Is there any ‘context’ for that memo that can make the FBI look good?
You can certainly see why the FBI didn’t want the House Intelligence Committee memo released: It paints a brutal picture of the agency seeking a warrant to wiretap a US citizen on the basis of glorified gossip.
That picture may be false: Committee Democrats and the bureau insist the memo leaves out important context, and we absolutely want to hear more — especially whether the request cited harder information.
But it’s hard to see what could explain away this evidence:
Andrew McCabe, then No. 2 at the FBI and a key player in the investigation, told the committee the bureau never would’ve tried for the warrant without the “Steele Dossier,” which alleged that Carter Page, a volunteer adviser to the Trump campaign, was a paid agent of the Kremlin.
The application for the warrant also cited a Yahoo News story — which was itself based on the same dossier.
The FBI knew, but failed to tell the court, that Steele’s work was opposition research on Trump, done for an outfit paid by the Clinton campaign, or that Christopher Steele said he was “desperate” to prevent a Trump victory.
We absolutely need to know more: Is any of the above what ex-FBI chief Jim Comey claims was “dishonest and misleading”? How?
Cutting against Comey’s credibility is his outrage that the memo “inexcusably exposed classified investigation of an American citizen,” given that the FBI’s spying on Page has been reported to death.
Page has never been charged with anything, nor is there any sign he ever will be. All he seems guilty of is an openly held and obscenely high opinion of Vladimir Putin.
Assuming the memo holds up, Americans are left asking whether 1) the FBI and/or its Justice Department overseers went off the reservation here by withholding key info from the court that OK’d the surveillance; or 2) the whole system for court oversight of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants is a joke.
It’s perfectly legit to have a lower standard for what was, after all, a national-security investigation — checking for Russian influence in a US presidential campaign.
And if the whole thing had been kept quiet, it’s hard to see any harm done. But this national-security investigation leaked like a sieve, especially after Election Day — with every leak a “dishonest and misleading” effort to paint President Trump in a terrible light.
What does everyone in hysterics over the memo’s release have to say about that?