Recently declassified evidence directly undercuts the main arguments the FBI used to justify investigating President Trump and his campaign.
They’ve come slowly, drip by drip: the reluctant revelations of an FBI bureaucracy. But taken together, the body of evidence now amassed over two years of investigating the investigators explains why Attorney General William Barr last week declared there was never really a basis to probe Donald Trump’s campaign for alleged collusion with Russia.
"I think the president has every right to be frustrated, because I think what happened to him was one of the greatest travesties in American history," Barr told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham.
"Without any basis they started this investigation of his campaign, and even more concerning, actually is what happened after the campaign, a whole pattern of events while he was president. to sabotage the presidency, and I think that – or at least have the effect of sabotaging the presidency,” the attorney general said.
Two years ago, those words coming from the top law enforcement official in the land would have been hard to imagine, or to support with public evidence.
But today, after countless open record lawsuits, congressional investigations, sworn depositions and declassifications, there is compelling evidence that the FBI did not have justification to sustain its nearly three year-long, now debunked, Russia collusion probe or to support Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants targeting the Trump campaign.
Furthermore, the evidence shows, the false narrative was sustained by repeated leaks of information to the news media that was blatantly false, debunked in many instances by evidence sitting in the FBI's own files.
The latest revelations came Friday, when previously classified footnotes from the Justice Department inspector general were unmasked and showed the FBI had stunning reason to distrust Christopher Steele’s dossier when the former British spy first pitched it in July 2016.
But today, after countless open record lawsuits, congressional investigations, sworn depositions and declassifications, there is compelling evidence that the FBI did not have justification to sustain its nearly three year-long, now debunked, Russia collusion probe or to support Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants targeting the Trump campaign.
Furthermore, the evidence shows, the false narrative was sustained by repeated leaks of information to the news media that was blatantly false, debunked in many instances by evidence sitting in the FBI's own files.
The latest revelations came Friday, when previously classified footnotes from the Justice Department inspector general were unmasked and showed the FBI had stunning reason to distrust Christopher Steele’s dossier when the former British spy first pitched it in July 2016.
Here are 13 of the most important revelations that undercut the FBI’s predicate for opening an investigation targeting the Trump campaign in July 2016, for obtaining a year’s worth of FISA warrants to spy on former campaign adviser Carter Page and for seeking a special prosecutor, Robert Mueller, to take over and extend the probe.
1.) The FBI possessed information dating to 2015 in Steele’s intelligence (Delta) file warning that he might be the victim of Russian disinformation through his contacts with Vladimir Putin-connected oligarchs. By 2017, the FBI was warned specific false information in Steele's dossier was planted by Russian intelligence, according to the declassified notes that became public from Michael Horowitz’s report.
2.) Senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr warned the FBI in August 2016 that Steele held an extreme bias against Trump (he was “desperate" to defeat Trump) and that his information was likely uncorroborated raw intelligence.
3.) Steele’s work on the dossier was funded by Trump’s rival in the election, Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and the Democratic Party, through their opposition research firm, Fusion GPS. Ohr warned the FBI in...
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