The Steele Dossier and the ‘VERIFIED APPLICATION’ That Wasn’t
By Andrew C. McCarthy
May 18, 2019 5:00 AM
Former officials are fighting over who deserves blame.
H ere’s what you need to know: In rushing out their assessment of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, Obama-administration officials chose not to include the risible Steele-dossier allegations that they had put in their “VERIFIED APPLICATION†for warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) because . . . wait for it . . . the allegations weren’t verified.
And now, the officials are squabbling over who pushed the dossier. Why? Because the dossier — a Clinton-campaign opposition-research screed, based on anonymous Russian sources peddling farcical hearsay, compiled by a well-paid foreign operative (former British spy Christopher Steele) — is crumbling by the day.
As I write, we mark the two-year anniversary of Robert Mueller’s appointment to take over the Russiagate probe — which is fast transforming into the Spygate probe. Special Counsel Mueller inherited the investigation seven months after the Obama Justice Department and FBI sought a FISC warrant to monitor former Trump-campaign adviser Carter Page. By then, it was already acknowledged that dossier information was “salacious and unverified,†to quote congressional testimony by former FBI director James Comey.
That was problematic on a number of levels.
more
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/the-steele-dossier-and-the-verified-application-that-wasnt/
