The inspector general for the Justice Department, Michael
Horowitz, has released his report on the origins of the Russia investigation
and the FISA applications for surveillance of Carter Page. As expected, the
report found that the investigation into whether members of the Trump campaign
conspired with Russia, codenamed “Crossfire Hurricane,” was opened in good
faith and that the surveillance of Page was carried out with a valid probable
cause. Although the inspector general did not find a conspiracy biased against
Donald Trump, he did find that there were 17 errors or omissions by the FBI in
the four Page FISA applications.
In the report, which is
available online
here, the IG team found that Crossfire Hurricane was opened on July 31,
2016 and was based entirely upon information from a friendly foreign government
(FFG) that detailed George Papadopoulos’ claims that “the Trump team had
received some kind of suggestion from Russia that it could assist this process
with the anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be
damaging to Mrs. Clinton (and President Obama).”
“We did not find information in FBI or Department ECs,
emails, or other documents, or through witness testimony, indicating that any information
other than the FFG information was relied upon to predicate the opening of the
Crossfire Hurricane investigation,” the report states.
The investigation found “that, under the AG Guidelines and
the DIOG, the FBI had an authorized purpose when it opened Crossfire Hurricane
to obtain information about, or protect against, a national security threat or
federal crime, even though the investigation also had the potential to impact constitutionally
protected activity.”
“Additionally,” the report continues, “given the low
threshold for predication in the AG Guidelines and the DIOG, we concluded that
the FFG information, provided by a government the United States Intelligence
Community (USIC) deems trustworthy, and describing a first-hand account from an
FFG employee of a conversation with Papadopoulos, was sufficient to predicate
the investigation.”
The report cites Bill Priestap, then the FBI’s Counterintelligence
Division (CD) Assistant Director, who said that the FBI considered notifying
the Trump campaign that some of its staffers could be compromised. Priestap
told the IG that he decided against the notification because “if someone on the
campaign was engaged with the Russians, he/she would very likely change his/her
tactics and/or otherwise seek to cover-up his/her activities, thereby
preventing us from finding the truth.” The IG determined that this was a
judgment call that was not addressed by FBI policy.
With respect to allegations of political bias in opening the
investigation, the IG report says, “We did not find documentary or testimonial
evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the decisions to
open the four individual investigations.” Specifically, Lisa Page did not play
a role in opening any of the investigations. While Peter Strzok was involved in
the investigations, the report points out that Strzok “was not the sole, or
even the highest-level, decision maker as to any of those matters.” The
decision to open the investigation was “reached by consensus after multiple
days of discussions and meetings that included Strzok and other leadership in
CD, the FBI Deputy Director, the FBI General Counsel, and a FBI Deputy General
Counsel.”
Regarding Christopher Steele, the IG found that the FBI use
of Steele was based on five factors. These included “(1) Steele's prior work as
an intelligence professional for [the FBI]; (2) his expertise on Russia; (3)
his record as an FBI CHS [confidential human source]; ( 4) the assessment of
Steele's handling agent that Steele was reliable and had provided helpful
information to the FBI in the past; and (5) the themes of Steele's reporting
were consistent with the FBI's knowledge at the time of Russian efforts to
interfere in the 2016 U.S. elections.”
The report found that “the FBI's decision to rely upon
Steele's election reporting to help establish probable cause that Page was an
agent of Russia was a judgment reached initially by the case agents on the Crossfire
Hurricane team. We further determined that FBI officials at every level
concurred with this judgment, from the OGC attorneys assigned to the investigation
to senior CD officials, then General Counsel James Baker, then Deputy Director
Andrew McCabe, and then Director James Comey.”
However, the IG found that “FBI personnel fell far short of
the requirement in FBI policy that they ensure that all factual statements in a
FISA application are ‘scrupulously accurate.’” The report identifies “seven
significant inaccuracies and omissions” in the first FISA application. These
include:
1. Omitted information the FBI had obtained from another
U.S. government agency detailing its prior relationship with Page, including
that Page had been approved as an "operational contact" for the other
agency from 2008 to 2013, and that Page had provided information to the other agency
concerning his prior contacts with certain Russian intelligence officers, one
of which overlapped with facts asserted in the FISA application;
2. Included a source characterization statement asserting
that Steele's prior reporting had been "corroborated and used in criminal
proceedings," which overstated the significance of Steele's past reporting
and was not approved by Steele's handling agent, as required by the Woods Procedures
[safeguards against abuse that went into effect in 2001];
3. Omitted information relevant to the reliability of Person
1, a key Steele sub-source (who was attributed with providing the information
in Report 95 and some of the information in Reports 80 and 102 relied upon in
the application), namely that (1) Steele himself told members of the Crossfire Hurricane
team that Person 1 was a "boaster" and an "egoist" and "may
engage in some embellishment" and (2) [redacted]
4. Asserted that the FBI had assessed that Steele did not
directly provide to the press information in the September 23 Yahoo News
article based on the premise that Steele had told the FBI that he only shared
his election-related research with the FBI and Fusion GPS, his client; this
premise was incorrect and contradicted by documentation in the Woods File-
Steele had told the FBI that he also gave his information to the State Department;
5. Omitted Papadopoulos's consensually monitored statements
to an FBI CHS in September 2016 denying that anyone associated with the Trump campaign
was collaborating with Russia or with outside groups like Wikileaks in the
release of emails;
6. Omitted Page's consensually monitored statements to an
FBI CHS in August 2016 that Page had "literally never met" or
"said one word to" Paul Manafort and that Manafort had not responded
to any of Page's emails; if true, those statements were in tension with claims
in Report 95 that Page was participating in a conspiracy with Russia by acting
as an intermediary for Manafort on behalf of the Trump campaign; and
7. Included Page's consensually monitored statements to an
FBI CHS in October 2016 that the FBI believed supported its theory that Page was
an agent of Russia but omitted other statements Page made that were
inconsistent with its theory, including denying having met with Sechin and
Divyekin, or even knowing who Divyekin was; if true, those statements contradicted
the claims in Report 94 that Page had met secretly with Sechin and Divyekin
about future cooperation with Russia and shared derogatory information about
candidate Clinton.
“None of these inaccuracies and omissions were brought to
the attention of OI before the last FISA application was filed in June 2017,”
the IG found. “Consequently, these failures were repeated in all three renewal
applications.”
There were three subsequent FISA applications that contained
an additional 10 errors. These errors were:
8. Omitted the fact that Steele’s Primary Subsource, who the
FBI found credible, had made statements in January 2017 raising significant questions
about the reliability of allegations included in the FISA applications,
including, for example, that he/she had no discussion with Person 1 concerning
WikiLeaks and there was “nothing bad" about the communications between the
Kremlin and the Trump team, and that he/she did not report to Steele in July
2016 that Page had met with Sechin;
9. Omitted Page’s prior relationship with another US.
government agency, despite being reminded by the other agency in June 2017, prior
to the filing of the final renewal application, about Page's past status with
that other agency; instead of including this information in the final renewal
application, the OGC Attorney altered an email from the other agency so that
the email stated that Page was “not a source" for the other agency, which
the FBI affiant relied upon in signing the final renewal application;
10. Omitted information from persons who previously had
professional contacts with Steele or had direct knowledge of his work-related performance,
including statements that Steele had no history of reporting in bad faith but “[d]emonstrates
lack of self-awareness, poor judgment,” “pursued people with political risk but
no intelligence value,” “didn’t always exercise great judgment,” and it was “not
clear what he would have done to validate” his reporting;
11. Omitted information obtained from Ohr about Steele and
his election reporting, including that (1) Steele's reporting was going to
Clinton’s presidential campaign and others, (2) Simpson was paying Steele to
discuss his reporting with the media, and (3) Steele was “desperate that Donald
Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being the US. President";
12. Failed to update the description of Steele after information
became known to the Crossfire Hurricane team, from Ohr and others, that provided
greater clarity on the political origins and connections of Steele's reporting,
including that Simpson was hired by someone associated with the Democratic
Party and/or the DNC;
13. Failed to correct the assertion in the first FISA application
that the FBI did not believe that Steele directly provided information to the reporter
who wrote the September 23 Yahoo News article, even though there was no information
in the Woods File to support this claim and even after certain Crossfire
Hurricane officials learned in 2017, before the third renewal application, of
an admission that Steele made in a court filing about his interactions with the
news media in the late summer and early fall of 2016;
14. Omitted the finding from a FBI source validation report
that Steele was suitable for continued operation but that his past
contributions to the FBI's criminal program had been " minimally corroborated," and instead continued to
assert in the source characterization statement that Steele's prior reporting
had been "corroborated and used in criminal proceedings";
15. Omitted Papadopoulos's statements to an FBI CHS in late
October 2016 denying that the Trump campaign was involved in the circumstances
of the DNC email hack;
16. Omitted Joseph Mifsud's denials to the FBI that he
supplied Papadopoulos with the information Papadopoulos shared with the FFG
(suggesting that the campaign received an offer or suggestion of assistance
from Russia); and
17. Omitted information indicating that Page played no role
in the Republican platform change on Russia's annexation of Ukraine as alleged
in the Report 95, which was inconsistent with a factual assertion relied upon
to support a probable cause in all four FISA applications.
While the 17 errors “represent serious performance failures
by the supervisory and non-supervisory agents
with responsibility over the FISA applications” in the eyes of the IG, the
report further states, “did not find documentary or testimonial evidence of intentional
misconduct on the part of the case agents who assisted OI in preparing the
applications, or the agents and supervisors who performed the Woods Procedures.”
Nevertheless, the IG was not satisfied with explanations for the errors and
omissions and believed that “case agents may have improperly substituted their
own judgments in place of the judgment of OI [Office of Intelligence]” or the
FISA court.
Regarding Bruce Ohr, who met separately with Steele, the IG “concluded
that the federal ethics rules did not require Ohr to obtain Department ethics
counsel approval before engaging with the FBI in connection with the Crossfire
Hurricane matter because of Nellie Ohr's prior work for Fusion GPS. However, we
found that, given the factual circumstances that existed, and the appearance
that they created, Ohr displayed a lapse in judgment by not availing himself of
the process described in the ethics rules to consult with the Department ethics
official about his involvement in the investigation.”
While any significant error in such a high-profile investigation
is troubling, the 17 errors and omissions identified by the inspector general
are cause for concern. However, rather than a Deep State conspiracy, the IG
report identified “an absence of sufficient policies to ensure appropriate Department
oversight” as the probable cause of the problems with the FBI’s handling of the
case. Despite years of claims to the contrary, the investigation “did not find
documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation”
in the investigations of Trump campaign aides. That should be cause for
celebration.
