"The whole problem with the FBI and what they did with this FISA application is they also didn't verify or check any of the claims being made in the dossier. [Former FBI Director] James Comey said in his testimony sometime back that they were relying on Christopher Steele," says Hans von Spakovsky. (Photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters/Newscom)
: Sure. Happy to do it.
Davis: So, Hans, the president is claiming victory with these documents, saying they prove that he was spied on during the campaign. First question for you: What do these documents prove?
von Spakovsky: Well, having always been a big support of the FBI, I’m disappointed to say that I think the president is right.They dumped over 400 pages of the documents related to the FISA warrant application. For your listeners, we should remind them
the FISA court is the secret court that can approve electronic surveillance warrant, the ability to basically eavesdrop, particularly in espionage and terrorist case.And even though a lot of the application was blacked out, it’s pretty clear that what, for example, [House intelligence committee] Chairman [Devin] Nunes … and others have said is correct,
which is the
FBI when it submitted its application asking for permission to surveil the campaign, in particular Carter Page, they were relying on unverified, uncorroborated information contained in the Christopher Steele dossier, which had been paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign.
Katrina Trinko: Let’s back track and talk a little bit more about that dossier. Of course the full dossier was published by BuzzFeed back in 2017. What do we know about it, and you mentioned it’s unverified—is there reason to believe that it’s untrue?
von Spakovsky: Yes.
Trinko: OK. Expand on this, Hans.von Spakovsky: Look, the dossier was composed of hearsay based on hearsay. It was composed by Christopher Steele, a former British agent, and he was basing it on anonymous sources who were hearing things from other anonymous Russian sources, and no work was actually done by him to verify whether any of the supposed claims were true.And the whole problem with the FBI and what they did with this FISA application is they also didn’t verify or check any of the claims being made in the dossier. [Former FBI Director] James Comey said in his testimony sometime back that they were relying on Christopher Steele.Well, I’m sorry, but that’s not the way a FISA application works. In fact, when the FBI signs the FISA application under oath, they are certifying that they have actually corroborated the facts and claims that are being submitted with it. And they clearly didn’t do that.So they didn’t verify it. They, in essence, were misleading the FISA court, and I have no doubt that the FISA judges would never had issued this electronic surveillance warrant if they had known that the FBI hadn’t actually checked any of this information.
Davis: Yeah. Or, I guess, if [the FISA court] had known that [the dossier] was funded by the DNC and …