Michael Isikoff Says He Was "Stunned" To See His Story Cited In FISA Warrant

from ZeroHedge:

It’s not every day that investigative journalists discover their work was cited in a controversial warrant application that has become a flashpoint of partisan conflict in the US. So, it’s telling that, rather than being honored to see his work having such a profound impact, Yahoo News reporter Michael Isikoff said he was “stunned” to see a story he published more than a year ago cited in the “FISA memo” as one of the justifications in a FISA warrant application for former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

As Isikoff explains, his story was almost entirely based on information from the Steele dossier, which was passed to him by an intermediary. Therefore, citing it would be redundant. The revelation, which was made in a memo released by the House Intelligence Committee on Friday, “stuns me,” Isikoff said in an episode of his podcast, “Skullduggery.”

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The four-page memo alleges that the DOJ and FBI relied on the “unverified and salacious” (in the words of former FBI Director James Comey) dossier in their initial application for the Page warrant, as well as in the applications for renewal. The article, which was published by Yahoo on Sept. 23, 2016, was “cited extensively” in the application, which also notes that most of the information contained in the story was derived from the dossier. Isikoff’s story was largely ignored when it was published as the media was hyper focused on the fallout from the “Access Hollywood” tape and few people believed Trump would prevail.

Check out the new episode of our podcast Skullduggery — “The Spy, the Reporter and the Memo” — in which @dklaidman and I discuss my strange appearance in the House Republican memo and what it means. https://t.co/RtzFahh19L

— Michael Isikoff (@Isikoff) 3 February 2018

Isikoff said it was “a bit beyond me” that the FBI would use his article in the FISA application.

“Obviously the information that I got from Christopher Steele was information the FBI already had,” he said, noting that Steele began sharing information from his dossier in July 2016.

“It’s self-referential,” he said of the article and its reliance on the dossier.

“My story is about the FBI’s own investigation,” he continued.

“So it seems a little odd that they would be citing the Yahoo! News story about the matter that they are investigating themselves based on the same material that had been separately presented to the FBI before I was ever briefed by Christopher Steele.”

The Republican spy memo makes a similar argument.

“This article does not corroborate the Steele dossier because it is derived from the information leaked by Steele himself to Yahoo! News,” it reads.

It also asserts that the Page FISA application “incorrectly assesses” that Steele was NOT a source for Isikoff.

According to the memo, that corroboration of the dossier was in its “infancy” at the time the FISA application was submitted. An FBI unit that tried to verify Steele’s research had determined that it was only “minimally corroborated” at the time the FISA warrant was granted.

Isikoff said on his podcast that he met Steele at a Washington hotel in September 2016. They were joined by his “old friend” Glenn Simpson, the founder of opposition research firm Fusion GPS.

Fusion hired Steele to investigate Donald Trump’s ties to Russia. The firm was working for the Clinton campaign and DNC, a fact which Isikoff was not aware of at the time of the meeting with Simpson and Steele.

Read More @ ZeroHedge.com