From today…
Graham says when they first applied for a FISA warrant, internal lawyers said they didn’t have enough evidence and McCabe suggested that they look at the Steele Dossier to get them “over the hump.” Graham says they then introduced the Dossier into the warrant application process and “it worked.” “Without this dossier, they go nowhere. With it, they are off to the races,” Graham says.
Well.
That is completely not what the media and many others have been insisting was true.
Brennan…
Ultimately, the ICA included a short summary and assessment of the dossier, which was incorporated in an appendix. “In the appendix, the intelligence agencies explained that there was ‘only limited corroboration of the source’s reporting’ and that Steele’s election reports were not used ‘to reach analytic conclusions of the CIA/FBI/NSA assessment,'” the IG report states.
A few months later, on May 23, 2017, when testifying before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Brennan categorically denied that the CIA relied on the Steele dossier for the ICA report. Here is the full exchange with former Rep. Trey Gowdy:
Mr. Gowdy: Do you know if the Bureau ever relied on the Steele dossier as any — as part of any court filings, applications, petitions, pleadings?
Mr. Brennan: I have no awareness.
Mr. Gowdy: Did the CIA rely on it?
Mr. Brennan: No.
Mr. Gowdy: Why not?
Mr. Brennan: Because we — we didn’t. It wasn’t part of the corpus of intelligence information that we had. It was not in any way used as a basis for the Intelligence Community assessment that was done. It was — it was not.
Brennan claimed the unverified dossier was not “part of the corpus of intelligence information we had.” On page 179 of the IG report, IG investigators asked former FBI Director James Comey if he remembered discussions with Brennan on presenting the dossier to Obama. Comey said Brennan and other officials argued it was “important” enough to include in the ICA — clearly part of the “corpus of intelligence information” they had.
