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White House Official: Schiff Intentionally Sabotaged Democratic Rebuttal To FISA Memo
11 February, 2018
A
senior White House official accused Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) of
intentionally sabotaging the House Intel Committee's Democratic
response to the four-page "FISA memo" prepared by staffers
for Committee chairman Devin Nunes.
Appearing
on NBC's "Meet The Press," White House legislative
director Marc Short said that Schiff included confidential sources
and methods in his 10-page rebuttal which he knew would require
redaction - setting the stage for Democrats to cry foul.
“We
believe Congressman Schiff intentionally put in there methods and
sources that he knew would need to be redacted.
And if we redacted it, there
would be an outcry that says the White House is trying to edit it,”
Short said. “So, we said take it back, work with the FBI, clean it
up and we'll release it.”
Democrats
will likely point to the fact that the White House ignored
DOJ warnings
not to release the Nunes memo without redactions, calling it
"extraordinarily reckless" without a DOJ review. That said,
the FBI reportedly wanted names redacted from
the Nunes memo, while the White House claims that sources
and methods are
divulged in the Schiff memo.
The Democrats sent a very political and long response memo which they knew, because of sources and methods (and more), would have to be heavily redacted, whereupon they would blame the White House for lack of transparency. Told them to re-do and send back in proper form!
Rep.
Schiff responded, tweeting "Mr. President, what you call
"political" are actually called facts, and your concern for
sources and methods would be more convincing if you hadn't decided to
replease the GOP memo ("100%") before reading it and over
the objections of the FBI.
Mr. President, what you call “political” are actually called facts, and your concern for sources and methods would be more convincing if you hadn’t decided to release the GOP memo (“100%”) before reading it and over the objections of the FBI.
In
fact, the FBI did review the Nunes memo and only wanted
names redacted, according to journalist Sara Carter:
Marc
Short effectively confirmed this on "Meet The Press,"
telling the panel that the FBI's concern over the Republican memo
wasn't over sources and methods, rather, the agency didn't want the
names of its agents involved in "FISAgate" exposed.
“There
were not sources and methods of concern in that memo. There was
concern of us releasing it because they didn't want the same
transparency,” Short said of the FBI.
Democrats
say that the four-page memo released by GOP members of the House
Intelligence Committee paints an incomplete picture of the FBI's
conduct while engaging in counterintelligence operations against
then-candidate Donald Trump during the 2016 election.
A
few relevant points in the timeline...
Recall
that Donald Trump was considered a joke when he announced his run for
presidency. In fact, WikiLeaks emails reveal that the DNC elevated
Trump to
help Clinton win - thinking
there's no way he would win in a final runoff vs. Hillary.
In April,
2016,
the FBI is contacted by the DNC to report that they had been hacked.
They hire cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, which determines it
was Russian
intelligence who
conducted the breach
Perhaps
sensing that the DNC and Clinton were about to be majorly exposed,
and that Trump actually had a chance of winning the White
House, Fusion
GPS begins working for the Clinton campaign and the DNC in
April,
2016 to
provide opposition research on then-candidate Donald Trump. The deal
between Clinton, the DNC and Fusion GPS is sealed by Marc Elias,
a lawyer representing the DNC and Clinton.
Two
months later...
June
15, 2016, Hacker
"Guccifer 2.0" takes credit for the DNC
hack.
Later analysis would disprove this, as the CrowdStrike failed (or
chose not) to catch that the DNC files were copied at 22.6
MB/s,
all but confirming that the files had to have been copied locally by
an inside source. Many have speculated that DNC IT staffer
Seth Rich, whose murder is still unsolved, was the source of the
emails provided to WikiLeaks.
Five
days later...
June
20, 2016, former
UK spy Christopher Steele - commissioned by Fusion GPS, (which was
commissioned by Clinton and the DNC), files "The Dossier"
- the first of 17 memos which relies on
senior Kremlin officials and
makes salacious
and unverified claims against Donald Trump.
Of
note - the FBI had worked with Steele for many years, however
they severed their relationship after Steele went to the press with
allegations contained within his dossiers.
On October
19, 2016,
the FBI used
Steele's unverified dossier to
obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to
spy on one-time Trump campaign advisor Carter Page. The warrant
allowed the agency to also surveil anyone
page was in communication with - including members
of the Trump
campaign.
We
now know:
-
Steele's unverified dossier played a critical role in obtaining
approval from the FISA court to carry out surveillance of Carter Page
and "unmask" members of the Trump campaign
-
The FBI used a Yahoo
News article
written by Michael Isikoff to support the FISA application -
however the Isikoff article contained information provided by Steele.
In other words, the
FBI made it appear to the FISA court that two separate sources
supported their application, when in fact they both came from Steele
(interestingly,
Isikoff also wrote
a hit piece to
discredit an undercover FBI informant who testified to Congress last
week about millions of dollars in bribes routed to the Clinton
Foundation by Russian nuclear officials. Small world!)
-
Steele was paid by Clinton, the DNC and the FBI for the same
information
-
The FBI and DOJ made minimal disclosures
to the FISA court about the dossier's political origins - mentioning
in a footnote that a law firm paid for it
"FBI noted to a vaguely limited extent the political origins of the dossier. In footnote 8 the FBI stated that the dossier information was compiled pursuant to the direction of a law firm who had hired an "identified U.S. person" -- now known as Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS." -"Grassley Memo"
-
Despite terminating their relationship with Steele over leaking to
the media, the FBI vouched for Steele's reputation in the FISA
application in order to overcome the fact that most of the dossier's
contents were unable to be verified.
-
Signing off on the FISA applications for the FBI were James Comey
(three times) and Andrew McCabe. Signing off for the DOJ were Sally
Yates, Data Boente and current
Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein
We
look forward to the eventual release of the Schiff memo - however
it's clear that the Democrats are simply going to point to the
redactions and say "see, they covered up our proof!"
Let's
see if Schiff's gambit pays off...
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