IS J. EDGAR STILL HAUNTING THE FBI?

There are those who want us to believe that the FBI is beyond reproach and that their integrity is dependent on the public trust that they are squeaky clean of corrupt players.



Then there are also those who still believe in Santa Claus.



As it turns out, neither are true.



FBI Director Must Be Prepared to Resign Over Nunes Memo, Ex-Agents Warn


Mueller’s probe is an outgrowth of an FBI investigation that Nunes’ still-secret memo purportedly claims was tainted from the start. In batting back the FBI’s attack on his memo, Nunes confirmed that one of its claims concerns another right-wing bete noire: the salacious dossier, compiled by ex-British spy Christopher Steele, financed at first by Trump’s GOP rivals and then Democrats last year, alleging that Trump allies had been compromised by or complicit with the Kremlin.

“Top officials used unverified information in a court document to fuel a counterintelligence investigation during an American political campaign,” Nunes charged Wednesday, calling the FBI and Justice Department objections “spurious” and self-interested.

That’s a reference to a surveillance application submitted last year for Carter Page, a Trump campaign foreign policy aide with a history of proximity to Russian spies.

But according to ex-Justice Department attorneys who have been involved in the so-called Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) process, information from the Steele dossier could have played little more than a marginal role.

To obtain a surveillance warrant on a specific person under what is known as Title I FISA, a judge on a secret court must find the Justice Department and FBI have probable cause to believe their intended target is an agent of a foreign power. Showing that involves affiants describing the evidence underlying each of their arguments.

But Steele’s dossier cited proprietary and unnamed sources for his claims. While Justice Department lawyers are permitted to cite the FBI’s confidential sources before a FISA Court judge, they would not be in a position to explain why Steele’s unknown sources merit confidence. At most, attorneys say, Steele’s information could bolster submissions for which the FBI and Justice Department already had evidence.