Grokmaster
02-09-2018, 02:35 PM
The Graham/Grassley criminal referral letter gives lie to the Obama Swamp claim that "voluminous evidence" other than the dossier was given for the FISA warrants, which is a BIG DEAL. It also reveals that the Obama Swamp KGB-FBI/DOJ failed ot inform the FISA court of the fact that they KNEW STEELE WAS A LIAR before they sought the warrants, as well as neglected to reveal who, exactly PAID for the dossier:
The (mostly) unredacted Grassley/Graham referral is more damning of the DOJ than the Nunes memo
The key question in the Nunes memo was how much, exactly, did the FBI rely on the Steele dossier in its FISA application to surveil Carter Page. Did they treat the dossier as a lead, something that they needed to investigate themselves, or did they treat it as evidence, something to be laid in front of the Court as credible information in and of itself that probable cause existed to believe Page was a foreign agent? There’s nothing wrong with the cops following a lead to build their own case, even if the source it comes from has a bias. But gaining a warrant based largely on that source’s work product? Surely the Fourth Amendment demands more than that.
The Nunes memo was cagey about how heavily the dossier factored into the FISA application. Grassley/Graham is less cagey. Answer: Heavily.
22710
What does “heavily” mean, exactly? Apparently, it means that “the bulk of the application” against Page was dossier material:
22711
“The application appears to contain no additional information corroborating the dossier allegations against Mr. Page.” In other words, they seem to have treated the dossier as evidence, not as a lead. That’s big news.
Also big news is the core allegation of the document, that Christopher Steele lied to someone about whether he was quietly whispering to the media in the fall of 2016 about what his sources were telling him. He told the FBI that he wasn’t in direct contact with any media, but in 2017 he admitted to a London court that he had been in contact with the press. Did he lie to the court or did he lie to the FBI?
The FBI would counter, I assume, that there was no deliberate misconduct on their part. They were misled by Steele, and once they found out in late 2016 that he was in fact chattering to the media about the dossier, they ended their relationship with him. They got burned and they booted Steele because of it. Which is nice, but (a) that doesn’t solve the problem that the original FISA application against Page evidently relied “heavily” on information passed from a not-very-credible foreign agent and (b) that doesn’t explain why the Bureau allegedly failed to tell the FISA Court in later applications to renew their surveillance of Page that Steele’s info maybe hadn’t been so credible. Quote:
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Allegedly Bruce Ohr later warned the FBI that Steele was “desperate” not to see Trump elected, a fact that also bears on his credibility and the credibility of the information in the dossier but which somehow didn’t make it into any of those surveillance renewal applications either.
Still, the referral doesn’t completely support the Nunes memo. One of the sticking points in the memo, remember, was whether the FBI disclosed that the dossier material was the product of oppo research. The memo strongly implied that they hadn’t but the reality appears to have been more complicated. As Nunes himself later admitted (https://hotair.com/archives/2018/02/05/nunes-well-technically-maybe-doj-disclose-dossiers-political-bias-fisa-court/), the Bureau apparently did disclose in a footnote that the material was paid political research. It just didn’t mention who, precisely, had paid for it. The Grassley/Graham referral corroborates that:
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So they did tell the FISA Court that the material was paid for, and of course the Court was free to demand more information about that if it thought it was relevant. Apparently the judge didn’t. Which makes me wonder if Julian Sanchez (https://twitter.com/normative/status/961101091323744257) is right, that the Grassley/Graham document is more an indictment of the low bar set by the FISA Court in granting surveillance than it is an indictment of FBI misconduct.
https://hotair.com/archives/2018/02/07/mostly-unredacted-grassleygraham-referral-damning-doj-nunes-memo/
The (mostly) unredacted Grassley/Graham referral is more damning of the DOJ than the Nunes memo
The key question in the Nunes memo was how much, exactly, did the FBI rely on the Steele dossier in its FISA application to surveil Carter Page. Did they treat the dossier as a lead, something that they needed to investigate themselves, or did they treat it as evidence, something to be laid in front of the Court as credible information in and of itself that probable cause existed to believe Page was a foreign agent? There’s nothing wrong with the cops following a lead to build their own case, even if the source it comes from has a bias. But gaining a warrant based largely on that source’s work product? Surely the Fourth Amendment demands more than that.
The Nunes memo was cagey about how heavily the dossier factored into the FISA application. Grassley/Graham is less cagey. Answer: Heavily.
22710
What does “heavily” mean, exactly? Apparently, it means that “the bulk of the application” against Page was dossier material:
22711
“The application appears to contain no additional information corroborating the dossier allegations against Mr. Page.” In other words, they seem to have treated the dossier as evidence, not as a lead. That’s big news.
Also big news is the core allegation of the document, that Christopher Steele lied to someone about whether he was quietly whispering to the media in the fall of 2016 about what his sources were telling him. He told the FBI that he wasn’t in direct contact with any media, but in 2017 he admitted to a London court that he had been in contact with the press. Did he lie to the court or did he lie to the FBI?
The FBI would counter, I assume, that there was no deliberate misconduct on their part. They were misled by Steele, and once they found out in late 2016 that he was in fact chattering to the media about the dossier, they ended their relationship with him. They got burned and they booted Steele because of it. Which is nice, but (a) that doesn’t solve the problem that the original FISA application against Page evidently relied “heavily” on information passed from a not-very-credible foreign agent and (b) that doesn’t explain why the Bureau allegedly failed to tell the FISA Court in later applications to renew their surveillance of Page that Steele’s info maybe hadn’t been so credible. Quote:
22712
Allegedly Bruce Ohr later warned the FBI that Steele was “desperate” not to see Trump elected, a fact that also bears on his credibility and the credibility of the information in the dossier but which somehow didn’t make it into any of those surveillance renewal applications either.
Still, the referral doesn’t completely support the Nunes memo. One of the sticking points in the memo, remember, was whether the FBI disclosed that the dossier material was the product of oppo research. The memo strongly implied that they hadn’t but the reality appears to have been more complicated. As Nunes himself later admitted (https://hotair.com/archives/2018/02/05/nunes-well-technically-maybe-doj-disclose-dossiers-political-bias-fisa-court/), the Bureau apparently did disclose in a footnote that the material was paid political research. It just didn’t mention who, precisely, had paid for it. The Grassley/Graham referral corroborates that:
22713
So they did tell the FISA Court that the material was paid for, and of course the Court was free to demand more information about that if it thought it was relevant. Apparently the judge didn’t. Which makes me wonder if Julian Sanchez (https://twitter.com/normative/status/961101091323744257) is right, that the Grassley/Graham document is more an indictment of the low bar set by the FISA Court in granting surveillance than it is an indictment of FBI misconduct.
https://hotair.com/archives/2018/02/07/mostly-unredacted-grassleygraham-referral-damning-doj-nunes-memo/