Fact check: Was Devin Nunes ‘vindicated’ by report on FBI’s Trump investigation?
Rep. Devin Nunes this week said he was vindicated by a new inspector general report that detailed the origins of the FBI’s surveillance of President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, which affirmed key parts of a controversial memo Nunes released nearly two years ago.
The so-called Nunes memo, published amid Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the 2016 election, alleged the FBI abused its power to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant to put Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page under surveillance.
Nunes of Tulare, former chair of the House Intelligence Committee and now its top Republican, has for years said that there was a “deep state” within the intelligence community, full of employees with a political bias against Trump who wanted to oust him from office. His office did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
The new report does not support Nunes’ theory of a politically motivated “deep state” or support that investigators were deliberately misleading. While many of the Nunes memo’s assertions were correct, according to the report, officials also found no evidence of political bias.
“We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the FBI’s decision to seek FISA authority on Carter Page,” the report reads.
Former FBI Director James Comey and Democrats like House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Burbank, have maintained that surveilling Page was warranted, and the inspector general report does not make any conclusions on whether putting Page under surveillance was right or wrong.
Later, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the election led to 34 criminal indictments, including against 12 Russian nationals who allegedly attempted to hack Democratic Party servers to influence the 2016 election.
The inspector general report, nonetheless, identified a number of errors in the information the FBI provided to a court in October 2016 to obtain permission to put Page under surveillance.
The FBI’s investigation into Trump’s campaign began in July 2016, according to the inspector general report, after an Australian diplomat reported that another Trump campaign adviser, George Papadopolous, had shared information suggesting the Russian government had dirt on Democrat Hillary Clinton and intended to influence the election.
Here’s what the report had to say about the main points of Nunes’ memo.
Based on Steele dossier
Nunes’ main argument in his 2017 memo was that the FBI’s FISA application relied heavily on reporting by Christopher Steele, a former British spy and FBI informant who had compiled the so-called Steele dossier that included unverified information about the Trump campaign and its connections to Russia.
The Steele dossier was paid for by Perkins Coie, a law firm funded by the Democratic National Committee and the 2016 presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton. To Nunes and others, that made the document unreliable at best, due to its origins as a politically motivated document.
Nunes’ memo said the Steele dossier was “essential” to the FISA application into Page, and the inspector general report agreed, saying it played a “central and essential role.”
Page caught the FBI’s attention because he was advising Trump’s campaign and he had long ties to Russia as an energy consultant.
The FBI in its application argued for surveillance based on known attempts by Russia to interfere in the election; reported contact between Russia and another member of the Trump campaign, Papadopoulos; Page’s historical connections to Russia and Russian Intelligence Services; Steele’s reporting in the dossier; and Page’s statement to an FBI informant in October 2016 that he had an “open checkbook” from certain Russians to fund a think tank project.
However, the inspector general found the FBI omitted facts that were favorable to Page and that could have led a court to reject the warrant application, such as that Page was an “operational contact” for a U.S. intelligence agency for five years, and that he had provided information about his Russia contacts to that U.S. agency.
The inspector general found that the FBI “overstated the significance” of Steele’s record as an informant. Agents also omitted interviews that Page and Papadopoulos gave to FBI agents that contradicted the premise of the warrant application.
The FBI had tried to open a FISA warrant into Page earlier in August 2016, but agents were rebuffed by the department’s lawyers, according to the inspector general report. Talks about the FISA warrant only resumed after agents received the Steele dossier in September.
The Nunes memo assertions that the Steele dossier was “essential” to the Page FISA warrant therefore appears correct, according to the inspector general report.
Political origins
Nunes’ memo said the FISA warrant did not disclose or reference the role of the Democratic National Committee or the Clinton campaign in funding the dossier, “even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior DOJ and FBI officials.”
It’s true FISA applications did not explicitly say the Steele dossier was connected to the Democratic Party or Clinton campaign, according to the inspector general report.
The FISA application included a footnote stating “that Steele was hired by an identified U.S. person” to research Trump’s ties to Russia and “that the FBI ‘speculates’ that this U.S. person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit the Trump campaign.”
“Speculates” seems to be the key word here, as the inspector general report said some at the FBI believed the dossier could have origins with the Democratic Party and Clinton campaign, but the report doesn’t say anyone involved knew for sure, as the Nunes memo asserts.
The inspector general found the FBI should have clarified the origins of the Steele dossier while using it in a FISA warrant application.
“Absent corroboration for the factual assertions in (Steele’s) election reporting, it was particularly important for the FISA applications to articulate the FBI’s knowledge of Steele’s background and its assessment of his reliability,” the inspector general reports states.
When confronted with those speculations, then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe indicated he “felt strongly” that the FISA application should move forward because Russia’s interference in the election was a potentially serious threat to national security, according to the report. McCabe has since been fired by Trump.
Peter Strzok bias
The Nunes memo asserts in its final point that the entire investigation was authorized by former FBI agent Peter Strzok, who had shown political bias in text messages to former FBI attorney Lisa Page. Strzok was taken off the investigation after those texts surfaced.
While the texts between Strzok and Page talking about an “insurance policy” against Trump and showing dislike for his campaign are accurate, the inspector general report points out that Strzok was “not the sole, or even the highest-level, decision maker” on opening the investigation into Trump’s campaign.
That person was Strzok’s now-retired supervisor, Bill Priestap, the head of the FBI’s counterintelligence division, according to the report. There has not been reported evidence of political bias by Priestap.
This story was originally published December 12, 2019 at 8:22 AM with the headline "Fact check: Was Devin Nunes ‘vindicated’ by report on FBI’s Trump investigation?."
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