OPINION:
One of the more disconcerting revelations from the long-anticipated FISA memo released by the House Intelligence Committee Friday was that the FBI had barely begun a verification process of the Russian dossier when they used it to justify a FISA surveillance warrant on Carter Page. Meanwhile the media refused to publish the dossier allegations because they could not be verified.
In short: The media had higher standards than the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Steele peddled the Russian dossier to several media outlets and most wouldn’t run with it because the info was so sketchy and uncorroborated. However, the FBI used the same info to justify spying on an American citizen. Think about that.
— Larry O’Connor (@LarryOConnor) February 4, 2018
The dossier, a compilation of political opposition research compiled at the behest of the Hillary Clinton for President campaign, was peddled to multiple media outlets in the waning months of 2016. No surprise there. This was the sole reason millions of dollars was paid to political slime machine Fusion GPS in the first place. The whole reason the dossier was compiled so Hillary’s henchmen could float stories to journalists in the final weeks of the presidential campaign to damage Donald Trump.
The sad thing for all that money Hillary spent (rather than on a couple visits to Wisconsin and Michigan) was that hardly any publication would print the unverified and salacious details in Christopher Steele’s magnum opus. Other than a late hit by left-wing activist David Corn at Mother Jones and an article by Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News, mainstream media outlets refused to bite on the Fusion GPS dirt.
We’re told that many reporters in Washington were aware of the dossier and were briefed on the more salacious details in the hopes that they’d form an “October Surprise” helping Hillary sweep to victory, but publishers and networks would not run the story because the information could not be verified and the sources were mostly anonymous.
According to the FISA memo, the FBI used the dossier to obtain a warrant to spy on and wiretap Mr. Page despite the fact that said corroboration of the dossier was in its “infancy” at the time of the FISA application, according to the head of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division Bill Priestap.
The media couldn’t run with the dossier, but the FBI did.
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