FBI Director Christopher Wray just last month told Congress he has instituted reforms in response to FISA surveillance abuses, yet at the same time he appears to have tried to hide the full extent of those abuses under redactions.
The officials who spoke to RCI said the inclusion of the since-retracted Post story may be even more egregious because it was unsourced, which should have sent red flags flying at the FBI. Post reporters said a key source of the dossier's allegations was a Belarusian-American businessman named Sergei Millian.
FBI spy application with blacked out falsehoods reported by the Washington Post.
The strangely unsourced article carried the headline, "Who is 'Source D'? The man said to be behind the Trump-Russia dossier's most salacious claim: The story of Sergei Millian." The next day, the Post ran the same story on Page One of the paper, but under the headline: "Insider or opportunist? A wild card in Russia story: Businessman said to be source of spy dossier's salacious claim about Trump." The above-the-fold article appeared just eight days prior to the April 7 deadline the FBI faced to resubmit an application to the FISA court for a fresh warrant to secretly monitor Page.
In its April 7 affidavit requesting a renewal of the warrant, FBI headquarters advised the FISA court that the Post had confirmed that Millian was the source for the dossier's allegation that the Kremlin was "Feeding" the Trump campaign "Very helpful" dirt on Clinton through Page.
"The FISA verification process known as the Woods Procedures was created to eliminate this problem, but Comey's hand-picked bunch at headquarters did not follow them. They were a bunch of arrogant investigators relying on erroneous and tainted information from Washington reporters rather than a traditional, responsible investigation gathering the facts." Biasello said resorting to using such a murky newspaper story to backstop the main thrust of the FBI's surveillance case suggests its case was more of a political fishing expedition than a legitimate national security matter.
On April 11, 2017, just four days after the FISA warrant was re-approved, the Post broke the story about the FBI surveilling Page under the headline, "FBI obtained FISA warrant to monitor former Trump adviser Carter Page," and attributed the story to "Law enforcement and other U.S. officials." It added: "This is the clearest evidence so far that the FBI had reason to believe during the 2016 presidential campaign that a Trump associate was in touch with Russian agents," helping the FBI justify its unprecedented investigation of the Trump campaign.
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