WSJ, NYT, WaPo: Actually, The DoJ Did Tell The FISA Court About Steele’s Political Connections

First, we had #ReleaseTheMemo. Now, sit back and wait for #ReleasetheLeaken. Actually, we don’t have to wait at all; the counter-leaks began late yesterday, designed to poke holes in the Devin Nunes memo, which left lots of room for those holes to exist. The Wall Street Journal got the first significant leak, with an anonymous source telling the paper that the main thrust of Nunes’ memo — that the Department of Justice hid Christopher Steele’s political connections — was false: The memo contends that by not stating the partisan origin of the research, prosecutors obscured a possible political motive for the surveillance of Mr. Page, marking a “troubling breakdown of legal processes.” But the document’s claims are difficult to evaluate without access to the underlying, highly classified law-enforcement material that it was based on. It also doesn’t address or dispute the research collected by Mr. Steele that was included in the warrant application, and it recommends no changes to U.S. intelligence programs.-- More...