You’re going to hear a lot of partisan screaming for the next 48 hours about the Nunes memo. But here’s the part that I think matters most, referring to the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation seeking a probable cause order authorizing electronic surveillance of Carter Page:
Neither the initial application of October 2016, nor any of the renewals, disclose or reference the role of the DNC, Clinton campaign, or party/campaign in funding Steele’s efforts, even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior DOJ and FBI officials.
In other words, the FBI knew that the information it was using to get the FISA warrant came from Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele, who had a partisan motive and an axe to grind. That’s the sort of information that a judge should know before he rules so he can evaluate the request fairly. It seems hard to believe that the FBI and DOJ simply forgot to mention where they got their information.
Let’s imagine the parties were reversed. If FBI officials decided to eavesdrop on Hillary Clinton’s campaign officials because of research by… oh, America Rising, or Jerome Corsi, and then withheld the source of that information from the FISA judge when they sought permission. The reaction from Democrats would be thermonuclear rage, and with good reason! We don’t want the far-reaching apparatus of federal law enforcement and the intelligence community being exploited for partisan objectives.
You may recall that the Washington Free Beacon retained Fusion GPS to provide research on multiple candidates in the Republican presidential primary.
But, really, who could imagine Hillary Clinton doing anything that was corrupt, dirty or underhanded? Of course the FBI trusted the information she paid for and provided. After all, they HAD investigated her and she was SO reputable that they found her innocent before they even started!