IG Report Confirms Schiff FISA Memo Media Praised Was Riddled

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IG Report Confirms Schiff

FISA Memo Media Praised

Was Riddled With Lies

Nearly two years later, the inspector

general's report vindicates the Nunes

memo while showing that the Schiff memo

was riddled with lies and false statements.

By Mollie Hemingway

The new inspector general report on FISA

abuse settles the debate between Republicans

and Democrats on the House Permanent

Select Committee on Intelligence. Both groups

put out memos about the Department of

Justice’s efforts to secure a warrant to wiretap

Carter Page.

At the time of their release, the media praised

Democrat Adam Schiff and his memo and

vilified Republican Devin Nunes and his

memo. Nearly two years later, the inspector

general’s report vindicates the Nunes memo

while showing that the Schiff memo was

riddled with lies and false statements.

The memo from the Republicans on the House

Intelligence Committee reported:

1. A salacious and unverified dossier formed

an essential part of the application to

secure a warrant against a Trump

campaign affiliate named Carter Page.

This application failed to reveal that the

dossier was bought and paid for by

Hillary Clinton and the Democratic

National Committee.

2. The application cited a Yahoo News

article extensively. The story did not

corroborate the dossier, and the FBI

wrongly claimed Christopher Steele, the

author of the dossier, was not a source for

the story.

3. Nellie Ohr, the wife of a high-ranking

Justice Department official, also worked

on behalf of the Clinton campaign effort.

Her husband Bruce Ohr funneled her

research into the Department of Justice.

Although he admitted that Steele “was

desperate that Donald Trump not get

elected and was passionate about him not

being president,” this and the Ohrs’

relationship with the Clinton campaign

was concealed from the secret court that

grants surveillance warrants.

4. The dossier was “only minimally

corroborated” and unverified, according

to FBI officials.

All of these things were found to be true by the

Inspector General Michael Horowitz in his

December 9 report. In fact, Horowitz detailed

rampant abuse that went far beyond these four

items.

The Democratic minority on the committee,

then led by Rep. Adam Schiff, put out a

response memo with competing claims:

1. FBI and DOJ officials did not omit

material information from the FISA

warrant.

2. The DOJ “made only narrow use of

information from Steele’s sources about

Page’s specific activities in 2016.”

3. In subsequent FISA renewals, DOJ

provided additional information that

corroborated Steele’s reporting.

4. The Page FISA warrant allowed the FBI to

collect “valuable intelligence.”

5. “Far from ‘omitting’ material facts about

Steele, as the Majority claims, DOJ

repeatedly informed the Court about

Steele’s background, credibility, and

potential bias.”

6. The FBI conducted a “rigorous process”

to vet Steele’s allegations, and the Page

FISA application explained the FBI’s

reasonable basis for finding Steele

credible.

7. Steele’s prior reporting was used in

“criminal proceedings.”

Each of these claims were found by Horowitz

to be false.

Horowitz found that FBI and DOJ officials did

in fact omit critical material information from

the FISA warrant, including several items

exculpatory to Page. Material facts were not

just omitted but willfully hidden through

doctoring of evidence.

The warrants were based on Steele’s dossier,

which was known by January 2017 to be

ridiculously uncorroborated. The renewals did

not find information that corroborated Steele’s

reporting. The warrants clearly didn’t allow the

FBI to collect valuable intelligence. And

Steele’s prior reporting was not used in

criminal proceedings.

“We found that the FBI did not have

information corroborating the specific

allegations against Carter Page in Steele’s

reporting when it relied upon his reports in the

first FISA application or subsequent renewal

applications,” the executive summary of the

report says.

The media joined Department of Justice

bureaucrats in bitterly opposing the release of

the Nunes memo. The Justice Department

released a letter to the press saying the action

was “extraordinarily reckless,”would be

“damaging” to “national security,” and would

risk “damage to our intelligence community or

the important work it does in safeguarding the

American people.”

Then, when the report was released, the media

made a variety of contradictory claims, all of

them downplaying or dismissing the memo as

nothing whatsoever. “Why Were The

Democrats So Worried About The Nunes

Memo?” asked The New Yorker. Rachel

Maddow said that, far from destroying

national security, instead the memo delivered

“a sad trombone for Trump.” “It’s a joke and a

sham,” claimed Washington Post writers.

“The memo purports to show that the process

by which the FBI and Justice Department

obtained approval from the Foreign

Intelligence Surveillance Court to conduct

surveillance on former Trump adviser Carter

Page was deeply tainted,” the Post article says.

“It does this by straining every which way to

suggest that the basis for the warrant was the

so-called ‘Steele dossier,’ which contains

Democratic-funded research by former British

spy Christopher Steele.” (The IG confirmed

this week that the efforts to secure a warrant to

spy on Page were dropped due to lack of

evidence until Steele delivered his memos.)

On the other hand, Salon called the memo

“fake news.” New York Magazine’s Jonathan

Chait, who fervently believes that Trump is a

traitor who colluded with Russia to steal the

2016 election, all evidence to the contrary,

went even further. “The Nunes Memo Is Fake

and the Russia Scandal Is Very Real,” he

claimed. “While the evidence that the DOJ has

been corrupt or even sloppy in its investigation

has disintegrated, evidence for the seriousness

of the investigation itself has grown

progressively stronger,” Chait claimed.

CNN had their good buddy James Clapper, an

Obama intelligence chief, say that the memo

was a “blatant political act.” John Brennan,

Obama’s CIA chief who was also implicated in

the spying on the Trump campaign, told

Politico that the memo was “exceptionally

partisan.” Politico claimed the memo “makes

no sense.”

“Nunes Memo Accidentally Confirms the

Legitimacy of the FBI’s Investigation,”

asserted The Intercept. “All Smoke, No Fire,”

claimed resistance member Orin Kerr in The

New York Times. “The Nunes Memo Continues

To Backfire,” declared the hyperpartisan

Washington Post editorial board.

A great example of the general media

treatment of the issue of FISA abuse was

offered up by U.S. News and World Report.

“Nail in the Coffin for Nunes Memo,” declared

the headline of an article that effusively

praised Schiff while utterly condemning

Nunes. “Nunes’ memo was a bad joke from the

start,” the author writes, going on to assert

that Page was a dangerous agent of Russia,

multiple Trump campaign operatives were

surveilled for excellent reason, and the ex-

British spy secretly hired by Hillary Clinton to

produce the dossier alleging Trump was a

secret agent of Russia was simply beyond

reproach.

“If the GOP’s defense of Page is puzzling so is

its targeting of Steele, an accomplished British

former spy with an expertise in Russia and

Vladimir Putin,” claimed the U.S. News and

World Report article. Steele’s reputation with

most reporters was not based in reality and he

doesn’t even claim he verified any of the

information in his report, which a sprawling

special counsel investigation was unable to

corroborate in any of its central and major

claims.

It is unclear if the media will revisit, much less

apologize for, their false claims about the

Nunes memo or credulous support of Schiff’s

memo.

Mollie Ziegler Hemingway is a senior

editor at The Federalist. She is Senior

Journalism Fellow at Hillsdale College and

a Fox News contributor. Follow her on

Twitter at @mzhemingway

Photo Face the Nation / YouTube

Adam Schiﬀ Bruce Ohr Carter Page

Christopher Steele collusion

Department of Justice Devin Nunes DOJ

FISA FISA abuse

House Intelligence Committee Inspector General

Media media bias Media Criticism

Michael Horowitz Nellie Ohr Nunes memo

Russiagate Russian collusion Spygate

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