Quote:Bill Priestap, the FBI’s former chief of counterintelligence, told Justice Department investigators he agreed not to disclose information he learned about Christopher Steele as a precondition for a meeting with British government officials regarding the former MI6 officer, according to recently declassified information.

Priestap and his deputy, Peter Strzok, traveled to the United Kingdom in November and December 2016 to assess the reliability of Steele, a former MI6 officer whose dossier the FBI used for its investigation into the Trump campaign.

Priestap and Strzok received mixed reviews about Steele from his former colleagues, according to a Justice Department inspector general’s report on the FBI’s probe.

Some vouched for Steele’s honesty and integrity, but several others questioned his judgement and “lack of self-awareness.” Some colleagues described Steele as “smart,” and a “person of integrity,” their notes said.

“[I]f he reported it, he believed it,” one contact said.

But their notes also reflected negative reviews on Steele. He “[d]emonstrates lack of self-awareness, poor judgment,” was “underpinned by poor judgment,” and “[r]eporting in good faith, but not clear what he would have done to validate,” one source said.

Priestap and Strzok embarked on the fact-finding mission weeks after the FBI had already used Steele’s anti-Trump dossier to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) order against Carter Page.

They shared those assessments with the FBI team conducting the Trump probe, but did not include the information in Steele’s so-called Delta file, which the FBI maintains for its confidential sources.

Because the information was not in Steele’s file, it was not used to assess Steele’s validity as an FBI source for the Trump investigation. The FBI also did not share the information in three additional applications for FISA orders against Page.

Priestap was asked during an interview with the IG why the negative Steele information was not included in his file, or disclosed to the FISA Court.

He said that he “may have made a commitment” to Steele’s former employer, “not to document the former employer’s views on Steele as a condition for obtaining the information” on the retired spy.



The IG report provides a damning assessment of Steele’s dossier.

Released on Dec. 9, 2019, the report said Steele’s primary source for the dossier disputed many of the characterizations in the salacious document.

According to footnotes from the report released April 10, the FBI received evidence in early 2017 that Russian intelligence operatives might have fed disinformation to Steele that ended up in the dossier.

Footnotes declassified this week said the U.S. intelligence community produced a report in June 2017 that said two Russian intelligence operatives knew in early July 2016 that Steele was investigating Trump. The Kremlin’s awareness of Steele’s activities might have made him a vulnerable target for a possible disinformation campaign.

Priestap, who retired from the FBI in 2018, did not respond to an email seeking comment.

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If he is that loyal to the Brits, deport him there and yank his citizenship.

Yeah, and he also has a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

Quote:A source of information for the Steele dossier had contacts with a Kremlin insider in early summer 2016, and also voiced “strong support” for Hillary Clinton, according to information declassified Wednesday.

Other declassified information shows that the U.S. intelligence community told the FBI in 2017 that two Russian intelligence officers were aware as of July 2016 that Christopher Steele, the author of the dossier, was investigating Donald Trump.

The FBI also received evidence in early 2017, just after the dossier was published, that Russian operatives might have fed disinformation that ended up in the dossier.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence declassified the information along with multiple other footnotes from the Justice Department office of inspector general’s (IG) report of the FBI’s surveillance of the Trump campaign.

The footnote regarding the pro-Clinton Steele source does not tie the individual to the possible Russian disinformation campaign, but it shows for the first time that one of Steele’s sources might have had a political axe to grind against Donald Trump.

Steele himself was working indirectly for the Clinton campaign. An opposition research firm working for the presidential candidate and DNC hired Steele in June 2016 to investigate Trump’s possible ties to Russia.

Steele relied on just one source, dubbed “Primary Sub-Source” in the IG report, for information published in the dossier. The source collected information from a network of contacts, or sub-sources, and passed them along to Steele.

The Primary Sub-Source has disputed portions of Steele’s reporting. He told the FBI in a series of meetings in early 2017 that Steele misrepresented or embellished information in the dossier.

The IG report said that the pro-Clinton sub-source also disputed information in the dossier. The person told the FBI in an interview in August 2017 that the information attributed to him or her in the document had been “exaggerated.”

“He/she did not recognize anything as originating specifically from him/her,” the IG report stated.

The FBI received information in June 2017 revealing that Steele’s primary source had “personal and business ties” to the sub-source. The bureau also received information of “contacts between the sub-source and an individual in the Russian Presidential Administration in June/July 2016,” the newly declassified footnote stated.

The footnote is heavily redacted before a section that reads, “and the sub-source voicing strong support for candidate Clinton in the 2016 U.S. elections.”

The IG report does not say how the FBI obtained that tidbit of information, but clues in the footnote suggest it could have been through electronic surveillance of the Steele sub-source.

The footnote said that an FBI supervisory intelligence analyst told IG investigators “that the FBI did not have Section 702 coverage on any other Steele sub-source.”

Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) allows the government to collect communications from foreigners outside the United States.



The FBI relied heavily on Steele’s information to obtain FISA orders to conduct surveillance against Carter Page, a former Trump campaign aide.

Steele, a former MI6 officer, reported in the dossier that Page was part of a “well-developed conspiracy of cooperation” between the Trump campaign and Russian government.

The IG footnotes also said that the FBI received evidence on Jan. 12, 2017, two days after the dossier was published, that information regarding former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen was likely the product of Russian disinformation. Steele had claimed that Cohen visited Prague in August 2016 to meet with Kremlin operatives and pay off Russian hackers.

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It has already been established Clinton's campaign paid for the Steele dossier; as it has already been established that dossier was used to improperly obtain FISA warrants and as a pretext for the Mueller fishing expedition.

It has already been established, Clinton was exonerated by the corrupt Obama regime and those involved have faced zero consequences.

Search around. Australians are disavowing official involvement in the coup. Rats scattering.