The Justice Department inspector general’s report undercut many of the claims in a memo that Rep. Adam Schiff released in February 2018 defending the FBI and the Steele dossier, according to an analysis by The Daily Caller News Foundation.
In the memo, Schiff, a California Democrat, downplayed the FBI’s use of information from former British spy Christopher Steele in applications for surveillance warrants against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Schiff, who now chairs the House Intelligence Committee, also asserted that the FBI did not omit any key details about Steele from the warrant applications and that investigators went to great lengths to verify the dossier.
The Justice Department inspector general’s report contradicted Schiff’s defense. It listed 17 significant omissions and errors that the FBI made in the Carter Page surveillance warrants, including derogatory information about Steele and at least one of his sources.
Schiff’s memo was a response to a report that his counterpart, California Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, released on Feb. 2, 2018. The so-called Nunes memo criticized the FBI for relying on the unverified Steele dossier and for failing to disclose evidence of Steele’s political and personal bias against Donald Trump. Schiff defended the FBI and Steele, a former British spy who worked in 2016 for the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign.
The key claim in the Nunes memo — that the Steele dossier “formed an essential part of the Carter Page FISA application” — is backed up by the inspector general’s report. The inspector general also faulted the FBI for failing to tell the surveillance court that Steele told a Justice Department official, Bruce Ohr, that he was “desperate” in September 2016 to see Donald Trump lose the election.
The Nunes memo does have some flaws. It criticized the FBI for failing to disclose that the DNC and the Clinton campaign funded Steele’s investigation of Trump. But as Democrats have noted, the FBI acknowledged that Steele was working for someone who opposed Trump’s presidential candidacy.
The Schiff Memo
CLAIM: “FBI and DOJ officials did not ‘abuse’ the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) process, omit material information, or subvert this vital tool to spy on the Trump campaign.”
REPORT: “We identified multiple instances in which factual assertions relied upon in the first FISA application were inaccurate, incomplete, or unsupported by appropriate documentation, based upon information the FBI had in its possession at the time the application was filed.”The IG found widespread evidence that the FBI and DOJ omitted information significant to the FISA applications. In all, the report tallied 17 errors and omissions in the FBI’s renewal applications for FISA warrants against Page. Among the key omissions was Steele’s claims to the FBI in October 2016 that a major source for the dossier was a “boaster” and “embellisher.”
CLAIM: “DOJ met the rigor, transparency, and evidentiary basis needed to meet FISA’s probable cause requirement.”
REPORT: “Although some of the factual misstatements and omissions we found in this review were arguably more significant than others, we believe that all of them taken together resulted in FISA applications that made it appear that the information supporting probable cause was stronger than was actually the case.”CLAIM: “DOJ cited multiple sources to support the case for surveilling Page — but made only narrow use of information from Steele’s sources about Page’s specific activities in 2016.”
REPORT: “Further, we found that the first FISA application drew heavily, although not entirely, upon the Steele reporting to support the government’s position that Page was an agent of a foreign power.”CLAIM: “In subsequent FISA renewals, DOJ provided additional information obtained through multiple independent sources that corroborated Steele’s reporting.”
REPORT: “[B]ecause the FBI did not have information corroborating the Steele reporting relied upon in the Carter Page FISA application, it was particularly important for the application to articulate to the court the FBI’s assessment of the reliability of the source.”CLAIM: “DOJ repeatedly informed the Court about Steele’s background, credibility, and potential bias.”
REPORT: As noted previously, an FBI attorney “did not believe at the time” that Steele’s “desperate” remark “needed to be included in the renewal applications because the comment was only Ohr’s opinion of Steele’s feelings toward Trump.”
Remember that time Schiff made a statement that turned out to be factual and significant? Yeah… me neither.
I’m sure Schiff looks at that and says, “Just 17? Hell, I can do that in one hearing!”
So, Nunes, who the Democrats have been accusing being a liar, has been PROVEN have been exactly right which Schiff is shown, once again, to be a filthy liar. Hmmm… and Schiff has been ramrodding the impeachment hoax. Gosh, what conclusions should we draw from this?
The FBI spy ring was targeting Carter Page, General Flynn and Poppa D from the very start offering 15K to Steele for information on any of these 3.
A bounty fee. Steele working for Glen Simpson who was working for?
Who was Halper, the partnering professor with a very high ranking Russian spook, working for Paid a million bucks by whom?
Did Simpson ever fork over who all was paying him for his political dirt devil operations?
Who really wrote the Dossier?
The IG report confirms the spygate conspiracy all of it.
Sources were verified as jesting beer talk. Thats both central evidence for a FISA warrant and for our intelligence community to determine Russian meddling into the 2016 campaign.