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Local items of interest
April 20, 2020
FBI (Continued from page 8)
a short period of time was unusual and recommended that a validation review be completed on Steele because of this activity,” one footnote stated. You can read the declassified footnotes in their entirety here. 0415-20_ODNI_Declassified_Footnotes_2000337_Unclassified.pdf The FBI did not complete that reevaluation until 2017, long after they had used Steele’s material for a FISA warrant, even though officials acknowledged they were aware of the red flags concerning his oligarch contacts. The two dozen newly declassified footnotes from the Horowitz report on Russia probe failures were provided to Sens. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, on Wednesday, about two months after the senators first pressed for their declassifications. The two lawmakers expressed grave concerns about the FBI's conduct. "As we can see from these now-declassified footnotes in the IG’s report, Russian intelligence was aware of the dossier before the FBI even began its investigation and the FBI had reports in hand that their central piece of evidence was most likely tainted with Russian disinformation,” Grassley and Johnson said Wednesday. The memos provide the clearest picture to date that the FBI had numerous warnings it ignored, and kept from the FISA court, about Steele, including the likelihood that his dossier was used as a conduit for a Russian disinformation campaign. For instance, in early October 2016, before the first FISA warrant was secured, the FBI team leading the Russia investigation codenamed Crossfire Hurricane were told that one source used by Steele and known as Person 1 was tied to Russian intelligence, the newly declassified information shows. “According to a document circulated among Crossfire Hurricane team members and supervisors in early October 2016, Person 1 had historical contact with persons and entities suspected of being linked to RIS,” the acronym for Russian Intelligence Services, one footnote stated. “The document described reporting [redacted] that Person 1 was rumored to be a former KBG/SVR officer.” The FBI also failed to disclose that the source known as Person 1 was under a separate counterintelligence investigation by the FBI, the footnotes show. Likewise, the footnotes show, the FBI interviewed one of Steele’s former bosses in MI6 in November 2016, who warned FBI agents that Steele had overstated his seniority during the time he served in British intelligence. “Steele’s former employer told the FBI in November 2016 after the first application was filed that Steele had served in a ‘moderately senior’ position and not a ‘high-ranking position’ as Steele had suggested,” the footnote said. By Jan. 12, 2017, eight days before Trump had even taken office as president, the FBI had received clear warnings in a report that some of Steele’s dossier information about Trump lawyer Michael Cohen was “part of a Russian disinformation campaign to denigrate U.S. foreign relations.” The same month the FBI learned from an interview with Steele’s main subsource of intelligence that the central and later disproven allegation that Page had met with senior Russian official Igor Sechin during the 2016 election likely came from Russian intelligence. The subsource “who provided the information about the Carter Page-Sechin meeting had a (Continued on page 14)
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