Author of Yahoo News Article Used to Obtain FISA Warrant on Trump Campaign Was Secretly Working With DNC

An email published by WikiLeaks reveals that Michael Isikoff, whose article for Yahoo News based on the debunked “Steele dossier” was used to obtain a FISA warrant against Carter Page from the Trump campaign, was secretly working with the Democratic National Committee.

WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange tweeted the link to the email on Wednesday afternoon.

“I spoke to a delegation of 68 investigative journalists from Ukraine last Wednesday at the Library of Congress – the Open World Society’s forum – they put me on the program to speak specifically about Paul Manafort and I invited Michael Isikoff whom I’ve been working with for the past few weeks and connected him to the Ukrainians,” Democratic consultant Alexandra Chalupa wrote to Luis Miranda, communications director of the Democratic National Committee.

The recently released memo on FISA abuse prepared by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes states:

“The Carter Page FISA application also cited extensively a September 23, 2016 Yahoo News article by Michael Isikoff, which focused on Page’s July 2016 trip to Moscow. This article does not corroborate the Steele dossier because it is derived from information leaked by Steele himself to Yahoo News. The Page FISA application incorrectly assesses that Steele did not directly provide information to Yahoo News—and several other outlets—in September 2016 at the direction of Fusion GPS. Perkins Coie was aware of Steele’s initial 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.”

While discussing his story being one of the justifications in the FISA warrant application against Page during an episode of his podcast, “Skullduggery,” Isakoff claimed that he was “stunned.”

“Obviously the information that I got from Christopher Steele was information the FBI already had,” he said. “It’s self-referential.”

Zero Hedge reports that Isakoff also claimed that the FISA application “incorrectly assesses” that Steele was not a source for his story, adding that he met with the dossier author at a Washington hotel in September 2016.

“My story is about the FBI’s own investigation,” he continued. “So it seems a little odd that they would be citing the Yahoo! News story about the matter that they are investigating themselves based on the same material that had been separately presented to the FBI before I was ever briefed by Christopher Steele.”

Isakoff claimed that he was aware that Simpson and Steele were working for Democrats, though he did not know it was the campaign and DNC.

According to a report from Fox News last year, Chalupa, a Ukrainian-American activist, had worked in the White House Office of Public Liaison during the Clinton Administration and was paid $412,000 by the DNC from 2004 to 2016, according to Federal Election Commission records.

“Ali Chalupa naturally was interested on behalf of the DNC to paint Mr. Manafort in the most negative light possible,” Ukraine expert Adrian Karatnycky of the Atlantic Council told Fox News.

“There was a financial ledger book under investigation by the Ukrainians,” Karatnycky said. “Shedding light on that would have been in Chalupa’s playbook. She was pointing media where there was smoke in the middle of a campaign. And indeed there was a media firestorm that led to Manafort’s resignation in the middle of the campaign.”

Also, according to the Senate Judiciary memo released in unredacted form on Tuesday evening, Grassley reveals the FBI KNEW Steele lied about his contact with media outlets, yet they DID NOT disclose this very pertinent information to the FISA court.

 

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