good question

When Comey privately briefed Donald Trump on 6 Jan 2017, he only talked about the sex tape from the dossier.

It is unclear when President Trump finally found out there was an active FISA warrant on Carter Page (and that the FBI had declared Page to be a Russian foreign agent).

That is an indicator the true target of the counterintel investigation always was Donald Trump.

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diff topic

House Intel Comm Democrats interviewed Papadopoulos' wife on 18 Jul 2018. (Just the DEMs, no Republicans)

http://thehill.com/policy/nati...ily-with-house-intel

The wife of former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos participated Wednesday in a voluntary interview with Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee.

Simona Mangiante Papadopoulos appearance on Capitol Hill comes after she has increasingly become her husband’s public defender since he pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators last year. He is said to be cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller as part of the investigation into Russian interference.


Mangiante Papadopoulos is the second witness to cooperate with Democrats on the panel, who have vowed to continue to conduct witness interviews even after their GOP colleagues decided to conclude its Russia probe in March.

In an usual showing, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), an ex-officio member of the Intel panel, said she had a quick word with the witness behind the closed-door space where Mangiante was being interviewed.

Republicans, who want nothing to do with additional Russia-related interviews since they voted along party lines to end the probe in March, refused to grant Democrats access to the committees for their interviews, according to a committee source.

This forced Democrats on the panel to interview the witness in an unsecured room within a House congressional building, rather than the committee’s secure committee space that is typically used for the panel’s witness interviews.

quote:

When Comey privately briefed Donald Trump on 6 Jan 2017, he only talked about the sex tape from the dossier.

Well that was how Hoover did things too, so Comey was just using a known technique.

The Donald Trump Jr meeting w Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya on 9 June 2016 keeps coming up over and over.

The meeting was in Trump Tower and was set up by an intermediary because supposedly Veselnitskaya had “some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father,”

But at the meeting, Veselnitskaya only talked about a court case she was involved in that had nothing to do w Clinton. The meeting was quickly adjourned.

It has also been noted by quite a few people that how come the 9 June meeting never got mentioned anywhere in the Steele dossier ?

Glenn Simpson (Fusion GPS) has a favorite tactic: Create several events establishing a common "fact". The events appear to be independent, but have them support and corroborate each other. Sort of like a magic trick.

It is now an acknowledged fact that Simpson has a business relationship w Veselnitskaya. It is also on the record that Simpson met w Veselnitskaya on 8, 9, and 10 June 2016.

Simpson says they never discussed the DJT Jr meeting.

The very first Christopher Steele report is dated 20 June 2016.

One of the key things in the first report is that

"the Kremlin has been feeding TRUMP and his team valuable intelligence on his opponents, including Democratic presidential candidate Hillary CLINTON, for several years"

So what if it went down like this:

a. Temp DJT Jr w intelligence on Clinton. Provided straight from a Russian.

b. Hold the meeting but have it be about some other topic

c. 11 days later, put in the first dossier report that the Russians have been feeding Donald Trump intelligence on Clinton

d. Never mention Veselnitskaya in the dossier so there is no obvious link to Glenn Simpson, Fusion GPS, and Christopher Steele.

That is classic Fusion GPS.

DoJ has made a largely unredacted copy of the Carter Page FISA warrant available to congress. It has to be reviewed at a DoJ secure location.

(just because it is unredacted, doesn't mean it would then be unclassified)

31 members of congress have reviewed.

As usual DEMs are criticizing Devin Nunes for not having read the largely unredcated version. But the answer is the same as before. Nunes has Gowdy review it and then brief him.

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:


As usual DEMs are criticizing Devin Nunes for not having read the largely unredcated version. But the answer is the same as before. Nunes has Gowdy review it and then brief him.

Good idea.

If Nunes read it, he would have to be afraid he might be captured by the enemy and tortured.

There is a comprehensive discussion of the Wolfe case found on The Conservative Treehouse, https://theconservativetreehou...ntinues/#more-152282.

Wolfe is the Senate Intel Committee staff security guy arrested and charged with lying to the FBI about leaking the FISA complaint to the media bimbette he was carrying in an affair with, or maybe vice versa.

It's been a long frustrating journey on this fight against the deep state conspiracy to take down President Trump.

I get pretty discouraged quite a bit.

This ltr though is pumping me up.





pages 10-12 and 17-34 of the third renewal. The one signed by Rod Rosenstein.

Devin Nunes talking about this, but not saying much. But he sounds like this is a big deal.

https://twitter.com/FoxNews/st.../1023595504297336833

So I missed it. I guess. Why don't they/Mr. Trump, package up the evidence and send it to the Sessions guy (no reason to honor him with the AG title.) Ask him nicely to terminate everyone who signed the warrants. Then charge them with some obscure violation of DOJ or FBI policy. If the Sessions guy somehow grows or finds gonads to do as ordered or asked, fire his slimy ass too.

Then appoint or try to appoint Trey Gowdy as the next AG. Let him clean house, as sorely needed.

long post. will break into parts for readability

Part 1 of 5

This post is a collection of suspicious things in the Carter Page FISA warrant. A big caveat is that most of the warrant is blacked out (redacted). So there could be some real surprises that we cannot see. But even just commenting on what is shown, there are some things that look like the FBI was “stacking the deck” against Carter Page and the Trump campaign.

Bottom line:

a) Based just on the unredacted parts of the FISA warrant, the Steele dossier was the major “evidence” that Page was a Russian spy.

b) parts of the FBI inputs are very deceitful and wrong

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

1. Carter Page is identified as an agent of a foreign power. Specifically a Russian foreign agent. The original warrant was dated 21 Oct 2016. There were 3 subsequent extensions on 12 Jan 2017, 7 Apr 2017, and 29 Jun 2017.

Given what is publicly known today, there is no convincing evidence that Carter Page actually was a Russian agent. Page has not been indicted. He has been interviewed by the FBI. Even though the FBI obtained a FISC (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court) warrant on 21 Oct 2016 and a first extension on 12 Jan 2017, there is no indication that these charges were made known to candidate Donald Trump or President elect Donald Trump.

2. The warrant states that Carter Page coordinated with the Russian Govt to undermine and improperly and illegally influence the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. “the FBI believes that the Russian Government’s efforts are being coordinated with Page and perhaps other individuals associated with Candidate #1’s campaign”

I will use actual names, but in the warrant it is clear that

Candidate #1 = Donald Trump, Candidate #2 = Hillary Clinton
Source #1 = Christopher Steele
Identified U.S. person = Glenn Simpson
U.S. based law firm = Perkins Coie

The warrant starts out by discussing the 2013 events where Russian agents tried to trick Carter Page into thinking they were just Russian businessmen. There is no public evidence that they recruited Page. There is public information that the FBI debriefed Page (known as “male-1”) and told him the Russians were spies for Russia. Much of this section is blacked out, so it is not known what the FBI said about the Russian arrest in 2015 and the Russian guilty plea in Mar 2016.

3. The warrant then shifts to a section that addresses “Page’s Coordination with Russian Govt Officials on 2016 U.S. Presidential Election Influence Activities”.

Immediately the warrant jumps into the Christopher Steele information. I didn’t say the “Steele dossier” because DEM Adam Schiff has said the only thing from the dossier that was in the warrant was the material related to Carter Page. The Steele report dated 19 July 2016 claimed that Page met with Russians Igor Sechin and Divyekin.

The FBI words visible in the warrant are almost verbatim from the Steele 19 July 2016 report. Then lots of black out including a TS paragraph and TS footnotes.

Note that the Steele material is front and center when the FBI describes the alleged Carter Page coordination with the Russians to influence the 2016 election.

part 2 of 5

4. Early in the section described above there is a long footnote about “Source #1”. It says Steele has been an FBI source and his (previous ?) reporting has been corroborated and used in criminal proceedings.

The footnote says the identified U.S. person (Simpson) hired Steele to conduct the research. And that the identified U.S. person never advised Steele as to the motivation behind the research into Donald Trump’s ties to Russia. That sounds like a significant lie. By 21 Oct 2016, Simpson and Steele had briefed numerous U.S. media on the dossier material including the parts about Carter Page.

The footnote also says that the FBI “speculated” that Simpson was “likely” looking for information that could be used to discredit the Trump campaign. The same language about Simpson not telling Steele about the “motivation” and that the FBI “speculated” about trying to discredit the Trump campaign is in the original warrant and all three extensions. So the FBI was claiming these things all the way to June 2017.

The footnote says that based on Steele’s previous reporting history with the FBI, the FBI believes Steele’s reporting is credible. Again, that same statement is made in the original warrant and all three extensions. In contrast, Comey, Steele himself, and Clapper all stated that the dossier was unverified at various times up to June 2017. But Rod Rosenstein signed the last extension with literally zero verification, except that they trusted Steele. (Reminder: there may be hidden surprises in the redactions)

The dossier material supposedly came in the following human source chain: Russian source to a Russian “collector” to Christopher Steele. In at least one case the chain was Russian source to a paramour to a collector to Steele. Many have pointed out that it is not relevant that Steele was trusted; what matters is whether the chains of sources were reliable. But 4 different FISC judges signed the warrants based on the FBI assurances.

5. Glenn Simpson testified to the House Intel Comm in November 2017. He was asked if the FBI ever reached out to him or Fusion GPS in relation to the matters that Steele informed them upon. Simpson said “No”.

So how does the FBI know to put in the warrants that the “identified U.S. person” never told Steele about the motivation behind the “research”? Is that what Steele told the FBI ?

This is another significant issue. Wouldn’t it be odd for the FBI to not talk to Glenn Simpson about the Steele dossier? Simpson testified no one from the FBI or DoJ talked to him before the election, and after the election only Bruce Ohr of the DoJ talked to him “in relation to these matters”. No one from the FBI or DoJ talked to Glenn Simpson before the first Carter Page FISA warrant (according to Glenn Simpson). The FBI got the first Steele report on 5 July 2016. The FBI seems to have had the same lack of intensity in checking out the Steele dossier as they did in investigating the Clinton classified emails.

6. At the end of the warrant section about “Page coordination with Russia …”, the FBI includes discussion of a July 2016 article that claimed the Trump campaign worked behind closed doors to make sure the Republican platform would not call for giving weapons to the Ukraine to fight Russia. (Presumably this was an example of the Trump campaign “colluding”)

Although the article is not identified, it sounds like this one from the Wash Post:

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

“Trump campaign guts GOP’s anti-Russia stance on Ukraine”

The Wash Post article was deflated by Byron York:

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”

So the FBI included in the warrant a news article that was misleading

part 3 of 5

7. Next is one of the dirtiest tricks in the warrant.

On page 22 of the original warrant, the FBI describes the 23 Sep 2016 Yahoo News article written by Michael Isikoff. (The article is not specifically identified, but there is no doubt they are writing about the Isikoff article.)

Steele had briefed Isikoff in September, and then Isikoff wrote the article which he said came from a “well placed Western intelligence source”.

For reference:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-s...emlin-175046002.html

“U.S. intel officials probe ties between Trump adviser and Kremlin”

“The activities of Trump adviser Carter Page, who has extensive business interests in Russia, have been discussed with senior members of Congress during recent briefings about suspected efforts by Moscow to influence the presidential election, the sources said”

“A senior U.S. law enforcement official did not dispute that characterization when asked for comment by Yahoo News. “It’s on our radar screen,” said the official about Page’s contacts with Russian officials. “It’s being looked at.””

“But U.S. officials have since received intelligence reports that during that same three-day trip, Page met with Igor Sechin”
“U.S. intelligence agencies have also received reports that Page met with another top Putin aide while in Moscow — Igor Diveykin”

The article is extensively quoted in the warrant.

Now here is the kill shot:

Footnote 18 “Source #1 told the FBI that he/she only provided this information to the business associate and the FBI”

“The FBI does not believe that Source #1 directly provided this information to the press”

Business associate = Glenn Simpson

But now, Isikoff has publicly acknowledged the information came from Steele

Simpson and Steele independently have asserted that the dossier material was briefed to NYT, Wash Post, Yahoo News, the New Yorker, and CNN in Sep 2016.

Steele further briefed NYT, Wash Post, and Yahoo News in Oct 2016.

Isikoff in Feb 2018: Isikoff was shocked, he said, because his very article was based on information that came from Christopher Steele, the former British spy who wrote the dossier. He said it was “a bit beyond me” that the FBI would use his article in the FISA application

Implication: the FBI included the Isikoff article in the warrant and never talked to Isikoff ? Or was the lie intentional ? The Isikoff article corroborated the Steele material but only because Steele was the common source.

Once again, the same material on the Isikoff article was included in the original warrant and all 3 extensions. (21 Oct 2016 to 29 Jun 2017)

For the extensions, the FBI footnote slightly changed to:

“The FBI does not believe that Source #1 directly provided this information to the identified news organization that published the September 23rd News Article”

The FBI took the bait that Simpson and Steele put on the hook.

part 4 of 5
8. A minor issue. In the warrant (page 17) there is an FBI entry about the Dept of Treasury announcing sanctions against the Russians and identifying Igor Sechin in the announcement. That Treasury link:
https://www.treasury.gov/press...es/Pages/jl2369.aspx

is straight from the 23 Sep 2016 Isikoff article.

9. On page 25 of the warrant, the FBI acknowledged that Carter Page sent a letter to FBI Dir Comey on 25 Sep 2016. Page denied the allegations in the Isikoff article of 23 Sep 2016. Page wrote he would be willing to discuss any “final” questions the FBI may have.

The warrant doesn’t address the Page letter any further. As far as I can tell, the FBI did not interview Carter Page until Mar 2017. It was several days of interviews and Page appeared without an attorney. Why did the FBI wait so long to interview Page ? You might argue they had the FISA warrant active for electronic surveillance and Stefan Halper spying on Page. So why bother to interview him ?

10. Page 32 of the original warrant. “Conclusion”

“the FBI believes that Page has been collaborating and conspiring with the Russian Government”

“is an agent of a foreign power as defined by 50 U.S.C. 1801(b)(2)(E)”

Reference:
1801(b)(2)(E) reads (simplified) that the person knowingly aids or conspires to A) engage in clandestine intelligence gathering activities for a foreign power, or B) engages in any other clandestine intelligence activities for a foreign power, or C) engages in sabotage or international terrorism.

So the FBI thought Carter Page was a Russian foreign agent, but never told Donald Trump.

11. The original warrant did not say that FBI support for Steele was suspended because Steele talked to the press. That issue was mentioned in the extensions.

Steele has said in court depositions that he thinks the sex tape story is 50-50 chance of being true. He has said he is “horrified” the dossier became public. He has said this raw intelligence was never meant to become public.

But the FBI and FISC ran with it.

Page 54 of the original warrant, titled “VERIFICATION”:

“I declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing information regarding Carter W. Page is true and correct.”

Signed by a Supervisory Special Agent

The nature of the FISA Court Demands that it's behavior be above reproach and held to the highest standards.

part 5 of 5

12. Just an observation, nothing more, but in the 4 times where a Supervisory Special Agent signed the “Verification” page, the hand writing style of the date is different. Pages 54, 150, 260, and 380.

13. Page 100. In the extensions after the original warrant, there is a footnote that says:

“in or about October 2016, the FBI suspended its relationship with Source #1 due to Source #1’s unauthorized disclosure of information to the press. ….. Moreover, the FBI notes that the incident that led to the FBI suspending its relationship with Source #1 occurred after Source #1 provided the reporting that is described herein.”

Reminder: If Adam Schiff was correct, the only part of the dossier in the warrant were the parts about Carter Page.

The FBI seems to be identifying the “unauthorized disclosure” as the 31 Oct 2016 Mother Jones article where Steele gave quite a bit of the dossier information to David Corn.

However, Simpson and Steele have testified they also gave multiple briefings in September and mid October to numerous media outlets.

One more thing the FBI “missed”.

14. Byron York had an article that brought up this last point.

The FBI writes they consider Source #1 reliable. They seem to go out their way to hide the bias of Christopher Steele. The FBI writes in the warrant:

“The identified U.S. person never advised Source #1 as to the motivation behind the research into Candidate #1’s ties to Russia”

And

“The FBI speculates that the identified U.S. person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit Candidate #1’s campaign”

So the message to the FISC is that Simpson was likely looking for opposition research on the Trump campaign, but supposedly he never told Christopher Steele that.

BS.

Byron York also notes that Bruce Ohr is not mentioned in any of the warrants (even under a general identified term without using the name).

Devin Nunes reported from FBI interview information: Bruce Ohr told the FBI that in Sep 2016, Christopher Steele said he “was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president”

But according to the FBI, Steele was to be trusted and he never knew the motivation behind his research.

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We may all get some surprises if we ever see a more unredacted version of the Carter Page FISA warrant. But it is difficult to conclude from what we have now that the FBI was “true and correct” in the Verification.

Some of us have wondered what it meant to have a FISA surveillance on Carter Page

Here are two links that describe the "two hop rule"

https://www.tabletmag.com/jewi...fisas-license-to-hop

https://wtop.com/national-secu...hops-take-step-back/

By putting Page under FISA surveillance, the FBI was able to go back a few years and check all electronic communications to and from Page to others. That is the first hop.

The second hop is that they can also examine the to/from communications from all of the first hop people to anyone they communicated with.

I drew a simple picture. Z is the target (Page). Assume 10 people communicate w Page (X1 to X10).






Just for example assume 10 other people communicate w each X person (Y1 to Y10)

So the FBI would be looking at communications for the 10 first hop people w Page and another 100 sets of communication between all the X people and their respective Y people.

"A conspiratorial enterprise is bound to involve communications beyond Carter Page’s first circle of direct contact, so investigators need to look at the next circle as well."

under current rules, it’s the first two that government investigators can routinely gain access to in order to “uncover the full scope of a conspiratorial enterprise,” without needing to apply for further warrants.

Some of the surveillance done under “warrant” approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) may be current surveillance, which may entail watching a subject’s texts, emails, phone calls, etc. as they occur in real time. But a great deal of what we call “surveillance” today is actually data-mining—using the fabled NSA database—or direct requests from federal agencies for customer data stored by telecoms and internet service providers.

The use of controls should not obscure for us the scope of what’s actually going on. Data-mining, in particular, is inherently about hunting through data that’s already there, because it is routinely collected, or stored under legal requirements and made available to the US intelligence community on demand. For some types of communications data, it is possible to retrieve information from as much as five years back in the relevant database.

In the case of a subject like Carter Page, that means investigators who obtain a warrant in October 2016 can hunt through his communications going back several years before that date—and can use their “license to hop” to probe the first and second order of correspondents linked to him at any point during that period in the same fashion.

What this means in practice is that, under a single warrant, anyone Page had a text or phone call with in the Trump campaign during the brief months of his association with it in 2016, was fair game, as a direct connection, all the way through the end of the last warrant-extension period on Page in October 2017. The second-hop connections of those initial contacts—meaning everyone that those people had contact with—are also fair game. In other words, it’s likely that almost everyone on the Trump campaign staff was included in the universe of first- and second-order contacts of Carter Page. The entirety of their correspondence is therefore also covered by the initial warrant, regardless of whether or not they ever met or corresponded with Carter Page, or whether that correspondence referred to him in any way, directly or indirectly.

adding: it is not clear to me how much data gets captured here. It might be just metadata. (who is communicating with who)

Trying to put a few things together

1. Jim Jordan pressed Rod Rosenstein hard during congressional testimony. Jordan kept asking if Rosenstein had actually read the third Carter Page FISA warrant extension (which Rosenstein signed in June 2017). Rosenstein danced around and eventually said that DoJ people had read the warrant and then briefed him. Rosenstein would not say that he actually read the warrant.

Then Rosenstein said something odd. He said the available version of the warrant did not match what he was told. He said the DoJ IG was investigating that. It got confusing.

2. Now we see the Nunes letter of 14 June 2018 asking the President to unredact specific pages of the third FISA warrant. Nunes asked to have pages 10-12 and 17-34 fully unredacted. Nunes has said Americans will be amazed when they see those pages.

3. Perhaps the next piece of the puzzle: Rep Gaetz was asked what he thinks the DoJ is hiding. Gaetz said “I believe that money was paid to people to collect intelligence on the Trump campaign.”

Maybe in the third extension there is FBI “evidence” involving someone such as Stefan Halper spying on Carter Page. Just guessing.

Rosenstein sure seemed uncomfortable when he was pressed about reading the warrant. At the time, I thought Jordan was trying to embarrass Rosenstein because he hadn’t read it. But given the Nunes letter, Rosenstein may be in hotter water if he had read it.

4. Some observations about pages 10-12 and 17-34 of the third extension.

Page 10 is the beginning of the section that addresses “The Russian Government’s Coordinated Efforts to Influence the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election”

Page 11 pretty much completely redacted

Page 12 Some redacted material involving Page having relationships with Russian intelligence officers

Page 17 is the beginning of the section on “Page’s Coordination with Russian Government Officials on 2016 U.S. Presidential Influence Activities”

Quite a few of the redactions on these pages include reference to FOIA b7D-1. That would pertain to disclosing information about a confidential source.

Dam I hate redactions.

...supposedly Veselnitskaya had “some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father,”

This, even though the information exchange never happened, is a high crime to the democrats and their propaganda channels, yet Hitlery working with British Christopher Steele, who supposedly worked with the Russians to get damaging info on Trump, is not even mentioned as a criminal act?

They rely on a huge portion of the American people being dumb.



.

Today is an anniversary.

Strzok said the counterintelligence investigation started 31 July 2016.

Two years in and nothing that proves any of the claims in the dossier.

I wonder if Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Lisa Page, Baker, Ohr, FISC, Glenn Simpson, Christopher Steele etc have any regrets.

Did the FBI really sever its relationship with Christopher Steele?

Weekly Standard
Eric Felten


What exactly does it mean for the FBI to suspend its relationship with a source? What does it mean when that relationship has been “closed”? The answers to those questions may provide insight into whether the FBI and Department of Justice, in their applications for surveillance warrants against Carter Page, were fully forthcoming with the secret federal court that considers such requests.

The Federal Intelligence Surveil­lance Act documents released on July 21 after a FOIA lawsuit from USA Today show the government informing the court that the FBI had “suspended its relationship” with Christopher Steele. Steele is the former British spy who was the Justice Department’s “Source #1” for its warrant applications targeting Carter Page. FISA warrants must be renewed every 90 days, and in the first such renewal filing with the court in January 2017, it was revealed that the suspension came after Steele was caught talking to the press, which the FBI had told him not to do.

The FISA filing explains at length why Steele felt driven to break his word: In late October, FBI director James Comey had “sent a letter to the U.S. Congress, which stated that the FBI had learned of new information that might be pertinent to an investigation that the FBI was conducting of Candidate #2.” That would be the inquiry into Hillary Clinton and her emails. Comey’s action made Steele mad: “Source #1 told the FBI that he/she was frustrated with this action and believed it would likely influence the 2016 U.S. Presidential election.”

“In response to Source #1’s concerns,” reads the January 2017 FISA renewal, “Source #1 independently, and against the prior admonishment from the FBI to speak only with the FBI on this matter, released the reporting discussed herein to an identified news organization.” Steele had actually been briefing multiple news outlets on his dossier since September 2016, but it was this late October conversation with Mother Jones that got him into trouble.

“Although the FBI continues to assess Source #1’s reporting is reliable,” the bureau states in the January renewal, “the FBI has suspended its relationship with Source #1 because of this disclosure.” And that’s that for the warrant application’s discussion of Steele.

One might think from this that Steele was a spy left out in the cold. But he wasn’t quite the non-grata persona that the warrant application suggests. Indeed, Steele continued to feed his allegations to the FBI—just not directly. The bureau continued to consume those allegations and went to great lengths to deal with Steele without directly talking with him.

Steele found a go-between through whom to maintain contact with the FBI: senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, whose wife Nellie Ohr, a Fusion GPS employee, was working with Steele on his dossier. (The dossier work had been contracted by Fusion GPS, which in turn was paid by law firm Perkins Coie; the law firm has acknowledged that the money came from the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign.)


Bruce Ohr met repeatedly with Steele. The Justice Department has already turned over to Senate investigators “63 pages of unclassified emails and notes documenting Mr. Ohr’s interactions with Mr. Steele.” Those materials have yet to be released.

But what we do know is that Ohr passed the details of his conversations with Steele on to the FBI. Ohr’s communications with the bureau weren’t merely informal chats. They were formal FBI interviews, each subsequently written up in a “302” summary memo. We know this from a detailed letter sent by Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley to deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein and FBI director Christopher Wray in early July.

The FBI conducted at least a dozen such interviews with Ohr. The first we know about took place November 22, 2016—just weeks after Steele was caught breaking FBI rules regarding the press. That was followed by interviews December 5 and 12. Those three interviews were summarized by the FBI in a 302 produced December 19.

The FBI interviewed Ohr about Steele’s stories again the next day, December 20, an interview memorialized in a 302 dated December 27. And it went on into 2017, with the FBI listening to Steele allegations by way of Ohr three times in January (the 23rd, 25th, and 27th), twice in February (the 6th and 14th), and then three times in May (the 8th, 12th, and 15th).

In April 2017, Justice filed a second renewal of its warrant application against Page. This time, the FBI claimed something more definitive about its relationship with Steele: He hadn’t just been “suspended.” After repeating the detail about “Source #1’s unauthorized disclosure of information to the press” (which had happened back in October), the FBI makes this unequivocal statement in the second renewal application (the emphatic underlining is in the original): “Subsequently, the FBI closed Source #1 as an FBI source.”

And yet all the while, the FBI was using an interlocutor (one with a serious conflict of interest) to continue its conversations with Steele.

Asked about Steele’s suspension and subsequent “closure” as a source, a spokesman for the FBI said that the bureau has no comment.

In the spirit of transparency, Grassley asked in his letter that Justice declassify the Ohr 302s and produce them to the Judiciary Committee by July 20.

The senator is still waiting.

Link

seen at CT

interview w Devin Nunes

He says the people need to see the 21 pages of the third FISA that are redacted

https://youtu.be/4qrg2FVwA9k

“a completely fraudulent document“