Ok, I've read the memo. I'm certain there are serious and glaring omissions of fact just by reading it. There's nothing here that's interesting at all except that Steele was "suspended and then terminated" as an FBI source for his unscrupulous contacts with media, which does bother me. Tweet storm:
- Trying to discredit the Steele dossier just by saying he was paid to do it is like saying a PI's evidence is inadmissible in court. Intelligence is intelligence and the FBI can make whatever determination they want about the source.
- The memo criticizes the mention of Papadopolopolopous but does not put into context how much information was in the FISA request and how important that was (it was probably a sidenote or something irrelevant).
- Making a judgement about the Russia investigation based on a potentially dubious FISA warrant against Carter Page is really dumb, and it's going to be even more dumb when Carter Page has nothing to do with the conclusions of the investigation (considering Carter Page has not been interviewed privately by Mueller, he only testified before a grand jury).
Lastly, I already said this, but if there really was "FISA abuse", then Congress has oversight powers. And Republicans have Congress. And Trump is president. They could literally do anything they want to about this, up to and including firing all of the people involved and reforming the structures that led to this. So: do it, bitch. Fire the deputy FBI director. I dare you.
I'll say this about Steele.
If what was stated in the testimony is true, and it would be a crime if what was stated wasn't, Steele came to Fusion with deep concern about ongoing criminal behavior that was alarming to him and prompted him to want to contact the FBI.
After a couple of contacts with the FBI, where at one point it was made aware to him that they contacted Steele back because some of his findings aligned with their own investigation and what was learned from ole Pappy. Steele also got the sense as things got closer to the election, that maybe the FBI was under-pursuing this matter or compromised in a way that concerned him, so he pulled back on dealing with them according to Simpson's testimony. Which seems to have prompted him to seek out the media as an alternative way of getting that info out there.
Everything about the narrative in full context really doesn't suggest bad faith at any point. In fact, it's hard to come up with a rational, alternative, nefarious explanation that explains all of the behavior Steele exhibited.
The right loves to use money as the evil motivator, just like with Uranium One foolishness or Mueller, but by all accounts Steele was doing quite well for himself in the private sector. So that always seemed to be a major reach.
