The country was engulfed in riots after the officer-involved death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Black Lives Matter, anarchists, Antifa, the far left—all were out in force, and the Trump-Russia collusion circus was still going on in the background. More and more about this fiasco is coming to light with former acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell declassifying the interviews relating to this subject. His successor John Ratcliffe recently declassified the 2017 intelligence assessment where it shows the FBI added the Trump dossier to the annex of the report but kept out critical details. This isn’t shocking.
The bureau’s credibility has been shot, stabbed, and set on fire post-2016 election. The counterintelligence probe they launched in 2016 to look into Russian collusion was a partisan witch hunt. I mean, if you want to talk about omissions, just look at the papers disgraced ex-FBI agent Peter Strzok signed off on to launch Crossfire Hurricane, the non-spying spying operation against the Trump campaign.
Former FBI intelligence official Kevin Brock wrote, “What this FBI document clearly establishes is that Crossfire Hurricane was an illicit, made-up investigation lacking a shred of justifying predication, sprung from the mind of someone who despised Donald Trump, and then blessed by inexperienced leadership at the highest levels who harbored their own now well-established biases.”
Ouch.
So, it shouldn’t shock us that when the FBI didn’t cite that the ex-MI6 spook who compiled it, Christopher Steele, had personally leaked the document to the press, that it was a Democrat-funded political opposition research project, and that Steele himself admitted that some of his sources were more or less not really reliable. Chuck Ross at the Daily Caller News Foundation has more:
Comey & McCabe pushed to include the 2-page annex with the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian interference.
— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) June 11, 2020
The FBI left out a lot of details known to investigators at the time that undercut Steele and the dossier.
The omissions all point in the same direction.
The two-page document, which Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe declassified this week, describes Steele’s allegations about possible links between the Trump campaign and Russian government. It says that an FBI source — Steele — had provided information thought to be credible regarding Russia’s goals in meddling in the election.
[…]
But the document, which was attached as an annex to a Jan. 7, 2017, Intelligence Community Assessment, failed to disclose information that the FBI had regarding Steele that likely would have raised questions about his motives for investigating the Trump campaign, as well as the validity of his allegations.
According to a Justice Department inspector general’s (IG) report, Steele told his FBI handlers on Oct. 3, 2016, that a key sub-source for his dossier was a “boaster” and “egotist.”
Some of Steele’s former colleagues also told FBI counterintelligence officials in December 2016 that the ex-spy sometimes showed poor judgment, according to the IG report.
The annex also does not disclose that the FBI cut ties with Steele on Nov. 1, 2016, after he had unauthorized contact with the media.
[…]
While the annex stated that Steele produced the dossier on behalf of a private client, it does not identify the client as the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign.
Yeah, because a biased piece of political propaganda that was riddled with Russian misinformation would be embarrassing. It is embarrassing. This dossier was the basis for this entire narrative that was exposed as a fraud. It was cited as credible evidence to spy on Americans; former Trump campaign official Carter Page was under a FISA warrant. It was the main reason why Michael Flynn was ensnared in this mess as well.
It just rehashes all of the allegations that have been lobbed at the FBI. They knew the dossier was trash, they weaponized it to go after Trump because Peter Strzok and company were doing all they could to beat him in the presidential election, and they hoped all of their dirty tactics would be swept under the rug under a Hillary administration. Not the case. And on top of that, the DOJ appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel to polish this mess of an investigation that was supported by nothing—no evidence. The Special Counsel’s Office tried desperately to find some, and even they could find any. And that probe was loaded with hardcore liberals and Democratic partisans. This myth engulfed the media for over two years, and it was utterly false and the key players, given their actions, probably knew as well. But ‘orange man…bad,’ right?
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