Guns and Crime

New FOIA records reveal Steele dossier motivations and FBI cover-up

Published

7 months ago

May 7, 2019

New FOIA records reveal Steele dossier motivations and FBI cover-up

For the past few months, I’ve been hesitant to point fingers at the Federal Bureau of Investigations as an institution that was directly involved in a scheme to discredit President Trump prior to the 2016 election. It has always been obvious there were elements within the Bureau at the time who hated then-candidate Trump, but I didn’t see it as a conspiracy that involved many if not most at the top.

A news report today on a Freedom of Information Act release has changed my mind. It’s now clear that the FBI was not only complicit as an organization of complying with forces bent on hurting candidate Trump’s chances, but they partook in a cover-up that, unfortunately, has extended into current leadership at the Bureau. Moreover, it seems clear Hillary Clinton’s campaign was directly behind much of it through all of the usual suspects, including Glenn Simpson, Peter Fritsch, Bruce Ohr, and Christopher Steele.

Perhaps the most frightening aspect of this revelation is the political bias didn’t end with the election. Once their candidate lost, they continued to push forward to discredit and possibly lay the groundwork for removal of President Trump. Not only was the basis for the Mueller investigation predicated on a series of lies, but those lies were then covered up from the American people and Congress.

This is unacceptable. Read this story start to finish:

Steele’s stunning pre-FISA confession: Informant needed to air Trump dirt before election

If ever there were an admission that taints the FBI’s secret warrant to surveil Donald Trump’s campaign, it sat buried for more than 2 1/2 years in the files of a high-ranking State Department official.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec’s written account of her Oct. 11, 2016, meeting with FBI informant Christopher Steele shows the Hillary Clinton campaign-funded British intelligence operative admitted that his research was political and facing an Election Day deadline.

And that confession occurred 10 days before the FBI used Steele’s now-discredited dossier to justify securing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and the campaign’s ties to Russia.

Steele’s client “is keen to see this information come to light prior to November 8,” the date of the 2016 election, Kavalec wrote in a typed summary of her meeting with Steele and Tatyana Duran, a colleague from Steele’s Orbis Security firm. The memos were unearthed a few days ago through open-records litigation by the conservative group Citizens United.

Kavalec’s notes do not appear to have been provided to the House Intelligence Committee during its Russia probe, according to former Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.). “They tried to hide a lot of documents from us during our investigation, and it usually turns out there’s a reason for it,” Nunes told me. Senate and House Judiciary investigators told me they did not know about them, even though they investigated Steele’s behavior in 2017-18.

Anyone who was holding out hope that maybe there were just a few bad apples at the FBI trying to stop the President in 2016 can put those hopes down. As much as I hate to admit it, there really was a conspiracy. That much is clear now. My apologies for not seeing it sooner.

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