Carter Page: We’re taking this case to the Supreme Court

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/fbi-didnt-tell-fisa-court-about-steele-do...



December 5, 2019

FBI Didn't Tell FISA Court About Steele Dossier Issues: Report

The FBI used the dossier to wiretap Trump's campaign, but it was not 'entirely reliable.'

by Chuck Ross
The FBI failed to tell surveillance court judges that investigators developed concerns about the reliability of the Steele dossier after interviewing a source for the document, according to a new report.

According to The Washington Post, sources familiar with the forthcoming Justice Department inspector general’s (IG) report say that FBI agents determined that information from Christopher Steele was not “entirely reliable” after they interviewed a subsource for the former British spy.

The IG’s finding could undercut one of Democrats’ main defenses of Steele, who investigated the Trump campaign in 2016 on behalf of Fusion GPS. Democrats have argued that Steele was a credible source with a solid track record of providing information to the U.S. government.

The FBI relied on information from Steele, a former British spy, in applications for four Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants against Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Steele’s dossier alleged that Page met secretly with two Kremlin insiders to discuss ways to help the Trump campaign in exchange for a brokerage stake in the sale of Russian oil giant Rosneft.

Steele also reported that Page was part of the Trump campaign’s “well developed conspiracy of cooperation” with Russia, and that it was Page’s idea to release Democratic National Committee emails through WikiLeaks.

The FBI cited some of that information in four FISA warrant applications, the first of which was submitted on Oct. 21, 2016.

The special counsel’s report undercut many of the allegations against Page. It found that nobody on the Trump team acted as a Russian agent or conspired with Russians to influence the 2016 election. It also found that no Americans were involved in hacking or releasing DNC emails.

Steele’s sourcing for his dossier has largely remained a mystery. It is also unclear what steps the FBI took to verify the dossier.

Michael Horowitz, the inspector general, is expected to release the report Monday. He will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. The Post also reported that even with the omissions about the reliability of Steele’s information, the FBI still met the relatively low bar needed to obtain the surveillance warrants against Page.

The New York Times has previously reported that FBI agents tracked down and interviewed one of Steele’s sources in January 2017, around the time that BuzzFeed published the dossier.

According to The Times, the FBI agents suspected that the source embellished some of the information provided to Steele. The source was not identified, but was described as a Russian speaker living in the West who hailed from a former Soviet republic.

WASHINGTON POST

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/12/26/rachel-maddow-rooted-steele-d...

Rachel Maddow rooted for the Steele dossier to be true. Then it fell apart.

Rachel Maddow, host of MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show, moderates a panel at a forum called “Perspectives on National Security,” at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, in Oct. 2017. (Steven Senne/AP)
Image without a caption
By
Erik Wemple
Media critic
December 26, 2019 at 11:43 AM EST
Fifth in a series on the media’s handling of the Steele dossier. See Parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6.

In March 2017, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow invited Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) onto her show to talk Russia. She noted that in a House hearing, Schiff had cited the 35-page dossier of memorandums compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. Ever since that document had burst into national politics — and surfaced on the BuzzFeed website in January 2017 — Maddow had closely monitored its reception.

Each time she addressed the dossier, she was careful to alert viewers that it was unverified. But she had espied some developments that appeared to support the dossier’s nitty-gritty. So she asked Schiff: “When you cited … that dossier, should we stop describing that as an uncorroborated dossier? Has some of the information of that been corroborated?”

Schiff sidestepped the question.

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz did not. Over a nearly two-year investigation released on Dec. 9, Horowitz and a team of investigators reviewed at least a million records, interviewed more than 100 individuals and otherwise probed the actions of the FBI and the Justice Department in the Russia investigation. In so doing, they reached an answer to Maddow’s question.

Claims in the 35-page dossier fell into three pails, according to the report: “The FBI concluded, among other things, that although consistent with known efforts by Russia to interfere in the 2016 U.S. elections, much of the material in the Steele election reports, including allegations about Donald Trump and members of the Trump campaign relied upon in the Carter Page FISA applications, could not be corroborated; that certain allegations were inaccurate or inconsistent with information gathered by the Crossfire Hurricane team; and that the limited information that was corroborated related to time, location and title information, much of which was publicly available.”

The Horowitz team didn’t attempt an independent fact-check of the dossier, opting instead to report what the FBI had concluded about the document. Unflattering revelations pop up at every turn in the 400-page-plus report. It reveals that the CIA considered it a hodgepodge of “internet rumor”; that the FBI considered one of its central allegations — that former Trump attorney Michael Cohen had traveled to Prague for a collusive meeting with Russians — “not true”; that Steele’s sources weren’t quite a crack international spy team. After the 2016 election, for instance, Steele directed his primary source to seek corroboration of the claims. “According to [an FBI official], during an interview in May 2017, the Primary Sub-source said the corroboration was ‘zero,’” reads the report.

The ubiquity of Horowitz’s debunking passages suggests that he wanted the public to come away with the impression that the dossier was a flabby, hasty, precipitous, conclusory charade of a document. Viewers of certain MSNBC fare were surely blindsided by the news, if they ever even heard it.

Name a host on cable news who has dug more deeply into Trump-Russia than MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. She’s read hundreds, maybe thousands, of court filings; she’s read the plume of literature on Russia-Trump; and she’s out with a new book on the bane of petro-states: “Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth.”

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As part of her Russianist phase, Maddow became a clearinghouse for news increments regarding the dossier. Just days after BuzzFeed published the dossier in its entirety, she reported on the frustration of congressional Democrats with then-FBI Director James B. Comey, who was declining to divulge whether his people had opened an investigation into possible coordination between Russia and the 2016 Trump presidential campaign.

Director Comey refused to answer my question about whether the FBI has investigated Trump campaign contacts with Russia

— Ron Wyden (@RonWyden) January 10, 2017
Sorting through the silence from the FBI and the unverified claims in the dossier, Maddow riffed on her Jan. 13, 2017, program: “I mean, had the FBI looked into what was in that dossier and found that it was all patently false, they could tell us that now, right?” said Maddow. “I mean, the dossier has now been publicly released. If the FBI looked into it and they found it was all trash, there’s no reason they can’t tell us that now. They’re not telling us that now. They’re not saying that. They’re not saying anything.”

Dnarever wrote on Dec 28^th, 2019 at 6:19pm:


The thing Steve Bannon loved about Mr Trump was that he was prepared to take any stance and "just not give a sht".

Switch parties? Sure. Anti-abortion? Why not? Pro-guns? Okay.

When preparing for the primary debates, they'd throw the odd curve ball in. How do you explain that you've only ever donated to a Republican campaign once - Rudy Giuliani. And that was to get a Manhattan property deal stitched up. You've even said it yourself. Every other candidate you've donated was a Democrat.

Nonsense, Mr Trump said, it's all fake news. I've supported Republicans all my life. I've always voted Republican.

You can't say that, Mr Trump, it's all on the public record - every donation and every vote you've ever made. You've only voted once - Rudy Giuliani in the mayoral primary race.

Really?

When Bannon took over, he told Mr Trump he'd have to get the Bible Belt, and that meant being pro-life.

Sorry?

Pro-life. You've always been pro-choice. You've always said you support a woman's right to choose.

Bannon believed this was probably because Mr Trump had encouraged a few women to have abortions himself.

That's okay, Mr Trump said, I can be pro-life. Life's good.

Bannon didn't think Mr Trump knew what he was talking about. Still, he admired Mr Trump's ability to just ad lib, erase all history and lie through his teeth. Mr Trump didn't seem to give a sht about the consequences.

These weren't moral or political beliefs Mr Trump had formed and committed to, they were marketing ploys -like deciding which contestant should win the Apprentice based on the advertising demographics. You know, the advertisers were going for the black market, Hispanics or working women. The contestants were chosen to target these audiences. The Apprentice did product placements directly. Producers based the narrative of each show around the products. Mr Trump never cared which products or contestants, he'd go wherever he was told. For Bannon, that was his strength. Sure he could get a little tetchy and obstinate, but on the big things, he either didn't understand or he didn't care. Mr Trump was like a honey badger, Bannon said. "He just don't give a sht".

The perfect candidate, no?