TEL AVIV - The four-page House Intelligence Committee memo alleging abuse of
surveillance authority raises immediate questions about the specific role of
former FBI Director James Comey in utilizing the infamous, largely
discredited 35-page anti-Trump dossier to fuel an investigation into
unsubstantiated claims of collusion between Russia and Donald Trump's
presidential campaign.
Below, in no particular order, are nine new questions about Comey's actions
following disclosures in the memo crafted by House Republicans and released
this past Friday:
1 - Why did Comey utilize the largely discredited anti-Trump dossier as
purported evidence to sign FISA documents to conduct surveillance on Carter
Page, who briefly served as a volunteer campaign foreign policy adviser?
The memo documents that on October 21, 2016, the FBI and Justice Department
sought and received the FISA order against Page, and that the agencies
sought the renewal of the order every 90 days in accordance with court
requirements. Renewals require separate finding of probable cause each time,
the memo relates.
According to the memo, Comey "signed three FISA applications in question on
behalf of the FBI, and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe signed one." The memo
relates that the FBI utilized the anti-Trump dossier compiled by former
British spy Christopher Steele as evidence against Page in order to obtain
the FISA warrant.
2 - Why didn't Comey tell the FISA court that Steele's dossier was
reportedly funded by Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign and the
Democratic National Committee (DNC)?
"Neither the initial application in October 2016, nor any of the renewals,
disclose or reference the role of the DNC, Clinton campaign, or any
party/campaign in funding Steele's efforts, even though the political
origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior and FBI officials,"
the memo states.
In October, the Washington Post reported that in April 2016, attorney Marc
E. Elias and his law firm Perkins Coie retained Fusion GPS to conduct the
firm's anti-Trump work on behalf of both Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential
campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Clinton's campaign and
the DNC both were clients of Perkins Coie.
Instead of Fusion GPS receiving lump sums from Perkins Coie, Fusion GPS
co-founder Glenn Simpson testified in November that he believes his firm
expensed Steele's payments directly to Perkins Coie. Simpson stated that
bank records show Fusion GPS paid Steele about $160,000. Simpson's November
14 testimony was released last month.
While it is not clear how much the Clinton campaign or the DNC paid Fusion
GPS, the UK Independent, citing campaign finance records, reported that the
Clinton campaign doled out $5.6 million to Perkins Coie from June 2015 to
December 2016. Records show that since November 2015, the DNC paid the law
firm $3.6 million in "legal and compliance consulting."
3 - Why didn't Comey tell the FISA court the dossier he allegedly relied
upon to request a warrant to monitor Page was a product of the controversial
Fusion GPS firm?
The memo relates that the initial application notes Steele worked for a
"named U.S. person," but does not name Fusion GPS or its founder Simpson.
Breitbart News has released a series of articles documenting credibility
issues faced by Fusion GPS and its leadership.
4 - Why didn't Comey tell the FISA court that Steele reportedly met with
Yahoo News at the direction of Fusion GPS?
A Yahoo News article about an alleged trip by Page to Moscow was cited as
purported evidence against Page in the FISA warrant, according to the memo.
5 - How did Comey justify relying upon the dossier to monitor Page when he
personally called the information contained in Steele's dossier "salacious
and unverified" months later?
Comey first filed the FISA application citing the dossier on October 21,
2016, according to the memo. Yet during his June 8, 2017 prepared remarks
before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Comey referred to the
anti-Trump dossier as containing "salacious and unverified" material.
6 - How did Comey justify relying upon the dossier to monitor Page when his
own FBI determined the document was "only minimally corroborated"?
The memo relates that after dossier author Christopher Steele was terminated
months earlier as an FBI source a "source validation report conducted by an
independent unit within FBI assessed Steele's reporting as only minimally
corroborated." Still, Comey saw fit, according to the memo, to utilize the
dossier in the FISA documents and he briefed Trump and Obama on the dossier
contents.
7 -Why did Comey push back against a request from President Donald Trump to
possibly investigate the origins of claims made inside the dossier?
According to the memo, senior officials at the FBI were aware that Clinton
and the DNC partially financed Steele's work when they applied for the FISA
warrant on October 21, 2016. That disclosure raises questions about Comey's
June 2017 prepared remarks for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
in which he related that he pushed back against a suggestion from Trump to
investigate the origins of the dossier claims.
The former FBI chief stated that following a January 6 Oval Office meeting
with Intelligence Community leaders, Comey "remained alone with the
President Elect to brief him on some personally sensitive aspects of the
information assembled during the assessment."
It is clear Comey was referring to the dossier since he writes that the
"salacious and unverified" material was about to be publically reported by
the news media. Four days after that briefing, the dossier was published by
BuzzFeed.
In his statement summarizing his conversation with Trump, Comey refers to
Russian prostitutes, a key component of the dossier:
He said he had nothing to do with Russia, had not been involved with hookers
in Russia, and had always assumed he was being recorded when in Russia.
In a private White House dinner with Trump on January 27, Comey says the
topic of the "salacious material" again came up and he reveals that Trump
was considering asking the FBI to investigate the origins of the claims.
Comey pushed back against that idea.
Comey writes:
During the dinner, the President returned to the salacious material I had
briefed him about on January 6, and, as he had done previously, expressed
his disgust for the allegations and strongly denied them. He said he was
considering ordering me to investigate the alleged incident to prove it
didn't
happen. I replied that he should give that careful thought because it might
create a narrative that we were investigating him personally, which we
weren't,
and because it was very difficult to prove a negative. He said he would
think about it and asked me to think about it.
However, according to the memo, senior FBI officials already knew the
political origins of the dossier months before Comey met with Trump.
8 - Why didn't Comey immediately inform Trump that the dossier was financed
by Clinton and the DNC, and was compiled by the controversial Fusion GPS?
9 - Why did Comey brief Trump and then-President Barack Obama on the
contents of the dossier if he knew the document's political origins, his own
FBI determined it to be "only minimally corroborated" and Comey himself
later referred to the dossier as "unverified"?
As Breitbart News documented, Comey's dossier briefing to Trump was
subsequently leaked to the news media, setting in motion a flurry of news
media attention on the dossier, including the release of the document to the
public. The briefing also may have provided the veneer of respectability to
a document circulated within the news media but widely considered too
unverified to publicize.
The memo relates that in early January 2017, prior to Trump's inauguration,
Comey briefed Trump and Obama on the dossier even though months later Comey
would label the dossier as containing "salacious and unverified" material.
On January 10, CNN was first to report the leaked information that the
controversial contents of the dossier were presented during classified
briefings inside classified documents presented one week earlier to Obama
and Trump.
The news network cited "multiple U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the
briefings" - in other words, officials leaking information about classified
briefings - revealing the dossier contents were included in a two-page
synopsis that served as an addendum to a larger report on Russia's alleged
attempts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
Prior to CNN's report leaking the Comey briefing to Trump, which was picked
up by news agencies worldwide, the contents of the dossier had been
circulating among news media outlets, but the sensational claims were
largely considered too risky to publish.
The network reported the documents state that "Russian operatives claim to
have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump" and
contain "allegations that there was a continuing exchange of information
during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the
Russian government."
All that changed when the dossier contents were presented to Obama and Trump
during the classified briefings. In other words, Comey's briefings
themselves and the subsequent leak to CNN about those briefings by "multiple
US officials with direct knowledge," seem to have given the news media the
opening to report on the dossier's existence as well as allude to some of
the document's unproven claims.
source: Breitbart.com
--
Ja sam covjek obican
radim svojim rukama
i nosim obraz koji traje
prokleta nam sudbina samo udara samo trazi
trazi, trazi, a malo daje
Ja gradim autoput u glavi
da se vozim slobodno
i ne dam nikom da me gnjavi
kada vozim prebrzo
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