Grassley Document Appears to Support Claims the FBI Used Dossier to Receive Surveillance Warrant
All the contradictions!
On Monday, I blogged about how Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) asked the FBI to declassify the criminal referral he and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) sent to the DOJ over dossier author Christopher Steele.
The FBI approved a less-redacted version and Grassley released it on Tuesday, including some parts of the documents that detail why the two senators believe Steele misled the FBI. However, the portion about Steele’s second dossier that had information from an associate of the Clintons and member of the State Department remains the same.
In other parts, it supports claims that the FBI used Steele’s dossier to receive a surveillance warrant on carter Page.
The part about Steele’s second dossier caught eyes on Monday, but the FBI kept the redactions intact. Officials blacked out what the dossier alleges and which associate of failed Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and member of the State Department provided Steele with the information.
In early January, Grassley and Graham asked the DOJ to investigate Steele because they believe he misled the FBI. The first version had that portion blacked out, but the FBI decided to declassify a few parts of the referral.
Grassley wrote that “there is substantial evidence suggesting that Mr. Steele materially misled the FBI about a key aspect of his dossier efforts, one which bears on his credibility.” The part underneath this is blacked out, which I assume Grassley wrote about that key aspect. The FBI declassified the portion where Grassley explains evidence that shows otherwise:
Grassley wrote that a footnote on a renewal for the FISA warrant on Carter Page shows a contradiction on the FBI’s part. The FBI “addressed Mr. Steele’s credibility.” The department “suspended its relationship with Mr. Steele in October 2016 because of Steele’s ‘unauthorized disclosure of information to the press.'” Yet they kept citing his work.
Grassley reminded the DOJ that former FBI Director James Comey described the dossier as “salacious” and “unverified” to the Senate. The FBI unclassified the parts below this reminder. Guess what it contains? MORE CONTRADICTIONS.
Comey said the department “included the dossier allegations about Carter Page in the FISA applications because Mr. Steele himself was considered reliable due to his past work with the Bureau.” Grassley wrote that the documents they have reviewed “show that the FBI took important investigative steps largely based on Mr. Steele’s information-and relying heavily on his credibility.”
The FBI filed its first warrant on Page in October 2016. The next sentence remains blacked out, but apparently the majority “of the application consists of allegations against page that were disclosed to the FBI by Mr. Steele” that also existed in the dossier. The application did not have any “additional information corroborating the dossier allegations against Mr. Page, although it does cite to a news article that appears to be sourced to Mr. Steele’s dossier as well.” MORE CONTRADICTIONS:
Steele admitted that he provided off the record briefings to the media in late 2016. In another sworn filing, Steele said that he and Fusion GPS (the company that worked on the dossier) briefed reporters from the New York Times, Washington Post, Yahoo News, New Yorker, and CNN at the end of September 2016. Fusion also pushed Steele to have more meetings with these outlets in mid-October 2016.
Media reported these filings last year, but as Grassley points out, “the FBI did not subsequently disclose to the FISC this evidence suggesting that Mr. Steele had lied to the FBI.” The application for the warrant “still relied primarily on his credibility prior to the October media incident.”
This information appears to confirm the memo from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) since it alleges that the FBI used the dossier to obtain a warrant on Page.
I am SO LOST. So did the FBI really believe Steele had unreliable information? Were they that desperate to get dirt on then-candidate Donald Trump that it didn’t matter? Did Comey truly find the dossier as salacious?
I love having transparency, but it seems to bring up more questions than answers.
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“In another sworn filing, Steele said that he and Fusion GPS briefed reporters”
The entire company briefed reporters? Must have been a very large conference table.
Why aren’t we getting the names of the actual people at Fusion GPS behind this?
Why aren’t we getting names of the actual people at Perkins Cole?
Why aren’t we gettikng the names of the journalists bribed by Fusion GPS?
There is so much happening today that ten articles wouldn’t cover the headlines.
Absolutely crazy texts between Stzrok and girlfriend.
Ron Johnson report
I understand that these 2 high-ranking DOJ/FBI staff were lovers, but, with their chronicling every stray thought which crossed their little minds, I can’t imagine when they had time for sex.
I’m curious what Page, the lawyer, submitted to courts over the years based on information from her FBI lover.
Related:
Adam Schiff’s sister Melissa was married to George Soros’s son, until 2015:
http://truthfeednews.com/well-well-well-look-who-adam-schiff-has-family-ties-to/
The corruption is incredible.
This is all on Sessions now. And if he fails to perform, it will be all on Trump because he failed to fire him.
More, from the same piece. In other words, Schiff is in soros’ (a corrupt seditionist) pocket. What treasonous scum infests the democrat party:
“Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, was previously financially aided by the George Soros-financed MoveOn.org to win his Congressional seat. Schiff was also awarded the Toll Fellowship, which is sponsored by the Council of State Governments, a nonprofit that monitors federal government activities and is heavily financed by Soros’s Open Society Foundations. The Open Society and Soros-funded groups have additionally supported a number of Schiff’s legislative efforts. Schiff has been helping to lead the Democrats’ unsubstantiated charges of alleged collusion between President Donald Trump and Moscow. Last month, Schiff delivered the opening statements at a Congressional hearing where he laid out the case for alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. This reporter previously documented serious problems with Schiff’s charges, which include wild conspiracy theories and heavy reliance on a questionable source. In largely forgotten history, Schiff’s 2000 Congressional campaign against Republican incumbent Jim Rogan was openly aided by MoveOn.org. On January 1, 2000, the Wall Street Journal reported on the radical group’s fundraising efforts for Schiff.”
http://truthfeednews.com/well-well-well-look-who-adam-schiff-has-family-ties-to/
I was under the impression that these 2 are not actually related. Do we have confirmation that they are in fact related?
False. They are not related.
Soros is divorcing Schiff.
The FBI and DoJ clearly mislead the FISC about the provenance of Steele’s information in the warrant application. What the hell are the judges doing about it?
That’s another angle to this – any respectable FISC judge should have laughed this affidavit out of court.
The initial application for a FISA warrant to spy on Trump, personally, and not including the “dodgy dossier” was rejected by the court.
That was the ONLY rejected warrant for years – >10,700 applications approved, 1 rejected.
“any respectable FISC judge” Given the above, seems pretty obvious that there are no “respectable FISC judges” at all. Must be an incredibly low bar to pass to get them to approve whatever garbage you submit.
That explains how all of the contradictions noted in the article above got past these “judges” in the applications that were approved and then, repeatedly, extended.
There’s no check on this process at all. Virtually everything gets approved, and everyone involved knows that the whole process is so secret that no one can ever come behind and check up on them. So, the FBI just throws whatever crap they want in as “support” for the request for the surveillance they want to do and the court approves it.
They only balked once: When the target was the Presidential nominee, during the campaign for President. They wouldn’t approve spying on him directly.
But, later, they approved of spying on Page AND ANYONE IN HIS “CIRCLE” (John Fund broke the news on this important bit – which most articles are neglecting), which of course would include most of the people involved in the Trump campaign, the transition team after the election, and the Administration after inauguration.
I pretty much agree with what you said but do we know if they went back to the same judge every time? If so I haven’t seen anything about new information or evidence to keep the fisa active. It would be easier to make that sale if they went to different judges each time. I wouldn’t put anything past these corrupt cops. By the fourth time there should be some pictures of someone having brunch with Putin!
So did the FBI really believe Steele had unreliable information? Were they that desperate to get dirt on then-candidate Donald Trump that it didn’t matter? Did Comey truly find the dossier as salacious?
The answers to all of these questions depend on: “Which answer will make Trump look bad?”
The FBI and the MSM (but I repeat myself) always ask that last question first.
Taking the last question first, no. Comey has NEVER said the entire dossier was salacious. Which would mean zip, since “salacious” does not imply it’s false, just sordid. He gave his opinion respecting a part or parts, not the whole deal.
You’ll find the links quoting his statement if you look.
The reason you investigate information is to determine it’s verity. That’s why you obtain warrants.
If making T-rump “look bad” was the point, why wasn’t all this disclosed PRIOR to the election?
The salacious part is false- that’s the golden showers. If one part of an affidavit is demonstrably false- the entire affidavit is false. Since it’s sworn that the entire affidavit is true.
Where do you even GET that bullshit…???
NOBODY can “swear” to the truthfulness of a body of accusation they are seeking to investigate.
Plus, if you figure that every word a cooperating…but very interested and hostile…witness says is ALWAYS true, you are in complete la-la land.
Very true rags, yet that is exactly what Comey did. Believed a source, (Steele) that was a proven liar
I don’t see the evidence for that. But, if true, that’s bad judgement; it’s not criminal.
What Comey actually said in testimony was that the dossier was “salacious and UNVERIFIED”.
“Which would mean zip, since “salacious” does not imply it’s false, just sordid.”
Like the way you leave off the fact that he said it was “UNVERIFIED” so you could claim that he didn’t imply it was false.
Full quote from the testimony:
“The IC leadership thought it important, for a variety of reasons, to alert the incoming President to the existence of this material, even though it was salacious and unverified. Among those reasons were: (1) we knew the media was about to publicly report the material and we believed the IC should not keep knowledge of the material and its imminent release from the President-Elect; and (2) to the extent there was some effort to compromise an incoming President, we could blunt any such effort with a defensive briefing.”
This was his opinion of what he himself had used to get the FISA warrant to spy on Page “and his circle”.
Have you bothered to read the dossier? “Salacious and unverified” is an extremely nice way of describing the amateurish pile of garbage it contains. No one who has ever looked at it could ever imagine it contains any credible information.
That’s why, when Steele was shopping it around to the press in September prior to the election, the NY Times, WAPO, AP, and a variety of other media outlets refused to publish ANY of it – despite the fact that they were doing everything they possibly could to help Hillary win the election. Even after Buzzfeed, the bottom feeder’s bottom feeder, published it the liberal MSM still held back, for a time, in giving it any credence.
And what YOU left off is that it remains unverified, but still under investigation.
That’s how you “verify” stuff, binky.
And neither term makes it untruthful. You just want it to be SOOOOOOoooooo badly.
And maybe it is. You don’t know, and neither do I. But I’m doing what I always do…watch and wait.
Steele was fielding unverified stories from Sid Blumenthal, mixing it with his Russian “sources” and peddling the dossier to journos, while FBI used it as fraudulent intel multiple times in a federal court.
The takeaway is FBI defrauded a federal court multiple times.
Comey’s name is all over the fraudulent affidavits, so I cannot see how he stays out of jail here.
I remember 20 years ago when Blumenthal lied to the news cameras outside the Federal District Court in D.C. about the questions Ken Star asked him before the Grand Jury.
His statements were complete fabrications.
He is undoubtedly on the same moral plane as the Clintons.
Drip, drip, drip…
1 or 2 months until the IG report comes out.
All of the counsel at the DOJ and FBI who signed the FISA application and the 3 reapplications must have missed the day that they taught the ethical mandate of exhibiting candor towards the tribunal.
They perpetrated a fraud upon the court.
I hope that someone is filing complaints with the various boards of professional responsibility in the states in which they hold law licenses.
Better yet, someday soon I hope that each of them is Mirandized and taken into custody.
Things that make you go “Hmmmmmm……..”
“Mollie Hemingway:
The Grassley/Graham Memo is Even More Damaging Than the Nunes Memo, and Obliterates Many of the Progressives’ and NeverTrumpers’ Key Wishcasting Defenses of the FISA Application”
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/373770.php#373770
Since the FBI is greatly implicated in this scandal why do they get to approve how these memos are released or redacted? Talk about the fox guarding the henhouse…
Thankyou!!
Given the fact that the scandal now encompasses DOJ, FBI, POTUS, and State Dept, and DHS (unmasking scandal), all weaponizing the federal government to spy on a candidate for President, and then disseminating that information to his opponent’s campaign and the press – how is it that a Special Prosecutor has not been appointed?
They can’t very well investigate themselves.
They appointed a Special Prosecutor to look into Trump Campaign / Russia Collusion even though 1) There was Zero evidence of it, 2) No investigation was done prior to the SP being appointed (as required by law), and 3) No law is alleged to have been broken.
I’m genuinely interested in just who you think would comprise the special counsel and staff, if not the DOJ, FBI, etc.
It isn’t a snarky question. I’m curious.