^^^ But in the nicest possible way - once their sources have "confidentially verified" that Page sang.

Rep. Trey Gowdy told FNC's Bret Baier on FOX News Sunday that while there are documents he has not seen, he knows that if there were any evidence that President Trump committed any crime with regard to Russia "Adam Schiff would have leaked it."

Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said this week that President Trump is compromised by the Russians, offering possible recordings of his meeting with Putin as evidence.

"I have not seen one scintilla of evidence that this president colluded, conspired, collaborated, with Russia. And neither has anyone else, or you can rest assured, Adam Schiff would have leaked it," Gowdy said. "That is why they have moved on from collusion on to obstruction of justice, which is now their current preoccupation."

Link

Confirmed: DOJ Used Materially False Information To Secure Wiretaps On Trump Associate

Newly released documents confirm House and Senate investigators' claims that the Department of Justice and FBI used materially false and misleading information to secure wiretaps on Carter Page.

Federalist
Mollie
Hemingway

Newly released documents confirm House and Senate investigators’ claims that the Department of Justice and FBI used materially false and misleading information to secure wiretaps on Carter Page, a former volunteer foreign policy advisor to President Trump. The highly redacted documents released in response to Freedom of Information Act requests show how the FBI was able to convince the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to surveil the Naval Academy graduate and energy consultant for a year of his life.

The wiretap was applied for and granted in October 2016, shortly before the end of the presidential campaign. Approved applications last for 90 days. The Department of Justice requested and received three renewals, for a total of one year of surveillance. Despite claiming to the court in 2016 that “the FBI believes that Page has been collaborating and conspiring with the Russian Government,” the government has yet to charge Page with breaking any of the serious laws it alleges he knowingly transgressed.

Here is what the highly redacted FISA applications show us thus far.

The Dossier Provided an Essential Part Of Application

As members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and Senate Judiciary Committee previously reported, a salacious and unverified dossier was essential to the government’s case for spying on Page. The information from the dossier is presented to the court as if it’s believable.

For instance, the application states, “the FBI has learned that Page met with at least two Russian officials during this trip.” The only way it learned that was through the dossier. Steele’s claim that Page had a “secret meeting with Igor Sechin, who is the President of Rosneft [a Russian energy company] and a close associate to Russian President Putin” to lift sanctions is included.

Another secret meeting with Igor Nikolayevich Divyekin to discuss releasing dirt on “Candidate #2” to “Candidate #1’s campaign” is mentioned. Also, while Page had left the campaign by the time the wiretap was sought, it is clear that the FBI believed its wiretap would find information on the Trump campaign, stating that the “Russian government’s efforts are being coordinated with Page and perhaps other individuals associated” with the Trump campaign.

The Dossier Was Not Verified

As House and Senate members reported, there is no evidence the dossier was verified before being used in the applications. For instance, there is no evidence as of July 2018 that either of the two meetings above that Steele claimed happened ever occurred. There was obviously no verification of these claims in 2016, or even an indication that the FBI desired verification. Page has repeatedly denied that he met with these individuals.

The Applications Employed Circular Reporting

As senators Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) wrote earlier this year, “The application appears to contain no additional information corroborating the dossier allegations against Mr. Page, although it does cite to a news article that appears to be sourced to Mr. Steele’s dossier as well.”

As the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence reported, “The Carter Page FISA application also cited extensively a September 23, 2016, Yahoo News article by Michael Isikoff, which focuses on Page’s July 2016 trip to Moscow. This article does not corroborate the Steele dossier because it is derived from information leaked by Steele himself to Yahoo News.”

These reports are accurate — the Yahoo News story sourced to Steele is cited extensively and repeatedly. Even worse, the FBI repeatedly claimed Steele is not the source of the article. Isikoff has confirmed Steele was of course his source.

Cites Steele’s Credibility, Despite Overwhelming Evidence To Doubt It

For the first application, the FBI reported that the previous reporting of Steele (identified as Source #1) had been corroborated and used in criminal proceedings and that Steele was deemed “reliable” by the FBI. They said they were unaware of any derogatory information on him. They said he wasn’t told about the motivation of the funder of the research.

There are a few problems with this. One is that the application itself admits that Steele was working with sub-sources. We now know he never visited Russia for his research but had other people gathering information from Russians, including from Russian government officials. Since the information was actually provided by these second- and third-hand sources, it is their reliability the FBI should swear to, not Steele’s. Just because he once had reliable information or had a source with reliable information doesn’t mean that all or even most of the sources he compensated for information will be even remotely reliable.

The other problem is that at some point in the process, the FBI realized their source was unreliable in multiple ways, yet they continued to swear to the court otherwise. Soon after the first application, the FBI had to terminate the relationship with Steele because he broke a promise to not share information with the press.

What’s more, he broke that promise out of fear that Clinton might lose the election, suggesting extreme motivation. He claimed he had not shared information with the press before the end of October 2016, but that was not true. He later testified to a British court that he’d briefed numerous media outlets throughout the waning months of the U.S. election.

The Applications Made Materially False Claims

Again, the dossier was essential to the wiretap applications, and its credibility was sourced not to the veracity of its claims, but to its author. So Steele’s lies were a problem. How did the FBI and DOJ handle this? Not well.

The FISA applications cited Isikoff’s September 23 Yahoo News article, which you would have to be an idiot to not realize was sourced to Steele. Take this paragraph, for example:

But U.S. officials have since received intelligence reports that during that same three-day trip, Page met with Igor Sechin, a longtime Putin associate and former Russian deputy prime minister who is now the executive chairman of Rosneft, Russian’s leading oil company, a well-placed Western intelligence source tells Yahoo News.

A well-placed Western intelligence source? You don’t say! What an obvious way to describe the non-American researcher who is the sole source of the claim! But note how the FBI reported the inclusion of this Yahoo News article in the dossier:

Footnote 18, application: “Source #1 told the FBI that he/she only provided this information to the business associate and the FBI. REDACTED The FBI does not believe that Source #1 directly provided this information to the press.”
Footnote 19, first renewal: “Source #1 told the FBI that he/she only provided this information to the business associate and the FBI. REDACTED The FBI does not believe that Source #1 directly provided this information to the identified news organization that published the September 23rd News Article.”
Footnote 20, second renewal: “Source #1 told the FBI that he/she only provided this information to the business associate and the FBI. REDACTED The FBI does not believe that Source #1 directly provided this information to the identified news organization that published the September 23rd News Article.”
Footnote 22, third renewal: “”Source #1 told the FBI that he/she only provided this information to the business associate and the FBI. REDACTED The FBI does not believe that Source #1 directly provided this information to the identified news organization that published the September 23rd News Article.”

As Sens. Graham and Grassley wrote earlier this year:

In Steele’s sworn court filings in litigation in London, he admitted that he ‘gave off the record briefings to a small number of journalists about the pre-election memoranda [i.e., the dossier] in late summer/autumn 2016.’ In another sworn filing in that case, Mr. Steele further stated that journalists from ‘the New York Times, the Washington Post, Yahoo News, the New Yorker, and CNN’ were ‘briefed at the end of September 2016 by [Steele] and Fusion at Fusion’s instruction.’ The filing further states that Mr. Steele ‘subsequently participated in further meetings at Fusion’s instruction with Fusion and the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Yahoo News, which took place mid-October 2016.’…

The first of these filings was publicly reported in the U.S. media in April of 2017, yet the FBI did not subsequently disclose to the FISC this evidence suggesting that Mr. Steele had lied to the FBI. Instead the application still relied primarily on his credibility prior to the October media incident.

Anyone should have doubted the credibility of a man who claimed he wasn’t Isikoff’s source. But to do so after his sworn court filings admitting to any number of press briefings during the campaign is downright scandalous.

The True Funding Of Dossier Was Oddly Obscured

House Intelligence Committee members complained that the wiretap applications failed to disclose that the dossier was funded by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Sens. Grassley and Graham said the FBI revealed the political origins of the dossier to only a “vaguely limited extent.”

That’s true. Donald Trump shows up in the application as Candidate #1 and Hillary Clinton shows up as Candidate #2. The Republican Party is identified as Political Party #1. So it would have been easy to note that the dossier was secretly bought and paid for by Candidate #2 and Political Party #2. Instead, a veritable word salad is deployed to hide that significant fact.

The court is told Source #1 was told “that a U.S.-based law firm had hired the identified U.S. person to conduct research regarding Candidate #1’s ties to Russia” and that Source #1 wasn’t told about the motivation behind the research. The FBI surmises that Source #1’s boss — Fusion GPS’ Glenn Simpson — wanted information to discredit Candidate #1’s campaign.

Critics of the House and Senate investigators say it’s obvious that referred to Hillary Clinton and the Democrats. But remember that Simpson and Fusion GPS had also been hired by the Washington Free Beacon to gather information to discredit Candidate #1’s campaign. The Free Beacon contracted with Fusion GPS through January 2017.

And the Clinton secret funding is relevant. In the second renewal, the application says:

Page sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Voting Section, urging the review of what Page claimed was ‘severe election fraud in the form of disinformation, suppression of dissent, hate crimes and other extensive abuses led by members of [Candidate #2’s] campaign and their political allies last year.’ In his letter, Page claims that he has not directly supported a political campaign since September 2016, but continues to be subjected to personal attacks by former members of Candidate #2’s campaign based on fictitious information. Page wrote that his academic lecture and related meetings with scholars and business people in Moscow had no connection to the U.S. election. Page attributes the assertions in the September 23rd News Article that Page met with two senior Russian officials (i.e., Sechin and Diveykin) while he was in Moscow in July 2016 to give the commencement address at the New Economic School, which Page claims is ‘false evidence,’ to Candidate #2s campaign. Page further claims that the information relied on by Candidate #2’s campaign, certain members of the U.S. Congress, and the media are lies that were completely fabricated by Candidate #2’s paid consultants and private investigators. [emphasis added]

You don’t say! While the redacted application renewal does not indicate why this letter from Page is included, it is clear that the government continues to believe “Candidate #2’s paid consultants and private investigators” over the word of the surveilled American citizen. From the date of his letter, two more wiretap applications are pursued and granted.

What In The World

It remains possible that Page is the most talented spy who ever walked the earth and fully deserved to be surveilled by the federal government. It is also possible that the surveillance was ordered merely because the country has an intelligence apparatus that was unable to recognize their main source was a liar whose sub-sources were at best playing him and whose recklessness left his little partisan research project open to manipulation by foreign adversaries.

Barring those options, our intelligence apparatus misled a FISA court with materially false claims.

Link

Two separate points:

1.

A reminder. With the vast majority of the FISA application being blacked out, we really don't know what was completely said about the dossier.

Adam Schiff has told us that only the parts about Carter Page were in the warrant.

video here:

https://www.cnn.com/videos/pol...nes-memo-on-fbi-doj/

So we all keep talking about the dossier and FISA application, but it was very selectively used. The Yahoo article of 23 Sep 2016 also only discussed Carter Page from info provided by Christopher Steele to Michael Isikoff.

2.

Another lie by the warrant that hasn't got a lot of attention:

On page 21 of the FISA warrant, the FBI wrote about an article that said the Trump campaign weakened the Republican Party platform towards the Ukraine.

The reference is to a Wash Post article:

https://www.washingtonpost.com...m_term=.212b958069d7

This WaPo article was a hit job and not true.

Byron York debunked the article here:

https://www.washingtonexaminer...-platform-and-russia

"During the 2016 Republican convention, the story goes, the Trump campaign weakened a critical passage in the GOP platform to go easy on Russia. The Trump team acted, according to this narrative, as part of an ongoing conspiracy with Russian President Vladimir Putin to help Donald Trump win the White House.

But that is not what happened. In fact, an already-tough portion of the Republican platform dealing with Russia was strengthened, not weakened, at the GOP convention"

There is an interesting discussion of the release of the FISA application, the indictment of James Wolfe, the activities of Sen. Warner and DOJ duringthis time found at https://theconservativetreehou...watkins/#more-152076

The redaction of dates is to conceal a leak check.

I've criticized the Senate Intel Comm many times for being more interested in a mysterious fuzzy "never ending Russia investigation", rather than getting the truth out to the American people.

Once again, they prove the point.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/24...a-warrant/index.html

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr told CNN Tuesday he believed there were "sound reasons" for judges to approve the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant on former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page, in yet another break between the Republican leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees.

"I don't think I ever expressed that I thought the FISA application came up short," Burr said when asked about House Republican memo alleging FBI and Justice Department abuses of the FISA process. "There (were) sound reasons as to why judges issued the FISA."

so what were they ?

While Nunes' committee disputed the "tradecraft" behind the US intelligence community's January 2017 assessment that found Russian President Vladimir Putin was trying to help Donald Trump win, the Senate Intelligence Committee issued a report earlier this month that agreed with the intelligence community's conclusions and took no issue with its tradecraft.

Burr steered clear of the original controversy over the Nunes memo earlier this year, and the effort from House Republicans to make public the classified material contained in the FISA warrant application on Page. Things got so tense between the panels that Burr's staff was denied access to the memo by the House Intelligence Committee before it was released.

Nunes smelled a rat

Nunes used an obscure committee rule that allowed the classified memo on the FISA warrant application to be made public, which kicked off the chain of events that prompted Saturday's release of the redacted FISA application following Freedom of Information Act lawsuits.


Now Nunes wants the rest of the October 2016 FISA application and three subsequent renewals to be made public.

But Burr told CNN he has concerns that the document was released in any form.
"I cease to be amazed by how much stuff we release publicly now," Burr said.

because Burr wants to keep us in the dark

adding:

as noted by Undercover Huber blog, the Sen Intel Comm security person in charge of all their classified material was James Wolfe. He leaked the material to reporters and lied to the FBI about it.

JALLEN's post above is about James Wolfe.

CT notes that on the day the FISA warrant was sent to the congressional committees (17 Mar 2017), Wolfe texted his girl friend reporter 82 times. There were 82 pages to the warrant.

coincidence ?

I had not seen these before today:


https://bigleaguepolitics.com/...et-up-mueller-probe/

" Former Obama administration director of national intelligence James Clapper admitted that former president Barack Obama gave the order to Peter Strzok to kick off his Operation Crossfire Hurricane targeting of President Donald Trump.

Obama — who also gave a stand-down order on stopping alleged Russian hacking — was personally implicated in the plot according to Peter Strzok and Lisa Page’s texts. Clapper confirms the obvious.

This is James Clapper’s interview with Anderson Cooper, which confirms that Obama ordered Strzok to carry out an Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), which became the basis for the entire Mueller probe.

“If it weren’t for President Obama we might not have done the intelligence community assessment that we did that set up a whole sequence of events which are still unfolding today, notably Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation. President Obama is responsible for that. It was he who tasked us to do that intelligence community assessment in the first place,” Clapper said in his Anderson Cooper interview."

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:
JALLEN's post above is about James Wolfe.

CT notes that on the day the FISA warrant was sent to the congressional committees (17 Mar 2017), Wolfe texted his girl friend reporter 82 times. There were 82 pages to the warrant.

coincidence ?

He sent 82 messages after he was asked to deliver an 83 page document (one page of which was/is blank) to a secure location. Yeah, I’m thinking it’s probably not a coincidence.

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:
JALLEN's post above is about James Wolfe.

CT notes that on the day the FISA warrant was sent to the congressional committees (17 Mar 2017), Wolfe texted his girl friend reporter 82 times. There were 82 pages to the warrant.

coincidence ?

That is interesting but the important thing is that the media had the FISA app since March 2017. I wonder if it was an unredacted one?

The peculiarity is that Wolfe might be in legal trouble for handing it over but the reporter is in none for receiving it, and publishing it. I wonder why it was not published.

Off and on I'm reading the book "Russian Roulette". It is written by Michael Isikoff and David Corn.


Isikoff and Corn were each separately briefed by Steele on the dossier material before the November 2016 election. Both of them independently wrote and put out news stories based on that information before the election happened. So they are especially close to Simpson and Steele.

A lot of interesting items in the book (which is very anti-Donald Trump at every opportunity).

We now know that the H Clinton campaign and the DNC gave money to the Perkins Coie law firm. Perkins Coie hired Fusion GPS, and then Fusion hired Steele to do opposition research for the 2016 election.

The book reveals that in 2012, the Obama campaign sent money to Perkins Coie for "legal bills". Perkins Coie passed funds to Fusion GPS to do opposition research on Mitt Romney.

The same operating procedure. You may remember how nasty the attacks got against Romney and his family.

quote:

I wonder why it was not published

Perhaps because it shows how biased and deceptive the FBI actually was in the warrant. Anti-Trump people don't want the warrant to come out at all.

Rep Goodlatte, who has seen a less redacted version, is saying the less redacted version is even further supportive of how much the warrant relied on the dossier.

If it ever becomes completely clear that the FBI significantly lied and deceived the FISC to get the warrant, could that have ripple effects throughout the entire Mueller investigation ?

If Mueller used material gained because of the Carter Page warrant, would that be a poison pill on his investigation ?

It might be significant if the Supervisory Special Agent who signed the warrants had transferred to the Mueller team at any point.


xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

perhaps the warrant was leaked. Cued from CT

11 Apr 2017 article

https://www.washingtonpost.com...m_term=.73384b339152

FBI obtained FISA warrant to monitor former Trump adviser Carter Page

good old Devlin Barrett

The FBI obtained a secret court order in October 2016 to monitor the communications of a former adviser to presidential candidate Donald Trump, part of an investigation into possible links between Russia and the campaign, law enforcement and other U.S. officials said.

The FBI and the Justice Department obtained the warrant targeting Carter Page’s communications after convincing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge that there was probable cause to believe Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power, in this case Russia, according to the officials.
...

News media like NBC and ABC are working hard to say the dossier wasn't a major part of the FISA warrant.

CBS even argues that Carter Page is a foreign agent and the dossier is not a Clinton campaign document

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/a...s-show-fbi-cover-up/

Here's a look at how Mr. Trump's tweets Monday run counter to the truth:

TRUMP: "Carter Page wasn't a spy, wasn't an agent of the Russians - he would have cooperated with the FBI. It was a fraud and a hoax designed to target Trump."

THE FACTS: Trump is quoting conservative activist Tom Fitton, who appeared on Fox News early Monday. But this assertion flatly contradicts the FBI's characterization of Page as "an agent of a foreign power."

Page denied this description over the weekend. However, according to the FBI, Page "has been the subject of targeted recruitment by the Russian Government" and Russia's goal was "to undermine and improperly and illegally influence the 2016 U.S. Presidential election."

The documents state "the FBI believes that the Russian Government's efforts are being coordinated with Page and perhaps other individuals associated with" Trump's campaign.

smoke screen by CBS. They are struggling to deal w the absolute known fact that the FBI declared Carter Page to be a Russian foreign agent. Page has never been indicted.


TRUMP: "It was classified to cover up misconduct by the FBI and the Justice Department in misleading the Court by using this Dossier in a dishonest way to gain a warrant to target the Trump Team. This is a Clinton Campaign document. It was a fraud and a hoax designed to target Trump ...."

THE FACTS: Wiretap requests are routinely classified to protect sources and methods, not to cover up misconduct by the FBI or Justice Department.

Multiple news organizations, including The Associated Press, requested that the government release the documents under the Freedom of Information Act. The New York Times and others sued for its release, resulting in the documents being posted to the FBI's website.

It's also not correct to call the Steele dossier a "Clinton Campaign document ." Steele was hired by Fusion GPS, a private research firm that in turn was hired by a law firm that represented the Democratic campaign. But Clinton's closest aides said they didn't learn about the research until after the election, which is probable considering they never raised the allegations publicly.

but the allegations were raised publicly. Fusion GPS and Steele briefed major news media multiple times and got most of the dossier actually published before the election. Fusion GPS marketed the dossier as "intelligence" and hid the fact that it was Clinton funded op research. Perkins Coie had been asked if they funded the dossier and they denied it to the NYT. They denied it until Devin Nunes forced the release of Fusion GPS bank records.

are we really expected to believe that "research" as explosive as the dossier wasn't immediately passed back to Perkins Coie and then to the Clinton campaign and DNC ?

quote:

Originally posted by signewt:
I had not seen these before today:


https://bigleaguepolitics.com/...et-up-mueller-probe/

" Former Obama administration director of national intelligence James Clapper admitted that former president Barack Obama gave the order to Peter Strzok to kick off his Operation Crossfire Hurricane targeting of President Donald Trump.

Obama — who also gave a stand-down order on stopping alleged Russian hacking — was personally implicated in the plot according to Peter Strzok and Lisa Page’s texts. Clapper confirms the obvious.

Well, he did after Valerie Jarrett passed along his marching orders from her (and his) boss.

IMHO.

I am going thru the Carter Page FISA warrant very carefully. I would like to write a list of the things, that even with all the redactions, show that parts of the warrant were false.

It is hard to slog thru so many redacted pages and attempt to get a feel for what is going on.

Two things have already popped out though.

1. In each of the warrant applications it starts off by saying in para 2 that "The status of the target was determined in or about [ a date] from information provided by the U.S. Department of State."

At first that really caught my eye and I was thinking that meant something significant. But after thinking about it, maybe it just means the State Dept provided an input for each of the 4 warrants about the nationality of Carter Page.

In the sentence just previous to the State Dept one, it says Carter Page is a U.S. person.

So right now I'm not so sure that the State Dept "status of the target" is that big a deal.

2. It is certain that more information is added to each warrant. You can see more blacked out redaction pages and paragraphs being added for the first, second, and third extensions.

A final observation, there are a lot of paragraphs labeled TS in the warrant.

Consider this:



It looks like that para was classified as TS.

But nothing was redacted.

Read the paragraph. All they are talking about is Source#1 (Steele), identified U.S. person (Glenn Simpson), Candidate #1 (Donald Trump). The FBI considered that paragraph TS.

Doesn't seem TS to me.

adding one more thought
For the original warrant, the dossier was not public.

But the first extension was 12 Jan 2017. Buzzfeed released the dossier on 10 Jan 2017.

So the first judge may have had no knowledge of the dossier other than what was in the application. It probably wasn't even called the dossier. But after 10 Jan 2017, could these judges have not read the dossier that was all over the news ?

Too bad this case won't start until November.

http://dailycaller.com/2018/07...er-buzzfeed-lawsuit/

JUDGE ORDERS FUSION GPS TO REVEAL DOSSIER DETAILS IN BUZZFEED LAWSUIT

Representatives of Fusion GPS must answer a broad array of questions about the opposition research firm’s role in creating, investigating and disseminating the infamous Steele dossier, a federal judge ruled.

U.S. District Court Judge Ursula Ungaro issued the decision Tuesday in a defamation lawsuit a Russian tech executive filed against BuzzFeed News, which published the dossier on Jan. 10, 2017.

The trial is scheduled to begin in Miami in November.

Ungaro ruled that attorneys for the executive, Aleksej Gubarev, can ask Fusion GPS representatives in a deposition about the firm’s dossier clients, its efforts to verify the dossier, its decision to hire dossier author Christopher Steele and its interactions with government officials and media outlets, including BuzzFeed

Fusion GPS, which was founded by three former Wall Street Journal reporters, has resisted efforts to provide information about its work on the dossier. The firm has claimed that revealing details about its dossier work would violate its confidentiality clauses with its clients as well as its First Amendment rights to political free speech.

Fusion GPS was hired in April 2016 by the law firm representing the Clinton campaign and DNC to investigate Donald Trump’s links to Russia. Fusion in turn hired Steele, a former British spy with connections to Moscow.

Ungaro largely rejected Fusion’s First Amendment objection, saying the firm’s business relationships with its clients “are not protected from disclosure by the First Amendment even though the opposition research it conducts on behalf of clients may be political in nature.”

“This ruling gave us everything that we had hoped for,” Evan Fray-Witzer, a lawyer for Gubarev, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

“After a year of trying everything they could think of to avoid being deposed, Fusion is finally going to have to sit down and answer our questions,” he added.

Gubarev is mentioned in the last of 17 memos in the dossier. The final memo, dated Dec. 13, 2016, claims Gubarev’s web hosting companies used viruses and malware to infiltrate the DNC’s computer networks. The dossier also alleges Gubarev worked for Russian intelligence services.

Gubarev has vehemently denied the allegations and claims that BuzzFeed was negligent in failing to investigate the claims before publishing the dossier.

BuzzFeed has defended its decision to publish the document, saying it disclosed in an article revealing the dossier that the document had not been verified. The website’s editor, Ben Smith, said BuzzFeed published the dossier because the document was in the hands of numerous U.S. government officials and media outlets.

Smith has argued the public had a right to know what information government officials were sharing about Trump

Steele, who is being sued by Gubarev in London, revealed in court filings in 2017 that he had not verified the final dossier memo before BuzzFeed published the document.

Gubarev’s lawyers have also sought to find out who provided the dossier to BuzzFeed.

Fusion GPS has denied being BuzzFeed’s source. It has been widely speculated that a longtime associate of Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain provided the dossier to BuzzFeed. David Kramer, a former Department of State official, was with McCain when the Republican was first told about the dossier by Sir Andrew Wood, the former U.K. ambassador to Russia and an associate of Steele’s

In late November 2016, Kramer traveled to London on McCain’s behalf to meet with Steele. Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson has testified to Congress that he and Steele discussed whether to provide the dossier to Kramer. Simpson told Congress he had long known Kramer and trusted him with the dossier.

McCain provided an incomplete copy of the dossier to then-FBI Director James Comey on Dec. 9, 2016. McCain did not know at the time that Comey and the FBI had already reviewed the Steele reports.

Ken Bensinger, the BuzzFeed reporter who obtained the dossier, has revealed in court filings that he received the dossier in late December 2016. He said in a court filing that he contacted the source at the suggestion of Smith, the BuzzFeed editor

Smith is also being sued by Gubarev.

Kramer has not responded to numerous requests for comment about his handling of the dossier. Shortly after he provided it, Gubarev’s lawyers announced they had learned the identity of BuzzFeed’s source

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:

.....

adding one more thought
For the original warrant, the dossier was not public.

But the first extension was 12 Jan 2017. Buzzfeed released the dossier on 10 Jan 2017.

So the first judge may have had no knowledge of the dossier other than what was in the application. It probably wasn't even called the dossier. But after 10 Jan 2017, could these judges have not read the dossier that was all over the news ?

There is no indication that the judge saw the “dossier” itself, not attached as an Exhibit, etc, so it seems to me that the information of the “dossier” is underneath the redacted paragraphs.

quote:

so it seems to me that the information of the “dossier” is underneath the redacted paragraphs.

agreed. and as I have beat the dead horse so many times, it probably is not the full dossier in the redactions. Adam Schiff let the cat out of the bag that the only parts of the dossier in the warrant application were the parts about Carter Page.

So, if Carter Page is a Russian agent, then why isn't he in jail?