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FBI used dossier(DNC Oppo-Research) allegations to bolster Trump-Russia investigation

(CNN)The FBI last year used a dossier(DNC Oppo-Research) of allegations of Russian ties to Donald Trump's campaign as part of the justification to win approval to secretly monitor a Trump associate, according to US officials briefed on the investigation.

The dossier DNC Oppo-research has also been cited by FBI Director James Comey in some of his briefings to members of Congress in recent weeks, as one of the sources of information the bureau has used to bolster its investigation, according to US officials briefed on the probe.

This includes approval from the secret court that oversees the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to monitor the communications of Carter Page, two of the officials said. Last year, Page was identified by the Trump campaign as an adviser on national security.

Quoted from CICERO

https://www.google.com/amp/s/a.....stigation/index.html

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Intel chiefs presented Trump with (DNC Oppo-Research) claims of Russian efforts to compromise him

Classified documents presented last week to President Obama and President-elect Trump included allegations that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump, multiple US officials with direct knowledge of the briefings tell CNN.

The allegations were presented in a two-page synopsis that was appended to a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. The allegations came, in part, from memos compiled by a former British intelligence operative(hired by the DNC/Clinton Campaign), whose past work US intelligence officials consider credible. The FBI is investigating the credibility and accuracy of these allegations, which are based primarily on information from Russian sources, but has not confirmed many essential details in the memos about Mr. Trump.

The classified briefings last week were presented by four of the senior-most US intelligence chiefs -- Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers.

One reason the nation's intelligence chiefs took the extraordinary step of including the synopsis in the briefing documents was to make the President-elect aware that such allegations involving him are circulating among intelligence agencies, senior members of Congress and other government officials in Washington, multiple sources tell CNN.

Quoted from joebxr

and your point is????
How does this bolster your non-factual comments? It is in a different direction than what
you have been trying to imply. It was used to justify investigating Carter Page.

Quoted from CICERO

I've implied nothing.  I cited the report that the DNC/Clinton Campaign funded the Trump-Russia Dossier. Now I've just cited reports that the FBI actually used the partisan Oppo-Research to begin an investigation into the information in the partisan dossier.  Those are the facts as reported.  

Quoted from joebxr

(1) Reports funding by DNC/Clinton campaign remain UNPROVEN AND DENIED WITH NO MONETY TRAIL OR PROOF TO THE CONTRARY! Told you this already, but it's not getting through. When there is PROOF to contradict, then I will accept the assumption you are making.

I'm not making an assumption.  I have cited POLITICO and now WAPO as a source of PROOF.  You can accept whatever you want, whenever you want.

Quoted from joebxr

(2) "partisan"...really, initially hired by REP entity then taken over by DEM entity...I would accept BI-PARTISAN...and again, they did not directly hire the Brit...unless you can show me factually proof to the contrary.

Quoted from joebxr

(3) FBI investigating allegations, which to date have shown that some are true...no surprise here,  because the "true" information, as
has been widely reported, is that Russia attempted by interference to influence the election in favor of Trump. The OPPO DOSSIER only substantiated what was already being widely reported and investigated...RUSSIA INTERFERED WITH INTENT TO ASSIST ELECTING TRUMP.

Quoted from joebxr

(4) information was "Russian sources"...doesn't support your false comment, which I can't find info to support, that info was
provided by Russian "GOVERNMENT" sources.

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The Dossier
Background: The “dossier” is a collection of 17 memos concerning President Trump and Russia written by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer, between June 20 and Dec. 13, 2016. Steele produced his memos under a contract with Fusion GPS, a strategic intelligence firm run by former journalists.


The memos are written as raw intelligence, based on interviews Steele had with unidentified Russian sources (identified, for instance, as “Kremlin insider”), some of whom he paid for information. Raw intelligence is essentially high-grade gossip, without the expectation it would be made public unless it is further verified.
The memos, among other things, allege the Russian government had been seeking to split the Western alliance by cultivating and supporting Trump and also gathering compromising information — “kompromat” — on him in an effort to blackmail him. The memos, among other allegations, claim the Russian government fed the Trump campaign “valuable intelligence” on Clinton.
Why It’s Important: The dossier mirrors a separate conclusion by U.S. intelligence agencies that the Russian government intervened in the U.S. election in an effort to bolster Trump and harm Clinton, such as through hacking the Democratic National Committee and distributing materials to WikiLeaks to publish at key moments. As the official declassified report stated:

“We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin intensely disliked Clinton because he was convinced that when she was secretary of state she had promoted anti-Putin, pro-democracy efforts in his country. The FBI considered the information gathered by Steele to be of sufficient importance that it considered paying him for his research, although it later dropped the idea.
What’s New: The DNC and Clinton campaign were revealed as the “Democratic donors” who paid Fusion GPS for Steele’s research. (Technically, Perkins Coie, the law firm of Marc Elias, an attorney representing the Clinton campaign and the DNC, funded the research.)
Separately, a “Republican donor” who had earlier hired Fusion GPS for information on Trump was revealed to be the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website. But that earlier effort is unrelated to the Democratic-funded research that yielded the dossier.
We should note that, in another assignment, Fusion had been hired by a U.S. law firm in early 2014 to assist on the defense against a civil action filed by the U.S. government alleging fraud by Prevezon Holdings. Prevezon is owned by Denis Katsyv, the son of a senior Russian government official.
Why is that relevant? Natalia Veselnitskaya, who was also working for the law firm on the Prevezon case, met with Trump campaign officials at the Trump Tower in June 2016, including Donald Trump Jr., campaign manager Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner, the husband of Ivanka Trump. Donald Trump Jr. agreed to meet with Veselnitskaya after an intermediary promised dirt on Clinton. She arrived with a memo containing talking points that had been previously shared by Yuri Chaika, Russia’s prosecutor general who is known as a master of kompromat.
What’s controversial: The Trump White House has tried to use the connection between the dossier and Clinton to claim that this shows that rather than Trump colluding with Russia, Clinton colluded with Russia. (The theory appears to be that because Steele was getting information from Russian officials in part with funds provided by the Clinton campaign, the Russians were helping Clinton.) But that ignores the fact that DNC emails — as well as the email account of the Clinton campaign chairman — were hacked and then published by WikiLeaks as part of the pro-Trump Russian operation identified by U.S. intelligence agencies.
Steele started producing his memos in June 2016, about the same time that intelligence agencies began investigating possible ties between Russia and people close to Trump. The connection between Steele’s research and official government investigations is murky, but for some Republicans it raises questions about whether the official probe begun in the Obama administration was influenced by information gathered by someone being paid by Democrats.
CNN, for instance, reported that the FBI used information in the Steele memos to obtain approval from the secret court that oversees the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to monitor the communications of Carter Page, who Trump had said was a key adviser on national security issues. Presumably, the FBI had verified the information before it could cite it in court. Steele had quoted an “ethnic Russian close associate” of Trump as saying Page was an intermediary in “a well-developed conspiracy of co-operation” between the Trump campaign and the Russian leadership. Page has adamantly denied any wrongdoing.
Steele, during the campaign, at Fusion’s direction also briefed reporters from some U.S. news organizations, including The Washington Post, on his findings, according to court filings. Only one publication, Mother Jones, published information based on the briefing before the election.

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Trump Campaign Adviser Met With Russian to Discuss ‘Thousands’ of Clinton Emails
WASHINGTON — A professor with close ties to the Russian government told an adviser to Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign in April 2016 that Moscow had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails,” according to court documents unsealed Monday.
The adviser, George Papadopoulos, has pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. about that conversation. The plea represents the most explicit evidence connecting the Trump campaign to the Russian government’s meddling in last year’s election.
“They have dirt on her,” the professor told him, according to the documents. “They have thousands of emails.”
Mr. Papadopoulos was quietly arrested in July and has since been cooperating with the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, records show. Mr. Papadopoulos’s conversation in April raises more questions about a meeting in June at Trump Tower, where Mr. Trump’s eldest son and senior advisers met with Russians who were similarly promising damaging information on Mrs. Clinton.
Taken together, the meetings show that early in the presidential race, people at the heart of Trump campaign and on its fringes were aware that Russian government officials were trying to help Mr. Trump.
The professor whom Mr. Papadopoulos met was not identified in court documents. The professor introduced Mr. Papadopoulos to a woman identified as a relative of the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, and to someone in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Mr. Papadopoulos repeatedly tried to arrange a meeting between the Trump campaign and Russian government officials, court records show.
“We are all very excited by the possibility of a good relationship with Mr. Trump,” the woman, who was not identified, told Mr. Papadopoulos in an email.
Mr. Papadopoulos told the F.B.I. in January that the professor was “a nothing.” But Mr. Papadopoulos now acknowledges that he knew the professor had “substantial connections to Russian government officials.” Attempts to reach Mr. Papadopoulos on Monday were not successful.
The United States government has concluded that Russia hacked Democratic email accounts and released thousands of embarrassing messages related to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign. The emails began appearing online in the summer of 2016. The Trump campaign has repeatedly denied any inside knowledge about that.
Mr. Papadopoulos was one of a small group of foreign policy advisers that Mr. Trump announced in March 2016. Another of the advisers, Carter Page, has met with the F.B.I. about his own meetings with Russians.
The plea was unsealed the same day Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman, and his longtime associate Rick Gates were indicted on charges of money laundering and conspiracy.