Posts Tagged ‘Carter Page’

LinkSwarm For May 19, 2023

Friday, May 19th, 2023

The Russian Collusion Hoax is now officially bunk, Budweiser’s self-inflicted freefall continues, blue city commercial real estate bites the moose, and a whole lot of shocked face to go around. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!


  • John Durham finally delivers his report sinking the Russian collusion hoax.

    The Department of Justice and the FBI did not have “any actual evidence of collusion” between Russian officials and Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, and began their Crossfire Hurricane probe of Trump’s campaign based on “raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence,” according to a report released on Monday by special prosecutor John Durham.

    Durham scolded federal law enforcement and counter-intelligence officials for failing to “uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law” as part of their investigation.

    He wrote that at least one FBI agent criminally fabricated language in an email that was used to obtain a FISA surveillance order. And he accused FBI leaders of displaying a “serious lack of analytical rigor” and relying significantly on “investigative leads provided or funded (directly or indirectly) by Trump’s political opponents,” referring to staffers and allies of Hillary Clinton, then the Democratic presidential nominee, whose campaign funded the Steele dossier through its law firm Perkins Coie.

    Compiled by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, the dossier is an unverified collection of opposition research accusing then-candidate Trump and his campaign aides of collaborating with Kremlin officials. The FBI used the dossier to secure a FISA warrant to surveil Trump campaign aide Carter Page, though its central claims were subsequently disproven by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

    The report notes that the FBI was quick to investigate Trump, while it proceeded cautiously with allegations against Clinton.

    The 316-page report sent to Congress was nearly four years in the making. It concluded that neither federal law enforcement nor intelligence officials “appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation,” which the FBI “swiftly opened.”

    The report accuses federal officials of acting “without appropriate objectivity or restraint.” Peter Strzok, then the FBI’s deputy assistant director for counterintelligence, opened the investigation “immediately” at the direction of Andrew McCabe, then the FBI’s deputy director. “Strzok, at a minimum, had pronounced hostile feelings toward Trump,” the report states.

    It states that former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith “committed a criminal offense by fabricating language in an email that was material to the FBI obtaining a FISA surveillance order.”

    Durham wrote that FBI officials continued to seek FISA surveillance while acknowledging that “they did not genuinely believe there was probable cause to believe that the target was knowingly engaged in clandestine intelligence activities on behalf of foreign power, or knowingly helping another person in such activities. And certain personnel disregarded significant exculpatory information that should have prompted investigative restraint and re-examination.”

    “Based on the review of Crossfire Hurricane and related intelligence activities, we conclude that the Department and the FBI failed to uphold their mission of strict fidelity to the law in connection with certain events and activities described in this report,” Durham wrote.

    Read the full Durham Report here.

    So how many hacks are going to give back their Pulitzer Prizes?

  • Speaking of which:

  • “Media Admits They Lied About That Russia Collusion Thing But Are Totally Telling The Truth About Everything Else.”
    

  • “Gov. Newsom Announces California Budget Deficit Bigger than Projected.” Legal Insurrection has already used the “unexpectedly” here, so I’ll just note that Newsom is the far lefty a whole lot of Democratic Party power players want to substitute for Biden at the top of the ticket in 2024.
  • Soros-Backed Group Pushes Chicago Mayor To Slash Funding for ‘Racist’ Police Force.” Of course they do. Chicago Democrats are going to get what they voted for, gooder and harder. (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)
  • NIH Renews Funds for ‘Bat Coronavirus’ Research despite Energy Department, FBI’s Lab-Leak Conclusion.” That’s like catching Mrs. O’Leary’s cow after she’s burned down Chicago, strapping lit fireworks to her body and letting her loose in the dynamite factory.
  • The Censorship-Industrial Complex: Top 50 Organizations To Know.”
  • “Man Who Assaulted Congressional Staffers Had Previously Been Let off by Soros-Funded Prosecutor.” There’s not enough shocked face in the world…
  • Seattle-area official defends nominating sex offender to committee that includes one of his victims. (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)
  • “New York, San Francisco Office Buildings Are Absolute Ghost Towns.”

    “Things are so bad, in fact, that 26 Empire State Buildings could fit into New York City’s empty office space, as occupancy in the city is hovering around 50% of prepandemic levels.”

    “In San Francisco, the downtown area is experiencing its worst office vacancy crisis on record – with 31% of space available for lease or sublease, the SF Chronicle reports.”

  • “DeSantis Defunds ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’ Bureaucracies in Florida Public Universities.” Trump did a lot of things right as President, but he never fought social justice warrior madness with the same ferocity that DeSantis has in Florida.
  • Speaking of DeSantis, he’s expected to launch a 2024 Presidential campaign next week.
  • Also 2024 race news: Biden may not even be on the primary ballot in New Hampshire. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Bud Light finds out there’s no bottom to their tranny pander pit. “Sales volumes of Bud Light fell by 23.6 percent in the week ended on May 6, according to retail scanner numbers cited by Beer Business Daily that are based on Nielsen IQ data. That’s a drop from the 23.3 percent slide Bud Light suffered in the final week of April.”
  • Finnish nuclear plant coming online drops spot energy prices by 75%.
  • Russia’s energy revenue falls by 47%.
  • Child mutilation ban passes Texas House.
  • “24 Republican governors pledge to assist Texas in securing its border.

    Republican governors released a joint statement on Tuesday pledging to assist Texas in securing its border with Mexico.

    In response to Gov. Greg Abbott’s request for assistance, twenty-four Republican governors committed to helping secure the 1,254-mile-border and commended the Texas Republican for the recent actions he was forced to take due to the failures of the Biden administration’s open-border policies, according to the Washington Examiner.

    “The federal government’s response handling the expiration of Title 42 has represented a complete failure of the Biden Administration,” the joint statement reads. “While the federal government has abdicated its duties, Republican governors stand ready to protect the U.S.-Mexico border and keep families safe.”

    “All states have suffered from the effects of deadly illegal drugs coming across the border, and every state is a border state due to the devastating influx of drugs in our communities. Republican governors are leading the way to address the border crisis by increasing fentanyl sentencing and increasing support for law enforcement interdiction of drugs, among other measures,” they continued.

    “Texas Governor Greg Abbott has exemplified leadership at a critical time, leading the way with Operation Lone Star, and deploying the Texas Tactical Border Force to prevent illegal crossings and keep the border secure. We support the efforts to secure the border led by Governor Abbott.”

    On Tuesday afternoon, Abbott sent an urgent request to all of the nation’s governors asking them to band together to defeat the invasion at the US/Mexico border, something he said impacts every community in the United States.

    “The flood of illegal border activity invited by the Biden Administration flows directly across the southern border into Texas communities, but this crisis does not stop in our state. Emboldened Mexican drug cartels and other transnational criminal enterprises profit off this chaos, smuggling people and dangerous drugs like fentanyl into communities nationwide,” Abbott wrote.

    “In the federal government’s absence, we, as Governors, must band together to combat President Biden’s ongoing border crisis and ensure the safety and security that all Americans deserve,” he requested.

    While no Democratic governors responded to the letter, twenty-four Republicans pledged to help from states which include: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

  • “Yes, Migrants Believe Biden Has Rolled Out A Big Welcome Mat.”

    Jorge Mijares left Venezuela months ago — last November, he says. He’s been in Ciudad Juarez, across the Rio Grande River from El Paso, for four weeks. But he planned to cross over Thursday night, as Title 42 immigration restrictions ended.

    “I have the app,” said Mijares, 54. “I’m just waiting for it to tell me when to go.”

    He’s not concerned about the Biden administration’s warnings against migration. After all, he has many friends who have made it across — safely.

    There’s an app that tells you how to break U.S. immigration laws. Of course there is. Silly of me to be even slightly surprised. “The street finds its own uses for things” as the now-elderly cyberpunks used to say…

  • Twisted Sisiter’s Dee Snider is not down with your tranny madness. You submitted this with a better “we’re not going to take it” pun.
  • Speaking of tranny madness: Cross-dressing serial thief Samuel Brinton arrested as a fugitive from justice.
  • “Toronto ‘Anti-Capitalist’ Pay-When-You-Can Cafe Shuts Down After Just One Year.”

  • Chutzpah: Taking a paycheck for not working for 15 years. Boss Level Chutzpah: Suing for a raise for not working.
  • Meet Scary Barbie, the star-shredding black hole.
  • “Poll: Most Democrats In Favor Of Welcoming Immigrants Into Someone Else’s Neighborhood.”
  • “Dad Punishes Misbehaving Son By Giving Him Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.”
  • Scandularity: A Summary of a Summary of Two Summaries

    Saturday, September 15th, 2018

    Like a toothache that never goes away, the dull, throbbing pain of constant FISA-gate scandularity revelations never quite goes away. There have been some unusual twists and turns as of late, so let’s get this mini-scandularity update out the door.

    First up: Powerline’s Scott Johnson has a good summary of two Andrew McCarthy summaries of various released FISA documents:

    Andy says he has read the FISA applications so you don’t have to. He has performed a great public service in these columns. Even so, I say you have to review the FISA applications with your own eyes. They are shocking. Drawing from my series on Doss’s Weekly Standard cover story, I want to restate the relevant background in the context of Andy’s linked columns:

  • Under Title I of FISA — see this useful House Intel Committee summary — it was the burden of the government to establish probable cause that Page was engaging in espionage, terrorism, or sabotage by or on behalf of a foreign power that involved a violation of a criminal statute. (Doss stated: “Although Page had left the campaign, the FBI feared Russia was using him for its own purposes. The application states that the FBI alleged there was probable cause to believe Page was an agent of a foreign power under a specific provision of FISA that involves knowingly aiding, abetting, or knowingly conspiring to assist a foreign power with clandestine intelligence gathering activities, engage in clandestine intelligence gathering at the behest of a foreign power, or participate in sabotage or international terrorism or planning or preparation therefor.”)
  • Doss to the contrary notwithstanding, the allegations cited by Doss in her article don’t make out probable cause that Page is a Russian agent on any fair reading of the facts once the Steele dossier is seen for what it is.
  • The FBI relied in substantial part on the allegations of the Steele dossier to obtain the FISA warrant on Page. Although the applications swear otherwise, these allegations were unverified. I observed in my series that Andy was one of the knowledgeable observers who disputes Doss on the propriety of this reliance. Doss simply omitted any acknowledgement of the related issues.
  • The FBI nevertheless secured the FISA surveillance warrant on Page in October 2016 and renewed it three more times at 90-day intervals. I held out the possibility that the cited facts together with the redacted material fairly establish probable cause, but we have yet to see it. McCarthy now demonstrates that this is highly unlikely.
  • Whether or not the FBI made out probable cause, it must have monitored Page’s every communication by text, email and cell phone for a year. Yet Page remains a free man. No charge of any kind — not even a process crime such the one used against Michael Flynn and George Papadoploulos — has been brought against Carter Page. The circumstantial evidence strongly suggests that Page is not a Russian agent.
  • Given the year-long surveillance on him without any resulting charge, Page might not only not be a Russian agent, he might be the cleanest man in Washington.
  • Carter Page was a victim of government misconduct whose true object was Donald Trump.
  • Quotable quote: “[L]et’s dispense with the tired claim that the Obama administration did not really spy on Trump and his campaign. Every one of the four FISA warrant applications, after describing Russia’s cyberespionage attack on the 2016 election, makes the following assertion (after two redacted lines): ‘the FBI believes that the Russian Government’s efforts to influence the 2016 election were being coordinated with Page and perhaps other individuals associated with Candidate #1’s [i.e., Trump’s] campaign.’”

    One more: “For Mueller, the Russia counterintelligence probe was cover to conduct a criminal investigation of Trump in the absence of grounds to believe a crime had occurred.”

    Other Scandularity news:

  • Did Bruce Ohr break multiple laws?

    A review of publicly available information causes a reasonable person to wonder whether Bruce Ohr broke the law by promoting his wife’s anti-Trump research to the FBI when he was working at the Justice Department.The law prohibits public officials from involvement in matters in which their spouse has a financial interest. The question is, Did Ohr “personally and substantially” participate in a particular matter in which his spouse had a “financial interest” while he was employed by the Justice Department as the assistant attorney general? Let’s take a closer look.

    Recall that the Hillary Clinton campaign (through its law firm Perkins Coie) hired opposition research firm Fusion GPS to generate dirt on Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential campaign. Fusion GPS in turn hired former British spy Christopher Steele, who compiled the Trump dossier containing as yet unproven allegations of Russian dirt on Trump.

    We learned in December that Ohr met with Fusion GPS in November 2016 — a critical time frame — while he was the associate deputy attorney general. Former FBI agent Peter Strzok has confirmed Ohr fed the FBI documents pertinent to the investigation into Trump’s Russia ties, and The Hill reported the FBI used Ohr to continue collecting information from Steele, even after it terminated him as a source for leaking word of the investigation to the media.

    John Solomon filled in the contours of Ohr’s role in the investigation, writing in The Hill of recently disclosed emails: They also confirm that Ohr later became a critical conduit of continuing information from Steele after the FBI ended the Brit’s role as an informant.

    The FBI specifically instructed Steele that he could no longer ‘operate to obtain any intelligence whatsoever on behalf of the FBI,’ those memos show.

    Yet, Steele asked Ohr in the Jan. 31 text exchange if he could continue to help feed information to the FBI: ‘Just want to check you are OK, still in the situ and able to help locally as discussed, along with your Bureau colleagues.’

    ‘I’m still here and able to help as discussed,’ Ohr texted back. ‘I’ll let you know if that changes.’

    Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy recently expressed alarm that Ohr would insert himself into the ongoing Russia investigation. Understandably so. The FBI acts as the Justice Department’s investigator, and normally must convince the DOJ that the quality and quantity of gathered evidence will support a case before a federal court. When a senior DOJ prosecutor gives the FBI information, it comes with the DOJ’s implied endorsement of the evidence. This kind of implied endorsement may have played a role in the FBI’s decision to pay Steele to continue research on the Trump dossier.

    Ohr sponsored Steele’s research in spite of the fact that, as Steele later admitted, critical allegations in the dossier remain unverified. In particular, Steele now refuses to stand by his allegations of Russian hacking. Steele reportedly said his dossier allegations were never supposed to be made public, which is incongruous with his dissemination of the allegations to Ohr and his decision to leak word of the investigation to the press.

    Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson disclosed in a sworn declaration that Fusion GPS paid Ohr’s wife, Nellie Ohr, a Russia expert, to help research and analyze potential opposition research on Trump.

    Curiously, it appears Ohr’s relationship with both Simpson and Steele predated his wife’s work for Fusion GPS, which raises the question whether Simpson may have hired her to gain favor with him. We don’t know how long Nellie Ohr worked for Fusion GPS, but Simpson’s December 2017 declaration indicates bank records from August 2015 through that time reflected she contracted with the firm to help research Trump. Ohr’s promotion of his wife’s research to the FBI potentially helped stoke continued demand for her services.
    As pointed out by The Daily Caller, Ohr failed to disclose that his wife was being paid by Fusion GPS in his mandatory public financial disclosure form. The purpose of the form is to “identify potential or actual conflicts of interest.” Thus, The Daily Caller posits that when Ohr became involved in brokering his wife’s Trump-Russia research to the FBI, he deprived DOJ of the opportunity to identify this potential conflict of interest by failing to disclose the source of her “consulting” income. The DOJ had a legal right to know that Ohr’s wife was personally profiting from the research he promoted to the FBI.

    One question that remains unanswered is whether Ohr also had a role in approving or overseeing the Trump-Russia investigation from within the DOJ. As noted by The Daily Mail, he “worked closely” with both Sally Yates, former assistant attorney general, and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

    Also of note is that both Yates and Rosenstein signed off on one or more of the spy warrants for Trump associate Carter Page. If either Yates or Rosenstein consulted Ohr on the propriety of those applications, Ohr would have been in a position to endorse the validity of research for which his spouse was paid.

    Violation of the law prohibiting public officials from involving themselves in matters in which their spouse has a financial interest (18 U.S.C. §208) is a crime punishable for up to five years in prison, if the conduct is deemed willful. The DOJ has the power to enforce this law civilly and criminally, and as Ohr’s employer, has a responsibility to do so if he violated it.

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • Speaking of leaks to the media: “Rep. Jordan: Thirteen Different FBI Agents Were Working with One Reporter.” Sound like a horrible indictment of the FBI even if, by some unlikely miracle, they weren’t all leaking to get Trump. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • In the “old news is so exciting” category, here’s an in-depth examination of the Strzok hearings from back in July, which was only two months ago, but seems much, much longer:
  • Former FBI Director James Comey says people must vote for Democrats this fall. Gee, how could anyone have imagined the FBI was biased against Trump?
  • Were there three different fake Trump Dossiers, each one pushed by someone with ties to the Clinton Administration? (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • The Mueller campaign is a vertible buffet of conflicts of interest. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Here’s a another state of play piece from Andrew C. McCarthy from a few months ago that nicely encapsulates what was known then:

    With due respect, this is not a situation in which, out of the blue, “a congressional majority [has made] substantial charges of Department of Justice wrongdoing.” Against the backdrop of its blatant tanking of the criminal investigation against the Democratic presidential nominee, the Democratic administration’s Department of Justice went to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in the last three weeks of the presidential campaign to seek monitoring of a former adviser of the Republican presidential campaign — monitoring that would inevitably have revealed campaign communications in stored email and texts, and quite possibly in real-time conversations — based on a stated suspicion that there was a traitorous confederation between the Republican campaign (quite possibly including the Republican nominee) and the Putin regime.

    That was a very “substantial charge” for the Justice Department to make. It is completely reasonable, then, to demand of it what David demands of the House Intelligence Committee’s allegations: a carefully researched presentation (in this instance, in a FISA warrant application) “that provide[d] supporting evidence for each and every inflammatory charge.” Certainly, it is fair to expect that of the Justice Department since (a) that is the standard to which the DOJ proudly holds itself, and (b) the DOJ and FBI typically work as a harmonious unit, unlike a congressional committee composed of sharply divided partisans in the throes of a highly charged political rift.

    Snip.

    It got worse when the Obama administration started spying on its domestic opponents during the Iran deal, when the Obama administration learned how far it could go in manipulating the foreign-intelligence surveillance apparatus for domestic political advantage. As Adam Entous, then of The Wall Street Journal, wrote in a December 2015 article, “the National Security Agency’s targeting of Israeli leaders and officials also swept up the contents of some of their private conversations with U.S. lawmakers and American-Jewish groups.”

    Obama administration officials had leaked the story to Entous in order to shape its reception. After all, the real news was pretty bad—Obama had spied on Americans and the Americans he spied on, Congress and Jewish community leaders, knew it. But in Entous’ account, it was only by accident that the National Security Agency had listened in on Americans opposed to the Iran deal, opponents whose communications had simply been “swept up.” While Entous’ evident lack of skepticism about that account was hardly good reporting, it was perfectly in keeping with the maxim of not biting the hand that feeds you.

    What the White House really wanted to know, on Entous’ telling, was what the Israeli prime minister and his ambassador to Washington were doing to contest the Iran deal. Except, neither Benjamin Netanyahu nor Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer makes U.S. policy: Congress does. As I explained in an April Tablet article, the purpose of the spying campaign was to help the White House fight U.S. legislators and other Americans critical of the deal—i.e., to win a domestic political battle. A pro-Israel political operative who was deeply involved in the Iran deal fight told me last year, “The NSA’s collections of foreigners became a means of gathering real-time intelligence on Americans.” With the Iran deal, as would later happen with Russiagate, the ostensible targets of intelligence collection—Israel, then Russia—were simply instruments that the Obama administration used to go after the real bad guys, namely its enemies at home.

    The same process of weaponizing foreign-intelligence collection for domestic political purposes that the Obama administration road-tested during the Iran-deal fight was used to manufacture Russiagate and get it to market. Except instead of keeping a close hold of the identities of those swept up during “incidental collection” of U.S. persons, departing Obama White House officials leaked the names to friendly reporters.

  • Another Husband-Wife Team Linked to Fusion GPS Found in Russia Collusion Probe:

    House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence investigators appear to have uncovered a second husband-wife team providing a conduit for opposition research by Fusion GPS into the highest levels of former President Barack Obama’s White House.

    Shailagh Murray, a former Obama policy adviser who previously served as deputy chief of staff and communications director for Vice President Joe Biden, is married to Neil King, Jr., who, according to Fox News, works for the shadowy Washington, D.C.-based opposition research firm that hired former British spy Christopher Steele.

    Snip.

    Murray and King both worked for The Wall Street Journal, while Murray also was at the Washington Post during her career. Fusion GPS was founded by Glenn Simpson, another former Wall Street Journal reporter.

    Snip.

    She and a second former Biden aide, Colin Kahl, are being questioned via a questionaire, according to Fox News. Should either of them decline to respond, the intelligence committee will seek to compel their answers.

    Committee investigators see parallels between the Murray-King duo and that of Fusion GPS employee Nellie Ohr, whose husband Bruce, was deputy associate attorney general during the 2016 campaign. Bruce Ohr was demoted after it was learned he failed to disclose on federal conflict of interest reports required details of his wife’s employment.

  • If both left and right agree that Russiagate is bunk, why does it live on?

    The specter of an intelligence bureaucracy working in tandem with the press to preserve the prerogatives of a ruling clique is the kind of thing that someone who knows Russia from the inside and actually fears the specter of authoritarian government would naturally find worrying. And not surprisingly, concerns over the role of the intelligence community and its increasingly intrusive methods motivate other Russiagate critics on the left, like Glenn Greenwald at the Intercept, historian Jackson Lears writing at the London Review of Books, and Stephen Cohen at The Nation.

    “One of the most bizarre aspects of Russiagate,” writes Lears, “is the magical transformation of intelligence agency heads into paragons of truth-telling—a trick performed not by reactionary apologists for domestic spying, as one would expect, but by people who consider themselves liberals.”

    Cohen, a distinguished if often overly sympathetic historian of the Soviet Union, was even more alarmed. “Was Russiagate produced by the primary leaders of the US intelligence community?” asks Cohen, referring to former CIA director John Brennan as well as ex-FBI chief James Comey. “If so, it is the most perilous political scandal in modern American history and the most detrimental to American democracy.”

    Yes, the left hates Trump. I didn’t vote for him, either. But what Gessen, Greenwald, Lears, and Cohen all understand is that Russiagate isn’t about Trump. He’s just a convenient proxy for the real target. Their understanding is shared by writers on the right, like Andrew McCarthy, a former lawyer at the Department of Justice, who has unfolded the Russiagate affair over the last year in the pages of National Review, where he has carefully explained how the DOJ and FBI misled the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in order to spy on Carter Page and violate the privacy of an American citizen.

    What unites Gessen, Greenwald, Lears, and McCarthy obviously isn’t politics—rather, it’s the recognition that the Russiagate campaign represents an attack on American political and social institutions, an attack on our liberties, an attack on us. Russiagate is a conspiracy theory, weaponized by political operatives, much of the press, as well as high-level intelligence and law enforcement bureaucrats to delegitimize an American election and protect their own interests, which coincide with those of the country’s larger professional and bureaucratic elite.

  • One of Ann Althouse’s readers goes through all four Carter Page FISA warrants so you don’t have to:

    Here is the absolute truth — all of the applications rely on the Steele Dossier and the Isikoff story from September 2016 — a story that Steele himself was the source for. Those are the only two pieces of “evidence” the FBI supplied to the FISA court that could reasonably be inferred to assign probable cause that Page was a knowing Russian agent. The only other things mentioned in regards to Page are that he lived in Russia for a time, travels there sometimes as an energy consultant, and was approached by Russian agents in the past, one of whom Page himself helped to trap and convict by serving as a willing FBI informant. That last part is incongruous with designating him as a Russian agent, but is included any way as an attempt, not to exonerate him, but to tar him.

    Also, if you do a page by page comparison of all four applications, there is little material added from one to the other —if you compared the applications side by side, practically every redacted section is identical in shape and length and page designations. In other words, in each of the renewals, it is apparent that the FBI got jackshit from the surveillance — there was nothing they could add to each application, and so just mostly copied the first application serially.

    In addition, none of the applications told the court that the Clinton Campaign is the one who paid Steele and FusionGPS — not a single time. Indeed, the only mention in all the applications of “Candidate 2” is in the very last renewal, and that section wasn’t discussing who hired the law firm, but was instead discussing some letters Page wrote criticizing the Clinton Campaign. The FBI knew who hired the law firm — they knew Steele (Source 1) was hired by Glenn Simpson (aka US citizen), and they knew Simpson was hired by a law firm- i.e. the FBI knew which law firm and thus it was the Clinton Campaign. The applications studiously avoid mentioning “Candidate 2” at every point they describe the chain of cutouts- always ending with “law firm”.

    Finally, it clear the FBI confirmed nothing of the Steele Dossier. At no point does it appear that Steele revealed his sources to the FBI- they are always described as “subsources”- this is FBI legalese for “we don’t even know the name so that we can designate them by number”.

    The House Intelligence Republican memo was correct on all counts. The Democrat memo was extremely misleading — there is nothing else other than the Steele Dossier and the story Steele sourced to Isikoff.

  • As always if you’re following scandularity twists and turns, this timeline of treason from Director Blue is invaluable.

    And if all that weren’t enough, hold on to your hats: As many as 50,000 new text messages and emails from Strzok may be released next week. It used to be people wondered how he could do any work with all his adultery and test messaging. Now I’m beginning to wonder how he even had time for adultery

    The Memo and the Damage Done

    Saturday, February 3rd, 2018

    The Memo we’ve all been waiting for has been released. For those who have been following the scandal here, the only big surprise is that the FBI knew the Steele dossier was unreliable, used it as the basis of a FISA warrant anyway, and then lied about it to the courts.

    Here’s the text of the memo from The Atlantic, which I’m using just to avoid a half hour of stripping line returns and typos out of the ScribeD text file a lot of outlets posted:

    January 18, 2018

    To: HPSCI Majority Members

    From: HPSCI Majority Staff

    Subject: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Abuses at the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation

    Purpose

    This memorandum provides Members an update on significant facts relating to the Committee’s ongoing investigation into the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and their use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) during the 2016 presidential election cycle. Our findings, which are detailed below, 1) raise concerns with the legitimacy and legality of certain DOJ and FBI interactions with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), and 2) represent a troubling breakdown of legal processes established to protect the American people from abuses related to the FISA process.

    Investigation Update

    On October 21, 2016, DOJ and FBI sought and received a FISA probable cause order (not under Title VII) authorizing electronic surveillance on Carter Page from the FISC. Page is a U.S. citizen who served as a volunteer advisor to the Trump presidential campaign. Consistent with requirements under FISA, the application had to be first certified by the Director or Deputy Director of the FBI. It then required the approval of the Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General (DAG), or the Senate-confirmed Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division.

    The FBI and DOJ obtained one initial FISA warrant targeting Carter Page and three FISA renewals from the FISC. As required by statute (50 U.S.C. §,1805(d)(l)), a FISA order on an American citizen must be renewed by the FISC every 90 days and each renewal requires a separate finding of probable cause. Then-Director James Comey signed three FISA applications in question on behalf of the FBI, and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe signed one. Then-DAG Sally Yates, then-Acting DAG Dana Boente, and DAG Rod Rosenstein each signed one or more FISA applications on behalf of DOJ.

    Due to the sensitive nature of foreign intelligence activity, FISA submissions (including renewals) before the FISC are classified. As such, the public’s confidence in the integrity of the FISA process depends on the court’s ability to hold the government to the highest standard—particularly as it relates to surveillance of American citizens. However, the FISC’s rigor in protecting the rights of Americans, which is reinforced by 90-day renewals of surveillance orders, is necessarily dependent on the government’s production to the court of all material and relevant facts. This should include information potentially favorable to the target of the FISA application that is known by the government. In the case of Carter Page, the government had at least four independent opportunities before the FISC to accurately provide an accounting of the relevant facts. However, our findings indicate that, as described below, material and relevant information was omitted.

    1) The “dossier” compiled by Christopher Steele (Steele dossier) on behalf of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Hillary Clinton campaign formed an essential part of the Carter Page FISA application. Steele was a longtime FBI source who was paid over $160,000 by the DNC and Clinton campaign, via the law firm Perkins Coie and research firm Fusion GPS, to obtain derogatory information on Donald Trump’s ties to Russia.

    a) Neither the initial application in October 2016, nor any of the renewals, disclose or reference the role of the DNC, Clinton campaign, or any party/campaign in funding Steele’s efforts, even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior DOJ and FBI officials.

    b) The initial FISA application notes Steele was working for a named U.S. person, but does not name Fusion GPS and principal Glenn Simpson, who was paid by a U.S. law firm (Perkins Coie) representing the DNC (even though it was known by DOJ at the time that political actors were involved with the Steele dossier). The application does not mention Steele was ultimately working on behalf of—and paid by—the DNC and Clinton campaign, or that the FBI had separately authorized payment to Steele for the same information.

    2) The Carter Page FISA application also cited extensively a September 23, 2016, Yahoo News article by Michael Isikoff, which focuses on Page’s July 2016 trip to Moscow. This article does not corroborate the Steele dossier because it is derived from information leaked by Steele himself to Yahoo News. The Page FISA application incorrectly assesses that Steele did not directly provide information to Yahoo News. Steele has admitted in British court filings that he met with Yahoo News—and several other outlets—in September 2016 at the direction of Fusion GPS. Perkins Coie was aware of Steele’s initial media contacts because they hosted at least one meeting in Washington D.C. in 2016 with Steele and Fusion GPS where this matter was discussed.

    a) Steele was suspended and then terminated as an FBI source for what the FBI defines as the most serious of violations—an unauthorized disclosure to the media of his relationship with the FBI in an October 30, 2016, Mother Jones article by David Corn. Steele should have been terminated for his previous undisclosed contacts with Yahoo and other outlets in September—before the Page application was submitted to the FISC in October—but Steele improperly concealed from and lied to the FBI about those contacts.

    b) Steele’s numerous encounters with the media violated the cardinal rule of source handling—maintaining confidentiality—and demonstrated that Steele had become a less than reliable source for the FBI.

    3) Before and after Steele was terminated as a source, he maintained contact with DOJ via then-Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, a senior DOJ official who worked closely with Deputy Attorneys General Yates and later Rosenstein. Shortly after the election, the FBI began interviewing Ohr, documenting his communications with Steele. For example, in September 2016, Steele admitted to Ohr his feelings against then-candidate Trump when Steele said he “was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president.” This clear evidence of Steele’s bias was recorded by Ohr at the time and subsequently in official FBI files—but not reflected in any of the Page FISA applications.

    a) During this same time period, Ohr’s wife was employed by Fusion GPS to assist in the cultivation of opposition research on Trump. Ohr later provided the FBI with all of his wife’s opposition research, paid for by the DNC and Clinton campaign via Fusion GPS. The Ohrs’ relationship with Steele and Fusion GPS was inexplicably concealed from the FISC.

    4) According to the head of the FBI’s counterintelligence division, Assistant Director Bill Priestap, corroboration of the Steele dossier was in its “infancy” at the time of the initial Page FISA application. After Steele was terminated, a source validation report conducted by an independent unit within FBI assessed Steele’s reporting as only minimally corroborated. Yet, in early January 2017, Director Comey briefed President-elect Trump on a summary of the Steele dossier, even though it was—according to his June 2017 testimony—“salacious and unverified.” While the FISA application relied on Steele’s past record of credible reporting on other unrelated matters, it ignored or concealed his anti-Trump financial and ideological motivations. Furthermore, Deputy Director McCabe testified before the Committee in December 2017 that no surveillance warrant would have been sought from the FISC without the Steele dossier information.

    5) The Page FISA application also mentions information regarding fellow Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos, but there is no evidence of any cooperation or conspiracy between Page and Papadopoulos. The Papadopoulos information triggered the opening of an FBI counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016 by FBI agent Pete Strzok. Strzok was reassigned by the Special Counsel’s Office to FBI Human Resources for improper text messages with his mistress, FBI Attorney Lisa Page (no known relation to Carter Page), where they both demonstrated a clear bias against Trump and in favor of Clinton, whom Strzok had also investigated. The Strzok/Lisa Page texts also reflect extensive discussions about the investigation, orchestrating leaks to the media, and include a meeting with Deputy Director McCabe to discuss an “insurance” policy against President Trump’s election.

    Again, if you’ve been following this blog regularly, almost none of that was in dispute and very little of it should be new. But the FBI/DOJ misrepresenting the source of the dossier as reliable information, and hiding that it was partisan hackery, is new.

    Here’s Ace of Spades HQ on the issue:

    Bear in mind, when the FBI and DOJ presented the Steele Dossier to the court as their pretext to open surveillance, they would have almost certainly identified him as a “source” who has “previously proven reliable” (the quotes are just-for-example verbiage, not actual quotes) and cited, for example, his work in the FIFA investigation as well as his service in MI6.

    In short, they would have presented his inherent reliability as a reason to believe the otherwise completely unsubstantiated claims his “dossier” offered. His dossier offered no proof — the only “proof” of the dossier’s claims would Steele’s reliability, honesty, and lack of bias or material interest in this case.

    But, according to The Memo, the FBI and DOJ had reason to know that Steele wasn’t all that reliable — and they concealed each of these points from the court:

    1. They withheld from the court that Steele was working for Trump’s rival for the presidency, Hillary Clinton, and the DNC, which Hillary Clinton had contractually taken over by this point. They only said in their application that Steele was working for a “U.S. person.”

    The fact that Steele had been commissioned by Trump’s political opponent would have greatly diminished his perceived reliability — he had a material interest in this dossier “succeeding.” He had been paid $160,000 to produce it. (And note, Glenn Simpson refused to say if he was ever paid to get an investigation started.)

    As this information would have reduced Steele’s reliability in the court’s eyes, the FBI/DOJ concealed that from the court. They lied. They represented Steele as reliable, but then hid competing evidence of his unreliability.

    This sort of hearing is ex parte. Only one side gets to present evidence to a judge. No representative of Trump or Carter Page was in the room. It seems to me that the government, when seeking a warrant in an ex parte hearing, should present contrary evidence so that the judge can make an informed decision. There’s no opposing party in the room to offer that contrary evidence, and no one except the government itself to look out for the civil rights of the people it’s seeking surveillance orders on.

    The government does not seem to have offered the court such information, and seems to have concealed information they knew would be relevant to the judge’s understanding of the situation and his decision on granting the warrant.

    To the detriment of a citizen’s civil rights, note.

    2. No less an authority than Bruce Ohr communicated to his superiors that Steele was personally extremely biased in this matter. Not just paid to be biased; but personally, emotionally biased himself.

    Ohr reported that Steel personally “was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president.”

    Steele’s reliability depends largely on his judgment, his dispassion. Steele didn’t have any information of his own — he got his information long-distance from Russian operatives and government officials whom he might have paid. Steele has always been touted as an “MI6 agent” to prove that he is expert in separating bullshit from real intelligence — and yet, he put transparent nonsense like the Pee-Pee Party bullshit into his dossier.

    Given that he was “desperate” and “passionate” to keep Trump out of the White House, one begins to understand his failure to discriminate between plausible claims and implausible ones.

    This information would have helped the court determine if it agreed with the FBI and DOJ that Steele was reliable and a good judge of unverified gossip and rumor — so the FBI and DOJ again concealed this highly-pertinent information from the court.

    3. The FBI and DOJ had, of course, a huge reason to suspect Steele wasn’t as reliable as they were representing to the court– namely, that they stopped working with him for violating their ethical rules of confidentiality in peddling these claims to media organizations. I would say that Steele betrayed himself here, proving that he was still working for FusionGPS as a political operative trying to plant dirt against a target he was paid to undermine, and not an informant or researcher working for the FBI.

    The FBI and DOJ concealed the fact that they had terminated their relationship with Steele from the court.

    4. On that, the initial FISA application claimed that Steele’s claims were corroborated by independent reporting by Michael Isikoff — the idea being, this isn’t just Steele who’s reporting this, it’s also the completely independent reporter Michael Isikoff.

    But Michael Isikoff wasn’t an independent source at all — he was fed these claims by Steele himself.

    So there was no second source for Steele’s claims — you had Steele making these claims, and then Steele’s stenographer repeating Steele’s claims under a byline of “Totally Not Christopher Steele.”

    However, the FBI/DOJ “assessed” that Isikoff’s reporting was independent and represented it that way to the court.

    Now, it we can’t say they lied on that point — they might just have been wrong. Incompetent, as usual. Steele lied to them about, or at least concealed, his blabbing to reporters.

    Or so we’re told, anyway.

    However, after the DOJ/FBI ended its association with Steele for spreading his claims to various media organizations, in violation of FBI/DOJ confidentiality agreements, it surely must have at least occurred to them that perhaps Steele had also previously spread his tales of Urinary Olympics to Michael Isikoff.

    However, if such thoughts occurred to them, they quickly put them out of mind. Despite now having reason to suspect that they had, whether wittingly or unwittingly, misrepresented to the court that Isikoff’s article constituted independent corroboration, they seem to have taken no efforts to repair that misrepresentation and inform the court that their initial representation may have been completely false.

    The FBI knew the partisan origins of the Steele Dossier, knew that it was funded by the Clinton campaign, then omitted that very material information from the FISA warrant requests. That’s the documented and unambigious use of national security surveillance powers to spy on American citizens to further the partisan political objectives of the party controlling the Executive branch.

    That’s the abuse.

    That’s why this is bigger than Watergate.