House Intelligence Committee member Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), who co-authored the infamous GOP memo, told Face the Nation that without the disputed Christopher Steele dossier, the FBI wouldn’t have been able to receive a surveillance warrant.

Gowdy is the only Republican on the committee that has seen the warrant applications. He also told Brennan that the public will not ever know if the FBI had justification to have surveillance on Carter Page. He explained that the application relied on three things: “the dossier, a reference to a Yahoo News article and other information available to the FISA court judges who approved warrants.”

The memo stated that the FISA application says that dossier author Christopher Steele did not provide the information to Yahoo! News for an article on Page’s trip to Moscow that the website published in September 2016.

However, as the memo states, that Steele did admit that “he met with Yahoo News-and several other outlets-in September 2016 at the direction of Fusion GPS.” It also alleges that Perkins Coie, the law firm that hired Fusion GPS, knew about Steele’s “media contacts because they hosted at least one meeting in Washington D.C. in 2016 with Steele and Fusion GPS where this matter was discussed.”

From the transcript:

MARGARET BRENNAN: Would it have been authorized were it not for that dossier? REP. GOWDY: No. It would not have been. MARGARET BRENNAN: How can you say that? Because it was authorized four times by separate judges. REP. GOWDY: Right. And the information was in there all four times. MARGARET BRENNAN: Mm-hm. REP. GOWDY: And the judge doesn’t do independent research. There are three Republicans that have seen every bit of information. Three of us: Bob Goodlatte, the chairman of the Judiciary; Johnny Ratcliffe, who’s a former terrorism prosecutor and U.S. attorney in Texas, and me. All three of us have total confidence in the FBI and DOJ to be able to do the jobs that they have been assigned. We have confidence in Bob Mueller, and we have serious consideration– serious concerns about this process. So, we have all three of those things in common, including being concerned about what–what happened in 2016.

People have said the memo vindicates President Donald Trump and tried to use it to discredit the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, but Gowdy insists that the memo will not affect it:

MARGARET BRENNAN: Saturday, President Trump tweeted that the memo “totally vindicated Trump” in the Russia probe. We sat down earlier with South Carolina Congressman Trey Gowdy, a key House Intelligence investigator and asked him if he thought the president had been vindicated. REP. GOWDY: I actually don’t think it has any impact on the Russia probe for this reason — MARGARET BRENNAN: The memo has no impact on the Russia probe? REP. GOWDY: No– not to me, it doesn’t — and I was pretty integrally involved in the drafting of it. There is a Russia investigation without a dossier. So to the extent the memo deals with the dossier and the FISA process, the dossier has nothing to do with the meeting at Trump Tower. The dossier has nothing to do with an email sent by Cambridge Analytica. The dossier really has nothing to do with George Papadopoulos’ meeting in Great Britain. It also doesn’t have anything to do with obstruction of justice. So there’s going to be a Russia probe, even without a dossier.

I don’t know about you, but I’m going to miss having Gowdy in Congress.



