GOP case: FBI probe based on tainted evidence linked to Clinton
1
February, 2018
Congressional
Republicans are seeking to make the case that the FBI’s
investigation into President Trump’s campaign and possible
collusion with Russia was based on flawed or politically tainted
evidence connected to partisans loyal to Hillary Clinton.
The
House Intelligence Committee memo spearheaded by Rep. Devin Nunes
(R-Calif.) that is the talk of Washington will be at the center of
the argument. The release of that four-page memo is expected as early
as Friday.
Another
document — an eight-page criminal referral filed with the Justice
Department by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley
(R-Iowa) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) — is also part of the GOP
case.
While
the FBI has been protesting the release of the Nunes memo, it has
been working behind the scenes to vet a version of the
Grassley-Graham memo, which is expected to be released in redacted
form soon. The FBI is also seeking redactions to the Nunes memo,
though it is not clear the White House or congressional Republicans
will agree to them.
Republicans
believe both documents will back up arguments that evidence used to
justify the FBI’s probe came from partisans loyal to Clinton,
sources said. They are also expected to play into arguments from some
Republicans that special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russia
is based on false information.
Those
suggestions have provoked a backlash from Democrats. Some Republicans
have also expressed concerns, with GOP leaders saying Mueller should
be allowed to continue his work. Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on
Tuesday backed releasing the Nunes memo but also offered support for
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
The
GOP's arguments that the FBI investigated on flimsy evidence will
zero in on ex-British intelligence operative Christopher Steele,
whose unverified dossier of Trump allegations gave enormous momentum
to the probe during the bitterly fought 2016 presidential election,
say sources familiar with the memo.
They
will argue the FBI failed to critically assess the political motives
and credibility of Steele and did not fully disclose that evidence
came from Clinton supporters as it sought to get permission from
courts for surveillance warrants.
“The
fact that half to three-quarters of the evidence the FBI used to
unleash the most awesome of surveillance powers upon Donald Trump’s
inner circle came from sources tied directly to his Democratic
opponent should worry us all, especially when that happened during an
election,” said one senior Republican directly familiar with the
evidence, describing the party’s core concerns.
“The
FBI allowed itself to be used by Clinton partisans to parlay
single-sourced, mostly unverified evidence into a counterintelligence
probe with clear weaknesses that weren’t disclosed,” the source
added.
Sources
in both parties and in law enforcement say the emergence of Steele
and his dossier in the summer of 2016 gave the FBI the jolt to open a
full counterintelligence probe into alleged Trump-Russia collusion.
Steele,
a British intelligence officer for decades, had provided reliable
evidence that helped the FBI in a prior foreign corruption case and
his early package of information contained multiple allegations of
Trump-Russia collusion organized and sourced liked real raw
intelligence, sources said.
So
the FBI put great credence in Steele’s work product when it
approached the courts for legal surveillance authority, even though
much of what Steele provided could not be immediately corroborated,
the sources said.
Steele
was employed by the research firm Fusion GPS, which was in turn being
paid to do opposition research on Trump by the Clinton campaign and
the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
Fusion
GPS was initially hired by the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative
website backed in part by Republican donor Paul Singer, to dig into
Trump. As Trump was clinching the GOP nomination, the Free Beacon
told Fusion GPS to stop doing research. Fusion GPS was then hired by
Clinton and the DNC through the law firm Perkins Coie.
Republican
investigators say they have evidence that Steele first approached the
FBI with his allegations on July 5, 2016, the same day then-FBI
Director James Comey announced he would not pursue criminal charges
against Clinton for passing more than 100 classified documents
through her private email server.
Republicans
believe the date of Steele's approach to the FBI is evidence of
politics, since his employer was being paid by a Clinton campaign
that for months was angered by the bureau's probe of the email
controversy.
Republican
investigators say it is unclear exactly when the FBI learned that
Steele was being paid by Clinton's campaign. But by late July 2016,
just weeks after he first contacted the FBI, the formal
counterintelligence probe was opened, the sources said.
After
Steele came forward, the FBI received information from a friendly
foreign government that also pointed to possible links between
Trump’s campaign and Russia.
The
diplomat from Australia heard a Trump campaign aide named George
Papadopoulos boasting in a bar that Russia was considering the
release of damaging emails from Clinton during the election. The
diplomat actually heard the conversation in May 2016 but it did not
get reported to U.S. authorities until weeks later, after Steele had
begun cooperating with the FBI, the sources said.
The
FBI gave credence to the information both because it came from a
trusted foreign source and because emails hacked from the Democratic
Party and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta had already leaked
onto the internet, the sources said. The FBI already suspected Russia
was involved in those hacking attacks by the time the information was
reported by the Australian diplomat, the sources said.
As
the investigation was unfolding, Steele also forwarded the FBI a new
piece of evidence with substantially similar information as that
contained in his dossier. The FBI learned that information came from
a private investigator with longtime ties to the Clinton inner
circle, according to sources familiar with the evidence.
The
sources declined to provide the private investigator's name, though
British papers have suggested a Clinton supporter named Cody Shearer
may have offered Steele information about Trump and Russia.
Republican
investigators say they have developed evidence that Steele broke off
his relationship with the FBI shortly before Election Day 2016 as he
and his employer, Fusion GPS, began talking to reporters.
The
investigators say the bumpy ending was due in part to the fact that
Steele and Fusion GPS were upset the FBI suddenly reopened the
Hillary Clinton email case but did not seem as invested in the
Trump-Russia case. Many Democrats believe the FBI's reopening of the
Clinton investigation cost her the election.
Glenn
Simpson, the co-founder of Fusion GPS who hired Steele, acknowledged
to the House Intelligence Committee in an interview that he and
Steele began talking to reporters because they were angry about the
reopening of the Clinton email case.
"We
decided that if James Comey wasn't going to tell people about this
investigation ... we would only be fair if the world knew that both
candidates were under FBI investigation," Simpson testified.
Simpson
separately told the Senate Judiciary Committee that Steele ended his
FBI relationship because he was alarmed by a story in The New York
Times on Oct. 31, 2016, that claimed the FBI had looked into ties
between the Trump campaign and Russia but found nothing.
“Chris
severed his relationship with the FBI out of concern that he didn't
know what was happening inside the FBI and there was a concern that
the FBI was being manipulated for political ends by the Trump
people,” Simpson said.
According
to the Republican investigator, the FBI also developed concerns that
either Steele or his employer, Fusion GPS, were contacting media
organizations to disseminate the very intelligence that was at the
heart of its probe, the sources said.
Simpson,
in his testimony, said he and Steele had conducted off-the-record
briefings with reporters in the fall of 2016, but claimed none of the
memos written by Steele were shown or given to the journalists who
attended. The purpose of the briefings, he said, was to encourage
reporters to ask questions about whether the FBI was in fact
investigating ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Republicans
plan to portray the timing of Steele’s cooperation, its abrupt
ending, his connections to the private investigator, and the Clinton
and DNC payments as prima facie evidence of politically motivated
digging rather than high-quality intelligence worthy of the FBI’s
extensive investigation, the sources said.
Grassley
referred Steele to the Justice Department for contacts he and Fusion
GPS had with the media around the same time he was cooperating with
the FBI. Grassley has asked the Department of Justice to investigate
whether Steele concealed those contacts from the FBI or whether the
FBI knew about the contacts and did not properly disclose them to
Congress or the courts.
The
reason the media contacts raised red flags for both Senate and House
GOP investigators is that the FBI used a fall 2016 news story with
allegations of Trump-Russia collusion that were similar to Steele’s
dossier as evidence to ask the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Court to issue a surveillance warrant against Trump campaign adviser
Carter Page, the sources said.
The
sources declined to identify the specific story. An Oct. 31, 2016,
story by reporter David Corn in Mother Jones, however, is the first
known story to make mention of Steele's work.
The
Steele dossier, the PI report and the news story “all seem like
independent corroborating evidence” but Republicans now believe
they were “the fruits of a single politically poisoned tree planted
by Clinton partisans,” said a source familiar with concerns that
are raised in the House Republican Intelligence panel memo.
“Rather
than quality double-sourced intelligence, it is our conclusion it was
nothing more than thinly veiled, single-sourced political opposition
research masquerading as intel," the source said.
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