05-08-How The FBI Blatantly Lied

https://www.redstate.com/bonchie/2019/05/07/fbi-lied-christopher-steele-fisa-court/?utm_source=rsmorningbriefing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&bcid=ec2c51cd86c15d57e1fd9f662ddad585

How The FBI Blatantly Lied About Christopher Steele To The FISA Court

Posted at 9:30 pm on May 7, 2019 by Bonchie

https://www.redstate.com/bonchie/2019/05/07/fbi-lied-christopher-steele-fisa-court/?utm_source=rsmorningbriefing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&bcid=ec2c51cd86c15d57e1fd9f662ddad585

New information has come out related to how Christopher Steele was presented to the FISA court and it’s not good for the FBI.

This relates to the warrants sought against Carter Page, who turned out to be absolutely none of the things he was accused of being. As we now know, the majority of the evidence presented in those warrants was based on the dumpster fire that is the Steele dossier, which was full of unverified nonsense. It’s actually easier to say what’s true in the dossier than to point out all the falsities. You end up talking a lot less that way. There was no justification for using such a garbage piece of raw intelligence to pursue a FISA warrant against a U.S. citizen.

The Hill has the details of how Steele was falsely described to the FISA judge. This was just given to the DOJ Inspector General this week and more is likely to emerge.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec’s written accountof her Oct. 11, 2016, meeting with FBI informant Christopher Steele shows the Hillary Clinton campaign-funded British intelligence operative admitted that his research was political and facing an Election Day deadline.

Why is this important? Because the FBI claimed just ten days later in the Page warrant application that Steele had no knowledge of his money man’s motivations. In other words, the FBI claimed that Steele did not know he was doing political opposition research or that the research was meant to interfere in the election.

“Steele was approached by an identified U.S. person, who indicated that a U.S.-based law firm had hired the identified U.S. person to conduct research regarding (Trump’s) ties to Russia.”

The footnote goes on to say that “the identified U.S. person never advised (Steele) as to the motivation behind the research into (Trump’s) ties to Russia. The FBI speculates that the identified U.S. person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit (Trump’s) campaign.”

Does anyone see “Clinton” or “DNC” or “opposing presidential campaign” mentioned?

Instead, the footnote is full of weasel words. The FBI “speculates” that he “was likely” looking for information that “could discredit” Trump.

That was a lie by the FBI because Steele had just told them ten days prior that his handlers wanted the dossier information out before the election. He clearly knew the motivation behind the document he was compiling. He knew it was political opposition research and was seeking to get it into the public conscience before voters went to the polls.

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Notice that the FBI decides to “speculate” in the most generic of terms instead of just telling the judge what Steele had specifically told them. That does not add up to anything but willfully misleading the court to garner the warrant. While Comey and his crew were pretending to be in the dark, they knew exactly what was going on. They also knew the dossier was completely unverified but chose to present it as the lion’s share of evidence anyway.

Meanwhile, current FBI Director Christopher Wray classified the majority of the document that revealed this information just two weeks ago.

Nonetheless, the FBI is doing its best to keep much of Kavalec’s information secret by retroactively claiming it is classified, even though it was originally marked unclassified in 2016…

…Everything else in the memo was redacted. The FOIA notes contain this explanation for the redactions: “Classified by FBI on 4/25/2019 — Class: SECRET.”

In other words, the FBI under Director Christopher Wray classified the document as “secret” just a few days ago. To add injury to insult, the FBI added this hopeful note: “Declassify on 12/31/2041.” That would be 25 years after the 2016 election.

Now, why would he do that?

Last I checked, lying to a FISA court is a crime. It’s time for the people that perpetrated this to pay the piper.

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https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/442592-steeles-stunning-pre-fisa-confession-informant-needed-to-air-trump-dirt#.XNIAVvr8PT0.twitter

Steele's stunning pre-FISA confession: Informant needed to air Trump dirt before election

BY JOHN SOLOMON, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 05/07/19 06:00 PM EDT 4,718

THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL

If ever there were an admission that taints the FBI’s secret warrant to surveil Donald Trump’s campaign, it sat buried for more than 2 1/2 years in the files of a high-ranking State Department official.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec’s written account of her Oct. 11, 2016, meeting with FBI informant Christopher Steele shows the Hillary Clinton campaign-funded British intelligence operative admitted that his research was political and facing an Election Day deadline.

And that confession occurred 10 days before the FBI used Steele’s now-discredited dossier to justify securing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and the campaign’s ties to Russia.

Steele’s client “is keen to see this information come to light prior to November 8,” the date of the 2016 election, Kavalec wrote in a typed summary of her meeting with Steele and Tatyana Duran, a colleague from Steele’s Orbis Security firm. The memos were unearthed a few days ago through open-records litigation by the conservative group Citizens United.

Kavalec’s notes do not appear to have been provided to the House Intelligence Committee during its Russia probe, according to former Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.). "They tried to hide a lot of documents from us during our investigation, and it usually turns out there’s a reason for it," Nunes told me. Senate and House Judiciary investigators told me they did not know about them, even though they investigated Steele’s behavior in 2017-18.

One member of Congress transmitted the memos this week to the Department of Justice’s inspector general, fearing its investigation of FISA abuses may not have had access to them.

Nonetheless, the FBI is doing its best to keep much of Kavalec’s information secret by retroactively claiming it is classified, even though it was originally marked unclassified in 2016.

The apparent effort to hide Kavalec's notes from her contact with Steele has persisted for some time.

State officials acknowledged a year ago they received a copy of the Steele dossier in July 2016, and got a more detailed briefing in October 2016 and referred the information to the FBI.

But what was discussed was not revealed. Sources told me more than a year ago that Kavalec had the most important (and memorialized) interaction with Steele before the FISA warrant was issued, but FBI and State officials refused to discuss it, or even confirm it.

The encounter, and Kavalec’s memos, were forced into public view through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation by Citizens United. Yet, all but a few lines have been redacted after the fact. Officials are citing as the reason national security, in the name of the FBI and a half-century-old intelligence law.

David Bossie, head of Citizens United and an informal Trump adviser, said the documents suggest there was an illegal effort to “frame” the future president with bogus Russia collusion allegations. “This new information proves why the attorney general must conduct a thorough investigation of the investigators,” he said.

Sources tell me there also are handwritten notes from the meeting, with information about Steele’s political ties, that have not been given to Congress. “There’s a connection to Hillary Clinton in the notes,” said one source who has seen them.

Perhaps those will come to light soon.

The mere three sentences that the FBI allowed State to release, unredacted, show that Kavalec sent an email two days after her encounter with Steele, alerting others.

“You may already have this information but wanted to pass it on just in case,” Kavalec wrote in the lone sentence the FBI and State released from that email. The names of the recipients, the subject line and the attachments are blacked out.

Interestingly, one legal justification cited for redacting the Oct. 13, 2016, email is the National Security Act of 1947, which can be used to shield communications involving the CIA or the White House National Security Council.

The three sentences visible in her memo show that U.S. officials had good reason to suspect Steele’s client and motive in alleging Trump-Russia collusion because they were election-related and facilitated by the Clinton-funded Fusion GPS founder, Glenn Simpson.

“Orbis undertook the investigation into the Russia/Trump connection at the behest of an institution he declined to identify that had been hacked,” Kavalec wrote.

At the time, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) was the highest-profile victim of election-year hacking.

“The institution approached them based on the recommendation of Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch (specialists in economic crime, formerly of the WSJ) and is keen to see this information come to light prior to November 8,” Kavalec wrote. “Orbis undertook the investigation in June of 2016.” Steele's firm Orbis was a subcontractor to Fusion GPS, and WSJ refers to The Wall Street Journal.

Everything else in the memo was redacted. The FOIA notes contain this explanation for the redactions: “Classified by FBI on 4/25/2019 — Class: SECRET.”

In other words, the FBI under Director Christopher Wray classified the document as “secret” just a few days ago. To add injury to insult, the FBI added this hopeful note: “Declassify on 12/31/2041.” That would be 25 years after the 2016 election.

Despite the heavy redactions, Kavalec’s notes have momentous consequence.

For the first time, we have written proof the U.S. government knew well before the FBI secured the FISA warrant that Steele had a political motive and Election Day deadline to make his dossier public.

And we know that information was transmitted before the Carter Page FISA warrant to one or more people whose job is so sensitive that their identity had to be protected. That means there is little chance the FBI didn’t know about Steele’s political client, or the Election Day deadline, before requesting the FISA warrant.

Documents and testimony from Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr, whose wife Nellie worked for Fusion GPS, show he told the FBI in August 2016 that Steele was “desperate” to defeat Trump and his work had something to do with Clinton’s campaign.

Kavalec’s notes make clear the DNC was a likely client and the election was Steele’s deadline to smear Trump.

Likewise, there is little chance the FBI didn’t know that Steele, then a bureau informant, had broken protocol and gone to the State Department in an effort to make the Trump dirt public.

That makes the FBI’s failure to disclose to the FISA judges the information about Steele’s political bias and motive all the more stunning. And it makes the agents’ use of his unverified dossier to support the warrant all the more shameful.

Kavalec’s notes shed light on another mystery from the text messages between the FBI’s Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, which first revealed the politically-biased nature of the Trump collusion probe.

Strzok, the lead FBI agent on the case, and Page, a lawyer working for the FBI deputy director, repeatedly messaged each other in October 2016 about efforts to pressure and speed the review of the FISA warrant.

For instance, on Oct. 11, 2016, Strzok texted Page that he was “fighting with Stu for this FISA,” an apparent reference to then-Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stu Evans in DOJ’s national security division.

A few days later, on Oct. 14, Strzok emailed Page he needed some “hurry the F up pressure” to get the FISA approved.

If the evidence is good and the FISA request solid, why did the FBI need to apply pressure?

The real reason may be the FBI was trying to keep a lid on the political origins, motives and Election Day deadline of its star informant Steele.

And that would be the ultimate abuse of the FBI’s FISA powers.

John Solomon is an award-winning investigative journalist whose work over the years has exposed U.S. and FBI intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal scientists’ misuse of foster children and veterans in drug experiments, and numerous cases of political corruption. He serves as an investigative columnist and executive vice president for video at The Hill. Follow him on Twitter @jsolomonReports.