kingsjester
BREAKING: FBI 302 reports of Bruce Ohr released to @JudicialWatch. Confirm FBI warned that [Steele?] was "desperate that @RealDonaldTrump not get elected and was passionate about him not being the U.S. President."
— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) August 8, 2019
FoxNews.com reports that
The FBI formally documented the anti-Trump bias of British ex-spy Christopher Steele months shortly after the November 2016 presidential election — yet despite the red flags, continued to use his unverified dossier in multiple Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court warrant application renewals, records obtained by Fox News show.
The partially redacted documents, first obtained by Judicial Watch, also revealed that top Justice Department official Bruce Ohr maintained contact with Steele for at least six months after Steele was fired by the FBI for unauthorized media contacts in November 2016.
The records further confirm that Ohr knew of Steele’s anti-Trump bias before the 2016 election.
“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told Fox News’ “Hannity” Thursday evening. “I know personally there’s a lot more out there.”
The summaries of FBI interviews with Ohr, known as 302s, showed that Ohr knew by September 2016 — a month before the initial FISA application to surveil the Trump campaign — that Steele was “desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being the U.S. President.”
A source close to the matter told Fox News “this had the effect of putting a senior DOJ official on notice that a witness/source had an extreme bias.”
Nevertheless, the FISA warrant application went through in October 2016 with multiple renewals. While the FISA records are heavily redacted, it does not appear that the FBI’s documentation about Steele’s bias was ever shared with the FISA court.
Proceedings before FISA courts are ex parte, meaning defendants are not aware of them or able to attend in any capacity. The FBI has a legal and procedural obligation to reveal exculpatory evidence to the FISA court on its own.
However, on four occasions, the FBI told the FISA court that it “did not believe” Steele was the direct source for a Yahoo News article written by Michael Isikoff implicating former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page in alleged collusion with Russian officials.
While FBI told the FISA court that the Yahoo article represented independent evidence to support Steele’s claims, the 302s show that by November 2016 — before several FISA warrant renewals — the FBI had made the connection between Steele and the Yahoo News article.
According to documents, Ohr apparently met with Steele in Washington, D.C. in late September, “possibly close to the time when the Yahoo news article was published on September 23, 2016.”
The materials indicate that Glenn Simpson, the co-founder of Fusion GPS, and Steele “could have met with Yahoo or Michael Isikoff jointly, but Ohr does not know if they did.”
Fusion GPS is the opposition research firm behind the dossier, and was funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee (DNC).
It is not clear from the interviews whether Ohr made the connection between Steele and the Yahoo article, or the interviewing agent did.
London court records have shown that contrary to the FBI’s assessments, Steele briefed Yahoo News and other reporters in the fall of 2016 at the direction of Fusion GPS.
The 22 pages of reports on interviews with Ohr also revealed his extensive contacts with Steele. The two communicated on the encrypted messaging app “WhatsApp,” according to the records.
The FBI documents showed Ohr’s contacts with Steele extended through May 2017, when Special Counsel Robert Mueller was appointed. Ohr then became a kind of backchannel linking Steele to the FBI after his termination.
House Oversight Committee ranking member Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told Fox News’ “Hannity” late Thursday: “Why do you terminate your direct relationship with Christopher Steele and then encourage a top Justice Department official to keep meeting with him, and then coming and briefing you about each of those meetings and conversations?”
“Seems to me you’re trying to hide something when you do that,” Jordan continued, adding that the 302s indicated that some at the bureau were seeking to take out Trump.
What could they be hiding, hmmm?
Kimberley A. Strassel, in an article published on Thursday, February 8, 2018 in The Wall Street Journal, states that the FBI swallowed whole the story pushed by a paid political operative of a subcontractor for Hillary Clinton’s campaign for President.
To be sure, the FBI should have known better. Even if Mr. Steele had previously been helpful, the bureau had every reason to be wary in 2016. This wasn’t like prior collaborations. He was coming to the FBI as a paid political operative, hired by Fusion, as a subcontractor for Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Opposition researchers are not retained to present considered judgment. They are retained to slime an opponent and benefit a client.
The FBI also had reason to view his research with skepticism—on grounds of its tabloid-like allegations, and also on the near-fantastical claim of skill that underlay it. To wit, that a man who had been out of official spy rings for seven years was nonetheless able, in a matter of weeks and with just a few calls from London, where he lives, to unravel an international conspiracy that had eluded the CIA, FBI, MI6 and every other Western intelligence agency, all of which have access to the globe’s most sophisticated surveillance tools.
But rather than proceed with caution, the FBI swallowed the whole package. According to Sen. Chuck Grassley’s declassified criminal referral, former Director James Comey testified that the bureau couldn’t meaningfully corroborate the dossier, but used it in Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court proceedings anyway because Mr. Steele had previously provided “reliable” information.
Of course, Comey denies knowing who funded the Steele Dossier.
If you believe that the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation did not know what his top agents were involved in nor have any knowledge of the Secretary of State’s activities and those of her confidantes’, I have two bridges over the Mississippi River at Memphis, Tennessee to sell you.
President Ronald Reagan used to say that the nine words that you never want to hear were
I’m from the Government and I’m here to help.
The Deep State Operatives within the FBI and the DOJ conspired to overturn the results of the 2016 Presidential Election via means of a seditious plot which like a Machiavellian spider’s web, reached into the Halls of Power in Washington, D.C.
Being political appointees holding political opinions, while carrying political obligations to a certain political party, never bodes well in a position of legal authority.
Add into that mix an extra-marital affair between these bureaucrats and, to paraphrase, “the affairs of mice and men (and agents) will indeed go awry”.
Since the kinky days of J. Edgar Hoover, the hierarchy of the FBI have run clandestine investigations of public figures, both political and cultural leaders.
J. Edgar did it to hold onto his office and to have political leverage against his enemies, as he had skeletons in his own closet…and dresses, too.
But, I digress.
In this case however, the hierarchy of the FBI did it to circumvent the will of the American People and to install Hillary Clinton as the 45th President, thus protecting the status quo in the Halls of Power in Washington, DC.
When that didn’t happen, they determined to bring President Trump down, by any means necessary, including creating a fake story of Russian Collusion.
Thanks to two agents who decided to do the Extramarital Mattress Mambo and text each other thousands of times, written evidence was provided to support the FISA Memo.
And now, with more and more documentation on the verge of being released, several of these professional bureaucrats may start singing like canaries in a coal mine before the spider’s web of corruption which they helped to spin collapses down around them.
My late Former Father-in-law was a retired Police Lieutenant, who had worked with the FBI on several high-profile cases.
To say that he wasn’t a fan would be an understatement.
According to him, the letters FBI stood for “F—ing Bunch of Idiots”.
In the case of the DOJ’s and FBI’s “Secret Society” of Deep State Covert Operatives, darned if he wasn’t right.
Until He Comes,
KJ
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