Authored by Larry Johnson via Sic Semper Tyrannis blog,
You do not have to wait for the Horowitz report. I can give you a preview of what he should have found if he conducted an honest audit.
The following is not my opinion. It is based on the flood of information that has come out over the past two and a half-years surrounding the plot to destroy the Presidency of Donald Trump. When you read these facts it is easy to understand how dishonest and corrupt the FBI were in presenting a FISA application to spy on Carter Page. Helen Keller could see this is wrong.
Let me take you through this piece-by-piece (except where noted I am quoting from the first FISA application).
Let’s start with the FBI claim that Carter Page was an “agent of a foreign government.”
The target of this application is Carter Page, a U.S. person, and an agent of a foreign power, described in detail below. The status of the target was determined in or about October 2016 from information provided by the U.S. Department of State.
What information did State supply? Information provided by the notorious Christopher Steele. The Washington Examiner’s Daniel Chaitin reported on this in May 2019:
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Steele met Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec on Oct. 11, 2016, 10 days before the first warrant application was submitted, and admitted he was encouraged by a client, the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, to get his research out before the 2016 election on Nov. 8, signaling a possible political motivation. The meeting was described in notes taken by Kavalec that were obtained by conservative group Citizens United through open-records litigation. The notes show that Kavalec believed at least some of Steele’s allegations to be false.
Government officials told the Hill that Kavalec informed FBI Special Agent Stephen Laycock about the meeting in an email eight days before the FISA warrant application was filed. Laycock, then the FBI’s section chief for Eurasian counterintelligence, quickly forwarded what he learned to Peter Strzok, the special agent who was leading the Trump-Russia investigation.
There it is. Not an assumption. A fact. State passed a false report from Christopher Steele to the FBI and the FBI ran with it. A competent FBI Agent would have asked about the identity of the source of the information. Either the FBI failed to do this or it lied in the FISA application. The FBI had a responsibility to note that Steele was the sole source for the claim that Page was an “agent of a foreign power.”
The application reiterates its basis for this assertion:
This application targets Carter Page. The FBI believes Page has been the subject of targeted recruitment by the Russian Government to undermine and influence the outcome of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election in violation of U.S. criminal law.
This is based on the false report from Christopher Steele as well as “cooked” intelligence provided by CIA Director Brennan. Brennan was passing off a low level Russian bureaucrat as a high level source with direct access to Putin. That was a lie.
The application then tries to bolster the lie by attributing the FBI’s credulity by citing the U.S. intelligence community (an ironic oxymoron).
In addition, according to an October 7, 2016 Joint Statement from the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security (Election Security Joint Statement), the USIC is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political organizations. The Election Security Joint Statement states that the recent disclosures of e-mails on; among others, sites like WikiLeaks are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. According to the Election Security Joint Statement, these thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the U.S. election process; activity that is not new to Moscow – the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there. The Election Security Joint Statement states that, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.
This was a lie. The US Intelligence Community aka USIC had made no such formal determination. If they had there would have been a written document. There was no written document and no evidence that “all 17 intelligence agencies” had coordinated and approved such a document. The Intelligence Community Assessment would not be published until January 2017 and only the FBI, the CIA and the NSA signed off on that piece of fantasy.
After stating that Carter was a Trump foreign policy advisor the FBI insists in the application:
The FBI believes that the Russian Government’s efforts are being coordinated with Page and perhaps other individuals associated with Candidate #l’s campaign (i.e. Trump).
That belief was based on the bogus information passed to State Department by Christopher Steele. It was a lie. They had no evidence and, more importantly, obtained no validation as a result of spying authorized by this outrageous application.
The FBI continues with this charade by outlining Page’s previous cooperation in helping gather evidence that led to the indictment of two Russian intel officers in January 2015. Worth noting that Bill Priestrap, who was now running FBI’s Counter Intelligence operations from FBI Headquarters, was the supervising agent in that operation and knew all about the role Page played in helping get the Russians. But the FBI put this into the application merely to foster the perception that Carter had an in with the Russians.
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The FBI then disingenuously introduces Christopher Steele (i.e., Confidential Human Source #1) as the source for evidence about Page’s supposedly nefarious activities:
According to open source information, in July 2016, Page traveled to Russia and delivered the commencement address at the New Economic School.7 In addition to giving this address, the FBI has learned that Page met with at least two Russian officials during this trip. First, according to information provided by an FBI confidential-human source (Source #1), reported that Page had a secret meeting with Igor Sechin, who is the President of Rosneft [a Russian energy company] and a close associate to Russian President Putin. [Steele] reported that, during the meeting, Page and Sechin discussed future bilateral energy cooperation and the prospects for an associated move to lift Ukraine-related Western sanctions against Russia.
This was a lie designed to bamboozle the FISA court Judge. When you look at the footnote for Christopher Steele, we catch the FBI in another monster lie:
and the FBI is unaware of any derogatory information pertaining to Source #1.
The FBI fired Steele as a compensated human source within days of this FISA application. Getting fired for leaking information to the press without the approval of the FBI is “DEROGATORY INFORMATION. Why did the FBI lie on this critical detail? Let us hope Horowitz addresses this.
