Explosion over the Washington Swamp

"In other words, the Obama administration used a dossier concocted by Russian agents to legitimize its surveillance of their political opposition."

terrellaftermath

Gary Gindler  . . . "As a result, we know that the chain of events associated with the case of Trump's "criminal collusion with Putin" looks like this:

• Trump's political opponents during the primaries hired the firm Fusion GPS, which specializes in opposition research, to dig up some dirt on Trump
• After Trump won the primaries, Fusion GPS lost the customer, but just for a short while
• The new customers of the dirt on Trump become the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC
• The new customers requested dirt on Trump from Fusion GPS, not only in the American domain but also in the international arena
• To add international dimension, Fusion GPS hired a subcontractor – former resident of British intelligence in Moscow Christopher Steele, known for his open anti-Trump beliefs
• Christopher Steele hired some former agents of the Russian intelligence services (against whom he once fought during the Cold War)
• The agents of Russian intelligence services concoct a dirty file on Trump (linguistic analysis confirmed that this dossier was written in "Russian English" with minimal editing by native English speakers)
• It is still unclear as to what extent these Russian agents were the "former" agents of the Russian intelligence services (that is, to what extent this dossier is fiction, and to what extent is it the deliberate work of the KGB/FSB disinformation effort)
• Trump's dossier, compiled by the Russians, gets to the FBI through the Assistant Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, who received it from his wife. At that time, she was working for Fusion GPS and was a part of the anti-Trump research team
• The FBI used this dossier as one of the key arguments in the secret intelligence court FISC to obtain a warrant to wiretap the Trump campaign

"In other words, the Obama administration used a dossier concocted by Russian agents to legitimize its surveillance of their political opposition.

"According to the memo, FBI leaders knew precisely where the dossier came from, but in the application to the FISC, they presented the dossier as a proven fact, and not as opposition research. It was not just a mere bureaucratic mistake -- the FBI used the dossier in such a way not once, but at least four times." . . .