December 9, 2019
The long-awaited report on the alleged Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuse is finally out. The headline, making the rounds in the mainstream media is that the Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz concluded that there was no bias in the opening of the Trump-Russia investigation and no intentional FBI misconduct.
However, the standard that Horowitz used to determine if the opening of the probe was appropriately predicated has a very low bar. The discretionary standard of the Justice Department to open a probe simply requires “articulable facts”. Almost any claimed “facts’ would meet this threshold.
Notwithstanding Horowitz’s conclusion, the details of the report are damning.
Horowitz was tasked with determining if there was FBI misconduct in seeking surveillance warrants to monitor former Trump campaign aide Carter Page. The IG probe found 17 “significant inaccuracies and omissions” in the applications submitted by the FBI to the secret FISA court to wiretap Page.
One of the most devastating findings in the report is that the infamous Christopher Steele dossier funded by the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s campaign played a “central and essential role” in the FBI’s decision to seek surveillance warrants for Page. In other words, if not for the dossier the FBI would not have had the necessary evidence to obtain the warrant, which gave the FBI access to the content of all of Page’s phone calls, text messages, and emails.
So now we know that every Democratic lawmaker, pundit and Democratic operative who unequivocally asserted that the dossier played a minor role in seeking the FISA warrants to spy on Page was lying,
Reminder- this is the same dossier that former FBI Director James Comey testified under oath to Congress was “salacious and unverified” well after the FISA warrants were sought and obtained. Comey signed off on three out of the four warrants.
One of the main findings of the report is that the FBI’s FISA process fell “far short of the requirements in FBI policy that they ensure that all factual statements in a FISA application are ‘scrupulously accurate’”.
According to the IG
“The Crossfire Hurricane team failed to inform Department officials of significant information that was available to the team at the time that the FISA applications were drafted and filed.” The report went on to say “Much of that information was inconsistent with, or undercut, the assertions contained in the FISA applications that were used to support probable cause and, in some instances, resulted in inaccurate information being included in the applications.”
Incredibly, the report found that even though the FBI knew the information in the Steele dossier was dubious they did not inform the FISA court in their applications to surveil Page. The IG identified “numerous serious and factual errors and omissions in the applications..that undercut certain allegations in the FISA applications.” In other words, they knowingly used bad information to spy on the Trump campaign.
When interviewed by the IG’s office according to the IG report Christopher Steele told them that “the reports he generated were not designed to be ‘finished products”. “He said that the reports were ‘mostly single-source reporting’ and were uncorroborated intelligence..”
According to the IG report “Steele himself was not the originating source of any of the factual information in his reporting. Steele instead relied on a Primary Sub-source for information, who used his/her network of sub-source to gather information…”.
Yes- Incredibly Steele obtained the bulk of his information contained in his dossier from one source.
It gets worse. In a series of interviews from January 2017 to May 2017, the FBI interviewed Steele’s “primary sub source”, which “raised significant questions” about Steele’s reporting. The source stated that he/she never expected Steele to put his/her statements “in reports or present them as facts.”
Steele’s source explained that his/her information came from “word of mouth and hearsay”, from conversations had with friends “over beers”. Incredibly, the source claimed that some of what he/she told Steele were statements made in “jest”. Putting the nail in the coffin of the dossier the source informed the IG that corroboration of his/her information was “zero.” Yes- this is the evidence used by the FBI to surveil Carter Page, which was effectively a back door into the Trump campaign, and candidate Trump.
Although the FBI was privy to exculpatory facts regarding Page, this information was omitted from applications submitted to the surveillance court. From 2008-2013 Page was an “Operational Contact” to the CIA. According to the report during this five-year-span Page helped the intelligence agency by providing information “concerning his prior contacts with certain Russian intelligence officers..”
Before the filing of the first FISA warrant an unnamed U.S. intelligence agency (which is believed to be the CIA) had told the FBI that Page had assisted that agency’s efforts against Russian spies. This information, which would have negated the claim that Page was a Russian asset, was never given to the FISA court when applying for the warrant to spy on Page.
Another damning finding- before the third application to renew the FISA warrant on Page, a top FBI national security lawyer doctored an email that originally stated that Page had been a source for the CIA. The FBI agent, who is believed to be Kevin Clinesmith, altered the email by inserting the words “not a source into it”, thus making it appear that Page had not been a source for the CIA. The IG has referred Clinesmith to the DOJ for criminal prosecution.
Further, The IG confirmed that the FBI employed an undercover informant to solicit information from Page, along with three other campaign aides. Page revealed to this informant information undercutting the Trump Russian collusion narrative. This exculpatory information was also omitted from the application warrants to spy on Page.
According to the IG report, the CIA Supervisory Intel Analyst did not want to include the Steele dossier in the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment into Russian election interference because it was viewed as nothing more than “internet rumor”.
So an “internet rumor” opened the door to spy on a presidential campaign, and almost destroyed a presidency. Horowitz didn’t conclude that the Steele dossier was responsible for the opening of the FBI Russia probe, but one has to wonder if it didn’t spur the investigation on, and help lead to the Special Counsel Mueller probe.
It’s incredible that despite the many damning findings that Horowitz concluded that he found there was no political bias or malfeasance. But, let’s not forget that this is the same IG who exonerated Hillary Clinton after she smashed cell phones, bleach bit her hard drive and deleted 33,000 emails which were under subpoena.
For those looking for justice, hope remains. Both Attorney General Willam Barr and U.S. Attorney John Durham, appointed by Barr to look into the origins of the Trump- Russia investigation, released a rebuke of Horowitz’s conclusions indicating they do not agree with Horwitz’s conclusions that the FBI investigation dubbed Crossfire Hurricane was adequately predicated.
“Our investigation has included developing information from other sources. Based on the evidence collected..we advised the inspector general that we did not agree with some of the reports conclusions regarding the predication and how the FBI case was opened.” – U.S Attorney John Durham
“The inspector general’s report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken… it is also clear that from its inception, the evidence produced by the investigation was consistently exculpatory. Nevertheless, the investigation and surveillance were pushed forward for the duration of the campaign and deep into President Trump’s administration.” -Attorney General William Barr.
