Steele Dossier’s and the IG Report

[GURPS]

It paints a picture of Steele, a former British spy, as an eager gun-for-hire encumbered with a poor sense of judgment. The FBI, while absolved of a top-down, politically-motivated conspiracy to take down Trump, failed to verify any of Steele’s allegations, and also omitted key pieces of information that contradicted the dossier.

[clip]

The FBI also withheld information that was favorable to Page, but derogatory for Steele, according to the IG.

The report cites one example of the FBI failing to tell the FISC that Page was also an “operational contact” for five years for the CIA. A CIA employee had informed FBI agents in August 2016 that Page was given a “positive assessment” after providing information about a Russian intelligence operative with whom he had interacted.

The FBI also failed to include Page’s statement to a confidential FBI source named Stefan Halper in August 2016 that he had never met Manafort. That statement was significant because Steele asserted in the dossier that Page was working under Manafort’s direction to conspire with the Kremlin.

Investigators also withheld information provided by people who knew Steele that would have raised questions about the quality of his work. Steele associates who spoke to the FBI described the London-based spook as “smart” and a “person of integrity.” But others said that he demonstrated a “lack of self-awareness” and “poor judgment.” Another person said that Steele’s work was “underpinned by poor judgment.”



https://dailycaller.com/2019/12/09/doj-watchdog-debunk-dossier/

 

[GURPS]

Brennan Lied About Not Including Steele Dossier In Intelligence Community Assessment On 2016 Russian Election Interference

A few months later, on May 23, 2017, when testifying before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Brennan categorically denied that the CIA relied on the Steele dossier for the ICA report. Here is the full exchange with former Rep. Trey Gowdy:

Mr. Gowdy: Do you know if the Bureau ever relied on the Steele dossier as any — as part of any court filings, applications, petitions, pleadings?
Mr. Brennan: I have no awareness.
Mr. Gowdy: Did the CIA rely on it?
Mr. Brennan: No.
Mr. Gowdy: Why not?
Mr. Brennan: Because we — we didn’t. It wasn’t part of the corpus of intelligence information that we had. It was not in any way used as a basis for the Intelligence Community assessment that was done. It was — it was not.

Brennan claimed the unverified dossier was not “part of the corpus of intelligence information we had.” On page 179 of the IG report, IG investigators asked former FBI Director James Comey if he remembered discussions with Brennan on presenting the dossier to Obama. Comey said Brennan and other officials argued it was “important” enough to include in the ICA — clearly part of the “corpus of intelligence information” they had.

 

[GURPS]

Trump Was Right From the Beginning

In many parts of the report, Horowitz raises more questions than he answers. For example, he mentions in passing that the FBI considered giving the Trump campaign a head’s up on the investigation but decided against that on the grounds it would allow the suspected colluders to change their behavior. Why Horowitz accepts that as a sound explanation for not giving Trump a defensive briefing on the possibility of Russian spies in his campaign isn’t clear, especially since James Comey hair-splittingly claimed it was never an investigation of “Trump” but merely members of his campaign.

In other words, Trump was right from the beginning: a politicized CIA and FBI imagined the worst about him and were gunning for him from the start. They used foul means to obtain spying warrants against his aides that gave agents the power to intercept his communications. At the very moment Comey was denying that the Obama administration spied on Trump Tower, he had sitting on his desk FISA warrants, based on nothing more than Hillary-financed opposition research, that gave him the power to reach into the campaign’s communications, past, present, and future. Horowitz details a host of improprieties that led to those sweeping warrants.

In truth, very little of the report exonerates the FBI, contrary to the Left’s spin. If anything, the report makes the FBI look like a politically crude amateur hour. By relying so heavily on Hillary Clinton’s opposition researcher Christopher Steele, the FBI basically let her purchase FISA warrants against her opponent’s campaign.

Some of Horowitz’s findings are grimly comic, such as his discovery that at the very moment the FBI was casting Carter Page as a probable Russian agent it was hiding from the FISA court his status as a source for the CIA. So much for John Brennan’s vaunted “interagency” coordination.

 

[GURPS]

Chapter 3 of the IG report clearly outlines a presumption by all FBI officials that Joseph Mifsud was acting on behalf of the Russian government. Again, Horowitz eliminates more variables.

The only thing remaining is the conflict between Durham and Horowitz on this predicate issue; and eliminating all other possibilities for the strength of the disagreement expressed by Durham only one reasonable aspect remains to reconcile the disparity:

Joseph Mifsud wasn’t an FBI operative (not in the CHS database); but also Joseph Mifsud was not a Russian operative (hence predicate issue).
Someone else was running Mifsud on behalf of the background effort.

My hunch is CIA asset Stefan Halper was running/instructing Mifsud, thereby creating plausible deniability for the CIA and John Brennan. Whoever it was, Durham knows.

https://theconservativetreehouse.co...rowitz-and-durham-is-crystal-clear-on-page-2/

 

[Bann]

The Democrats are acting smug and so high & mighty in their Impeachment hearings and Pelosi, et. al. will, of course, will be performing royally for the cameras today in their presser. Let them have their little fun innthe sun. The Senate Republicans will wuoe the floor up with them all.

Inside they are running scared. Durham and Barr are fully onto them.

 

[Hijinx]

The Democrats are acting smug and so high & mighty in their Impeachment hearings and Pelosi, et. al. will, of course, will be performing royally for the cameras today in their presser. Let them have their little fun innthe sun. The Senate Republicans will wuoe the floor up with them all.

Inside they are running scared. Durham and Barr are fully onto them.

You sound optimistic,while I am not so sure of anything any more.
To be honest I don't trust the Republicans in the Senate all that much.
To be sure a couple of them have been red hot on Nader's ass in his circus trial.
Unlike Graham I want to see the Democrats torn to shreds in the Senate trial.
But will they.? That is the question.

 

[GURPS]

The Senate Republicans will wuoe the floor up with them all.

I'm not so sure after Cocaine Mitch's Performance

 

[stgislander]

Sounds like another... Yeah what they did was wrong but there was no intent to do wrong.

 

[GURPS]

Watchdog: FBI Knew 'Pee Tape' Highly Dubious, Didn't Tell Trump


The allegation that the Russians had recorded Trump watching prostitutes performing a "golden showers (urination) show" on a bed in a Moscow hotel room once occupied by President Obama and wife Michelle was perhaps the most salacious claim made in the Steele dossier, the Hillary Clinton-funded opposition research that falsely alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

The IG report says the dossier’s named author, ex-British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, had embellished the story, peddling an unproven rumor as verified fact in statements to the FBI.

The IG report states that the FBI knew the story was unverified sometime in January 2017.

On Jan. 6 of that month, then-FBI Director James B. Comey told the president-elect about the pee tape in a Trump Tower meeting.

CNN used that meeting three days later as a news hook to report on the dossier, which it had been unable to verify.