GOWDY: FBI CONCEALED CLINTON ROLE IN STEEL DOSSIER

Rep. Trey Gowdy: FBI concealed Clinton role in Steele dossier

GOP investigator hopes memo is ‘one-off,’ doesn’t taint Russia probe

By Tom Howell Jr. - The Washington Times - Updated: 10:15 a.m. on Sunday, February 4, 2018

The House’s top investigator on Sunday said the FBI failed to notify a surveillance court it was relying on material funded by Democrats and the Hillary Clinton campaign when it asked to snoop on an adviser tied to the Trump campaign.

Rep. Trey Gowdy, South Carolina Republican and chairman of the House Oversight Committee, also said judges wouldn’t have authorized and repeatedly renewed a warrant to spy on the former Trump aide, Carter Page, if it hadn’t been for that very material, compiled by investigator Christopher Steele in a controversial dossier.

“They could have easily said it was the DNC and Hillary Clinton. That would have been really easy,” Mr. Gowdy told CBS’s Face the Nation, referring to footnotes in the agents’ request to the court. 

“It took longer to explain it the way they did, than if they just come right out and said, ‘Hillary Clinton for America and DNC paid for it.’ But they didn’t do that.”

Mr. Gowdy was involved in drafting a four-page memo by the House Intelligence Committee that details the FBI’s decision to rely in part on Clinton-backed material to spy on Mr. Page in October 2016. It also explores the role of top Justice Department officials in renewing those snooping powers.

President Trump says the memo “totally vindicates” him, as he’s dogged by claims his campaign colluded with Russians in 2016.

Yet it’s kicking up a political firestorm, with Democrats chastising its lead author, Rep. Devin Nunes of California, for peeling back the curtain on the secretive U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and its sensitive processes.

They say the memo amounts to a misleading “hit job” designed to sow doubt about probes into the Trump campaign’s alleged interactions with Russian actors.

And they say it doesn’t reflect all of the material that went into the government snooping application.

That drew a rebuke from Mr. Gowdy.

“I wish that they were equally concerned about what’s not in the FISA application, which is a lot of really important information about the source, and its sub-sources, and the fact that he was hired by the DNC and the Clinton campaign, and the fact that he was biased against President Trump,” said Mr. Gowdy, who last week said he will return to the legal field instead of seeking re-election.

“I would argue it’s also somewhat unprecedented to rely on political opposition research to instruct and inform an application, and it’s really bad precedent and unprecedented to not tell a court that a source has this level of bias,” he said.

Mr. Gowdy said he hopes the revealing memo is a “one-off,” but he also thinks it’s important to detail how the FBI sought its snooping powers, since the judge “doesn’t do independent research.”

He is among top Republicans preaching caution, even as vocal conservatives say heads should roll at the FBI and Justice Department.

Mr. Gowdy said the probe into the Trump campaign by special counsel Robert Mueller goes far beyond the controversial memo.

“There is a Russia investigation without a dossier,” he said, rattling off a list of things outside of its scope, such as a mysterious meeting between a Russian lawyer and Trump officials at Trump Tower.

The GOP memo itself says the FBI dug into the Trump campaign after another one of its aides, George Papadopoulos, reportedly boasted in mid-2016 that Russia had dirt on Mrs. Clinton.

Democrats have warned Mr. Trump not to use the memo to go after Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversaw renewals of the surveillance application and appointed Mr. Mueller, saying it would cross a red line — particularly in light of Mr. Trump’s firing last year of FBI Director James B. Comey.

As Mr. Gowdy himself noted, the GOP memo “doesn’t have anything to do with obstruction of justice.”

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/feb/4/trey-gowdy-says-fbi-concealed-clinton-role-steele-/?

My comments: I believe that Mr. Gowdy is wrong in saying that the Memo has nothing to do with the Mueller Investigation. DOJ Rosenstein signed off on the FISA Warrant, withholding the source of the Dossier from the Court, a Lie of Omission, and also appointed Mueller, when there was No Crime to base it upon, as required by Law.