If a bombshell drops on Washington and the media doesn’t report it, does it make a sound?

Last night, FBI director Christopher Wray unclassified large segments of a criminal referral letter sent to the Justice Dept. by Sen. Chuck Grassley. The letter calls for a criminal investigation of Christopher Steele for lying to the FBI. It also calls the DOJ to investigate the FBI’s misrepresentations to the FISA court.

Now we know why Democrats are fighting to destroy the Nunes Memo, and why the media this morning is more concerned about a military parade than the undermining of our nation. 

Put simply, the FBI flat out lied to the FISA court to get warrants to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page — and thus the Trump campaign. And they did so repeatedly. The letter also backs up the Nunes Memo and knocks Democratic talking points straight into the Potomac.

Further, not only did Hillary Clinton pay for the dossier, but her henchmen provided material for the dossier. That material had been handed out by Russia. 

Read the updated document yourself right here.

It All Hinged on Steele … and FBI Lied About Him

Before we get to Sen. Grassley, let’s set the stage with a key fact from the Nunes Memo:  “Deputy Director [Andrew] McCabe testified before the Committee in December 2017 that no surveillance warrant would have been sought from the FISC without the Steele dossier information.” No dossier, no warrant. 

The dossier was “salacious” and “unverified.” Those are former FBI director James Comey’ words. That alone makes its use dubious. So Grassley’s committee asked Comey the obvious: Why did the FBI rely on an unverified dossier, especially “in light of the highly political motives surrounding its creation”?  Comey replied, “because Mr. Steele himself was considered reliable due to his past work with the Bureau.” So no Steele, no dossier, no warrant. 

Comey’s claim doesn’t hold water. 

1. The FBI knew Steele was in the pay of the Hillary Clinton campaign. They did not share this with the FISA court.
2. The FBI knew Steele was “desperate” to stop Donald Trump. They knew this from top DOJ official Bruce Ohr, whose wife worked on the dossier, and who had secretly met with Steele. The FBI did not share this with the court. In fact, they did not reveal Ohr’s connection at all.
3. The FISA application noted a September 23, 2016 news article containing “some of the same dossier information about Mr. Page compiled by Mr. Steele and on which the FBI relied in its application.” They told the court, “The FBI does not believe that [Steele] directly provided this information to the press.” However, the FBI did become fully aware Steele had been briefing the press.
4. In fact, the FBI formally ended its relationship with Steele because he had spread the dossier dirt around.  (We say “formally” because Steele, via Ohr, continued to supply the FBI with information.) Steele also revealed to Mother Jones he was partnering with the FBI. (In the article he’s described as a “former senior intelligence officer for a Western country who specialized in Russian counterintelligence.”)
5. The FBI not only did not reveal that they had severed the relationship, they continued to vouch for his credibility. Again, Steele’s credibility was the sole thing justifying the use of the unverified dossier. 

So the FBI used a zero dossier from someone with zero credibility to zero in on the Trump campaign.

When Did the FBI Know? And the FBI’s Bind

A key question: At what point did the FBI become aware that Steele had been sharing dossier information to the press? Grassley’s letter says:

Mr. Steele told the FBI he had not shared the Carter Page dossier information beyond his client and the FBI. The Department repeated that claim to the FISC. Yet Mr. Steele acknowledged in sworn filings that he did brief Yahoo News and other media organizations about the dossier around the time of the publication of the Yahoo News article that seems based on the dossier.

 This puts the FBI in a bind:

Thus the FISA applications are materially false in claiming that Mr. Steele said he did not provide dossier information prior to the press prior to October 2016, or Mr. Steele made materially false statements to the FBI when he claimed he only provided the dossier information to his business partner and the FBI.

If Steele lied, there goes his credibility. The justification for using the dubious dossier is shot. The FISA warrant is toast. Steele should be prosecuted.

If the FBI lied from the get-go  — in addition to keeping the information from the court later — there goes their credibility. The FISA warrant is toast. And FBI officials who knew should be prosecuted.

Unlike the Nunes Memo, the Grassley letter is more than a summary of information. It is a criminal referral. Congress is asking the DOJ to open a criminal investigation into Christopher Steele, while determining whether what the FBI told the court was true. 

But is Steele the real target? The referral ultimately pits Steele against the FBI. So is this actually a clever way to get the DOJ to criminally investigate the FBI brass involved in the FISA applications without saying you want a criminal investigation of the FBI? Something to ponder. 

Then there’s Hillary.

Grassley Focuses More Light on the Clinton Connection

Hillary Clinton’s campaign paid for the Steele dossier that was the basis for the FISA warrant. Conservative talk show host Mark Levin put it even more simply,”Hillary Clinton paid for a warrant.” However, the Grassley letter shows how Hillary’s camp was also involved in funneling information to Christopher Steele. 

A Steele memo uncovered by the Committee states his company received a report from the State Department. That report came from a foreign sub-source who was in touch with a second person who was in contact with a “friend of the Clintons.” Though the name is redacted in the Grassley letter, both Rep. Jim Jordan and Rep. Trey Gowdy report the “friend” was Clinton fixer Sidney Blumenthal.

That’s not all. The Guardian reported Clinton operative Cody Shearer created his own Russian dossier and fed information to Steele.

In other words, a Russian agent funneled information to a Clinton associate (via the Obama State Department) for use by the FBI against the Trump campaign.  Put simply, Christopher Steele himself describes collusion between Russia and Hillary Clinton to undermine the 2016 election. 

Where, I wonder, is Rachel Maddow?