The transcript of former FBI Director James Comey’s closed-door Friday interview with the House Judiciary Committee was released Saturday. An admission by the fired deep-stater appears to confirm a belief Republican investigators have held since President Donald Trump was elected to the White House: The FBI failed to adequately verify the anti-Trump dossier used to surveil Trump campaign members during the 2016 presidential election.
Comey told investigators that the anti-Trump dossier authored by longtime British intelligence agent Christopher Steele was largely unverified before and after a FISA warrant was obtained to surveil Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, according to a report.
The Hill’s John Solomon reports: The towering ex-FBI boss confessed that the FBI had not corroborated much of the Steele dossier before it was submitted as evidence to a secret court to support a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in the final weeks of the election.
And Comey admitted much of the dossier remained uncorroborated more than six months later when he was fired by President Trump.
The former FBI director said the anti-Trump dossier “was coming to us from a reliable source with a track record, and it’s an important thing when you’re seeking a PC warrant,” concerning Steele.
“But what I understand by verified is we then try to replicate the source information so that it becomes FBI investigation and our conclusions rather than a reliable source’s,” he told Republicans. “That’s what I understand it, the difference to be. And that work wasn’t completed by the time I left in May of 2017, to my knowledge.” – READ MORE