The Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, led by Californian Adam Schiff, have taken on an awkward, crosswise task with their memo rebutting the majority’s memo, which alleged FBI abuse of the FISA court process. The task is crosswise because it requires the minority to do two not-necessarily-consistent things at the same time: (1) maintain that the anti-Trump dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele had nothing to do with getting the FBI’s investigation into Team Trump going; and (2) maintain that the FBI correctly used the dossier to obtain FISA warrants to surveil Carter Page.
The Democrats’ memo emphasizes “the FBI initiated its counterintelligence investigation on July 31, 2016” after learning George Papadopoulos had been told the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton, “that the information the Russians could assist by anonymously releasing were thousands of Hillary Clinton’s emails.” Thus, we’re not supposed to care about the defects in the dossier, because the FBI was on the trail of colluders long before the Bureau presented Steele’s material to the FISA court. “Christopher Steele’s reporting,” says the Schiff memo, “played no role [emphasis in the original] in launching the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into Russian interference and links to the Trump campaign.”
Having established that Steele’s dossier was irrelevant, the Democratic memo goes on, at great length, to argue that the Steele dossier was solid stuff, and properly used. For example, Schiff’s memo argues that, “Far from ‘omitting’ material facts about Steele, as the Majority claims, DOJ repeatedly informed the Court about Steel’s background, credibility, and potential bias.” And “DOJ was transparent with Court about Steele’s sourcing.” And “DOJ explained the FBI’s reasonable basis for finding Steele credible.” And the warrant “applications also reviewed Steele’s multi-year history of credible reporting on Russia and other matters, including information DOJ used in criminal proceedings.”
Even black marks against Steele are used in efforts to impeach the majority’s memo. For example, the minority proclaims in boldface, “DOJ never paid Steele for the ‘dossier’.” This is counter, we’re led to believe, to the claims of the majority, which in its memo “asserts that the FBI had ‘separately authorized payment’ to Steele for his research on Trump, but neglects to mention that payment was cancelled and never made.” The payments were cancelled, of course, because the FBI learned Steele was talking up his dossier to the press. And note that the majority said that payment had been “authorized,” not that it had been made. Which is to say that the minority is splitting hairs that have already been split.
The Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee want to both shore up Steele and at the same time walk away from him and his dossier whistling nonchalantly. It’s a trying and tricky job, which may explain why the memo has a strained quality compared with the simpler and shorter narrative of the majority memo. Simpler, shorter and less strained doesn’t necessarily mean the majority’s memo is the correct of the two. But it’s worth reading both to see which one is trying a bit too hard.
