the government must do a better job providing a full picture to the court when applying for FISA warrants.”
Based on previously classified information, the Nunes memo contains allegations that top officials at the FBI and Department of Justice officials abused their abilities to conduct surveillance by relying on the disputed Steele dossier as evidence for an application to spy on a Trump campaign adviser. The push to release the memo became a cause célèbre among conservatives.
Schiff and fellow Democrats had complained that Nunes' memo cherrypicked information and gave an inaccurate portrayal on how federal officials sought and secured a special warrant to spy on Page.
Brent D. Griffiths contributed to this report.
Read the Democratic rebuttal to the Nunes memo, annotated
Weeks after the release of the controversial memo from the office of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), we now have the Democrats' official response.
In case you need a refresher: The Nunes memo alleged abuses by law enforcement in their Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act application to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page as part of the FBI investigation into whether the campaign coordinated with Russia to influence the 2016 election. But it made some claims that Democrats questioned or directly disputed — including that the dossier compiled by Christopher Steele was "essential" to the application to monitor Page and that the former No. 2 at the FBI, Andrew McCabe, had told the committee that the government wouldn't have applied for a warrant if not for the dossier.
As with the GOP memo, we have posted the full memo below, with our annotations. All bolding and other formatting is original to the memo.
TO: All Members of the House of Representatives
FROM:HPSCI Minority
RE: Correcting the Record The Russia Investigations
FROM:
RE: Correcting the Record The Russia Investigations
The Majority's move to release to the House of Representatives its allegations against the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Justice is a transparent effort to undermine those agencies, the Special Counsel, and Congress' investigations . It also risks public exposure of sensitive sources and methods for no legitimate purpose.
FBI and DOJ officials did not abuse the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) process, omit material information, or subvert this vital tool to spy on the Trump campaign.
In fact, DOJ and the FBI would have been remiss in their duty to protect the country had they not sought a FISA warrant and repeated renewals to conduct temporary surveillance of Carter Page, someone the FBI assessed to be an agent of the Russian government. DOJ met the rigor, transparency, and evidentiarv basis needed to meet probable cause requirement, by demonstrating:
- contemporaneous evidence of Russia's election interference;
- concerning Russian links and outreach to Trump campaign officials;
- Page's history with Russian intelligence; and
REDACTED Page's suspicious activities in 2016, including in Moscow.
The Committee's Minority has therefore prepared this memorandum to correct the record:
Christopher Steele's raw intelligence reporting did not inform the decision to initiate its counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016 . In fact, the FBI's closely-held investigative team only received Steele's reporting in mid-September more than seven weeks later. The FBI and, subsequently, the Special Counsel's investigation into links between the Russian government and Trump campaign associates has been based on troubling law enforcement andintelligence information unrelated to the "dossier." - DOJ's October 21, 2016 FISA application and three subsequent renewals carefully outlined for the Court a multi-pronged rationale for surveilling Page, who,
at the time of the first application, was no longer with the Trump campaign. DOJ detailed Page's past relationships with Russian spies and interaction with Russian officials during the 2016 campaignREDACTED . DOJ cited multiple sources to support the case for surveilling Page but made only narrow use of information from Steele's sources about Page's specific activities in 2016, chiefly his suspected July 2016 meetings in Moscow with Russian officials. REDACTED. In fact, the FBI interviewed Page in March 2016 about his contact with Russian intelligence, the very month candidate Donald Trump named him a foreign policy adviser. As DOJ informed the Court in subsequent renewals, REDACTED, Steele's reporting about Page's Moscow meetings REDACTED. DOJ's applications did not otherwise rely on Steele's reporting, including any "salacious" allegations about Trump, and the FBI never paid Steele for this reporting. While explaining why the FBI viewed Steele's reporting and sources as reliable and credible, DOJ also disclosed: - Steele's prior relationship with the FBI
- the fact of and reason for his termination as a source; and
- the assessed political motivation of those who hired him.
- The Committee Majority's memorandum,
which draws selectively on highly sensitive classified information,includes other distortions and misrepresentations that are contradicted by the underlying classified documents, which the vast majority of Members of the Committee and the House have not had the opportunity to review — and which Chairman Nunes chose not to read himself.
On January 18, 20l8, the Committee Majority, during an unrelated business meeting, forced a surprise vote to release to the full House a profoundly misleading memorandum alleging serious abuses by the FBI and DOJ. Majority staff drafted the document in secret on behalf of Chairman Devin Nunes (and reportedly with guidance and input from Rep. Trey Gowdy ), and then rushed a party-line vote without prior notice.
This was by design. The overwhelming majority of Committee Members never received DOJ authorization to access the underlying classified information, and therefore could not judge the veracity of Chairman Nunes' claims. Due to sensitive sources and methods, DOJ provided access only to the Committee's Chair and Ranking Member (or respective designees), and limited staff, to facilitate the Committee's investigation into Russia's covert campaign to influence the 2016 US. elections. As DOJ has confirmed publicly, it did not authorize the broader release of this information within Congress or to the public, and Chairman Nunes refused to allow and the FBI to review his document until he permitted the FBI Director to see it for the first time in secure spaces late on Sunday, January 28 — 10 days after disclosure to the House.
FBI's Counterintelligence Investigation
In its October 2016 FISA application and subsequent renewals, DOJ accurately informed the Court that the FBI initiated its counterintelligence investigation on July 31, 2016, after receiving information REDACTED. George Papadopoulos revealed REDACTED that individuals linked to Russia, who took interest in Papadopoulos as a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, informed him in late April 2016 that Russia REDACTED. Papadopoulos's disclosure, moreover, occurred against the backdrop of Russia's aggressive covert campaign to influence our elections, which the FBI was already monitoring. We would later learn in Papadopoulos's plea that the information the Russians could assist by anonymously releasing were thousands of Hillary Clinton's emails.
DOJ told the Court the truth. Its representation was consistent with the underlying investigative record, which current and former senior officials later corroborated in extensive Committee testimony. Christopher Steele's reporting, which he began to share with an FBI agent through the end of October 2016, played no role in launching the counterintelligence investigation into Russian interference and links to the Trump campaign. In fact, Steele's reporting did not reach the counterintelligence team investigating Russia at FBI headquarters until mid-September 2016, more than seven weeks after the opened its investigation, because the probe's existence was so closely held within the FBI. By then, the FBI had already opened sub-inquiries into REDACTED individuals linked to the Trump campaign: REDACTED, and former campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page .
DOJ's FISA Application and Renewals
- Page's Connections to Russian Government and Intelligence Officials: The FBI had an independent basis for investigating Page's motivations and actions during the campaign, transition, and following the inauguration. As DOJ described in detail to the Court, Page had an extensive record as REDACTED prior to joining the Trump campaign. He resided in Moscow from 2004-2007 and pursued business deals with Russia's state-owned energy company Gazprom — REDACTED.
As early as REDACTED, a Russian intelligence officer REDACTED targeted Page for recruitment. Page showed REDACTED.
Page remained on the radar of Russian intelligence and the FBI. In 2013, prosecutors indicted three other Russian spies, two of whom targeted Page for recruitment. The FBI also interviewed Page multiple times about his Russian intelligence contacts, including in March 2016. The concern about and knowledge of Page's activities therefore long predate the receipt of Steele's information.
Page remained on the radar of Russian intelligence and the FBI. In 2013, prosecutors indicted three other Russian spies, two of whom targeted Page for recruitment. The FBI also interviewed Page multiple times about his Russian intelligence contacts, including in March 2016. The concern about and knowledge of Page's activities therefore long predate the receipt of Steele's information.
- Page's Suspicious Activity During the 2016 Campaign: The FISA applications also detail Page's suspicious activity after joining the Trump campaign in March 2016. REDACTED. Page traveled to Moscow in July 2016, during which he gave a university commencement address an honor usually reserved for well-known luminaries.
It is in this specific sub-section of the applications that DOJ refers to Steele's reporting on Page and his alleged coordination with Russian officials . Steele's information about Page was consistent with the assessment of Russian intelligence efforts to recruit him and his connections to Russian persons of interest.- In particular, Steele's sources reported that Page met separately while in Russia with Igor Sechin, a close associate of Vladimir Putin and executive chairman of Rosneft, Russia's state-owned oil company, and Igor Divyekin, a senior Kremlin official. Sechin allegedly discussed the prospect of future U.S.-Russia energy cooperation and "an associated move to lift Ukraine-related western sanctions against Russia." Divyekin allegedly disclosed to Page that the Kremlin possessed compromising information on Clinton ("kompromat") and noted "the possibility of its being released to Candidate No. 1's campaign." [Note: Candidate No. 1 refers to candidate Trump.] This closely tracks what other Russian contacts were informing another Trump foreign policy adviser, George Papadopoulos.
- In subsequent FISA renewals,
DOJ provided additional information obtained through multiple independent sources that corroborated Steele's reporting. REDACTED - REDACTED
- Page's REDACTED in Moscow with REDACTED senior Russian officials REDACTED as well as meetings with Russian officials REDACTED.
- The Court-approved surveillance of Page allowed FBI to collect valuable intelligence.
The FISA renewals demonstrate that the FBI collected important investigative information and leads by conducting Court-approved surveillance. For instance, REDACTED. DOJ also documented evidence thatPage REDACTED, anticipated REDACTED and repeatedly contacted REDACTED in an effort to present himself as REDACTED. Page's efforts to REDACTED also contradict his sworn testimony to our Committee.
DOJ's Transparency about Christopher Steele
Far from "omitting" material facts about Steele, as the Majority claims, DOJ repeatedly informed the Court about Steele's background, credibility, and potential bias . DOJ explained in detail Steele's prior relationship with and compensation from the FBI; his credibility, reporting history, and source network; the fact of and reason for his termination as a source in late October 2016; and the likely political motivations of those who hired Steele.
- DOJ was transparent with Court about Steele's sourcing: The Committee Majority, which had earlier accused Obama Administration officials of improper "unmasking," faults DOJ for not revealing the names of specific U.S. persons and entities in the FISA application and subsequent renewals. In fact, DOJ appropriately upheld its longstanding practice of protecting U.S. citizen information by purposefully not "unmasking" US. person and entity names, unless they were themselves the subject of a counterintelligence investigation. DOJ instead used generic identifiers that provided the Court with more than sufficient information to understand the political context of Steele's research. In an extensive explanation to the Court, DOJ discloses that Steele:
"was approached by an identified U.S. Person, who indicated to Source #1 [Steele] that a U.S.-based law-firm had hired the identified U.S. Person to conduct research regarding Candidate #1's ties to Russia. (The identified U.S. Person and Source #1 have a long-standing business relationship.) The identified U.S. person hired Source #1 to conduct this research. The identified U.S. Person never advised Source #1 as to the motivation behind the research into Candidate #1's ties to Russia. The FBI speculates that the identified U.S. Person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit Candidate No. 1's campaign."
Contrary to the Majority's assertion that DOJ fails to mention that Steele's research was commissioned by "political actors" to "obtain derogatory information on Donald Trump's ties to Russia," DOJ in fact informed the Court accurately that Steele was hired by politically-motivated U.S. persons and entities and that his research appeared intended for use "to discredit" Trump's campaign.
- DOJ explained the reasonable basis for finding Steele credible:The applications correctly described Steele as
REDACTED .The applications also reviewed Steele's multi-year history of credible reporting on Russia and other matters , including information DOJ used in criminal proceedings. Senior FBI and DOJ officials have repeatedly affirmed to the Committee the reliability and credibility of Steele's reporting, an assessment also reflected in the underlying source documents. The FBI has undertaken a rigorous process to vet allegations from Steele's reporting, including with regard to Page. - The FBI properly notified the FISC after it terminated Steele as a source for making unauthorized disclosures to the media. The Majority cites no evidence that the FBI, prior to its initial October 21, 2016, application, actually knew or should have known of any allegedly inappropriate media contacts by Steele.
Nor do they cite evidence that Steele disclosed to Yahoo! details included in the FISA warrant, since the British Court filings to which they refer do not address what Steele may have said to Yahoo! . DOJ informed the Court in its renewals that the FBI acted to terminate Steele after learning from him (after DOJ filed the first warrant application) that he had discussed his work with a media outlet in late October. The January 2018 renewal further explained to the Court that Steele told the FBI that he made his unauthorized media disclosure because of his frustration at Director Comey's public announcement shortly before the election that the FBI reopened its investigation into candidate Clinton's email use.- DOJ never paid Steele for the "dossier":
The Majority asserts that the FBI had "separately authorized payment" to Steele for his research on Trump but neglects to mention that payment was cancelled and never made. As the records and Committee testimony confirms, although the FBI initially considered compensation REDACTED, Steele ultimately never received payment from the FBI for any "dossier"-related information. DOJ accurately informed the Court that Steele had been an FBI confidential human source since REDACTED, for which he was "compensated REDACTED by the FBI" — payment for previously-shared information of value unrelated to the Russia investigation.
Additional Omissions Errors and Distortions in the Majority's Memorandum- DOJ appropriately provided the Court with a comprehensive explanation of Russia's election interference, including evidence that Russia courted another Trump campaign adviser, Papadopoulos, and that Russian agents previewed their hack and dissemination of stolen emails. In claiming that there is "no evidence of any cooperation or conspiracy between Page and Papadopoulos," the Majority misstates the reason why DOJ specifically explained Russia's courting of Papadopoulos. Papadopoulos's interaction with Russian agents, coupled with real-time evidence of Russian election interference, provided the Court with a broader context in which to evaluate Russia's clandestine activities and Page's history and alleged contact with Russian officials. Moreover, since only Page REDACTED, no evidence of a separate conspiracy between him and Papadopoulos was required.
DOJ would have been negligent in omitting vital information about Papadopoulos and Russia's concerted efforts. - In its Court filings, DOJ made proper use of news coverage. The Majority falsely claims that the FISA materials "relied heavily" on a September 23, 2016 Yahoo! News article by Michael Isikoff and that this article "does not corroborate the Steele Dossier because it is derived from information leaked by Steele himself." In fact,
DOJ referenced lsikoff's article, alongside another article the Majority fails to mention, not to provide separate corroboration for Steele's reporting, but instead to inform the Court of Page's public denial of his suspected meetings in Moscow , which Page also echoed in a September 25, 2016 letter to FBI Director Comey. The Majority's reference to Bruce Ohr is misleading . The Majority mischaracterizes Bruce Ohr's role, overstates the significance of his interactions with Steele, and misleads about the timeframe of Ohr's communication with the FBI. In late November 2016,Ohr informed the FBI of his prior professional relationship with Steele and information that Steele shared with him (including Steele's concern about Trump being compromised by Russia). He also described his wife's contract work with Fusion GPS, the firm that hired Steele separately. This occurred weeks after the election and more than a month after the Court approved the initial FISA application. The Majority describes Bruce Ohr as a senior DOJ official who "worked closely with the Deputy Attorney General, Yates and later Rosenstein," in order to imply that Ohr was somehow involved in the process, but there is no indication this is the case. Bruce Ohr is a well-respected career professional whose portfolio is drugs and organized crime, not counterintelligence. There is no evidence that he would have known about the Page FISA applications and their contents.The Majority's assertions, moreover, are irrelevant in determining the veracity of Steele's reporting. By the time Ohr debriefs with the FBI, it had already terminated Steele as a source and was independently corroborating Steele's reporting about Page's activities . Bruce Ohr took the initiative to inform the FBI of what he knew, and the Majority does him a grave disservice by suggesting he is part of some malign conspiracy.- Finally,
Peter Strzok and Lisa Page's text messages are irrelevant to the FISA application. The Majority gratuitously includes reference to Strzok and Page at the end of their memorandum, in an effort to imply that political bias infected the FBl's investigation and FISA applications. In fact,neither Strzok nor Page served as affiants on the applications, which were the product of extensive and senior DOJ and FBI review. In demonizing both career professionals, the Majority accuses them of "orchestrating leaks to the media" — a serious charge;omits inconvenient text messages, in which they critiqued a wide range of other officials and candidates from both parties; does not disclose that FBI Deputy Director McCabe testified to the Committee that he had no idea what Page and Strzokwere referring to in their "insurance policy" texts; and ignores Strzok's acknowledged role in preparing a public declaration, by then Director Comey, about former Secretary Clinton's "extreme carelessness" in handling classified information, which greatly damaged Clinton's public reputation in the days just prior to the presidential election.
Aaron Blake contributed to this report.- DOJ never paid Steele for the "dossier":
No comments:
Post a Comment