Thread by @themarketswork

1) On Steele:

"We were concerned by the FBI's inaccurate assertion in the application that Steele's prior reporting had been "corroborated and used in criminal proceedings," which we were told was primarily a reference to Steele's role in the FIFA corruption investigation."

2) "We found that the team had speculated that Steele's prior reporting had been corroborated and used in criminal proceedings without clearing the representation with Steele's handling agent, as required by the Woods Procedures."

3) "According to the handling agent, he would not have approved the representation in the application because only "some" of Steele's prior reporting had been corroborated - most of it had not - and because Steele's information was never used in a criminal proceeding."

4) "These failures created the inaccurate impression in the applications that at least some of Steele's past reporting had been deemed sufficiently reliable by prosecutors to use in court, and that more of his information had been corroborated than was actually the case."

5) "Despite having been closed for cause [in Nov '16], the Crossfire Hurricane team continued to obtain information from Steele through [Bruce] Ohr, who met with the FBI on 13 occasions to pass along information he had been provided by Steele."

6) It appears that Steele's info was used in the ICA and/or two associated reports:

"use of information from the Steele reports in an interagency assessment of Russian interference in the U.S. 2016 elections"

Hello Brennan & Clapper...

7) Hmmm:

"According to FBI staff, as the interagency editing process for the ICA progressed, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) expressed concern about the lack of vetting for the Steele election reporting and asserted it did not merit inclusion in the body of the report."

8) "In contrast, as we describe in Chapter Six, the FBI, including Corney and McCabe, sought to include the reporting in the ICA. Limited information from the Steele reporting ultimately was presented in an appendix to the ICA."

9) "In November and December 2016, FBI officials traveled abroad and met with persons who previously had professional contacts with Steele or had knowledge of his work."

10) "Information these FBI officials obtained about Steele was both positive and negative. We found, however, that the information about Steele was not placed in his FBI CHS file."

11) "FBI's Validation Management Unit completed a human source validation review of Steele in early 2017. The VMU review found that Steele's past criminal reporting was "minimally corroborated," and included this finding in its report provided to the Crossfire Hurricane team."

12) "This determination by the VMU was in tension with the source characterization statement included in the initial FISA application, which represented that Steele's prior reporting had been ''corroborated and used in criminal proceedings."

13) "The FBI's interviews of Steele, his Primary Sub-source, a second sub-source, and other investigative activity, revealed potentially serious problems with Steele's descriptions of information in his reports."

14) "We further determine that that the Crossfire Hurricane team was unable to corroborate any substantive allegations regarding Carter Page contained in Steele's election reporting which the FBI relied upon in the FISA applications."