Why Not Simply Release The FISA Application?

RT  | FBI Director Christopher Wray has declined to tell the House Judiciary Committee if he was prohibited from sharing documents that would show whether the notorious Steele dossier was used to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on the Trump campaign. 

Wray was appearing before the the House Judiciary Committee Thursday, after President Donald Trump’s recent tweet that the FBI’s reputation is “in tatters.”

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) asked Wray about the FBI’s possible use of the Trump–Russia dossier, also known as the Steele dossier, named after its author ex-British spy Christopher Steele. It was a document paid for by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton campaign to be used as opposition research against Trump in 2016. It contained allegations that Trump colluded with the Russian government in the 2016 US presidential election and engaged in lewd acts. The veracity of the salacious claims in the dossier were further undermined by the revelation that Steele paid Russian sources for information pointing to collusion.

Jordan also referred to Peter Strzok, an FBI agent and former deputy head of counterintelligence who led the investigation into Clinton’s use of private emails, and reportedly recommended that former FBI director James Comey describe Clinton’s actions as “extremely careless,” rather than “grossly negligent” – a term that implies felony charges under US law. It was revealed this week that Strzok was dismissed this summer from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into alleged collaboration between Trump and Russia for sending “anti-Trump text messages.”

Jordan alleged that Strzok used the Steele dossier to obtain a FISA warrant for spying on members of the Trump team.

“My hunch is it has something to do with the dossier,” Jordan said. “Did Peter Strzok help produce and present the application to the FISA court to secure a warrant to spy on Americans associated with the Trump campaign?”

Wray refused to answer, saying, “I'm not prepared to discuss anything about a FISA process in this setting.”

Jordan wouldn’t let Wary off the hook. “We're not talking about what happened in the court, we're talking about what the FBI took to the court,” he said. “The application. Was Peter Strzok involved in taking that to the court?”