DoJ OIG Review of Four FISA Applications and Other Aspects of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane Investigation
Executive Summary Notes (as compiled by glocktogo)
• Crossfire Hurricane (CH) opened on July 31, 2016, after Australian Ambassador Alexander Downer (AA) reported the bar conversation with Papadopoulos 2 ½ months earlier. The Steele Dossier played no part in opening the investigation.
• Individual cases were opened on Papadopoulos, Page, Manafort & Flynn in August, 2016.
• The full CH investigation was authorized by Counterintelligence Division Asst. Director Bill Priestap, based on the AA’s report and the ongoing investigation into the DNC hack.
• Priestap was the one who decided that the Trump Campaign would not be notified of the Russian intelligence threat.
• Priestap was Strozk’s immediate supervisor. Strozk was involved in all the discussions regarding the opening of CH, and Strozk approved the 4 individual cases on Trump associates. These were based on which Trump associates had recently travelled to Russia or had other alleged ties to Russia.
• Strozk was sent “abroad” to interview Ambassador Downer.
• Confidential Human Sources (CHS) were identified who could provide human intelligence (HUMINT) and recordings of Trump associates.
• CH sent multiple CHSs to record conversations with Papadopoulos and Page, without their knowledge.
• In August, 2016, CH discussed getting a FISA surveillance warrant on Page, but they determined they didn’t have PC to warrant it.
• CH received the Steele Dossier September 19, 2016 and used it as PC to obtain electronic surveillance authority from the FISC on September 21, 2016.
• While Steele was a registered CHS for the FBI, the CH team downplayed or ignored information that cast doubt on the veracity of his information.
• The Steele Dossier played a “central and essential role” in the CH team’s decision to seek the initial and three subsequent FISA warrants against Page.
• While CH was kicked off by the barroom report on Papadopoulos, the FBI attorneys were against getting a FISA warrant on him, due to lack of corroborating information.
• The CH team DID NOT give all the relevant information to senior leadership and they (James Baker, Andrew McCabe and James Comey) supported relying on the Steele Dossier to seek the FISA warrants on Page. This was over the objection of Deputy Asst. Attorney General Stuart Evans, who was concerned that they were using opposition research intended for a political campaign.
• The warrants went forward despite there being no independent corroboration of the Steele Dossier.
• Steele’s “reliability” was overstated by the CH team and did not meet FBI standards. His activities ultimately resulted in his being delisted as an approved FBI CHS, but CH continued to rely on him and his reporting thereafter.
• CH omitted exculpatory recordings from CHSs surveilling Page and Papadopoulos, while including recordings of Page that supported their theory.
• During all four FISA warrant applications against Page, CH never included the fact that Page was in fact an “operational contact” for the CIA, and had “candidly” provided information on Russian contacts during the period in question to the CIA. The FBI were aware of this fact as early as August, 2016, but a CH agent misrepresented that information as “dated” and “outside scope”. It was not.
• The IG could not interview Comey, therefore they could not determine accurately whether Comey was aware of any of these issues.
• The FBI officially closed Steele as an authorized CHS in November, 2016, but DoJ Associate Deputy Attorney General (AGAG) and Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) Director Bruce Ohr subsequently met with the FBI 13 times, to pass along further Steele derived information he received from Fusion GPS (Steele’s client on the Dossier).
• The CIA objected to the Steele Dossier being included in an Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on Russian election interference as “internet rumor”, but Comey and McCabe sought to have it included, portions of which were.
• The FBI sent agents abroad to shore up Steele’s credibility after he was closed as a CHS, but that information (both positive and negative) was never included in his file.
• FBI interviews with Steele and his sources revealed “potentially serious problems” with his reports.
• The FBI failed to corroborate ANY of the allegations against Page made by Steele.
• The CH team ultimately had multiple instances of non-corroborated evidence, exculpatory evidence and lack of source credibility being omitted from the three FISA warrant renewals against Page. This is the foundation for the IG’s 17 documented instances where the CH team failed to follow FBI policy and procedure in regards to FISA warrant applications.
• When Page made public statements in April & May, 2017 that he had assisted U.S. government agencies in the past, a request was made to confirm that Page was not a U.S. intelligence source. That Page WAS a CIA source was confirmed to an FBI Office of General Counsel attorney, who subsequently tampered with electronic communications to state that Page WAS NOT A SOURCE. This resulted in the 3rd FISA warrant reauthorization against Page being issued based on false information (hence the criminal referral to the Durham probe).
• Ultimately, the 17 significant procedural errors listed were so “basic and fundamental”, it calls into question the FBI’s management and supervision of the FISA process.
• Regarding ADAG Ohr, he initially met directly with McCabe to pass along Steele information he received directly from Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson. After the Ohr/McCabe meeting, Ohr met with members of CH 13 times to pass along information from Steele and/or Simpson.
• Ohr failed to notify his DoJ superiors that he was meeting with Steele, Simpson, DoS contacts and then the FBI. Ohr acknowledged that had he notified his superiors, he likely would’ve been told to stop. Ohr was operating wholly outside the scope of his office in these matters.
• Ohr was also taking Steele derived information to the DoJ Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section (MLARS) regarding Manafort. Several of these meetings also included Strozk and Lisa Page.
• While CHS’s and Undercover Employees (UCE’s) were used to surveil and record Trump Campaign members, there were no CHS’s or UCE’s placed within the campaign staff directly.
TL;DR: The FBI relied on one alleged barroom conversation that wasn’t reported for several months, and a discredited source proffering unsubstantiated political opposition “research”, to spy on the American presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump. The FBI misled the FISA court four times in order to obtain electronic surveillance warrants on a Trump Campaign official, who was in actuality a CIA confidential human source. In every instance where there was ambiguity, exculpatory evidence, conflicting information or FBI policy or procedure that might call the basis for the investigation into question, the FBI made “mistakes” in favor of continuing to surveil an American political campaign. When a crucial component if the investigation’s source predication was de-certified for cause, a high ranking DoJ official outside the scope of his authority intervened to continue feeding that unreliable information into the investigation.
I would contend that the IG report is narrow in scope and while it did not prove political bias in the official investigation, it fell far short of refuting it. Folks, this is just the first 20 pages of the Horowitz IG report, which is 476 pages long. It doesn’t even really get into Papadopoulos’ assertion that he originally heard that Russia might have dirt on Hillary from Joseph Mifsud (Page 262) on April 26, 2016, which Mifsud denied to the FBI. This is the same Mifsud who may or may not be either a Russian intelligence asset and/or a CIA intelligence asset respectively. All we know is that during all the hullabaloo which ensued, Mifsud was hiding out in an apartment paid for by “Link International”, right next to the American Embassy in Rome, allegedly at the behest of the head of Italian secret services (according to an interview with Mifsud).
https://www.justice.gov/storage/120919-examination.pdf
Originally Posted by armtx77
Senior Member
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