Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said Tuesday that senior FBI officials knew they were using false evidence to justify their surveillance of President Donald Trump during and after the 2016 election campaign.
“That’s an area in which, basically, a fake dossier turns into real evidence and is used to spy on candidate Trump and then president-elect Trump,” Issa told a crowd of reporters outside a closed joint hearing of the House Judiciary Committee and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
“I think that is what we’re learning, that well into the president-elect Trump period, they were continuing to use false evidence to maintain surveillance, effectively on President Trump,” Issa said before returning to the hearing.
He was referring to the infamous Steele dossier used by DOJ and the FBI to obtain approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court to spy on Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
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The DOJ inspector general said in a report released in June that Comey departed dramatically from normal procedures. Comey told Congress the dossier was based on “salacious and unverified” information.
“We are aware of that,” Issa said. “I think what’s noteworthy to come out of this — that you need to be aware of — is that Comey knew in December that the dossier was not verifiable and yet used it as if it was real evidence to maintain, not once, but multiple times, the eavesdropping or spying on the president.” –
