The steel dossier and foreign interference in u. S. Elections. This is three hours and 45 minutes. Thank you for coming and we will get started with of the the hearing. I want to thank mr. James comey, the former director of the fbi, for appearing today before the committee to talk with us about crossfire hurricane and anything else the committee would like to speak with him about. So, to give a little brief introduction of why we are here and what we are trying to accomplish, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act s a tool that has been around for a very long time for our Intelligence Community, the fbi, to make sure when Foreign Agents, terrorists or agents of a Foreign Government are in our country, they can be surveilled if they are doing things that are threatening to the National Security. I think this legislation goes all the way back t to the 70s, iand its been used a lot. Its been used in tariff cases when wee suspect someone of beig a terrorist under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, we had the Legal Authority to survey all those people and you can get a warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to actually follow an individual around. And i would say at least on our side, the fisa system is very much in jeopardy. The carter page warrant application is very much unnerving. The crossfire hurricane, crossfire razor investigations. I think its really shaken confidence in the system. And my goal as chair man and this will go into the next congress, no matter who is in charge, senator feinstein is that fisa needs to be reauthorized but right now, without substantial reform, i dont think we can get it reauthorized. And my goal is to understand how the system failed, how it got off the rails and be able to assure the American People and ourselves that what happened here will not happen again. So, the horwitz report is for the basis of what ive been trying to do. Mr. Horwitz is the Inspector General that the department of justice and he did a deep dive into the fisa warrant applications of carter page, ad he found 17 significant errors and admissions and the committee and its work found some other things that were pretty disturbing. So, weve tried t we tried to ue foundational document, the horwitz report, and i want to thank him and his team for their thorough examinationon of the fa carter page warrant application. They found evidence that the primary russian sub source was a single individual and they found interviews in january and march of the sub source where he basically said the dossier, which was central to getting the warrant against carter page, was all talk, hearsay, and quite frankly much worse. We found the primary sub source, a gentle man named igor, was actually suspected of being a russian agent all the way back to 2009. And what happened here is as a result of this information, the fisa court issued an order rebuking the fbi and department of justice conduct. Where is that final paragraph there. This is with the fisa court. The fbis handling of the carter page application has betrayed the report and was antithetical to the heightened duty of candor described above. But they expect the government to complete information with the filing of the Court Without emphasis of the fisa court cannot properly ensure that the government conduct electronic surveillance or foreign intelligence purposes only when there is a sufficient factual basis. So, we are trying to find out as the committee of oversight and the department of justice and the fbi how this happened and to make sure that it never happens again. So, the basis of the inquiry started with the horowitz report, an independent Agency Within the department of justice,th and we are going to look at the fisa rebuke and see if we can find a way to convince the court in the future that this problem has been solved quite very quickly. Carter page was on the Trump Campaign team. He was on the National Security team, and heres what we learned. If you had a photo with President Trump, you probably spent more time with him than carter page. Carter page is an interesting character, but the fbi sought a fisa warrant against carter page for suspectefour suspected tiesn intelligence operatives. They were unable to get the warrant approved internally, just based on contact with russiann operatives. Mr. Page denied knowing half the people, and there is yet to be any indication that he was lying. And the other group that he was associated with were foreign intelligence operatives of russia but he told the fbi early on, and i was working with the cia, thats why i knew these people. And the cia confirmed to the fbi that was true but later on, they doctored the information comingt over from the cia to say mr. Page was not working with the cia. During the course between october and june, october of 2016 and june of 2017, the dossier thate was central and essential to getting the warra warrant. The point is without the russian steel dossier, there wouldnt have been a warrant because they tried to just based on russian context. It wasnt until it appears on the scene that they were able to go and get a warrant. It was prepared by a man named christopher steel. It was betweenan them to do Opposition Research against candidate trump. We now know that he was suspected by the fbi back to 2009 as being a russian agent and National Security threat to the United States i not only how it became unreliable, but it lost all credibility and the court wasno never told of the information that was obtained between october and june. The fbi ignored exculpatory evidence and altered documents from the cia had interviews with the sub source about the accuracy and never submitted any of that information to the court. This to me is a stunning failure of the system to work. If they are trying to get a warrant against you or your family theres no lawyer there to protect you. The court has to rely on the agents, the department to be honest and forthright when it comes to obtaining a warrant against an american citizen or even in the fisa arena. So here is the question. What do we do when we find that the application relied upon a document that was fundamentally unsound, that the fbi ignored all of the warning signs about the document, misled the court about the author and the reliability of the document, and over andth over and over again t was used to keep an investigation of the american citizens alive that we now know had 17 irregularities. What do we do, we say thats the way it goes. Does anybody get fired or go to jail, and im saying this to my democratic friends. If it happened to us, it can happen to you. Every american should be worried about this. This isnt just an abuse of power against mr. Page and the juTrump Campaign. This is ab system failure. And you could be next. So, the joint effort of the committee in my view should be to make sure that this never happens again starting with finding out who did it, who is responsible. Ne apparently everybody is responsible, but nobody is to blame is not the right answer. So my goal is we will have a deep dive and understand how this happened and working together to assure the American People it never happened and any Political Campaign of any party and that the fisa system can survive this very sad chapter. We are turning the page on a very dangerous chapter in the history of the fisa program and we aread trying to start a new d the only way we can is to find out what happened and hold people accountable. We are not prosecutors. There are people out there that do have prosecutorial authority. Te will let them decide what to do, independent of us, but it is a responsibility of the committee to restore trust in the program that we all need. And we will start that endeavor and continue until we get to the bottom of it. I have two documents i would like to introduce for the record. I have an office of intelligence attorneys statements. This is the doj lawyer that signed off on the fisa application, and the letter says theff attorney advises that hade or she been significant of the errors and admissions identified by the Inspector General and the errors in the process, he or she would not have signed the carter page fisa applications. The attorney further advises he or she is not aware of any omissions in the applications under the crossfire hurricane investigation more than that which were not identified in the report. This is yet another person saying if i knew then what i know now, i wouldnt have signed this report. Horowitz did a really good job. Rosenstein said to this committee, who signed the warrant application, if i knew then what i know now, i wouldnt have signed this application. This is the lawyer preparing it that said the same thing. Thank you. Senator feinstein. Mr. Chair man. May we have copies of that document, please . Yes, we will submit it to heverybody. Thank you very much. Thank you, mr. Chairman. We are here today as a part of the chair mans examination of crossfiree hurricane, the fbis russia investigation. The president has long claimed the investigation of the campaign was a witchhunt and a hoax. Contrary to the president s claim of a witchhunt, the department of justice Inspector General, michael horowitz, confirmed in a detailed report that the fbi was justified when it opened the investigation into ties between the Trump Campaign and russia. The fbi learned in july of 2016 that the Trump Campaign appeared to have advanced knowledge of russias plans to release, quote, thousands of emails, to harm Hillary Clinton and help trump. The fbi learned this one week after wikileaks published 20,000 emails russia had stolen from the Democratic National committees hacked computers. The dnc hack and the possibility that the Trump Campaign knew of the plans to interfere in the 2016 election by releasing stolen emails created a significant counterintelligence concern. Mr. Comey has said that the fbi, quote, but have been derelict not to investigate, quote, and i agree. Special Counsel Robert Mueller assumed control of crossfire hurricane after mr. Comey was fired by President Trump. Muellers findings confirmed that the fbi was correct to investigate. Mueller found that the russian government, quote, perceived it would benefit from the Trump Presidency and worked to secure that outcome, quote. And the Trump Campaign knew about, welcomed and, quote, expected it would benefit electorally from russias interference. Mueller also uncovered numerous contacts between thehe Trump Campaigns and individuals linked to russia. For example, mueller found the Trump Campaign manager, paul man afford, gave internal polling data and Campaign Strategies to constantine glu, a russian Intelligence Officer. The Senate Intelligence committee, which i am a member, recently issued the bipartisan finding that man afford was a grave counterintelligence threat because of his ties to russian intelligence. So, think about that for a moment. Thebe president s campaign manar had tieses to russian intelligee and could have used them to share confidential campaign information. Mr. Chairman, of course the fbi should have investigated. Unfortunately, the president and his allies have been trying to rewrite the russia investigation since the day that it concluded. Theyey have seized on errors in the fbis applications for fisa surveillance on carter page. To assert that the entire Russian Investigation was corrupt. Those errors were serious, but the errors and the socalled steel dossier and this is important played no part in the broader russia investigation. This was confirmed by Inspector General horowitz and former Deputy Attorney general rod rosenstein, who told the committee that none of the Mueller Reports findings of criminal charges rely on the steel dossier, none of them. President trump anpresident trus also claim that the Russian Investigation was a political witchhunt overseen by investigators who hated the president. But Inspector General horowitzwt found no evidence that political bias impacted the crossfire hurricane, and none of the ten witnesses the committee has interviewed during the chair mans investigation provided such evidence either. We should not ignore or excuse what happened in 2016. Fbi director and the Intelligence Community have warned that russia is interfering in w the 2020 electn with the aim of denigrating Vice President biden. We should condemn russias current and past interference, not downplay it, and we should insist that the president reject russias interference as well. Thank you, mr. Chair man. Thank you, mr. Feinstein. As mr. Comey, is the Technology Working today . Mr. Comey . You want to put him up on the screen . Mr. Comey, could you speak, please . I can hear you. Okay, great. Thank you. Will he be on the screen . [inaudible] can you count to ten for us please. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Well, you did your part, i dont know there we go. Eleven must have been the right magic number. Raise your right hand, please. Do you solemnly swear the testimony you are about to give the committee is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you god . I do. If you would like to make an opening statement, you may. I am ready for your questions. Thank you very much. I will take a little more than five minutes here but we will try to plumb through it. Mr. Comey, on a scale of one to ten, with ten being the topoftheline great, how would you rate the crossfire hurricane investigation in terms of being done thoroughly, by the book and in investigation the fbi should be proud of . Im not sure i can apply a number scale, but it was done by the book, it was appropriate and essential that ite, be done. So youre proud of it . Overall im proud of the work. There are parts of it that are concerning which im sure we will talk about, but overall, im proud of it. Sounds good. When did you first learned of thlearn of theexistence of the r lacks. Sometime towards the end of september of 2016. Do you agree with mr. Horovitz that the dossier was central and essential to the carter page fisa warrant application being approved . I agree that it was important. I cant tell you whether it was essential. And by that, i mean, it wouldnt have been granted without the information. Lets go through the application. Theres two parts of the application. Was there an effort to get a warrant approved without using the dossier . Yes, my understanding is in the summer they asked the doj if they would support moving forward on the warrant application. And they said no, right . That is my understanding. Then you and the dossier and all of a sudden they say yes. Is that a fair statement . I think it is fair to say the doj decided to move forward after the information was part of it. Yes, so i would say that it was central based on that. Now, heresst what i would likeo ask. The context between mr. Page and the alleged russian operatives are one part of the application; is that correct . That is my recollection. Okay. Did mr. Page deny knowing people, that you accused him of having contact with . R. I dont remember. I think the horowitz report says that in the fall of 2016, speaking to an fbi source, he denied knowing certain people, but thats about all i recall. Heres the fact. He denied knowing these people, and the fbi is yet to find any evidence that he was lying. The people that he did have contact with, did he tell the fbi that he was working for the cia and thats why he had contact with these people . I dont remember [inaudible] do you have do you now agree the cia confirmed that mrg them . I know from the horowitz report that the cia confirmed he was what they call a contact. So the fbi in august of 2016 had information from the cia informing the fbi that in fact mr. Page was a resource, did you not know that . I did not know of the nature of his relationship with the cia. Its what i read in the horowitz report. Do you think it would have been fair for the fbi to tell the court that mr. Page had a reason to be talking to these people because he was working with the cia; with that have been a fair thing to tell the court . I donte agree with your characterization of what mr. Horovitz found im talking about you as the director. The fbi has in its possession in august of 2016 information from the cia confirming what mr. Page said, that in fact he was assisting the cia which explained the contacts. There was never given to the court. Should they have been informed of that, because its exculpatory to mr. Page . I believe mr. Horowitz found they should have at least considered it a should you you are the director of the fbi. Would you wish that had been done, that you had known about it . Im sorry, that what had been done . That you had informed the court that mr. Page was, in fact, working with the cia and that explains these contacts . Do you think out of a sense of fairness, the court should have been informed of that fact . Again i dont agree with your preamble. I dont think the record established he was working with the cia. He found he was a contact [inaudible] weve got the email from the cia confirm