FOIA'd "Human Source Validation Report" Shows That FBI Had Doubts About Alleged SuperSpy Christopher Steele's "Dossier"

FBI noted that Steele's dossier was only "minimally corroborated" and said they only had "medium confidence" in his work.

This is a very, very long way from the public claims that the FBI viewed Steele as some kind of DaVinci of Secrets.

The FBI's official "Human Source Validation Report" on Mr. Steele was provided to The Washington Times under the Freedom of Information Act. It said it had only "medium confidence" in his work. ...



The article notes that Nunes had previously characterized this document while only quoting lightly from it. Democrats claimed he was lying.

Spoiler alert: he wasn't.

The Times asked the FBI for all documents pertaining to its relationship with Mr. Steele as a "confidential human source." The highly redacted Human Source Validation Report proves that Mr. Nunes correctly relayed to the public what the FBI said about Mr. Steele�s reliability. ... After the firing [due to Steele's talking to the press, etc.], the FBI wrote its first, and apparently only, assessment of his reliability. The FBI said it had only "medium confidence" in his information "based on the fact that [his] reporting has been minimally corroborated." That poor grade did not stop the FBI from continuing to use Mr. Steele's Democratic Party-financed dossier to convince judges to place a wiretap on Trump volunteer Carter Page, starting in October 2016. The FBI renewed the wiretap three more times during 2017. Previously the FBI released the warrant application in a highly censored form.