Dossier

In June of 2015 Trump announced his candidacy for president. It was considered a joke by most experts in politics and in the press. As time passed his message began to resonate with the voters and the bureaucracy started to worry. In June of 2016 the Steel Dossier came on the scene. Hillary Clinton's campaign along with the Democratic National Committee (DNC) hired Christopher Steel to gather information on Trump and this was used to get the FISA court to approve a wire tap on Carter Page who was hired as Trumps foreign policy adviser. Between October of 2016 and June of 2017 the FBI asked for and received four FISA warrants targeting Page. This in and of itself is not that significant but this allowed the FBI to listen in to anyone who talked with Page and then listen in or their conversations and then on to those third parties which means they tapped the entire Trump campaign before and after the election. It was later that FBI chief Comey said they could not have gotten the warrants if it were not for the dossier. It was than revealed that the FBI knew the dossier could not be verified when they used it to get the warrants. Defining FISA surveillance as one of the “most sensitive and intrusive investigative techniques” available to the government, the IG report concluded in the Page matter, “FBI personnel fell far short of the requirement in FBI policy” that FISA applications contain only “scrupulously accurate” information. Not only did the FBI gather this information illegally they systematically released information to the press that was designed to damage Trump.