Pursuing the FBI’s “Wicked” Russiagate Perps

I know it’s hard being a cop. . . . But some jobs can’t have bad apples. Some jobs, everybody gotta be good. Like, pilots. American Airlines can’t be like, “You know, most of our pilots like to land, we just got a few bad apples that like to crash into mountains.”

—Chris Rock

Kash Patel, the nominee to be the next FBI director, believes the Bureau has been abusing its power. The Russiagate hoax is at the top of the evidence list.

Led by former director James Comey, the FBI used the so-called Steele dossier to help cook up the hoax. A 2019 investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Inspector General (IG) concluded the “Steele reporting” had “played a central and essential role” in the FBI’s filing of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) spy warrants targeting former Donald Trump aide Carter Page.

Back in May 2017, according to the IG, the FBI was told by Steele’s primary source that there was “zero” proof for the dossier’s assertions. But three years later, and then just seven months before the 2020 presidential election, a Harvard-Harris survey showed 53 percent still thought the “Steele dossier was real.”

It’s hard to exaggerate the damage the hoax did to America.

“Gross Incompetence”

The IG described FISA surveillance as one of the “most sensitive and intrusive investigative techniques” available, and the only Russiagate target they used it against was Page. While the FBI’s snooping uncovered no evildoing by the target or Trump, it did reveal plenty of bad behavior by the Bureau. The IG reported 17 “significant inaccuracies and omissions” in the FISA applications, and the IG himself told Congress the FBI had performed with “gross incompetence and negligence.”

From 2008 to 2013, Page was an “operational contact” for the CIA and occasionally interacted with Russian intelligence officers of interest to the Agency. The IG found that the CIA had given a “positive assessment of Page’s candor.” The CIA shared this positive opinion of Page with the Bureau two months before the FBI submitted the first FISA application.

But that application referenced only Page’s contact with Russian spies, and not that this occurred with the CIA’s blessing. The FBI repeated the supposed error over and over again in subsequent warrant requests. Just before the last FISA application was sent in, the CIA confirmed again that Page was a friendly source. This time an FBI attorney changed the answer to “not a source” [emphasis added] and sent it careening through the careless bureaucracy.

During the inept investigation, the FBI learned that the Steele dossier had been paid for by the Democratic National Committee and that Steele had openly stated his desire to prevent Trump from winning. The Bureau should have told the FISA court about this political bias, but did not do so. The IG investigators wrote that they “did not receive satisfactory explanations for the errors or missing information.”

Trump fired Comey in May 2017, but Comey kept at it, trigging yet another critical IG report. This one found the former FBI chief had “improperly disclosed FBI documents and information” to the New York Times.

Leaky Comey

In a memoir written after his dismissal, Comey recounted a discussion with Trump about this subject.

“I don’t do sneaky things, I told him. I don’t leak,” Comey claims to have told Trump.

Elsewhere in the memoir Comey wrote that the “stuff that gets me the most is the claim that I am in love with my own righteousness, my own virtue.”

That must be some tough love. The IG concluded Comey’s leaky behavior set “a dangerous example for the over 35,000 current FBI employees.”

Comey also wrote that he kept on his desk at the FBI a copy of the memo from J. Edgar Hoover that authorized FBI surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr. Among many other abuses, Hoover’s FBI also sent a blackmail letter encouraging King to kill himself.

Comey claimed that desk is where he “reviewed applications by the FBI and the Department of Justice to conduct national security electronic surveillance.” In other words, stuff like FISA applications, such as the ones approved for Page while Comey was the FBI director.

Neither Page nor references to him appear in the Comey memoir.

Similarly obtuse, Comey responded to the IG’s damning FISA report with an opinion essay in the Washington Post. He concluded mistakes were made . . . and that others should be blamed.

“The FBI fulfilled its mission—protecting the American people and upholding the U.S. Constitution,” he wrote. “Now those who attacked the FBI for two years should admit they were wrong.”

In his non-apology, Comey also brushed off the FISA errors as routine: “That’s always unfortunate, but human beings make mistakes.”

It’s true. Quality control takes a hit when the guy who is supposedly reading the botched spy warrant requests is instead performatively gazing at his J. Edgar Hoover memo. (Sarcastic props to the University of Chicago Law School, which awarded Comey his J.D.)

Sanctimony

Comey met the future president for the first time in late 2016, just prior to the inauguration. The FBI director used this unique opportunity to discuss the most salacious rumor in the Steele dossier—that Russian intelligence had video of Trump cavorting with prostitutes. Buzzfeed published the dossier a few days later, setting off a media firestorm that lasted years.

This also triggered a follow-up call to Comey from an understandably annoyed Trump, who had already strongly denied the outlandish tale the first time he heard it from Comey.

“I stared out at the monuments and wondered what had happened to me and our country that the FBI director was talking about this with our incoming president,” wrote Comey of the discussion.

Well, Jimmy, it was you who brought all this up. What did you expect?

Comey also complained that Trump wanted the FBI to investigate so the prostitute rumor could be disproven. Already well into the act of using the dossier to justify spy warrants, Comey implied that Trump’s fixation on it was due to Trump’s guilty conscience!

“I’m almost certain the president is unfamiliar with the proverb ‘The wicked flee when no man pursueth,’” he wrote.

This sanctimonious observation raises a good question for the new FBI director. Will the wicked from Russiagate flee if someone does pursueth?

More About the FBI

This essay was adapted from a larger report, “The FBI’s Bad Apples: The Bureau’s Worst Days Are Worth Remembering,” a cover story from the September 2022 issue of Capital Research magazine. That longer report addresses FBI abuses stretching back to the era of the 9/11 attacks, the Branch Davidian standoff, the Olympic Park bomber, and more.

The report is also available online at the following links:

Part 1: Trump-Russia Collusion Hoax

Part 2: The Dirty Dossier

Part 3: More Jewells

Part 4: Mueller and Mistakes

Part 5: Hoover’s Return

Part 6: Bad Apples

Additional coverage of the FBI includes:

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is a comprehensive history of the FBI at InfluenceWatch.org. Additional InfluenceWatch.org profiles covering the history and behavior of the FBI include The Twitter Files, Trump-Russia Collusion Claims, National Lawyers Guild, the Institute for Policy Studies, the Weather Underground, Students for a Democratic Society, the Venceremos Brigade, The Black Panther Party, Stokely Carmichael and the Communist Party USA.

“The Twitter Files and the Ministry of Truth Media,” a cover story from the March/April 2023 issue of Capital Research magazine, addressed the FBI’s involvement in speech suppression and the Hunter Biden laptop scandal. That report is also available online at the following links:

Part 1: The Twitter Files

Part 2: Watchdogs Became Lapdogs

Part 3: The Enemies List

Part 4: Apologies Without End

Part 5: Winston Enjoyed the Work