In light of new revelations, former FBI Director James Comey and the others who signed off on FISA warrants to spy on the 2016 Trump campaign should be held in contempt, contends Harvard emeritus law professor Alan Dershowitz.
Dershowitz, in an interview Thursday with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, was reacting to the Justice Department’s release of heavily redacted versions of FISA warrants. The documents show the DOJ and the FBI falsely attested to the FISA court four separate times that former British spy Christopher Steele was not the source of an article corroborating the anti-Trump “dossier” he wrote, the Gateway Pundit reported.
In fact, the House Intelligence Committee found that reporter Michael Isikoff’s only source for his Sept. 23, 2016, article was the dossier author.
Hannity recalled to Dershowitz that Comey signed the first warrant. Later, Comey failed to inform the court that the dossier used as evidence was funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
“Is that a fraud on the court, and why three months later did he tell President Trump the opposite?” Hannity asked.
“I think it is a fraud on the court, and I think the court ought to look into holding the people who misled them in contempt,” Dershowitz replied. “The court is a trusted institution. They handle these requests ex parte.”
Along with Comey, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and former Attorney General Sally Yates were required to sign off on the FISA warrant.
In August, the former top Justice Department official at the center of the anti-Trump dossier scandal, Bruce Ohr, testified that the FBI was aware when it submitted the dossier as evidence to obtain a warrant to spy on the Trump campaign that Steele was biased against Trump and that Ohr’s wife worked for the company that produced it.
Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., who questioned Bruce Ohr, said Ohr confirmed that after the FBI terminated its relationship with Steele for leaking to the media, the bureau “privately reengaged with him and continued receiving his info.”
“This was after suggesting to the American public they had cut Steele off,” Meadows said in a tweet.
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who also was present for the Ohr interview, told Fox News in August the scheme amounted to “the biggest abuse of power” he had ever seen.
“Go back to the fundamentals. Bruce Ohr, a top Justice Department official, his wife worked for the firm hired by the Clintons to produce the dossier. The dossier that we all know is the foundation of this whole thing which was disproven, salacious, unverified, not credible. That dossier Fusion is giving to Nellie Ohr, to Bruce Ohr who is giving it to the FBI. We know all that, and the FBI took it to the court. Didn’t tell the court who paid for it. Didn’t tell the court the guy who wrote it, Christopher Steele had been terminated,” Jordan said.
Comey described claims in the dossier as “unverified and salacious.” And longtime Clinton lawyer Lanny Davis has rebutted a key claim in the dossier, contending his client, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, was never in Prague. The dossier makes Cohen and his Prague visit central to its contention that there was “clandestine” conspiracy of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government.
