Steele is Right to be Concerned

Originally published on The Daily Caller:

“Very concerned” about what?

According to a new documents, then fourth-ranking Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr wrote that Christopher Steele, the former British spy paid by Fusion GPS to compile an anti-Trump dossier that even former FBI director James Comey called “unverified and salacious,” with help from Russian intelligence officials on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, was “very concerned about Comey’s firing — afraid they will be exposed.”

Which raises the obvious question: Who might be exposed? Doing what?

First, we know that Steele was a key source cited by the FBI and Department of Justice to obtain a FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) warrant to spy on Trump advisor Carter Page.

Given the extraordinary level of the Obama administration’s so-called “unmasking,” that is, exposing American citizens “accidentally” captured in what is supposed to be foreign intelligence surveillance, it is likely that this spying was an end in itself.

As of the last tally, in the fiscal year 2015 alone, the Obama administration made 654 requests to unmask U.S. citizens’ identities, resulting in a total of a towering 2,232 individual citizens unmasked.

We still do not have a full accounting of who in the Obama administration requested each unmasking, who was unmasked, and to whom that information was distributed.

It may be that all of it was perfectly legitimate.

Or, it may be that the Obama administration was systematically spying on the Trump campaign, using the ruse of a counterintelligence investigation about which even now-fired pro-Hillary FBI head of counterintelligence Peter Strzok said to his paramour Lisa Page as recently as May 19, 2017: “You and I both know the odds are nothing. If I thought it was likely, I’d be there no question. I hesitate in part because of my gut sense and concern that there’s no big there.”

So, perhaps Steele was “very concerned” about Comey’s firing because he and his allies inside and outside the Obama administration, Clinton Campaign, would be exposed as having deliberately thwarted the law to spy on an opposing presidential campaign.

And perhaps that is why, during a closed-door congressional testimony last year, the co-founder of Fusion GPS, Glenn Simpson, claimed he had no contact with Ohr until after the presidential election. But Ohr’s work emails conflict with Simpson’s testimony, and show contact months earlier”, according to the newly released materials.

If that interview was under oath, Simpson committed a crime.

Second, according to one source, GPS head “Simpson admits he had dinner with [Russian informant Natalia] Veselnitskaya both the night before and the night after the Trump Tower meeting.”

She, in turn, “claimed that the talking points for her meeting with the Trump people were provided to her by Simpson.”

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes has said:

“[The dossier] was handed directly from Russian propaganda arms to the Clinton campaign, fed into the top levels of the FBI and Department of Justice to open up a counterintelligence investigation into a political campaign that has now colluded (with) nearly every top official at the DOJ and FBI over the course of the last couple years. Absolutely amazing.”

So perhaps Steele was “very concerned” about Comey’s firing because he was afraid that he and Simpson would be exposed as having tried to set up the Trump campaign, colluding directly with Russian intelligence assets to do so.

Or perhaps Steele was very concerned about both. And more. Seems as though he is right to be very concerned.

Let’s just hope he and his co-conspirators are exposed, as he feared.