Consensus reached after multiple days and meetings among officials. We reviewed Department Policies and concluded Assistant Director pre steps exercise of description in opening the investigation was in compliance with those policies. We also reviewed, as we detail in the report, the emails, Text Messages and other documents of those involved in that decision, particularly mr. Pre steps. We didnt find documentary or Testimonial Evidence that indicated political bias or improper motivation influencing his decision to open the investigation. While the information in the fbis possession at the time was limited, in light of the Throw Threshold established by department and fbi predication policy which, by the way, is not a legal requirement but a prudential one in the fbi and Department Policies, we found that Crossfire Hurricane was opened for an authorized
investigative purpose and with sufficient factual predication. This decision to open Crossfire Hurricane which involved the activitie
january 2017 when the guy who gave steele all the information disavows the dossier, not only they should have told the court they should have slowed down, do you think the second and third warrants had a legal basis after that point? you know, we don t reach that conclusion and i m not going to would you have submitted a warrant application as a lawyer? let me put it this way. i would not have submitted the one they put in. okay. no doubt about it. it had no business going in what i want you to know is in january 2017, the whole foundation for surveilling carter page collapses, exculpatory information is ignored, they lie to the court about what the interview was all about. is that a fair summary about january 2017 i ll they certainly misled it was misleading the the court. fair enough. in january, about six months later, when they find more
reporting from christopher steal considering page s election acts for russian 06 fishls, the department was ready to move forward to obtain feis zoo author to surveil page. the steele reporting pushed fisa over the line in terms of establishing probable cause and we concluded that it played a central and essential role in a decision to seek a fisa order. fbi leadership supported relying on steele s reporting to seek a fisa order after being advised of concerns expressed by a department attorney that steele may have been hired by someone associated with a rival candidate or campaign. surveillance authority under fisa can significantly assist the government s efforts to combat terrorism, clandestine intelligence activity and other threats to the national
disturbing about that event, which is the initial application said, as you noted, that the fbi assessed that steele was the direct source or was a direct source, and on october 14th the drafts changed to the exact opposite. what we found is the fbi had no basis for the first statement, no evidence in their file it turned out the first statement was, in fact, the accurate statement. the point is they had no evidence to support that. when they flipped that, they had no evidence to support that either. that s the kind of issue that under the basic woods procedures, the factual accuracy procedures, had someone been doing their job and following up, they would have seen that and found that. of course, had they bothered to ask mr. steele, they might have found out which of the two versions was true. maybe they weren t interested in doing their job. question three, chairman graham and i sent our referral to the fbi and doj on january 4, 2018.
whether he was a source for the september 2016 yahoo news article that cited western intelligence sources, quote, unquote? if not, why not? they did not ask that question despite having the opportunity to do so. and we got a variety of explanations including that, as to some of these issues, that they didn t want to offend him or jeopardize their relationship with him. question two, on october 11th, draft of the vice is a application stating fbi believes steele was the source of the yahoo news article but it was taken out in the october 14th draft. why did the fbi originally say steele was the source and what factual basis did the fbi have to change that and tell the court that steele was not a source? this is what was so