FISA Memo – the Tip of the Iceberg

Yesterday, February 2nd, a memorandum summarizing more than a year-long investigation into the FBI and the Department of Justice and their use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) during the 2016 presidential election, from the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), Devin Nunes (R-CA), was released without objection or redaction from the White House.

Its release was vehemently opposed by senior-level associates of the Justice Department, including Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray, as well as the ranking minority member of the committee, Adam Schiff (D-CA), on the grounds that its release would compromise national security, it assets, and the methods and procedures used by our intelligence to gather information on foreign nationals. These objections, and the justification for these objections, were echoed by the mainstream news media- all in supposed fear that the memo’s release would irreparably damage our national security and destroy our federal agencies. Nevertheless, these objections turned out to be completely fallacious and without any merit or substance. The four-page memorandum itself, as well as the cover letter from White House Counsel Don McGahn, contained no such information as was alleged.

The salient question…why the objection to its release?

Simple. Its release exposes a level of corruption and abuse of power that was exacted upon the Trump campaign, before, during and after the election, on the part of Barack Obama’s Justice Department and the FBI, then under the direction of James Comey. The memo exposes the fact that a GPS/Fusion dossier, authored by Christopher Steele and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC to dig up dirt on Donald Trump, was the principle “evidence” submitted to the FISA court, backed up by media reports that were circularly sourced to Christopher Steele, to obtain warrants to spy on Carter Page and others associated with Trump’s campaign in the final weeks of the 2016 election. In December 2017 closed-door testimony, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe indicated that without this dossier, there would be no such FISA warrants requested from, much less approved by, the FISA Court. Originally requested under James Comey’s signature, and with the imprimatur of Obama’s Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, these illegal warrants were renewed by, and additional warrants were subsequently obtained by, Deputy Attorney Generals Sally Yates, Dana Boente and Rod Rosenstein, reaching well into the Trump presidency. This dossier, compiled by Steele and based on tabloid and salacious reports gathered from Russia, was revealed to President Trump in January 2017, by FBI Director James Comey, who assured the president that there was no reliable evidence in the dossier, despite the fact that it was Comey who used this dossier to gain FISA warrants, two months before. In May of 2017, the day following his firing by President Trump, Comey released transcripts of his own notes on his conversations with the new president through a college professor to the New York Times, which ultimately prompted Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein to appoint Robert Mueller as Special Counsel to investigate alleged Russian collusion with the Trump campaign, knowing full well that there was no substantive evidence of such collusion in the first place.

So, an opposition research paper paid for by Hillary Clinton and the DNC, was used by the Obama Justice Department and the FBI, to obtain FISA warrants against her opposing candidate, without divulging to the FISA court that this dossier was just that- a false dossier authored by a foreign national, Christopher Steele who “was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president.” The dossier was fed by Nellie Ohr, an employee of GPS/Fusion and the wife of Associate Attorney General Bruce Ohr, and these fabrications were used to obtain subsequent warrants.

Never in the history of the United States has there been so blatant disregard for the U.S. Constitution, and never has there been a scandal in such magnitude reaching far into an administration, to interfere with a presidential election, attempt to overturn that election, and destroy the subsequent administration of a duly-elected president.

Yet, the release of this memo only scratches the surface of the deep state corruption that has been unleased on President Trump. In the coming weeks and months, it will be revealed that similar abuses of power and attempts to destroy Trump’s presidency, extend to State Department and the Treasury Department personnel appointed during the last three administrations, all at the behest of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Had Hillary Clinton been elected, none of this corruption would have ever come to the surface, and no one would have ever known that her election was only made possible, as the result of collusion with the FBI and the Obama administration, aided and abetted by a news media which has ignored the biggest story in our lifetime…

…a story whose revelation is merely the tip of the iceberg.

-Drew Nickell, 3 February 2018

© 2018 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
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