Christopher Steele's nugget of fool's gold was easily disproven but FBI didn't blink an eye
By John Solomon, opinion contributor 05/21/19 06:30 PM EDT Of all the wild tales that Christopher Steele spun about Russia-Trump collusion during a visit to the State Department shortly before the 2016 election, only one was deemed worth forwarding to his FBI handlers. Long hidden, the now-disclosed email speaks volumes about both the quality of Steeles so-called intelligence gathering and the FBIs willingness to vet an informant who was openly biased against Donald Trump, paid by Trumps Democratic opponent, and motivated by an <https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/442592-steeles-stunning-pre-fisa-co nfession-informant-needed-to-air-trump-dirt> Election Day deadline. Multiple sources confirm to me that the attachment that Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec sent to then-FBI section chief Stephen Laycock on Oct. 13, 2016, was a summary from Steeles company alleging Trump and Russia might be communicating through a computer server at Russias Alfa Bank. This long-debunked allegation has floated around Washington since the summer of 2016, compliments of <https://thehill.com/people/hillary-clinton> Hillary Clinton backers ranging from a university computer science professor who spread it across the internet to a lawyer for Clintons campaign who delivered it to the FBI in summer 2016. The theory worthy of a spy novel was that a series of data pings between a computer in Trump Tower and Alfa Bank in Moscow actually was <http://time.com/5592739/donald-trump-petr-aven-alfa-bank/> a secret beacon alerting the Putin and Trump teams that it was time to talk about colluding on hijacking the American presidential election. The story eventually made its way to mainstream media such as The New York Times, Slate, CNN and, just last fall, The New Yorker. It has been debunked by the FBI, and it was not mentioned as a reliable allegation in special counsel <https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf> Robert Muellers report. Steeles version of the allegation was uploaded to a private internet storage service, then downloaded by Kavalec and sent on Oct. 13, 2016, to Laycock, who immediately forwarded it to the FBI team investigating Trump-Russia collusion, according to people who have seen it. The email arrived eight days before the FBI choose to use allegations in Steeles so-called dossier to secure an extraordinary Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) <https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/419901-fbi-email-chain-may-provide-most-d amning-evidence-of-fisa-abuses-yet> warrant to spy on the Trump campaign in the final days of the 2016 election. ADVERTISEMENT In other words, it was a clear signal for the FBI to check Steeles credibility before offering him to the judges as a reliable informant. The reason? It was clear, convincing evidence that the FBI informant had broken protocol and was leaking to entities outside his chain of command, experts say. Had the FBI done due diligence and theres no evidence it did then its agents would have followed up with Kavalec to see what else Steele had blabbed to State. And they would have learned that he admitted he had an Election Day deadline to get his information public, was leaking to the news media and had provided demonstrably false information to State officials, according to <https://www.scribd.com/document/409058964/KavelecSteeleMemoToFile10-11-16> Kavalecs own notes. All of that, FBI intelligence experts tell me, would be enough to question Steeles credibility and reliability as an informant and to push a pause button on the FISA request. But even absent checking with State, the very piece of Steele intelligence that Kavalec transmitted to FBI the alleged back-door computer channel at Alfa Bank already was deemed unreliable by the bureau. The FBI received similar information in summer of 2016 from the Democratic Partys and Clinton campaigns lawyer, who forwarded it to then-FBI chief counsel James Baker. I first heard about the allegation in late September 2016 and, by the first week of October, I reached multiple U.S. officials including one inside the FBI who told me the <https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/411209-move-over-grassy-knoll-the-t rump-russia-bank-tale-joins-unproven> allegation had been investigated and the pings were determined to be innocuous contacts, most likely related to errant spam emails. Alfa Bank hired two experts who reached similar conclusions. Every time the story surfaced over the next two years, I <https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/411209-move-over-grassy-knoll-the-t rump-russia-bank-tale-joins-unproven> got the same answer from U.S. officials. And I wasnt alone. The New York Times <https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/01/us/politics/fbi-russia-election-donald-t rump.html> published a similar answer before the 2016 election: The F.B.I. ultimately concluded that there could be an innocuous explanation, like a marketing email or spam, for the computer contacts, it reported on Oct. 31, 2016. In the end, Kavalecs email to the bureau about Steele was a perfect test of Steeles credibility and of the FBIs willingness to question the credibility of its star informant in one of the most controversial FISA applications in American history. Both failed. Steele passed along easily debunked intelligence, and the FBI failed to ask hard questions about his credibility or to alert FISA judges to the concerns that Steeles behavior raised before the warrant was secured. In other words, before the FBI and its then-director, <https://thehill.com/people/james-comey> James Comey and deemed Steele a credible informant with no known derogatory information, the government knew: * Steele had told senior Justice official Bruce Ohr he was desperate to defeat Trump and was working in some capacity for the Clinton campaign; * he leaked his dossier to the news media; * he offered demonstrably false intelligence, such as the Alfa pings and an allegation given to Kavalec that Russian hackers were being paid by a nonexistent Russian Consulate in Miami. Rep. <https://thehill.com/people/mark-meadows> Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), a leader of the FISA abuse investigation, said the discovery two weeks ago of the State documents further heightens his concerns about the "problematic genesis" of the FBI's probe of Trump. "Each day we receive additional confirmation that those at the highest levels of the FBI were fully aware of the bias and lack of credibility that the whole investigation was initiated upon," he told me. Far worse revelations for the FBI likely lie ahead. Most Americans <https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/444799-most-americans-sup port-inquiry-into-fbi-decisions-to-monitor> now support an investigation into whether the FBI abused FISA to smear Trump. <https://thehill.com/people/donald-trump> President Trump is preparing to declassify the first tranche of documents in the Russia case, and they are expected to show the FBI possessed but did not alert the court to damning evidence of the Trump campaigns innocence, including recorded conversations of targeted campaign aides denying wrongdoing. But even before that happens, the State Department email that was kept from the American public and Congress for 2 1/2 years should be appreciated for what it signifies: It was a missed opportunity to assess Steeles research for what it was political fools gold. John Solomon is an award-winning investigative journalist whose work over the years has exposed U.S. and FBI intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal scientists misuse of foster children and veterans in drug experiments, and numerous cases of political corruption. He serves as an investigative columnist and executive vice president for video at The Hill. Follow him on Twitter <https://twitter.com/jsolomonReports> @jsolomonReports. EM -> { Trump for 2020 } On the 49th Parallel Thé Mulindwas Communication Group "With Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja and Dr. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda is in anarchy" Kuungana Mulindwa Mawasiliano Kikundi "Pamoja na Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja na Dk. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda ni katika machafuko"
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