that the fbi wasn t working with this multi-professor named joseph massoud, who had made an offer of assistance and coordination to a former campaign official name george papadopoulos. it does, though, mention christopher steele, i understand, at fairly great length. what does it say about him? i think one of the takeaways from christopher steele, it s understanding that the i.g. isn t going to say that the fbi shouldn t have used this political research. but i think what will come out is that, you know, the way that steele was portrayed in this application, this warrant, you know, this surveillance application was misleading. some of the information was just flat-out wrong. all right. adam, stick around if you will. i want to bring in cnn chief legal analyst jeffrey toobin, phil mudd, former fbi senior intelligence adviser and former cia counterterrorism official,
say that the fbi, in particular its leadership, weaponized this surveillance tool, right, the fisa to spy on the trump campaign. what it does say is that while putting together the application to obtain this secret wiretap, they made a number of, you know, serious mistakes and omissions. it was basically unprofessionalism by the agents and officials and lawyers putting this thing together. what is the difference in this case between violations of procedures, serious though they may be, and what would amount to a finding of political bias, which they did not find in this case? i mean if they had found that the fbi had moved forward and gotten this wiretap, this fisa because of political bias, that would have been extremely damaging to the fbi. i mean, it would have been a major black mark on the fbi s
the i.g. is known for saying, if you didn t shine your shoes right today, you re going to get whacked. among my colleagues, this report is really embarrassing, but it is not what many people would have expected, that is, at the leadership levels of the fbi, there is a deep state effort to take down the presidency with an investigation. this is actually, in my world of inspector general investigations, relatively modest. adam, the major finding that has gotten all the attention so far was that this line attorney falsified a document. that is the allegation here, and that is a serious charge. there is a criminal referral for that. but to be clear on what it was, it was falsifying a document on a renewal for the fisa application, not even the original fisa application. and would the fisa application still have been accepted even if that hadn t been altered? yeah. let s not minimize that, right?
that said, there s a difference between mistakes on the periphery of the investigation. those mistakes are significant. i agree with adam. this is this cannot happen in a fisa application. i don t agree that this is the most important fisa application ever. it may be the most public. it s not the most important. that said, this is embarrassing. but if you compare it to the core of the investigation, what did the leadership of the fbi say and do? what happened in terms of roger stone s interaction with wikileaks? why did don junior suggest that he wanted to accept information from a russian lawyer? this is embarrassing on the inside, and on the outside i think it s chump change. i don t think it s that significant at the core of the investigation. can i make one point? go ahead. for the most part i agree with phil. let s remember this fisa application, the investigation in the carter page was a small part of a massive, sprawling investigation into russian
this is a false statement. it s a serious charge. i m not certain whether what he did during the renewal process was actually material to the application and whether or not, you know, a judge would have determined there was probable cause. i want to hit on something, though. what s important one of the important takeaways here is that, you know, the president and his allies have been calling this a witch hunt, a hoax, right? this was a legitimate, properly predicated law enforcement investigation, right? let s remember that. they had articulated reasons to investigate, and the i.g. has backed that up. and like many, many, many investigations and you have a former ausa on tv with me will tell you not all investigations end in charges, right? and this is what we re seeing now. so this idea that somehow it was a you know, it was a hoax is false. the other important takeaway here is, look, this was maybe