IG Horowitz Report Vindicates Nunes, Condemns Schiff
David Nunes was the first to blow the whistle on FISA abuse. IG Report vindicates him completely.
Adam Schiff had access to same info and chose to misinform the public about Steele dossier's role in obtaining a FISA warrant.
David Nunes was the first to blow the whistle on FISA abuse. IG Report vindicates him completely.
Adam Schiff had access to same info and chose to misinform the public about Steele dossier's role in obtaining a FISA warrant.
Even after FBI opened an investigation into Trump campaign in 2016, they failed to interview several key individuals or vet critical information and sources in the Steele dossier. DoJ officials offered this sorry excuse to Horowitz for doing so: ...
DoJ officials said they chose not to interview Trump campaign officials because they were unsure if the campaign was compromised and did not want to tip off the Russians. Cool!
Except: ...
Except: ...
The inspector general report says the Russians were directly told about the allegations repeatedly by the then CIA Director John Brennan and, ultimately, President Obama. So the Russians were informed, but no one contacted the Trump campaign so as not to inform the Russians?
In the meantime, the allegations quickly fell apart. Horowitz details how all of the evidence proved exculpatory of any collusion or conspiracy with the Russians. But the FISA court was never apprised of that fact when the FISA court warrant was renewed repeatedly.
Even worse, CIA told the FBI that Page was actually working for CIA in Russia gathering intelligence. The FBI was told this repeatedly, yet it never reported that to the FISA court approving the secret investigation of Page. Page's claim to have worked with the CIA was dismissed.
Worse yet, Horowitz found that investigators and DoJ concluded there was no probable cause on Page to support its FISA investigation. That is when there was an intervention from the top, ordering investigators to look at the Steele dossier funded by the DNC and Clinton campaign.
Who told investigators to turn to the dossier? Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. He was fired over his conduct in the investigation after earlier internal investigations.
Horowitz contradicts the media claim that the dossier was just a small part of the case presented to the FISA court. He finds that it was essential to seeking FISA warrants.
Horowitz also finds no sharing of information with FISA judges that undermined the credibility of the dossier or Christopher Steele himself.
Surprisingly little effort was made to fully investigate the dossier when McCabe directed investigators to it, yet investigators soon learned that critical facts reported to the FISA court were false.
FISA judges were told that a Yahoo News article was an independent corroboration of the Steele dossier, but Horowitz confirms that Steele was the source of that article. Therefore, Steele was used to corroborate Steele on allegations that were later deemed unfounded.
The report also said that Steele was viewed as reliable and was used as a source in prior cases, yet Horowitz found no support for that and, in fact, found that the past representations of Steele were flagged as unreliable.
Steele's veracity was not the only questionable thing unveiled in the report. Steele relied on a character who, Horowitz determined, had a dubious reputation and may have been under investigation as a possible double agent for Russia.
The source relied on by Steele was presented as conveying damaging information on Trump. When this source was interviewed, he said he had no direct information and was conveying bar talk. He denied telling other details to Steele.
This was all known to the Justice Department, but it still asked for warrant renewals from the FISA court. Finally, Horowitz found that an FBI lawyer doctored a critical email to hide the fact that Page was really working for us and not the Russians.
Despite this shockingly damning report, much of the media is reporting only that Horowitz did not find it unreasonable to start the investigation, and ignoring a litany of false representations and falsifications of evidence to keep the secret investigation going.
Nothing was found to support any of those allegations, and special counsel Robert Mueller also confirmed there was no support for collusion and conspiracy allegations repeated continuously for two years by many experts and members of Congress.
The above thread is based on not my but Jonathan Turley's reading of the IG Horowtiz Report. Jonathan Turley is the chair of public interest law at George Washington University. And he is a Democrat -- one of the rare principled ones.
The End
thehill.com/opinion/judici…
The End
thehill.com/opinion/judici…
And it's official -- the Steele dossier was malarkey.
