Page wire tap

The Steele dossier comes to light January 2017 just before Trump takes office, saying Trump conspired with Russia to win the election. The government uncovered many contacts between Trump associates and the Russia. Investigations into the dossier revealed that democrats paid for the research, funneled information to Steele's sources and then urged the FBI to investigate Trump's connections to Russia. The Durham investigation revealed that the primary source for the dossier was Igor Danchenko who repeatedly lied to the FBI about where he got his information. Mother Jones magazine first revealed the dossier as an opposition research project funded by Democrats. The money came from Hillary Clinton's campaign to a law firm, Perkins Coie to the a research company, Fusion GPS and the to Steele. Court records show that some information in the dossier came from Charles Dolan a PR executive with expertise in Russia affairs and a decades long Clinton family friend. Dolan was connected to the now infamous pee tape claiming that Trump had affairs with Russian prostitutes. This is the circular way misinformation gets into the press. Democrats dig up dirt on Trump and this is given to the FBI who leaks it to the press who then uses it as a reason to investigate. While this was going on in the fall of 2016 a Clinton campaign lawyer met with the FBI and gave them information about Trump operatives working with Alfa Bank in Russia. The lawyer, Micheal Sussmann, has since been charged with lying to the FBI. The FBI investigated and ruled out any improprieties. Later the FBI tracked down Danchenko who said the information he gave was hearsay and just talk and word of mouth. The bottom line is that James Comey confessed that the FBI had not corroborated much of the Steele dossier before it was submitted as evidence to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on Carter Page in the final weeks of the campaign. Comey admitted that the dossier remained uncorroborated more than six months later when he was fired by Trump. The DOJ now says it did not have probably cause to surveil Page. It turns out that Page was working for the CIA and the FBI failed to tell the court. The DOJ now believes it didn't have probable cause to think Carter Page might be acting as an agent of a foreign power, which was required to surveil him.