‘The crazies were right, and I was wrong’: Former federal prosecutor speaks of ‘rogue’ FBI & FISA court abuses

Former Federal Prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, while being critical of many aspects of the special counsel probe into Russian collusion with the Trump campaign, had long maintained that the FISA warrants obtained by the FBI/DOJ, were applied for and granted properly, until the controversial Nunes’ memo regarding FISA abuses was release, and later confirmed by the Senate Judiciary Commitees Grassley-Graham memo back in February 2018.

(Article by Susan Duclos republished from AllNewsPipeline.com)

At the time McCarthy wrote the following:

With its verification by the Grassley-Graham memo, the Nunes memo now has about a thousand times more corroboration than the Steele dossier, the basis of the heinous allegations used by the Justice Department and FBI to get the FISA warrants.

What the Grassley-Graham memo tells us is that the Nunes memo, for all the hysteria about it, was tame. The Grassley-Graham memo tells us that we need not only a full-blown investigation of what possessed the Obama administration to submit such shoddy applications to the FISA court, but of how a judge — or perhaps as many as four judges — rationalized signing the warrants.

We need full disclosure — the warrants, the applications, the court proceedings. No more games.

On Saturday, July 21, 2018, McCarthy partially got his wish. The FBI/DOJ dumped 412 pages of documents related to the FISA surveillance warrants for Carter Page, including the applications, the certifications, and the warrants themselves. (The 412 page release is embedded at the bottom of this article)

I say McCarthy only partially got his wish because the disclosure wasn’t full, and the heavy handed redactions mean the FBI/DOJ is still playing games, but the copious amount of information that was revealed was enough for McCarthy to finally admit the FBI, under Obama, went “rogue,” by breaking with all protocols in order to manufacture the great “Witch Hunt,” which is what President Trump has dubbed the special counsel investigation into collusion.

After having gone through the documents, McCarthy joined Fox & Friends to offer a verbal mea culpa, saying “I’m really embarrassed because I told people for months that this could never, ever happen.” He explains in the short clip below.

On July 23, expanding on his interview, McCarthy offered his full analysis in a piece titled “FISA Applications Confirm: The FBI Relied on the Unverified Steele Dossier,” where he explains what a proper verification process requires, finding the FBI did not, or could not, verify the Steele dossier, and misled the FISA court by claiming they had verified the information used in their application.

McCarthy then addresses his critics that are still trying to justify the FBI tactics by claiming the redacted information may show the FBI did corroborate Steele’s information. He highlights not only the Grassley-Graham declassified memo, but he also points out that former FBI Director James Comey had also testified in from of Congress by admitting the Steele dossier was “salacious and unverified.” Further proving his point, he reminds readers that “the FBI’s former deputy director, Andrew McCabe, told Congress that the bureau tried very hard to verify Steele’s information but could provide no points of verification beyond the fact that Page did travel to Russia in July 2016 — a fact that required no effort to corroborate since the trip was unconcealed and widely known.”

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