Last month, a nearly 500 page report was released, detailing 17 significant “errors” and “omissions” in the Carter Paige FISA applications which lead to the FBI spying on the Trump campaign. According to the report, the FBI’s deceptive manipulations made the evidence appear “stronger than was actually the case.” In other words, they made up a story that they knew to be inaccurate to take down Donald Trump. Believe it’s all a “conspiracy theory”? Scroll to the bottom of this page and read the full document from the Justice Department for yourself.
These aren’t simply “errors” or “omissions”. They are straight up lies. And if it could happen to Donald Trump, a candidate for President, could they do the same thing to you? Could they manipulate the facts to take away your rights? Are they fabricating evidence to spy on you?
The FBI originally decided to investigate the ties between Donald Trump and Russia, because they had suspicions that Donald Trump was in bed with Russia. That’s not really what the problem is. If they have evidence to suggest that there may be a connection between a Presidential candidate and a foreign government, they have a duty to investigate that. If Donald Trump, or any other candidate for President, was in bed with a foreign country, it would be really damaging to our Republic and we deserve to know that. We should want the truth to come out, regardless if our party wins the next election or not.
The problem started when it became politically motivated along the way. The FBI started lying to the FISA Court and try to make the evidence of Trump’s ties to Russia appear ““stronger than was actually the case.” They started to create a narrative and twist it to say what they wanted it to say, instead of just trying to uncover the facts.
The FISA Court is a very secretive court made up of 11 federal judges that review cases to “decide whether the U.S. government has enough evidence against foreign powers or individuals believed to be foreign agents to allow for their surveillance by the intelligence community.” “The Court entertains applications made by the United States Government for approval of electronic surveillance, physical search, and certain other forms of investigative actions for foreign intelligence purposes.” I could get in to my criticisms of the whole FISA court system, but I’ll save that for a later date.
So now, we know that the Russian government, the Ukrainian government, and most likely the Chinese government, all tried to influence the 2016 U.S. election, but we now have proof that our own government also tried to influence the results.
There are 17 “omissions” in this report and all of them are really bad.
“Omission” #1: “information the FBI had obtained from another U.S. government agency detailing its prior relationship with Page, including that Page had been approved as an “operational contact” for the other agency from 2008 to 2013, and that Page had provided information to the other agency concerning his prior contacts with certain Russian intelligence officers, one of which overlapped with facts asserted in the FISA application;”
So the FBI came to the court, said we have this guy that is talking to Russian agents and that we need to wiretap. The FBI was then asked are you sure that this guy (Carter Page) is not working for any other agency and the FBI said no, even though they knew for a fact that he was working with the CIA.
Now you can maybe argue that that is a honest mistake, until you learn that the CIA had previously cleared Carter Page and determined that he was not working with the Russians and that he actually worked with the CIA to infiltrate a Russian Spy Ring. But as we know Orange Man Bad, so I guess the ends justify the means, even if it means destroying a Patriot by spreading a false claim that Carter Page was the middleman between the Russian government and the Trump campaign.
Even if you buy that #1 was a honest mistake, what about the other 16 “errors” in this report?
“Omission” #2: “Included a source characterization statement asserting that Steele’s prior reporting had been “corroborated and used in criminal proceedings,” which overstated the significance of Steele’s past reporting and was not approved by Steele’s handling agent, as required by the Woods Procedures;”. In other words they lied. It was never corroborated and it was never used in criminal proceedings.
“Omission #3: “Omitted information relevant to the reliability of Person 1, a key Steele sub-source (who was attributed with providing the information in Report 95 and some of the information in Reports 80 and 102 relied upon in the application), namely that ( 1) Steele himself told members of the Crossfire Hurricane team that Person 1 was a “boaster” and an “egoist” and ” may engage in some embellishment” and (2) the FBI had opened a counterintelligence investigation on Person 1 a few days before the FISA application was filed;” (the rest of that was redacted)
#4: “Asserted that the FBI had assessed that Steele did not directly provide to the press information in the September 23 Yahoo News article based on the premise that Steele had told the FBI that he only shared his election-related research with the FBI and Fusion GPS, his client; this premise was incorrect and contradicted by documentation in the Woods File-Steele had told the FBI that he also gave his information to the State Department;”
#5: “Omitted Papadopoulos’s consensually monitored statements to an FBI CHS in September 2016 denying that anyone associated with the Trump campaign was collaborating with Russia or with outside groups like Wikileaks in the release of emails;”
#6. “Omitted Page’s consensually monitored statements to an FBI CHS in August 2016 that Page had “literally never met” or “said one word to” Paul Manafort and that Manafort had not responded to any of Page’s emails; if true, those statements were in tension with claims in Report 95 that Page was participating in a conspiracy with Russia by acting as an intermediary for Manafort on behalf of the Trump campaign; and” (the rest is redacted).
#7: Included Page’s consensually monitored statements to an FBI CHS in October 2016 that the FBI believed supported its theory that Page was an agent of Russia but omitted other statements Page made that were inconsistent with its theory, including denying having met with Sechin and Divyekin, or even knowing who Divyekin was; if true, those statements contradicted the claims in Report 94 that Page had met secretly with Sechin and Divyekin about future cooperation with Russia and shared derogatory information about candidate Clinton.”
So this FISA judge is getting the exact same treatment that the American people are getting from Adam Schiff and the Democrats. Half-truths mixed with some straight up lies. (Next week I’ll explain how this IG Report exposes Adam Schiff for being the liar that he is). And these “inaccuracies” get much worse the farther down this list that you go.
#8: “Omitted the fact that Steele’s Primary Subsource, who the FBI found credible, had made statements in January 2017 raising significant questions about the reliability of allegations included in the FISA applications, including, for example, that he/she did not recall any discussion with Person 1 concerning Wikileaks and there was “nothing bad” about the communications between the Kremlin and the Trump team, and that he/she did not report to Steele in July 2016 that Page had met with Sechin;”
#9: Omitted Page’s prior relationship with another U.S. government agency, despite being reminded by the other agency in June 2017, prior to the filing of the final renewal application, about Page’s past status with that other agency; instead of including this information in the final renewal application, the OGC Attorney altered an email from the other agency so that the email stated that Page was “not a source” for the other agency, which the FBI affiant relied upon in signing the final renewal application;”
#10: “Omitted information from persons who previously had professional contacts with Steele or had direct knowledge of his work-related performance, including statements that Steele had no history of reporting in bad faith but “[d]emonstrates lack of self-awareness, poor judgment,” “pursued people with political risk but no intelligence value,” “didn’t always exercise great judgment,” and it was ” not clear what he would have done to validate” his reporting;”
#11: “Omitted information obtained from Ohr about Steele and his election reporting, including that (1) Steele’s reporting was going to Clinton’s presidential campaign and others, (2) Simpson was paying Steele to discuss his reporting with the media, and (3) Steele was “desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being the U.S. President”;”
#12: “Failed to update the description of Steele after information became known to the Crossfire Hurricane team, from Ohr and others, that provided greater clarity on the political origins and connections of Steele’s reporting, including that Simpson was hired by someone associated with the Democratic Party and/or the DNC;”
#13: “Failed to correct the assertion in the first FISA application that the FBI did not believe that Steele directly provided information to the reporter who wrote the September 23 Yahoo News article, even though there was no information in the Woods File to support this claim and even after certain Crossfire Hurricane officials learned in 2017, before the third renewal application, of an admission that Steele made in a court filing about his interactions with the news media in the late summer and early fall of 2016;”
So they weren’t updating their information at all. They would receive new information but they didn’t go to the judge at all to correct their previous claims.
#14: Omitted the finding from a FBI source validation report that Steele was suitable for continued operation but that his past contributions to the FBI’s criminal program had been ” minimally corroborated,” and instead continued to assert in the source characterization statement that Steele’s prior reporting had been “corroborated and used in criminal proceedings”;”
#15: “Omitted Papadopoulos’s statements to an FBI CHS in late October 2016 denying that the Trump campaign was involved in the circumstances of the DNC email hack;”
#16: “Omitted Joseph Mifsud’s denials to the FBI that he supplied Papadopoulos with the information Papadopoulos shared with the FFG (suggesting that the campaign received an offer or suggestion of assistance from Russia); and (redacted)”
#17. “Omitted information indicating that Page played no role in the Republican platform change on Russia’s annexation of Ukraine as alleged in the Report 95, which was inconsistent with a factual assertion relied upon to support probable cause in all four FISA applications.”
The report states that according to DOJ IG Michael Horowitz, who took his position during the Obama years, “when “Steele’s handling agent” in the FBI “told us that when Steele provided him with the first election reports in July 2016 and described his engagement with Fusion GPS, it was obvious to him that the request for the research was politically motivated.” Yet, we are constantly being told by the media that it wasn’t politically motivated and that that is all a “conspiracy theory”. Is it still a “conspiracy theory” when there are actual documents to back up those claims? At what point does a “conspiracy theory” become a “conspiracy fact”?
Read the full text of the IG report here: https://www.justice.gov/storage/120919-examination.pdf