WHAT IS THE STEELE DOSSIER? A Jeffsplainer for the Dense and Progressives, But I Repeat Myself

The Steele Dossier was a hastily cobbled together justification for two things: 1) to justify the spying on Trump’s campaign team PRIOR to Mike Rogers shutting down NSA SIGINT database mining for Trump Team comms up to April, 2016.

2) to justify RESTARTING intelligence community intercepts of Trump campaign/transition team comms by proffering the dossier to the FISA Court by claiming Trump team members were foreign agents serving Russia.

We don’t know exactly when FBI subcontractors began to be used by the DOJ/FBI Hillary/Obama/DNC nexus to mine the NSA SIGINT database for Trump campaign team comms & then to submit Sec. 702 unmasking requests to reveal the names of Trump team members in the intel incercepts.

What we DO know is that in April 2016, NSA director Mike Rogers was made aware of the fact there were an unusually high number of Section 702 unmasking requests being made that were coming through the FBI…

When Rogers investigates, he discovers much to his abject horror, that almost all these unmasking requests are as a result of an FBI subcontractor data mining the NSA SIGNALS INTELLIGENCE [SIGINT] database, which the FBI had given unsupervised subcontractors access to.

The NSA SIGINT database is the collection of intel intercepts of all electronic data. It’s huge. It supposedly collects EVERYTHING. Phone calls, emails, texts, etc.

As you can imagine, the potential for the political & criminal abuse of that collected information is gigantic.

That is why there are supposed to be VERY stringent safeguards in place to prevent anybody using this collected intelligence for criminal or PARTISAN POLITICAL purposes.

And in April 2016, Mike Rogers discovered a group of people INSIDE THE DOJ/FBI had figured out a way to defeat EVERY SINGLE SAFEGUARD OF THE SYSTEM.

There is no way this could be done ACCIDENTALLY.

A group of people both inside the DOJ/FBI and inside the HRC campaign & inside the DNC figured out a way to defeat every single safeguard & collect these Trump Team comms intercepts, unmask the names & then pass them around.

Fun fact: you know the ONLY part of the DOJ that Inspector General Michael Horowitz couldn’t get oversight of the past few years?

It’s the VERY top of the DOJ, a section called the ‘National Security Division’ [NSD].

When Horowitz realized the very top of the DOJ, the NSD, had been sealed off from any oversight, he wrote a very specific letter to the then-Deputy Assistant Attorney General asking that this be corrected.

then wrote IG Michael Horowitz a very long memo in reply.

The Cliff Notes: “Go pound sand. You will never have any oversight over what the NSD sees or what it does with NSA SIGINT.”

Yates knew very well people inside the FBI had set up a scheme in which subcontractors were data mining the NSA SIGINT database for Trump campaign comms intercepts, then sending up Sec. 702 unmasking queries, compiling reports and SENDING THEM TO THE DOJ’S NSD.

The DOJ’s Nat. Sec. Division was then SPREADING THESE INTEL REPORTS containing Trump campaign info all around.

Watch Evelyn Farkas discuss this on Morning Joe.

That interview took place on March 2nd. Despite the attempts of sites like Snopes to spin what Farkas clearly said, she states intel was being COLLECTED & DISSEMINATED widely inside the Obama admin. detailing ‘Trump/Russia contacts’.

Now, in March 2017, OF COURSE that’s how the DOJ/FBI/Obama/Hillary nexus is going to SPIN why this intelligence was being collected, why names were unmasked & why these reports were spread around.

And why this started PRIOR to April, 2016 when Rogers was made aware of it.

“Well we were FORCED to do this, collect this stuff, and then make sure it was preserved because Donald Trump is a puppet of the Russians and so he’ll HIDE the Russian hacking evidence n’ stuff!”

So in April 2016, Mike Rogers shuts down the FBI – or an SUBCONTRACTORS hired by the FBI – from using the NSA SIGINT database for any more mining for Trump campaign team comms they can unmask & disseminate.

Read this to understand how Mike Rogers shut down the abuse of 702 queries and ordered a review of the process so it could be fixed so no further such abuses could take place:

theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/01/05/ope…

While Clapper and Yates and Holder and Lynch and MANY others were going along with blatant political use of classified intelligence from the NSA, Mike Rogers went in there and STOPPED the abuse in April 2016.

So the DOJ/FBI/HRC/Obama/DNC nexus had a problem. They’d been found out, and now they needed an EXCUSE to escape legal problems for the illegal use of the intel they’d leaked to each other.

So the very first problem that has to be addressed is these people who just got caught abusing intel collection have to come up with some valid NATIONAL SECURITY excuse to have been mining, collecting, unmasking the communications of Trump team people.

Then there’s the SECOND problem they have to address: they *still* want to get access to Trump campaign comms. Only now, thanks to Mike Rogers, they have to find a way to get it LEGALLY.

And it just so happens, there *is* a legal way they could get surveillance of SOME Trump team member’s communications: go to the FISA Court & convince the court that some Trump campaign members are RUSSIAN AGENTS.

ENTER THE STEELE DOSSIER.

By quickly cobbling together a bunch of ludicrous, anonymously sourced allegations claiming Trump is compromised by the Russians & members of his team are Russian agents, they can solve BOTH problems.

Now remember this: the first problem in April 2016, when Rogers shut down their further access to 702 queries, was only a POTENTIAL problem.

These people FULLY expect Hillary to win the election in Nov. 2016. They see their job as making that EASIER for her.

So, they aren’t really focused at THAT point on justifying the NSA intercepts & illegal unmasking they did. After all, Hillary is going to win the election and that goddamn Mike Rogers will gone soon, so who cares?

So, try to grasp how arrogant these people were. Rogers shut them out in/around April 2016, and they IMMEDIATELY focused on what they saw as the MAIN problem: getting their spying on Trump’s campaign team started right back up again.

By June/July 2016 they are BACK with ‘Plan B’. The Steele Dossier. They will take this #FusionGPS political product compiled by various people like Glenn Simpson & Nellie Ohr, use Steele as mostly a front man, and pass it off to the FISA Court as being a US intel product.

Remember, when they finally get this FISA Court warrant they wanted on the Trump campaign members, it’s still around July 2016. They STILL think Hillary is going to win. This is still just oppo research for Hillary using US gov’t surveillance, that’s all.

Nobody’s ever gonna see this dossier. The funding for it will never be traced. Nobody’s ever really gonna find out about all that NSA SIGINT database abuse with the 702 queries either.

Hillary’s gonna win.

This is all gonna be buried.