An FBI agent confirmed to Congress that agents at the agency would sometimes leak confidential information to the press in order to justify getting a FISA warrant.
This agent wouldn’t say whether this had been done with the FISA warrants used to surveil the Trump campaign, but he did admit it’s regular practice:
FOX NEWS – An FBI intelligence analyst admitted to House committees last week that bureau officials were known to leak information to the press and then use the resulting articles to help obtain surveillance warrants, according to a source with knowledge of his testimony.
Jonathan Moffa, who worked with controversial former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, testified last Friday behind closed doors before the House Judiciary Committee and House Oversight Committee.
The source with knowledge of his statements confirmed to Fox News that Moffa said FBI personnel would use media reports based on information they leaked to justify applications for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants.
The source told Fox News that Moffa acknowledged this “had been a practice in the past.”
Republicans have long questioned to what extent leaked information, related to the unverified anti-Trump dossier, was used as a basis for surveillance warrants against former Trump adviser Carter Page in 2016 — when the bureau was led by James Comey and deputy Andrew McCabe.
The source told Fox News that Moffa did not specifically confirm the practice of using leaked information to bolster warrant applications was employed with regard to the dossier.
But, when pressed by the committees on whether this was common practice at the FBI, Moffa acknowledged the FBI had at least engaged in this activity in other cases.
The concern here is that this happened in order to get the Carter Page FISA warrant:
The source familiar with Moffa’s testimony told Fox News that his statements raise concerns that the bureau indeed used this practice with the dossier, referencing an article written by Yahoo! News’ Michael Isikoff.
The Isikoff article was published on Sept. 23, 2016, focusing on Page’s July 2016 trip to Moscow. According to a House GOP memo earlier this year, the Isikoff article did “not corroborate the Steele dossier” as the article was “derived from information leaked by Steele himself to Yahoo News.” Yet the subsequent FISA application to spy on Page cited the Isikoff article, among other pieces of evidence.
“The [Carter] Page FISA application incorrectly assesses that Steele did not properly provide information to Yahoo News,” the memo read. “Steele has admitted in British court filings that he met with Yahoo News—and several other outlets—in September 2016 at the direction of Fusion GPS.”
Mark Meadows said they have actual evidence of this and it would be hard for the FBI to refute it:
House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows, R-N.C., told Fox News on Tuesday that the committee had evidence of the FBI’s practice that would be “hard to refute.”
“We know that some people at the Department of Justice and the FBI actually gave information to the media, then the stories were reported. Then they used those reports to justify further investigations,” Meadows said on “America’s Newsroom” Tuesday. “You know, that’s like saying, we’re going to incriminate on one hand, and be the jury on the other. It just doesn’t work that way.”
So if I have this right, they hide from the judge that the dossier is a political hit job by Hillary, the DNC and the Russians, and they leak the political dossier so that they can add the resulting press reports to justify the FISA warrant.
It’s amazing the things we continue to learn about Obama/Comey’s FBI. It really does sound more like a cabal, when it comes to the leadership, than it does an independent agency trying to find the truth.