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🚨 POLL: Should people be prosecuted for spying on Trump’s campaign?
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🚨 POLL: Should people be prosecuted for spying on Trump’s campaign?
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According to a report from Breitbart News, the dossier by former British spy Christopher Steele was heavily relied upon by the FBI to spy on the Trump campaign, despite learning that the document likely contained misinformation, as evidence declassified this week revealed.
Republican Senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson released freshly declassified information on Wednesday from the December 2019 Department of Justice inspector general report on the FBI’s Russia collusion probe.
According to the footnotes revealed, the FBI may have assisted Moscow in interfering in the American elections by using Russian misinformation contained in Steele’s “pee dossier.”
FBI officials started the investigation during the Obama administration, while the agency was under leadership from James Comey.
Grassley and Johnson gave a press release on Wednesday saying “Despite multiple reports in 2017 warning that claims in an anti-Trump dossier [by Steele] were “false” and “part of a Russian disinformation campaign,” the FBI continued to rely on the Democrat-funded opposition research to spy on a Trump campaign aide.”
The senators added in the joint statement, “As we can see from these now-declassified footnotes in the IG’s report, Russian intelligence was aware of the dossier before the FBI even began its investigation and the FBI had reports in hand that their central piece of evidence was most likely tainted with Russian disinformation.”
A February 2017 intelligence report also warned the FBI that Russian intelligence officers had infiltrated Steele’s network of sources that contributed to the dossier, according to the declassified footnotes
According to the wall Street Journal, “The FBI has brushed off concerns it was manipulated, telling the IG that the bureau evaluated and dismissed the idea. … This is the same FBI that by January 2017 had tracked down Mr. Steele’s primary source, who admitted that most of what Mr. Steele reported was “rumor” and “hearsay.” Yet former FBI Director Jim Comey and his coterie pushed the disinformation on the secret [ Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or FISA] court.”
“It’s now clear that Mr. Mueller and his team of Obama Justice Department holdovers—including deputy Andrew Weissmann—didn’t want to expose anything about the FBI and Justice mistakes and misinformation,” WSJ added.
More from Breitbart:
[DOJ] Inspector General Michael Horowitz and his team did what neither the FBI nor Special Counsel Mueller cared to do: examine and investigate corruption at the FBI, the sources of the Steele dossier, how it was disseminated, and reporting that it contained Russian disinformation.
As early as July 2016, Russian operatives were aware that Steele was investigating then-presidential candidate Trump, the footnotes showed.
That year, the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democrat party hired Steele to compile information on the Trump-Russia collusion allegations.
FBI officials ignored warnings in January 2017 that Russian intelligence operatives may have targeted and collected data on Steele’s firm, Orbis Business Intelligence, the newly released information revealed.
That year, Russian operatives reportedly fed disinformation to Steele contained in his anti-Trump dossier used by the FBI as its central evidence to obtain authorization from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court to wiretap Carter Page, a former aide to the Trump campaign.
