- The U.S. government revealed Friday that it used multiple informants to obtain information against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
- In court filings, government officials also revealed confidential human sources were paid for their work.
- The FBI relied heavily on an uncorroborated dossier to obtain warrants to spy on Page.
The U.S. government revealed in court filings Friday that the FBI used multiple confidential informants, including some who were paid for their information, as part of its investigation into former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
“The FBI has protected information that would identify the identities of other confidential sources who provided information or intelligence to the FBI” as well as “information provided by those sources,” wrote David M. Hardy, the head of the FBI’s Record/Information Dissemination Section (RIDS), in court papers submitted Friday.
Hardy and Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys submitted the filings in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit for the FBI’s four applications for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants against Page. The DOJ released heavily redacted copies of the four FISA warrant applications on June 20, but USA Today reporter Brad Heath has sued for full copies of the documents.
Hardy’s declaration acknowledged that the confidential sources used by the FBI were in addition to Christopher Steele, the former British spy who authored the infamous anti-Trump dossier.
“This includes nonpublic information about and provided by Christopher Steele, as well as information about and provided by other confidential sources, all of whom were provided express assurances of confidentiality,” Hardy wrote, referring to information disclosed in the four FISA applications.
Former FBI Director James Comey talks backstage before a panel discussion about his book “A Higher Loyalty” on June 19, 2018 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Carsten Koall/Getty Images)
Steele, who is referred to as Source #1, met multiple times with FBI agents during the 2016 campaign. The bureau relied heavily on his dossier in its applications to spy on Page.
Republicans have raised questions about the FBI’s reliance on the dossier given that the salacious 35-page report remains largely unverified. An internal analysis conducted by the FBI expressed only “medium confidence” in the dossier, and Steele himself has...