Well, Justice Department investigators Christopher Steele interviewed the former MI6 spy who prepared the infamous Trump dossier. The document, a Clinton-funded piece of political opposition research, was one of the key pieces of so-called evidence used to fan the flames of the Russian collusion myth. The credibility of the documentation was immediately questioned because much of the information contained therein could not be verified. In fact, most of them remain unverified. It doesn’t matter. A report filed by special counsel Robert Mueller debunked all of this. Trump and his campaign team did not collude with the Russians. There was no conspiracy.
And yet it was cited as credible evidence to obtain a FISA spy warrant against Carter Page, Trump’s former foreign policy adviser during the campaign. Has this document been verified at all? From the looks of it, this doesn’t seem to be the case. There were glaring errors in it, some of which could have been easily debunked with a straightforward Google search. If these sources were misleading, what else were they wrong about? Apparently those in power at Obama’s Justice Department never questioned this. Worse still, James Baker, then the FBI’s general counsel, knew their decisions would be controversial and ill-advised. Moreover, in 2017, FBI agents interviewed one of Steele’s sources, and the conclusion was not really shocking to those who thought the whole narrative was nonsense: the information provided was not credible.
Steele has previously refused to cooperate, but only recently agreed to be interviewed by investigators from the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General who are looking into alleged FISA abuses during the 2016 campaign. That certainly delayed the office’s deadline for its report, which caused some nervousness some Democrats and former Obama intelligence chiefs, and for good reason (via NOW):
LOL to anyone who pretended to be an intelligence expert and was fooled by fraudster Christopher Steele. https://t.co/uDBxVxiYFM
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) July 9, 2019
That would at least explain IG’s long delay. The story oddly suggests that the delay is because the IG wanted Steele’s information. It seems equally likely that the IG is investigating Steele’s credibility.
https://t.co/XGv794MKpl— Kimberley Strassel (@KimStrassel) July 9, 2019
In early June, in a London office building, three investigators hired by the Justice Department’s inspector general took a decisive step toward unraveling the political fallout from the Russia investigation: They spent two days interrogating Christopher Steele, the former British spy whose now-infamous dossier on alleged ties between Trump associates and Russia they ended up in the hands of the FBI before the 2016 elections.
Investigators reviewed Mr. Steele’s aged notes and his contemporary notes from meetings with FBI agents in the fall of 2016, according to a person familiar with the investigation. They asked Mr. Steele to explain in detail how he verified his sources in Russia, how he communicated with them and how he decided which of their claims to include in his reports. They talked at length about Mr. Steele’s cooperation with the FBI on other Russia-related investigations and his contacts with a senior Justice Department official.
The interview was a key step in Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz’s investigation into the facts behind the bitter partisan dispute: Whether FBI officials did anything wrong in 2016 in trying to understand the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia – including how they used the information from Mr. Steele?
[…]
Investigators working for Mr. Horowitz asked witnesses about whether the FBI properly opened the Russia probe and how the bureau dealt with a pair of informants, including Mr. Steele, whose work was financed by Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
[…]
Mr. Horowitz is expected to answer whether Mr. Steele’s information played a role in sparking the Russia investigation, codenamed Crossfire Hurricane. Former law enforcement officials insisted that was not the case, saying they launched an investigation in July 2016. The Steele dossier did not reach the appropriate agents until Sept. 19, 2016, nearly two months later, people familiar with the matter said.
[…]
In a lengthy footnote to the wiretapping request, investigators noted that Steele’s research was financed by an individual who was “likely seeking information that could be used to discredit” the Trump campaign. They did not specifically identify the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Trump’s allies called the employ of political opposition research for a wiretapping application abusive, especially without naming the funders.
[…]
Horowitz also examines a related issue: whether law enforcement officials adequately considered the recent information in seeking to reopen the wiretapping. For example, it is unclear when the FBI determined with certainty that the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign funded Steele’s research; the researchers never updated the language describing their research in their three renewal applications.
Moreover, by January 2017, FBI agents had located and interviewed one of the main sources of information about Steele, a Russian-speaking person from the former Soviet republic who was in the West, according to a Justice Department document obtained by The New York Times and three people familiar with the events. After questioning him, FBI officers suspected that the man may have added his own interpretations to the reports from his own sources given to Mr. Steele, thereby questioning the credibility of the information.
[…]
All told, Page’s wiretapping app has likely become one of the most scrutinized wiretapping applications in history. James Baker, then the FBI’s general counsel, who also agreed to cooperate with the inspector general, would not comment on the substance of his interactions in connection with Mr. Horowitz’s investigation, but he has stated in other forums that FBI officials knew that anything they did would not guess.
During congressional testimony last fall, Representative Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican and Trump ally, asked Mr. Baker why he had taken such an unusual step and had personally reviewed the original injunction request.
“I expected to be sitting here in rooms like the one down the street, I actually did, and I knew I was. I knew it was a sensitive issue,” Baker replied, according to the transcript. “I knew it would be controversial.”
As an aside, this whole sordid affair reached the State Department, which Steele met with before the FBI issued the FISA warrant for Carter Page, and they noted quite clearly that Steele’s information might be biased and politically motivated. It was. There were also some glaring omissions in Mueller’s report on Carter Page and Ukrainian businessman Konstantin Kilimnik, allegedly part of Russian intelligence. Page was a source of information for the FBI, State Department and CIA. Kilimnik was also a “sensitive intelligence source” for the State Department under Obama, who visited the United States twice in 2016. He met with US officials and his presence at the time showed that he was not considered a threat to foreign intelligence. John Solomon of Hill reported at length on the Trump-Russia collusion hysteria. And this FISA nonsense with Carter Page is not only part of that, but a very disturbing reminder of what the federal government can do to its citizens with impunity.
Oh, and even some members of British intelligence questioned the Steele files. All of this forms the basis for the not-so-crazy charge that this was a political hit job against Donald Trump.
