Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report confirms two things: The Steele dossier was an unreliable source of information, and the FBI used it as the foundation of their investigation into President Trump anyway.
The dossier, compiled by former British intelligence officer Christoper Steele, was so unreliable that the CIA rejected it as an “internet rumor,” according to Horowitz’s long-awaited report. The dossier was riddled with unverified claims that the FBI did not bother to investigate and confirm for themselves, Horowitz said, citing “at least 17 significant errors or omissions” in the FBI’s Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant application.
One omission is particularly troubling: the dossier’s funding. We know that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee helped fund the research that resulted in the Steele dossier. This piece of information could have been enough to disqualify the FBI’s FISA warrant application, and if that had occurred, it’s unlikely the intelligence community’s Russia hoax would have moved forward.
But for some reason, the FBI chose to leave this detail out. Either that or they didn’t care to ask Steele who was paying his bills, despite the fact that they knew Steele was involved in political opposition research.
“The FBI did not aggressively seek to obtain certain potentially important information from Steele,” Horowitz’s report states. “For example, the FBI did not press Steele for information about the actual funding source for his election reporting work.”
The political nature of Steele’s research did not require the FBI to toss it aside, Horowitz notes, but it did mean that the FBI should have been extra-thorough in its vetting and verifying processes. Instead, the FBI rushed through the FISA warrant process and neglected its responsibility to eliminate any conflicts of interest.
As a result, the Steele dossier — a thoroughly partisan, political, and untrustworthy report — was used to manipulate and exploit the political system. The Justice Department plans to run an audit to ensure similar abuse does not occur in the future, and Horowitz is scheduled to testify before Congress on Wednesday. But, as I wrote earlier, it’s clear there is deep-rooted irresponsibility in the intelligence community.
This irresponsibility has cost the FBI the confidence and trust of the president, his party, and his supporters.
But the FBI’s mishandling of the Steele dossier represents a bigger problem. The Clinton campaign and DNC’s ties to the Steele dossier are wrong for the same reason Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was inappropriate: partisan, personal politicking has no place in the federal government’s legitimate, lawful affairs.
Clinton’s attempts to undermine Trump’s 2016 campaign and Trump’s efforts to damage Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign are two sides of the same coin, and both have dealt a serious blow to the legitimacy of U.S. activities and the intentions behind them. Of course, the intelligence community was quick to act against Trump in 2019 — and it’s a good thing they did. But in Clinton’s case, when they had the chance to inquire after and report her campaign’s ties to Steele, they said nothing at all.
