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
security. at the same time, the use of this authority unavoidbly raises civil liberty concerns. fisa can be used to surveil u.s. persons and in some cases the surveillance will foreseeably collect information about the individual s constitutionally protected activities such as carter page s legitimate activities on behalf of a presidential campaign. moreover, proceedings before the foreign intelligence surveillance court, which is responsible for ruling on applications for fisa orders are ex-parte, meaning that unlike most court proceedings, the government is the only party prrcht for the proceedings and fisa orders have not been subjected to scrutiny through subsequent proceedings like search warrants and wiretap applications, potentially through the criminal process. in light of these concerns, the fisa statute and department and
immediately following mr. page, carter page, going to news outlets after word of the fisa hit the news media and said to the news media i was someone who worked with u.s. intelligence agencies, not someone who worked against them, lawyers and agents went and said weave got to figure out what s the story, is that what happened? the lawyer, the ogc attorney for the fbi reached out to a liaison at the other government agency that was at issue, asked the question is, was plfrmt page a source or contact of some sort for your organization. the report back and the email referenced the august 2016 memorandum that that agency had provided to the fbi that i mentioned in my opening statement, the fbi did no followup on and said what that
so barely mentioned. i m not trying to minimize fbi s mistakes here, but keep it in context. the fbi s errors in carter page s case do not undermine the unanimous assessment that russia and not ukraine interfered in our election. is that correct? we describe in the report the information about russia s the conclusions about russia s meddling in the 2016 election. i remember in one of the political events, mr. trump said, russia, if you re listening, take a look at this. the trump campaign seemed to welcome and exploit it. none of these errors correct me if i m wrong minimize the legitimacy of the dozens of indictments and convictions that
seven in the first application and a total of 17 by the final renewal application. for example, the crossfire hurricane team obtained information from steele s primary sub source. in january 2017 that raised significant questions about the reliability of the steele reporting. this was particularly noteworthy because the fisa applications relied entirely on information from the primary subsource s reporting to support the allegation that page was coordinating with the russian government on 2016 u.s. presidential election activities. however, the fbi did not share this information with department lawyers, and it was, therefore, omitted from the last two renewal applications. all of the applications admitted information that the fbi obtained in august 2017 sorry august 2016 from another u.s. government agency