FBI Director Wray balks at demand to disclose FISA application, Strzok role

by WorldTribune Staff, December 8, 2017

During a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Dec. 7, FBI Director Chris Wray was grilled by Rep. Jim Jordan on a former FBI agent’s role in a FISA application that Jordan said “became the basis for a warrant to spy on Americans.”

Jordan, a Republican from Ohio, pressed Wray on Peter Strzok’s involvement in the warrant and why he was hand-picked by special counsel Robert Mueller to play a key role in the investigation into alleged Trump-Russia collusion during the 2016 presidential election campaign.

Rep. Jim Jordan

“Let’s remember a couple of things about the dossier,” Jordan said. “The Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign, which we now know were one and the same, paid the law firm who paid Fusion GPS who paid Christopher Steele who then paid Russians to put together a report that we call a dossier full of all kinds of fake news, National Enquirer garbage and it’s been reported that this dossier was all dressed up by the FBI, taken to the FISA court and presented as a legitimate intelligence document – that it became the basis for a warrant to spy on Americans.”

Jordan asked Wray: “Director, 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 responded that he was not “prepared” to discuss applications tied to the FISA court.

Strzok, the former deputy head of intelligence at the FBI, was fired by Mueller after the discovery of anti-Trump and pro-Clinton text messages he sent to an FBI lawyer who was also his mistress.

Strzok was also the FBI agent who changed the criminal term of “gross negligence” to “extreme carelessness” in James Comey’s letter of findings on Hillary Clinton’s private email server.

“Well here’s what I’m not getting,” Jordan said to Wray. “Peter Strzok is selected to be on Mueller’s team – after all this history, put on Mueller’s team – and then he’s removed for some pro-Clinton text messages. I mean there are all kinds of people on Mueller’s team who are pro-Clinton. If you kicked everybody off Mueller’s team who was anti-Trump, I don’t think there’d be anybody left.”

Jordan continued: “It can’t just be some text messages … there’s got to be something more. And I’m trying to figure out what it is. But my hunch is, it has something to do with the dossier.”

Jordan concluded: “Here’s what I think – I think Peter Strzok … Mr. Super Agent at the FBI, I think he’s the guy who took the application to the FISA court and if that happened, if this happened, if you have the FBI working with a campaign, the Democrats’ campaign, taking opposition research, dressing it all up and turning it into an intelligence document so they can take it to the FISA court so they can spy on the other campaign, if that happened, that is as wrong as it gets.”


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