“The memo” authored by Devin Nunes, the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, has finally been released…
February 2018
Salient Revelations from the memo:
According to the memo written by Devin Nunes, the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, incredulously in the fall of 2016, the Obama justice department and FBI presented as evidence to the FISA court (The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which consists of federal judges who decide whether or not to grant certain government requests such as monitoring suspected foreign agents or terrorists operating in the United States) the unverified and in parts outright disproven Trump dossier, authored by former British spy Christopher Steele, in their bid to surveil a member of the Trump campaign, Carter Page.
The application presented by the DOJ and FBI never revealed to the court that the information in the dossier, which was presented as evidence, was actually opposition research financed by the DNC, and Trump’s political opponent Hillary Clinton. The left loves to counter with the fact that the dossier was first funded by a conservative site- The Washington Free Beacon. However, the investigation into a Trump/Russia connection did not begin until after the Free Beacon bowed out, and the democrats became the financial backers of the dossier.
Further, according to congressional testimony given by Andrew McCabe, (the then Deputy FBI Director), if not for the dossier information, which was and is mostly unverified, the FBI would never have sought a warrant to monitor Page. According to Trey Gowdy, (Congressman, from South Carolina, who is also an attorney), who examined all of the classified documents that the memo is derived from, without the dossier the warrant to monitor Page would never have been granted. The warrant was extended four times, each time relying on the Steele dossier. James Comey, (former FBI Director), Andrew McCabe, Rod Rosenstein, (Deputy Attorney General), and Sally Yates (then Acting attorney General) at various times signed off on the warrants.
The FBI also never updated the court on the fact that they terminated the author of the dossier nine days after they filed the first request with the court to monitor Page. Steel was terminated as an FBI source due to an unauthorized disclosure to a news outlet, in October 2016. Steele has admitted that at the direction of his employer, Fusion GPS, in September 2016 he met with several other news outlets, leaking the contents of his dubious report. He never disclosed these contacts to the FBI. One media source contacted by Steele was Yahoo News. Yahoo News ran an article focusing on Page and his trip to Moscow, in September 2016. The Page FISA application extensively cited this article as corroborating evidence. As this article is based on information derived from Steele it could not possibly serve to confirm the Steele dossier. It s also disconcerting that the FBI is relying on Yahoo News fo its intelligence!
One of the more damning revelations in the memo is that both, before and after being fired, Steele maintained contact with the DOJ through a senior DOJ official Bruce Ohr. In September 2016, as recorded by Ohr in official FBI files, Steele admitted to Ohr that he “was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president.” Steele’s lack of impartiality was also not disclosed to the FISA court.
In the spring of 2016 Nellie Ohr, Bruce ohr’s wife, was hired by Fusion GPS to assist in gathering oppositional research on Trump. Ohr provided the FBI with all of his wife’s research bought and paid for by the DNC and the Clinton campaign via Fusion GPS. Inexplicably, the Ohr’s relationship with Steele and Fusion GPS was omitted from the FISA application submitted to the court.
According to the memo Information pertaining to Trump campaign advisor, George Papadopoulos, was the impetus for the counterintelligence probe, which was instigated in July 2016, by FBI agent Peter Strzok. Strzok and his mistress FBI Attorney Lisa Page (no relation to Carter Page) were involved in the infamous text exchanges were they both admitted to bias against Trump and a preference for Clinton. These texts also revealed orchestrated leaks and an “insurance policy” to prevent a Trump presidency.
Interestingly, it appears that the Democrats claims that this memo puts our national security at risk because it exposes sources and methods used by our intelligence agencies were completely unfounded. Far left Democrat Adam Schiff, a ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, was one of the loudest voices making this claim. Schiff, along with other Democrats have also claimed that the memo is inaccurate and omits pertinent information. But, since they have already been proven that lying to advance an agenda is not beneath them, their credibility is nil. It will be interesting to read the Democrat rebuttal memo, which will more than likely be made available to the public.
It’s also worth noting that the House Intelligence Committee had been requesting documents on the Trump dossier for months, but had been stonewalled. It was only after they threatened to hold the FBI and DOJ in contempt of congress that they were finally able to see and analyze the documents in question pertaining to this memo
It looks like this is just the beginning of exposing the corruption and bias against a Trump presidency by Obama holdovers and senior intelligence officials. According to Nunes this is only Phase one….
To be continued
