![\"\"](\"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/Screen-Shot-2023-08-01-at-4.10.19-PM.png\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
By Paul Sperry
\nRealClearInvestigations<\/p>\n
The FBI\u2019s efforts to mislead<\/span>\u00a0a federal court in order to<\/span>\u00a0wiretap an adviser to the Trump campaign were more extensive than previously reported, according to classified documents described to\u00a0<\/span>RealClearInvestigations<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n The embattled bureau tried to hide its misconduct by redacting information about its actions under the guise that it involved sensitive intelligence information. RCI has learned that at least some of the redacted material, included in a \u201cClassified Appendix\u201d to Special Counsel John Durham\u2019s final report, has nothing to do with protecting \u201csources and methods\u201d and other \u201csensitive\u201d investigative techniques.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Instead<\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>it covers up additional improper behavior by the FBI brass, which initiated and signed off on all four of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act applications to spy on former Trump adviser Carter Page and his contacts within the Trump campaign and presidency in 2016 and 2017.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n For example, the FBI tried to justify continuing to spy on Page in early 2017 by indicating to the secret FISA court that it had verified a rumor about\u202fPage receiving dirt on Hillary Clinton from the Russian government and facilitating a \u201cwell-developed conspiracy of cooperation\u201d with the Kremlin to swing the 2016 election in Trump\u2019s favor.\u202fBut the bureau had corroborated no such thing. Its source was a front-page report in the Washington Post \u2013 one the newspaper later retracted after determining it was false,\u202faccording to two former\u202fU.S. officials who have seen the original, unredacted FISA applications and described the passages to RCI<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n The embarrassing revelation hasn\u2019t been previously reported thanks to redactions blacking out references to the Washington Post article in the still-partially classified applications. The officials confirmed to RCI that the censored section covers up the FBI\u2019s reliance on the bogus Post story,\u202fpublished in March 2017, as purported evidence supporting probable cause to continue spying on Trump\u2019s former aide.\u202fIn the sections of the FISA\u202frenewal applications blacking out references to the Post, the officials said, the FBI claimed the underlying text was \u201csensitive information.\u201d\u202fThe officials\u202fspoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss still-classified sections of the FISA warrant affidavits.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The FBI\u2019s references to the Post story are contained in the April and June 2017 FISA applications. These applications were so tainted<\/span>\u00a0by bad\u202finformation, politics, and glaring exculpatory omissions that after an inspector general\u2019s probe, the Justice Department years later had to secretly concede to a federal surveillance court\u202fthat they were \u201cinsufficient\u201d to establish probable cause to spy on Page and therefore\u202f<\/span>\u201cwere not valid\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n FBI Director Christopher Wray recently told Congress he has instituted a number of reforms in response to the FISA surveillance abuses, yet at the same time, he appears to have tried to hide the full extent of those abuses under redactions.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n This is not the only instance in which the FBI misrepresented unconfirmed news reports to secure authorization to spy on the Trump campaign. The bureau\u2019s FISA applications also referenced a September 2016 Yahoo News\u202f<\/span>account<\/span><\/a>\u202fto substantiate the\u00a0<\/span>false\u00a0<\/span>claim that Page had met with Kremlin officials in Moscow during the presidential campaign.<\/span><\/p>\n That Yahoo article by\u00a0<\/span>Michael\u00a0<\/span>Isikoff\u00a0<\/span>said the allegations had been\u00a0<\/span>confirmed\u00a0<\/span>by<\/span>\u00a0a \u201cwell-placed Western intelligence source.\u201d\u202f<\/span>Isikoff<\/span>\u00a0later revealed that the source, former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, had concocted the false allegation about Page in a series of now-debunked memos financed by Hillary Clinton\u2019s campaign. Hence, Steele was \u201ccorroborating\u201d his own shoddy work. Instead of following the law and verifying this material before including it in the FISA application, the FBI simply repeated it as fact.\u00a0<\/span>In 2018, Isikoff said it was \u201ca bit beyond me\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0why the bureau referenced his article.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The officials\u00a0<\/span>who spoke to RCI\u00a0<\/span>said\u00a0<\/span>the<\/span>\u00a0inclusion of the since-retracted Post story\u00a0<\/span>may be\u00a0<\/span>even more egregious because it was unsourced,\u202fwhich should have sent red flags flying at the FBI. Post reporters said a key source of the dossier\u2019s allegations was a Belarusian-American businessman named Sergei Millian.\u00a0<\/span>The Post, however, provided no source\u00a0<\/span>for this blockbuster claim, which Millian vociferously denied.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The FBI\u2019s reliance on the false Post story was \u201can act of desperation,\u201d noted one of the officials. In late March 2017, he said the FBI\u2019s Crossfire\u202fHurricane team investigating possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia faced a dilemma. A court deadline to reapply for a warrant\u202fto spy on Page was fast approaching, and it still hadn\u2019t verified the sourcing for the key \u201cconspiracy\u201d charge against him and the Trump campaign.<\/span><\/p>\n Moreover, agents had reason to be skeptical about the information, which formed the cornerstone of their case.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Over the previous two months, the FBI had conducted a series of interviews with Igor Danchenko, a Russia-born Washington-based researcher who helped\u202fcompile Steele\u2019s dossier of derogatory information about Trump\u2019s alleged ties to Russia, including the core \u201cconspiracy\u201d assertion. During the\u202fdebriefings, Danchenko confessed he couldn\u2019t be sure his alleged source, Millian, actually told him\u202fwhat he attributed to him about Page in the dossier.\u202f<\/span><\/p>\n The FBI needed the explosive allegation to be true because it was the heart of the factual information supporting probable cause to electronically\u202fmonitor Page as a supposed Russian collaborator under the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The FISA law, initially enacted in 1978 and broadened in the aftermath of 9\/11, is now under intense scrutiny on Capitol Hill\u202fin light of previously exposed FBI abuses of the congressionally granted surveillance power. The bureau included the information in earlier\u202frequests for wiretaps, but they were set to expire in early April 2017. To justify renewing them another 90 days, the FBI was under pressure to\u202fshow FISA judges additional evidence to support its suspicions about Page. Validating Millian as the main source of the dossier was critical, but the agents had come up empty, developing no evidence that corroborated the allegations.<\/span><\/p>\n Just in time, the Washington Post published a\u202f<\/span>story<\/span><\/a>\u202fonline on March 29, 2017, that supposedly \u201cconfirmed\u201d Millian was the source of the allegations against Page and the core claim of a Trump-Kremlin conspiracy. The strangely\u202funsourced article carried the headline, \u201cWho is \u2018Source D\u2019? The man said to be behind the Trump-Russia dossier\u2019s most salacious claim: The story of Sergei Millian.\u201d The next day, the Post ran the same story on Page One of the paper, but under the headline: \u201cInsider or opportunist? A wild card in Russia story: Businessman said to be source of spy dossier\u2019s salacious claim about Trump.\u201d 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\u202fPage.<\/span><\/p>\n 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\u202fthe dossier\u2019s allegation that the Kremlin was \u201cfeeding\u201d the Trump campaign \u201cvery helpful\u201d dirt on Clinton through Page. It also cited the article to buttress the dossier\u2019s linchpin allegation of a \u201cconspiracy of cooperation\u201d between the Trump campaign and the Russian leadership,\u202faccording to the two officials who have seen what is behind the blacked-out section of the sworn\u202f<\/span>affidavit<\/span><\/a>, which runs more than 100 pages. The references to the Post appear on page 22 of the FISA document.<\/span><\/p>\n As a result, the FISA court renewed the wiretaps. It approved them again on June 29, 2017, based in part on the same supposedly corroborative\u202fWashington Post article, according to the two officials, who have also seen the original, unredacted June application. On the strength of essentially\u202ffake news, surveillance court judges permitted the FBI to continue to vacuum up all of Page\u2019s communications through Sept. 22, 2017.<\/span><\/p>\n The Post was forced to retract its story\u202fin November 2021 when Durham proved in a court filing that Danchenko had never actually spoken to Millian and simply invented him as his source — and\u202ftherefore made up the \u201cconspiracy\u201d allegation and everything else he attributed to Millian. A week after Durham debunked the Millian hoax, Washington Post Executive Editor Sally Buzbee said\u202fthe Post could no longer stand behind the accuracy of the story and ordered the newspaper to print a retraction.<\/span><\/p>\n But in 2017, the story served the FBI\u2019s purposes, even as agents came to doubt the Millian sourcing because of Danchenko\u2019s\u202fdissembling (yet, agents nonetheless swore to the FISA court that Danchenko\u202fhad been \u201ctruthful and cooperative\u201d).\u202fHeadquarters had to\u202fhang on to the slim chance it could be true because the Millian-sourced allegations were central to their case for spying on the Trump campaign.\u202fWithout them, the case would have collapsed. Former FBI officials say it\u2019s highly unlikely the bureau would have been able to convince the spy court\u202fto continue to grant permission to monitor Page.<\/span><\/p>\n The FBI also relied on other allegations sourced to Millian as both \u201cSource E\u201d and \u201cSource D\u201d in the Steele dossier,\u202fincluding the made-up story that\u202fRussian President Vladimir Putin had a compromising sex tape of Trump cavorting with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel. The entire dossier\u202fturned out to be a series of\u202finvented rumors or outright fabrications that the FBI knew at the time were underwritten by the Hillary Clinton campaign as political opposition research.<\/span><\/p>\n FBI veterans who have sworn out affidavits for FISA wiretaps told RCI they have never known the bureau to cite media stories as evidence to\u202fcorroborate leads or support probable cause to obtain such all-invasive warrants from the spy court.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAbsolutely not,\u201d said former assistant FBI Director Chris Swecker. \u201cI signed scores of FISA orders as they moved up the chain of command from the\u202ffield office up to headquarters for final approval. None of them included that type of information, which is absolutely malpractice and incompetence,\u202for worse.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cNever, ever, ever,\u201d added 27-year FBI veteran special agent Michael Biasello. \u201cThe FISA verification process known as the Woods Procedures was created\u202fto eliminate this problem, but [then-FBI Director James] Comey\u2019s hand-picked bunch at headquarters did not follow them. They were a bunch of arrogant investigators relying\u202fon erroneous and tainted information from Washington reporters rather than a traditional, responsible investigation gathering the facts.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Biasello said resorting to using such a murky newspaper story to backstop the main thrust of the FBI\u2019s surveillance case suggests its case was more of a\u202fpolitical fishing expedition than a legitimate national security matter. He added that the FBI and DOJ are now trying to cover up the full breadth of their\u202fFISA scandal through unjustified redactions and classifications.<\/span><\/p>\n The FBI and DOJ refuse to fully declassify the documents, which Senate Republicans managed to release to the public in 2020, albeit with large sections blacked\u202fout. Whole pages of the renewal applications remain secret, even though the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court invalidated the warrants in the\u202fwake of a scathing 2019 inspector\u2019s general report. The IG found the spy warrants were based on allegations fabricated by Clinton-funded\u202fresearchers and had omitted exculpatory information proving the innocence of Page, a former U.S. Navy\u202flieutenant, whom the FBI knew was\u202fworking for U.S., not Russian, intelligence.<\/span><\/p>\n Special Counsel Durham did not uncover what\u2019s lurking beneath the FISA redactions in a recently released report of his four-year criminal\u202finvestigation of FBI misconduct in the Russiagate probe. He explained that because of the \u201csensitive and classified nature\u201d of certain \u201cportions\u201d of\u202fthe FISA applications, he was compelled to discuss them only in a Classified Appendix to the report. He said the classification effort was\u202f\u201ccoordinated\u201d with the FBI.<\/span><\/p>\n In other words, much of the FBI\u2019s wrongdoing remains shielded from public view.<\/span><\/p>\n The way the Post corrected its story was highly unusual.<\/span><\/p>\n Instead of appending a correction, the paper, which won a Pulitzer Prize for its Trump-Russia reporting,\u202fremoved all references to Millian as the\u202fdossier\u2019s source in online and archived versions of the original article, including all citations cataloged in the Lexis-Nexis database of news articles. It\u202falso took down a video that accompanied the story. The paper then reposted a new\u202f<\/span>article<\/span><\/a>\u202fwith a different headline \u2013\u202f\u201cSergei Millian: High-level\u202faccess to Trump or unwitting bystander?\u201d\u202f\u2013\u202fbut under the same bylines of Tom Hamburger and Rosalind Helderman, who\u202f<\/span>shared<\/span><\/a>\u202fthe\u202f<\/span>controversial<\/span>\u202f2018 Pulitzer (although the Millian article was not part of its entry).<\/span><\/p>\n The new\u202f<\/span>version<\/span><\/a>\u202fof the story contains an \u201cEditor\u2019s Note\u201d noting the date when the original was published, but oddly, it does not link to it. In a\u202f<\/span>story<\/span><\/a>\u202fthe Post ran\u202freporting on its \u201cunusual step of correcting and removing large portions\u201d of the article, it also failed to link to the original version of the article and only\u202flinked to the retooled one.\u202fThe original version has been\u202fscrubbed from Google and Twitter.<\/span><\/p>\n Journalism historians say they are not aware of another major newspaper making wholesale changes to a story four years afterward and\u202frepublishing an edited version of the story.<\/span><\/p>\n Another curious aspect of the story is how it got through Post editors without any sourcing or attribution. Normally such a sensitive story, which\u202fpotentially libeled Millian, would require intense scrutiny, if not a legal review.\u202f<\/span><\/p>\n\n![\"FR159526](\"https:\/\/assets.realclear.com\/images\/62\/620958_5_.jpeg\" "\\"Trump")
<\/div>\nJohn Durham, special counsel: The FISA abuse that got away.<\/div>\nAP<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n![\"AP\"](\"https:\/\/assets.realclear.com\/images\/61\/614089_5_.jpeg\" "\\"Carter")
<\/div>\nCarter Page: More false evidence comes to light.<\/div>\nAP<\/div>\n\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\nAn FBI spokeswoman said,\u00a0\u201cWe decline comment on this matter.” Attempts to reach Durham, who has closed his office looking into FBI malfeasance, were unsuccessful.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n![\"Washington](\"https:\/\/assets.realclear.com\/images\/62\/620969_5_.png\" "\\"Washington")
<\/div>\nThe false 2017 front-page Washington Post story used to continue spying on Carter Page. Full article\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/div>\nWashington Post<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n![\"sergeimillian.com\"](\"https:\/\/assets.realclear.com\/images\/55\/559332_5_.png\" "\\"Sergei")
<\/div>\nSergei Millian: The Washington Post’s report about him was unsourced. But that was good enough for the FBI.<\/div>\nsergeimillian.com<\/div>\n\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Foreign](\"https:\/\/assets.realclear.com\/images\/62\/620972_5_.png\" "\\"Foreign")
<\/div>\nFBI spy application with blacked out falsehoods reported by the Washington Post. More\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/div>\nForeign Intelligence Surveillance Court<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n![\"Twitter\"](\"https:\/\/assets.realclear.com\/images\/51\/516886_5_.png\" "\\"igor")
<\/div>\nIgor Danchenko, Steele dossier fabulist: The FBI knew that even he didn’t believe the dossier’s allegation about Millian. But just in time, the Washington Post published its story.<\/div>\nTwitter<\/div>\n\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n![\"U.S.](\"https:\/\/assets.realclear.com\/images\/62\/621106_5_.png\" "\\"Foreign")
<\/div>\nThe Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is now under intense scrutiny on Capitol Hill\u202fin light of previously exposed FBI abuses of congressionally granted surveillance power.<\/div>\nU.S. Judiciary\/Wikimedia<\/div>\n\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n![\"AP\"](\"https:\/\/assets.realclear.com\/images\/62\/621108_5_.jpeg\" "\\"James")
<\/div>\nJames Comey, former FBI chief: An ex-G-man says Comey’s arrogant, “hand-picked bunch at headquarters” relied on “erroneous and tainted information from Washington reporters rather than a traditional, responsible investigation gathering the facts.\u201d<\/div>\nAP<\/div>\n\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nUnusual Handling by Washington Post<\/h3>\n
\n\n![\"Twitter\/@thamburger\"](\"https:\/\/assets.realclear.com\/images\/56\/560058_5_.jpg\" "\\"Tom")
<\/div>\nTom Hamburger, Washington Post: Shared 2018 Pulitzer.<\/div>\nTwitter\/@thamburger<\/div>\n\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n![\"AP\"](\"https:\/\/assets.realclear.com\/images\/62\/621087_5_.jpeg\" "\\"Pulitzers\\"")
<\/div>\nRosalind Helderman: Also shared 2018 Pulitzer. With her from left on Pulitzer Day, Washington Post Publisher Fred Ryan, Executive Editor Marty Baron, National Security Editor Peter Finn.<\/div>\nAP<\/div>\n<\/div>\nIn a statement to RCI, a spokeswoman for the Post shrugged off criticism.\u00a0\u201cThe Post handled this correction with complete transparency,\u201d said Kathy Baird, the paper\u2019s chief communications officer. “As you can see in the Editor\u2019s Note, portions of the story and an accompanying video were removed and the headline was changed,\u201d she added. “This is consistent with the principles and practices we follow when issuing corrections for our readers so that all published information is up-to-date and accurate.”<\/div>\n\n![\"RCP\"](\"https:\/\/assets.realclear.com\/images\/55\/556551_5_.jpg\" "\\"Christopher")
<\/div>\nChristopher Steele, Hillary Clinton-paid agent and dossier compiler: \u201cThe liberal press never printed my statements,\u201d Sergei Millian said. \u201cThey all just went along with Steele\u2019s lies.\u201d<\/div>\n