Nunes Memo Vindicated

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes released his memo in February, declassifying abuses of FISA courts. The abuses involved using the now-discredited "Steele dossier", paid for by the DNC and Clinton campaign, as evidence to obtain a warrant to spy on the Trump campaign. See the Nunes memo here.

Over the past five months, the accuracy of details in the Nunes memo have been cast into doubt and debated by many in the media and online.

Over the weekend, a highly redacted version of the FISA application to obtain a warrant to spy on former Trump advisor Carter Page has been released. See the application here.

This Washington Examiner article re-examines the Nunes memo, paragraph by paragraph, in light of the newly released FISA application, which appears to confirm allegations in the memo. A sample:

The fifth paragraph:

a) Neither the initial application in October 2016, nor any of the renewals, disclose or reference the role of the DNC, Clinton campaign, or any party/campaign in funding Steele's efforts, even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior DOJ and FBI officials.

That is accurate. Readers will search the FISA application in vain for any specific mention of the DNC, Clinton campaign, or any party/campaign funding of the dossier. For the most part, names were not used in the application, but Donald Trump was referred to as "Candidate #1," Hillary Clinton was referred to as "Candidate #2," and the Republican Party was referred to as "Political Party #1." Thus, the FISA application could easily have explained that the dossier research was paid for by "Candidate #2" and "Political Party #2," meaning the Democrats. And yet the FBI chose to describe the situation this way, in a footnote: "Source #1...was approached by an identified U.S. person, who indicated to Source #1 that a U.S.-based law firm had hired the identified U.S. person to conduct research regarding Candidate #1's ties to Russia...The identified U.S. person hired Source #1 to conduct this research. The identified U.S. person never advised Source #1 as to the motivation behind the research into Candidate #1's ties to Russia. The FBI speculates that the identified U.S. person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit Candidate #1's campaign."

Democrats argue that the FISA Court judges should have been able to figure out, from that obscure description, that the DNC and Clinton campaign paid for the dossier. That seems a pretty weak argument, but in any case, the Nunes memo's statement that the FISA application did not disclose or reference the role of the DNC and the Clinton campaign is undeniably true.