The memo written by the House Committee on Intelligence is out to the public. It's amazing for what it says as well as for what it does not say. It's not very long. I suggest that you read it; it can be found here. (scroll past the letter from the White House to get to the memo.)
Here are the keys to what it says:
1. There was a request for a FISA warrant to surveil Carter Page of the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential campaign and three renewals after that, one every 90 days as required by law.
2. These submissions to the FISA court had to be signed by either the Director or Deputy Director of the FBI, as well as one of the Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General or the Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division. Those who signed off on these applications to the FISA court included FBI Director Comey, FBI Deputy Director McCabe, Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
3. The FBI admits that but for the so called Trump Dossier, no application for the FISA warrant would have been made. Andrew McCabe so testified to the Committee in December.
4. Both the FBI and the DOJ were well aware that the Trump Dossier was a creation put together by Christopher Steele, a previous FBI source. The FBI and DOJ officials who signed the FISA warrant requests all knew that Steele had been paid by the Clinton campaign and the DNC to compile the Trump Dossier. Steele told the DOJ at the time he turned over the Trump Dossier that he was "desperate" to keep Donald Trump from winning the election.
5. The DOJ official, Bruce Ohr, who was a principal contact with Steele and Fusion GPS (by whom Steele was employed) is married to a woman who is employed by Fusion GPS. She too was compiling "opposition research" for Clinton and the DNC in their effort to defeat President Trump.
6. When the FISA applications were first made, the Trump Dossier was at best "minimally verified". In English, that means that the FBI was unable to corroborate most of the charges in the Trump Dossier. Since that first application, the FBI has remained unable to verify the Trump Dossier any further.
7. In making the FISA applications and getting a warrant to spy on the Trump campaign, the FBI and DOJ did NOT tell the FISA court that the information on which they were relying (the Trump Dossier) could not be verified. They also did not tell the FISA court that the Trump Dossier had been politically generated (indeed bankrolled) by the DNC and the Clinton campaign. The FBI and the DOJ were also silent about the very strong political motivation of Christopher Steele to keep Trump out of the White House, a fact which further undermined the reliability of the Trump Dossier (if that were possible.)
8. After the initial FISA application, but before the renewals, the FBI suspended and then terminated Steele as a source for violating the rules the FBI requires of a source. In the subsequent renewal applications to the FISA court (which still relied on the Trump Dossier), the FBI and DOJ did not disclose to the court that the author of the dossier had been fired by the FBI for misconduct.
Think about this. In a detailed factual basis, the committee's memo sets forth that the leadership of the FBI and DOJ signed off on a submission to the FISA court which was based upon a politically motivated and unverified dossier. The highly questionable nature of the Trump Dossier was required by law to be disclosed to the FISA court. Remember, the FISA court issues these warrants in secret. There is no "other side" to present the opposing points. The FBI and DOJ are required to fully inform the FISA court of all relevant facts. Especially since the target of the FISA warrant was a volunteer advisor to the Trump campaign, the requirement for full disclosure was particularly important. Nevertheless, despite these legal requirements, Comey and McCabe at the FBI and Yates and Rosenstein at DOJ authorized the submissions to the FISA court that left out the key facts about the Trump Dossier. I don't know if these submissions were criminal acts by Comey, McCabe and the others. They are, however, offenses for which they should be fired.
An American citizen was spied on and so was the Trump campaign based upon a phony collection of salacious rumors. The intelligence community of the USA was weaponized by these people to attack one of the two major candidates for president. To put it mildly, this is bad stuff.
Now let's consider what the memo doesn't say.
1. For the last few weeks, the media and the Democrats have been telling us that the memo might reveal sources and methods of the intelligence community. It doesn't. The only source it names is Christopher Steele, but his name was public knowledge already. This claim against the memo and its Republican authors is totally baseless.
2. The FBI said yesterday that there were missing facts from the memo that deprive the reader of context. That too is baseless. Did the FBI verify the Trump Dossier? The memo says no. If there were a verification, the FBI can tell us. Did the FBI leadership know the truth about the Trump Dossier? The memo outlines the case why they did. If that is not true, these people can easily tell us, but they would have to contradict their earlier testimony. Did the FISA warrant requests tell the court that the Trump Dossier was an unverified piece of garbage paid for by Hillary Clinton and the DNC? There's no missing facts here; the FISA court was knowingly kept in the dark by the FBI and DOJ leaders. In short, there are no missing facts.
3. Is the memo just an attempt to undermine the Mueller investigation? That's what the media and Democrats have been saying for the last few weeks. This too is revealed to be a lie. Neither the special prosecutor nor his investigation is mentioned in the memo. The memo does lay out why the Trump Dossier is an unreliable and politically motivated hit job by the Democrats against President Trump. America already knew that, however. Surely, the special prosecutor will not rely on anything in that dossier. The memo does present a case for the potential criminal indictment of Jim Comey, the former director of the FBI as well as of the deputy director Andrew McCabe. To the extent these two are witnesses on whom Mueller plans to rely in any future case, their reliability has been damaged, but that is not something that operates like a Get Out Of Jail Free card. Congress has a responsibility for oversight of the FBI and DOJ. If the FBI has been lying to -- or at least misleading by omission to -- the FISA court, then Congress has to act.
Here are the keys to what it says:
1. There was a request for a FISA warrant to surveil Carter Page of the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential campaign and three renewals after that, one every 90 days as required by law.
2. These submissions to the FISA court had to be signed by either the Director or Deputy Director of the FBI, as well as one of the Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General or the Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division. Those who signed off on these applications to the FISA court included FBI Director Comey, FBI Deputy Director McCabe, Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
3. The FBI admits that but for the so called Trump Dossier, no application for the FISA warrant would have been made. Andrew McCabe so testified to the Committee in December.
4. Both the FBI and the DOJ were well aware that the Trump Dossier was a creation put together by Christopher Steele, a previous FBI source. The FBI and DOJ officials who signed the FISA warrant requests all knew that Steele had been paid by the Clinton campaign and the DNC to compile the Trump Dossier. Steele told the DOJ at the time he turned over the Trump Dossier that he was "desperate" to keep Donald Trump from winning the election.
5. The DOJ official, Bruce Ohr, who was a principal contact with Steele and Fusion GPS (by whom Steele was employed) is married to a woman who is employed by Fusion GPS. She too was compiling "opposition research" for Clinton and the DNC in their effort to defeat President Trump.
6. When the FISA applications were first made, the Trump Dossier was at best "minimally verified". In English, that means that the FBI was unable to corroborate most of the charges in the Trump Dossier. Since that first application, the FBI has remained unable to verify the Trump Dossier any further.
7. In making the FISA applications and getting a warrant to spy on the Trump campaign, the FBI and DOJ did NOT tell the FISA court that the information on which they were relying (the Trump Dossier) could not be verified. They also did not tell the FISA court that the Trump Dossier had been politically generated (indeed bankrolled) by the DNC and the Clinton campaign. The FBI and the DOJ were also silent about the very strong political motivation of Christopher Steele to keep Trump out of the White House, a fact which further undermined the reliability of the Trump Dossier (if that were possible.)
8. After the initial FISA application, but before the renewals, the FBI suspended and then terminated Steele as a source for violating the rules the FBI requires of a source. In the subsequent renewal applications to the FISA court (which still relied on the Trump Dossier), the FBI and DOJ did not disclose to the court that the author of the dossier had been fired by the FBI for misconduct.
Think about this. In a detailed factual basis, the committee's memo sets forth that the leadership of the FBI and DOJ signed off on a submission to the FISA court which was based upon a politically motivated and unverified dossier. The highly questionable nature of the Trump Dossier was required by law to be disclosed to the FISA court. Remember, the FISA court issues these warrants in secret. There is no "other side" to present the opposing points. The FBI and DOJ are required to fully inform the FISA court of all relevant facts. Especially since the target of the FISA warrant was a volunteer advisor to the Trump campaign, the requirement for full disclosure was particularly important. Nevertheless, despite these legal requirements, Comey and McCabe at the FBI and Yates and Rosenstein at DOJ authorized the submissions to the FISA court that left out the key facts about the Trump Dossier. I don't know if these submissions were criminal acts by Comey, McCabe and the others. They are, however, offenses for which they should be fired.
An American citizen was spied on and so was the Trump campaign based upon a phony collection of salacious rumors. The intelligence community of the USA was weaponized by these people to attack one of the two major candidates for president. To put it mildly, this is bad stuff.
Now let's consider what the memo doesn't say.
1. For the last few weeks, the media and the Democrats have been telling us that the memo might reveal sources and methods of the intelligence community. It doesn't. The only source it names is Christopher Steele, but his name was public knowledge already. This claim against the memo and its Republican authors is totally baseless.
2. The FBI said yesterday that there were missing facts from the memo that deprive the reader of context. That too is baseless. Did the FBI verify the Trump Dossier? The memo says no. If there were a verification, the FBI can tell us. Did the FBI leadership know the truth about the Trump Dossier? The memo outlines the case why they did. If that is not true, these people can easily tell us, but they would have to contradict their earlier testimony. Did the FISA warrant requests tell the court that the Trump Dossier was an unverified piece of garbage paid for by Hillary Clinton and the DNC? There's no missing facts here; the FISA court was knowingly kept in the dark by the FBI and DOJ leaders. In short, there are no missing facts.
3. Is the memo just an attempt to undermine the Mueller investigation? That's what the media and Democrats have been saying for the last few weeks. This too is revealed to be a lie. Neither the special prosecutor nor his investigation is mentioned in the memo. The memo does lay out why the Trump Dossier is an unreliable and politically motivated hit job by the Democrats against President Trump. America already knew that, however. Surely, the special prosecutor will not rely on anything in that dossier. The memo does present a case for the potential criminal indictment of Jim Comey, the former director of the FBI as well as of the deputy director Andrew McCabe. To the extent these two are witnesses on whom Mueller plans to rely in any future case, their reliability has been damaged, but that is not something that operates like a Get Out Of Jail Free card. Congress has a responsibility for oversight of the FBI and DOJ. If the FBI has been lying to -- or at least misleading by omission to -- the FISA court, then Congress has to act.
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