Steele Dossier

US: Democrats published a rebuttal memo to the FISA memo released by Republicans who alleged that the FBI and DOJ had abused the FISA system in obtaining the warrant. The Democrats' rebuttal omitted several key points such as: former FBI Deputy Director Andy McCabe's testimony that the FISA warrant would not have been sought without the infamous dossier, and it ignores the fact that the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign paid for the dossier. [...]

On Saturday, Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee released their rebuttal to the Nunes memo.
The counter-memo claims that the “FBI and DOJ officials did not ‘abuse’ the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) process, omit material information, or subvert this vital tool to spy on the Trump campaign.”

The revelation that Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee helped pay for the notorious “Steele Dossier” of hearsay claims about Donald Trump’s relations with Russia is not surprising but is noteworthy given how long the mystery about the funding was allowed to linger.
Another mild surprise is that the Clinton campaign would have had a direct hand in the financing rather than maintaining an arm’s length relationship to the dossier by having some “friend of the campaign” make the payments and giving Clinton more deniability.