IG report indicates James Comey lied about Steele dossier

The newly released inspector general report found that former FBI Director James Comey was briefed on concerns that the document presented as primary evidence to obtain warrants to surveil the Trump campaign was funded by the Democratic Party, contrary to Comey's claim in a Fox News interview.

In an April 2018 interview with Bret Baier, the "Special Report" host asked Comey when he learned that the so-called Steele dossier was funded by the Democratic National Convention and the Hillary Clinton campaign.

"Yeah, I still don't know that for a fact," Comey said.

"What do you mean?" Baier asked.

"I've only seen it in the media. I never knew exactly which Democrats has funded — I knew it was funded first by Republicans," Comey responded.

"That's not true that the dossier that Christopher Steele worked on was funded by Republicans," Baier said.

The IG report states that both Comey and then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe were in an Oct. 12, 2016, meeting in which then-National Security Division Assistant Attorney General Stuart Evans raised concerns about the DNC and Clinton campaign funding the Steele dossier.

The Horowitz report states:

On October 12, 2016, Evans’s concerns about Steele were briefed to Comey and McCabe in a meeting attended by at least [E.W] Priestap, [Peter] Strzok, Lisa Page, and the OGC unit Chief. According to notes of the meeting, the group discussed that Evans was concerned Steele may have been hired by someone associated with Hillary Clinton or the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and that the read copy of the FISA application would not be filed with the court that day so that Evans could further assess the potential bias. …

Following the meeting, the OGC Unit Chief emailed [Deputy General Counsel Trisha] Anderson and and the OGC Attorney on October 12 and advised them that the concerns Evans had raised were discussed with Comey and McCabe.

Baier asked Comey if wanted to know who funded the dossier.

"I wanted to know what I knew, which was that it was funded by people opposed to Donald Trump," he said. "Which particular opponents wasn't that important to me."

Baier pressed further.

"So you still to this day don't know that it was funded by the DNC or the Clinton campaign?" he asked.

"I've read that in media, but I don't know for a fact -- and didn't know while I was at the FBI -- which exact opponents of the president funded that," Comey replied

Comey acknowledged that the unverified dossier was included in briefings with President Obama and President-elect Trump.

The IG report also refutes Comey's claim that the dossier was not presented as primary evidence to the FISA court to obtain warrants to surveil Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page.

In his interview with Baier, Comey said it was "part of a broader mosaic of facts laid before the FISA judge to obtain a FISA warrant."

"My recollection was there was a significant amount of additional material about Page and why there was probable cause to believe he was an agent of a foreign power. And the dossier was part of that but was not all of it or a critical part of it," Comey said.

However, Horowitz told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that the FISA applications "relied entirely on information from" the Steele dossier.

Significantly, Steele's report was based on a "primary sub-source." But the sub-source told the FBI in January 2017 that Steele completely misrepresented his information, explaining much of it was based on "rumor and speculation" from "conversations with friends over beers" and statements that were made in "jest."

However, Horowitz said, the FBI did not share this information with Justice Department lawyers, and "it was therefore omitted from the last two renewal applications."

In his report, the IG said the interviews with the primary sub-source raised "significant questions about the reliability of the Steele reporting."