The FISA Memo Released Today - A Non-Partisan Recap

The Russian Dossier, a Clinton Campaign funded piece of opposition research, and oft-cited tool for Mainstream Media to claim Trump-Russian Collusion, has been at the epicenter of more controversy lately as a memo relating to the FISA application was released today.

NOTE: This article is a brief Non-partisan overview of the Trump-Russia Dossier Debacle and the new information that was released in the republican-hyped FISA memo today. For a brief backstory of the Trump-Russia dossier up until this point I have provided a "Backstory" summary at the end of my article.

The FISA Memo reveals that the Trump-Russia dossier was used in the application to obtain wire tap/search warrants for the purpose of investigating then for Trump advisor Carter Page's involvement with Russia during the Trump campaign. At the time of the application, the FBI and DOJ officials were aware of the political involvement from the Clinton campaign but, in the FISA application, Christopher Steele's involvement with the DNC, the Clinton campaign, and Fusion GPS were not mentioned, at all.

Kind of an important detail, don't you think?
Oh, it gets better...

Now, in order to approve this FISA application, the FBI reportedly cited a news article based on leaked info from Christopher Steele and his dossier as corroborating evidence. To put it simply They used the article, derived from the dossier, as evidence of the validity of the dossier . I think most know that it is completely unacceptable to use a secondary source to prove the validity of it being a primary source.

Whether there is enough other corroborating evidence other than the dossier is still not fully known. Just the Russian-dossier info should not have been grounds for approval of the FISA warrant because of its politically biased origins, which were known, but not disclosed in the FISA application.

The biggest question that exists now is if there was sufficient supporting evidence provided to FISA that justified the approval of 3 related warrants by James Comey. Due to the classified nature of much of this intel, this still remains unknown.

If it does come to light that the approval of the warrant was directly related to information exclusively found in the dossier, then Trump will have the power to close the investigation due to the clear political bias that existed, but was not disclosed, in the FISA application.

If you would like to read the whole memo released today, please CLICK HERE or the link at the bottom

For a more detailed explanation, this ZeroHedge Article can help you dig a bit deeper.

The Wikipedia page of the Trump-Russia Dossier is also a good, succinct, resource: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump–Russia_dossier

Backstory

The Saga began in December 2015 when the Dems found out their e-mail server had been hacked and their e-mails were going to be leaked. This was when the Clinton campaign went on the offensive and contracted the opposition research firm Fusion GPS in order to counter the potential damage caused by the release of their own E-mails.

The final product of this private investigation is a 17 memo document written by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele - known as the Trump-Russia Dossier or the Steel Dossier which was used regularly as "proof" of Donald Trumps ties with Russia.

In July 2016 Steele reports findings of the dossier to the FBI in the "interest of national security" citing potential Blackmail of then candidate Trump. Since the FBI did not follow up with these allegations, Steele then leaked the information to publication [Mother Jones]
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Jones_ magazine) as well as John McCain, who then brought the information to former FBI Director James Comey who then started paying Steele to continue work on the dossier.

Download the FULL FISA MEMO HERE: http://docs.house.gov/meetings/IG/IG00/20180129/106822/HMTG-115-IG00-20180129-SD001.pdf