Democrats: Steele dossier only ‘narrow’ part of FBI surveillance application
By Jeff Mordock, Seth McLaughlin and Stephen Dinan - The Washington Times - Saturday, February 24, 2018 A Democratic-funded opposition research dossier was only a “narrow†part of the FBI’s justification for obtaining a warrant to spy on a former Trump campaign official, congressional Democrats said in their long-awaited memo, finally released Saturday, detailing the process that led to the snooping.
The new memo says the FBI had opened a counterinvestigation into potential ties between the Trump campaign and Russia even before it obtained the so-called Steele dossier, a salacious and largely unverified document produced by a former British spy with funding from the Democratic National Committee.
The memo says ex-Trump aide Carter Page was targeted for recruitment by a Russian operative at a date that’s redacted from the document, and efforts to recruit Mr. Page continued.
The contacts were so striking that the FBI interviewed Mr. Page in March 2016, at about the time he was taking a role in the Trump campaign — though surveillance on him didn’t begin until months later, after he’d left the campaign.
<..snip..>
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/feb/24/democrats-release-their-version-russia-memo/