The FBI knew dossier author Christopher Steele was talking to people in the State Department before filing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant application to wiretap Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
Steele met Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec on Oct. 11, 2016, 10 days before the first warrant application was submitted, and admitted he was encouraged by a client, the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, to get his research out before the 2016 election on Nov. 8, signaling a possible political motivation. The meeting was described in notes taken by Kavalec that were obtained by conservative group Citizens United through open-records litigation. The notes show that Kavalec believed at least some of Steele’s allegations to be false.
Government officials told the Hill that Kavalec informed FBI Special Agent Stephen Laycock about the meeting in an email eight days before the FISA warrant application was filed. Laycock, then the FBI’s section chief for Eurasian counterintelligence, quickly forwarded what he learned to Peter Strzok, the special agent who was leading the Trump-Russia investigation.
Laycock is now assistant FBI director for the Directorate of Intelligence.
[Related: Byron York: Why was FBI so wrong in Trump-Russia wiretap warrant?]
The contents of the email are largely redacted due to concerns about national security. It is unclear what Strzok’s team did with this information or whether this was an authorized communication between departments, but current and former FBI officials said it would be a major breach of protocol if it was not.
Although the FISA application in October 2016, which was released in redacted form, was marked as being a “verified application,” FBI officials later acknowledged that the dossier’s claims were not confirmed. In public testimony after he was fired in May 2017, former FBI Director James Comey called at least some of the dossier’s allegations “salacious and unverified.”
Three FISA renewals followed, stemming into 2017. Page was never charged in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, which wrapped up this year and could not find sufficient evidence to establish criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
The FBI’s use of the dossier, which contains claims about President Trump’s ties to Russia, has rankled Republican investigators on Capitol Hill. They and federal investigators, including Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, are looking into possible bias in the upper echelons of the Justice Department and FBI.
[Also read: Lindsey Graham says he will ‘back off’ FISA abuse investigation]
