STATES DOJ/FBI INVOLVEMENT “UNREAL”
by Sharon Rondeau
(Aug. 28, 2018) — Late Monday, U.S. House Judiciary Committee member Mark Meadows (R-NC11) tweeted that “new information” has been discovered as to the involvement of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) in the circulation of the now-infamous Trump-Russia “dossier” which made unsubstantiated claims about Donald Trump’s alleged behavior during a visit he made to Moscow in 2013.
The dossier was commissioned by the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Hillary Clinton campaign, and a private company, Fusion GPS, using British citizen and former MI6 agent Christopher Steele as a conduit with alleged Russian sources.
In January 2017, then-FBI Director James Comey told the newly-inaugurated president, Donald Trump, that the contents of the dossier were “salacious and unverified,” yet the dossier was used as the foundation for four successive FISA warrants to surveil former Trump foreign-policy advisor Carter Page.
In his tweet, Meadows heralded the subpoenaed testimony Tuesday morning of DOJ official Bruce Ohr, who is now known to have communicated with Steele both before and after the 2016 election despite Ohr’s lack of authority to participate in counterintelligence activity. Meadows also referenced the technique of “circular reporting,” which involves a source leaking information to the press, then using the media’s output as a basis upon which to make a claim, in this case requesting the warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) authorized by the FISA law of 1978.
Last month, documents released by the DOJ indicated that not only was the dossier a major component of the warrant applications, but also that an article by Yahoo! News’s Michael Isikoff, allegedly a product of circular reporting from Christopher Steele, was included as a source.
According to Fox News, Ohr will face questions Tuesday morning over his communications with Steele and Glenn Simpson, founder of Fusion GPS. He may also be asked about his wife Nellie’s role, while employed by Fusion on the Trump dossier project, and how much she was paid.