In early February 2018, Rep. Devin Nunes released a four-page memo outlining what he said were abuses committed by members of the FBI in securing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant against onetime Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. It wasn’t received well in most circles. Still, because of the release of the inspector general report about the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation and possible FISA abuse, the record shows that the Nunes memo was pretty much on target.
Nunes took quite the beating over the last three years from the press and the commentariat, including yours truly. I still think Nunes deserves a lot of that criticism. He is, after all, a grown man who thought it would be a good idea to sue a fake cow from Twitter because the person running the account was a meanie pants to him.
That said, on the other side of the aisle, Democrat Adam Schiff also engages in the worst kind of partisan hackery. The Washington Examiner magazine cover story about Schiff, “The Worst Man for The Job,” written by David Harsanyi, spells out why it was a big mistake to run the impeachment inquiry through the House Intelligence Committee.
Whatever your thoughts are on impeachment, it doesn’t take away from the fact that Nunes was right. I took a beating over an old tweet (people have way too much time on their hands) where I dismissed the idea of the FBI engaging in wrongdoing to obtain FISA warrants during a counterintelligence investigation, and it turns out I was wrong. Nunes was right — for the most part.
In his memo, Nunes wrote: “In the case of Carter Page, the government had at least four independent opportunities before the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court] to accurately provide an accounting of the relevant facts. However, our findings indicate that, as described below, material and relevant information was omitted.”
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz substantiated that in his report. He wrote:
Horowitz also went on to talk about the Justice Department attorney who altered a document to make it look as if Page wasn’t a source for another government agency when he was.
That’s not just a mistake. That’s tampering with evidence, and whoever did it should face prosecution.
Concerning how much the role the infamous Steele dossier played in securing the FISA warrants, it’s not a nail-on-the-head scenario, but it’s still not a good look for the feds. Nunes’s memo states: “The ‘dossier’ compiled by Christopher Steele (Steele dossier) on behalf of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Hillary Clinton campaign formed an essential part of the Carter Page FISA application.”
Horowitz said, “We determined that the Crossfire Hurricane team’s receipt of Steele’s election reporting on September 19, 2016, played a central and essential role in the FBI’s and Department’s decision to seek the FISA order.”
If you notice, Horowitz says the dossier was central and essential in seeking the FISA warrant, whereas Nunes said it was “essential” to the FISA application. Someone could argue that it is a distinction without a difference, and I agree. The FBI tried to get a FISA warrant in July 2016 and was rebuffed. It was only in September 2016 when the Steele dossier surfaced, and the FBI obtained their FISA warrant.
Nunes did some things wrong. He wrote in the memo: “Director Comey briefed President-elect Trump on a summary of the Steele dossier, even though it was—according to his June 2017 testimony—’salacious and unverified.'”
That is not true. What Comey said in his testimony was this: “At the conclusion of that briefing, I remained alone with the president-elect to brief him on some personally sensitive aspects of the information assembled during the assessment. The [intelligence community] leadership thought it important, for a variety of reasons, to alert the incoming president to the existence of this material, even though it was salacious and unverified” [emphasis added].
Comey was talking about “pee tape” stuff, not the dossier overall.
In another part of the memo, Nunes said it was Peter Strzok who opened the investigation. According to the Horowitz report, that is also not true. The report says it was Bill Priestap, the head of the FBI’s counterintelligence division at the time, who opened the investigation.
Those are minor blips in what is otherwise a very accurate memo. I’ve seen far too many people focusing on Horowitz saying he found no evidence of political bias playing into agents’ decisions and ignoring what Nunes noted nearly a year ago.
Nunes was right, and it’s time for Congress to clean up the mess and address these issues with appropriate legislation.
Jay Caruso is the managing editor of the Washington Examiner magazine.
