![]() In late March 2017, he said the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane team investigating possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia faced a dilemma. The FBI’s reliance on the false Post story was “an act of desperation,” noted one of the officials. The Post, however, provided no source for this blockbuster claim, which Millian vociferously denied. Post reporters said a key source of the dossier’s allegations was a Belarusian-American businessman named Sergei Millian. The officials who spoke to RCI said the inclusion of the since-retracted Post story may be even more egregious because it was unsourced, which should have sent red flags flying at the FBI. In 2018, Isikoff said it was “a bit beyond me” why the bureau referenced his article. Instead of following the law and verifying this material before including it in the FISA application, the FBI simply repeated it as fact. Hence, Steele was “corroborating” his own shoddy work. That Yahoo article by Michael Isikoff said the allegations had been confirmed by a “well-placed Western intelligence source.” Isikoff later revealed that the source, former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, had concocted the false allegation about Page in a series of now-debunked memos financed by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The bureau’s FISA applications also referenced a September 2016 Yahoo News account to substantiate the false claim that Page had met with Kremlin officials in Moscow during the presidential campaign. This is not the only instance in which the FBI misrepresented unconfirmed news reports to secure authorization to spy on the Trump campaign. These applications were so tainted by bad information, politics, and glaring exculpatory omissions that after an inspector general’s probe, the Justice Department years later had to secretly concede to a federal surveillance court that they were “insufficient” to establish probable cause to spy on Page and therefore “were not valid.”įBI Director Christopher Wray recently told Congress he has instituted a number of reforms in response to the FISA surveillance abuses, yet at the same time, he appears to have tried to hide the full extent of those abuses under redactions.Īn FBI spokeswoman said, “We decline comment on this matter." Attempts to reach Durham, who has closed his office looking into FBI malfeasance, were unsuccessful. The FBI’s references to the Post story are contained in the April and June 2017 FISA applications. In the sections of the FISA renewal applications blacking out references to the Post, the officials said, the FBI claimed the underlying text was “sensitive information.” The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss still-classified sections of the FISA warrant affidavits. The officials confirmed to RCI that the censored section covers up the FBI’s reliance on the bogus Post story, published in March 2017, as purported evidence supporting probable cause to continue spying on Trump’s former aide. The embarrassing revelation hasn’t been previously reported thanks to redactions blacking out references to the Washington Post article in the still-partially classified applications. officials who have seen the original, unredacted FISA applications and described the passages to RCI. Its source was a front-page report in the Washington Post – one the newspaper later retracted after determining it was false, according to two former U.S. But the bureau had corroborated no such thing. Instead, it covers up additional improper behavior by the FBI brass, which initiated and signed off on all four of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act applications to spy on former Trump adviser Carter Page and his contacts within the Trump campaign and presidency in 20.įor example, the FBI tried to justify continuing to spy on Page in early 2017 by indicating to the secret FISA court that it had verified a rumor about Page receiving dirt on Hillary Clinton from the Russian government and facilitating a “well-developed conspiracy of cooperation” with the Kremlin to swing the 2016 election in Trump’s favor. RCI has learned that at least some of the redacted material, included in a “Classified Appendix” to Special Counsel John Durham’s final report, has nothing to do with protecting “sources and methods” and other “sensitive” investigative techniques. The embattled bureau tried to hide its misconduct by redacting information about its actions under the guise that it involved sensitive intelligence information. ![]() ![]() The FBI’s efforts to mislead a federal court in order to wiretap an adviser to the Trump campaign were more extensive than previously reported, according to classified documents described to RealClearInvestigations.
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