What Is and Isn’t New in the Unredacted Footnotes From the Inspector General’s Russia Report

At the request of Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson, the Trump administration recently declassified portions of footnotes in the Justice Department inspector general’s report on the early stages of the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation. The report, issued in December 2019, found no evidence of political bias against Trump, as the president and his supporters had alleged—but it uncovered a pattern of omissions, errors and inconsistencies in the government’s Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) applications to surveil former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

Grassley and Johnson’s efforts have focused on information contained in four footnotes. On April 10, the senators announced that the administration had made public parts of three of those footnotes—numbers 302, 334 and 350. Then, on April 15, they drew attention to the release of parts of the fourth footnote—number 342—along with the lifting of redactions in more than 30 other footnotes.

The senators initially declared that the new material was a bombshell. According to their April 10 press release, the footnotes “confirmed” that the Steele dossier, parts of which the FBI relied on to target Page, was the product of a Russian disinformation campaign. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Johnson wrote: “Now it’s been revealed the FBI had evidence that [the Steele dossier] was based in substantial part on a Russian disinformation campaign.” The senators also suggested that the new material tainted Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. In a tweet, Grassley charged:

Johnson voiced a similar doubt about the Mueller investigation in his op-ed. While Grassley and Johnson have not fully spelled out their argument, they seemed to suggest that because—in their view—the FBI’s investigation was infected with Russian disinformation, the Mueller investigation, which took over the FBI’s Russia probe, was fatally flawed.

The senators’ April 15 press release, however, made far narrower claims. They did not repeat their allegation that the new footnotes confirm that the Steele dossier included information planted by the Russians. Instead, they excoriated the FBI for relying on the Steele dossier after receiving “multiple reports in 2017 warning that [its] claims … were ‘false’ and ‘part of a Russian disinformation campaign.’” And their only mention of Mueller was to fault him for failing to “examine and investigate corruption at the FBI, the sources of the Steele dossier, how it was disseminated, and reporting that it contained Russian disinformation.”

The senators’ second press release is a more accurate characterization of the four key footnotes than was their first press release. The footnotes do not confirm that the Steele dossier was the product of Russian disinformation. But two footnotes do indicate that the FBI received reports alleging that portions of Steele’s evidence were the product of a Russian disinformation plot—though the footnotes do not establish that these reports were credible. The other two footnotes offer further reason to question the veracity of Steele’s reporting, but they do not necessarily implicate the existence of a Russian disinformation operation.

Additionally, the footnotes on their own do not fundamentally undermine the integrity of the Mueller report. As discussed below, the Steele dossier played no role in the origins of the FBI probe that was transferred to Mueller when he was appointed special counsel in May 2017. Moreover, whether or not Russian operatives targeted Steele has no bearing on Mueller’s conclusion that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 election. (In fact, if Russia did use Steele in an influence operation, that would only be further evidence of Russian interference in the U.S. election.)

Though the Mueller report contains passing references to the Steele dossier at several points, the report does not include any examination of the dossier’s origins—which is perhaps unsurprising, given Mueller’s seemingly narrow understanding of his mandate. As the report states, “The Special Counsel’s Office exercised its judgment regarding what to investigate and did not, for instance, investigate every public report of a contact between the Trump Campaign and Russian-affiliated individuals and entities.” When Mueller testified before Congress in July 2019, he said that he was “unable” to address questions related to the Steele dossier as they were “the subject of ongoing review” by the Justice Department. Presumably, Mueller was referring to the inspector general’s probe, which was announced in March 2018.

Background

To understand the relevance of the footnotes, some brief background is necessary. In June 2016, the Washington-based investigative firm Fusion GPS hired former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele—on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee—to uncover whatever potentially damaging information Steele could find about then-candidate Trump. Starting in July 2016, the FBI directly obtained numerous reports from Steele—collectively known as the much-discussed “Steele dossier”—which the bureau attempted to verify. (Ultimately, according to the inspector general, “the FBI concluded … that … much of the material in the Steele election reports … could not be corroborated; that certain allegations were inaccurate or inconsistent with information gathered by the [FBI]; and that the limited information that was corroborated related to time, location, and title information, much of which was publicly available.”) On July 31, 2016, the FBI opened its Russia investigation—named Crossfire Hurricane—based on intelligence received from a friendly foreign government. While Steele first provided information to an FBI agent in Europe in early July, the inspector general concluded that Steele’s information did not reach the Crossfire Hurricane team until September and that it was not a part of the FBI’s decision to open the investigation.

The Steele dossier has been the source of significant controversy. Among other things, the government relied on parts of the dossier in its FISA applications targeting Carter Page, who at one point served as a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign. The initial Page application was approved on Oct. 21, 2016—a month after Page left the campaign—and was subsequently renewed three additional times. (The inspector general’s report states that the “salacious and unverified” portion of the dossier, concerning alleged sexual conduct involving the future president, was not included in any of the FISA applications.)

According to the inspector general’s report, Steele “was not the originating source of any of the factual information in his reporting.” Instead, “Steele relied on a primary sub-source (Primary Sub-source) for information, and this Primary Sub-source used a network of [further] sub-sources to gather the information that was relayed to Steele.” It appears that the nature of this relationship was disclosed in the FISA applications. The inspector general’s report noted that:

Ultimately, the initial drafts provided to [Justice Department] management, the read copy, and the final application submitted to the FISC [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court] contained a description of the source network that included the fact that Steele relied upon a Primary Sub-source who used a network of sub-sources, and that neither Steele nor the Primary Sub-source had direct access to the information being reported. The drafts, read copy, and final application also contained a separate footnote on each sub-source with a brief description of his/her position or access to the information he/she was reporting.

Top FBI official Bill Priestap told the inspector general that the bureau never took Steele’s information at “face value.” Priestap and another FBI official, Peter Strzok, said that “the assessment [of Steele’s reports] involved determining the credibility of Steele, including understanding his record of furnishing reliable information, motivation, and possible biases; and verifying the information he provided through independent sources.” Nonetheless, while Steele told inspector general investigators that “his election reports should not have been treated as facts or allegations but as the starting point for further investigation,” the inspector general concluded that there was “no evidence that Steele communicated this view of his reporting to [Steele’s FBI handling agent in Europe] or members of the Crossfire Hurricane team.”

Footnote 302

The newly unredacted footnote 302 makes clear that an individual whom the inspector general report described as “a key Steele sub-source” may have had ties to the Russian government. According to “a document circulated among Crossfire Hurricane team members and supervisors in early October 2016,” the individual, referred to a Person 1, had “historical contact with persons and entities suspected of being linked to [Russian Intelligence Services (RIS)].” The footnote continues: “The document described reporting that Person 1 ‘was rumored to be a former KGB/SVR officer.’” In addition, the footnote establishes that Glenn Simpson, the head of Fusion GPS, told senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr that he “had assessed that Person 1 was a RIS officer who was central in connecting Trump to Russia”—and that Ohr had passed that information to a FBI special agent working on the investigation.

Because the FISA applications relied extensively on information attributed to Person 1, that individual’s credibility was critical to the government’s ability to establish probable cause and thereby obtain the FISA warrants. More specifically, the inspector general’s report concluded that Person 1 was likely the source of the “most descriptive information in the FISA application of alleged coordination between Page and Russia.” Among other things, the FISA application relied on Person 1 for the allegations that there was “a well-developed conspiracy of co-operation” between the Trump campaign and Russian leadership and that Russia was behind the leak of the Democratic National Committee emails to WikiLeaks with the “full knowledge and support of” of Trump and his campaign team.

Grassley and Johnson make clear that they believe that the government should have disclosed Person 1’s ties to Russia to the FISC. Their claim is generally consistent with the inspector general’s report. While the inspector general did not explicitly fault the government for failing to disclose Person 1’s potential Russia links, the report does express strong concern about the FBI’s failure to disclose, in the renewal applications, information the bureau learned that seriously undermined the credibility of allegations attributed to Person 1.

In addition, in the first statement, Grassley and Johnson also seemed to suggest that Person 1’s Russia ties confirmed that any information attributed to Person 1 was part of a Russia disinformation campaign. But that conclusion does not necessarily follow from the new footnote. In fact, it seems unremarkable—and even expected—that a Steele sub-source would have connections to the Russian government. And even if the allegations about Person 1’s Russia links are accurate, that alone does not prove that the information the sub-source provided was false.

Footnote 334

The new material revealed in footnote 334 establishes that a person identified as Steele’s “Primary Sub-source,” in an interview with the FBI in 2017, “stated that he/she did not view his/her contacts as a network of sources but rather friends with whom he/she has conversations about current events and government relations.” The next sentence in the footnote remains redacted.

The senators focus on this footnote because it likely reveals an inconsistency between the government’s representation of Steele’s Primary Sub-source to the FISC and how the Primary Sub-source perceived his or her contacts. Their allegation that the FBI should have disclosed information learned from its interview with the Primary

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