[Yosemitest]

"GOP leaders associated with the NeverTrump movement and what is known as the GOP “Mormon Mafia” hired a company named Fusion GPS in Washington DC to conduct “opposition research” against now President Trump in late 2015. ...

In their enthusiasm, FusionGPS/Orbis and their Russian operatives placed numerous calls and sent emails to both to Trump campaign members and to current Russian intelligence operatives early in 2016.
The volume of these calls and emails caught the attention of the CIA.
An FBI Counter-Intelligence project was started to assess whether these communications represented a threat to the US.
Because of the sheer volume of the communications and the known Russian agents involved, FBI Director James Comey sought a FISA Court warrant to investigate the nature of the calls in June 2016.
The FISA Court rejected the request.
Not to be thwarted, the FBI, working with the CIA and the NSA, created a list of Russian individuals that had communicated with the Trump campaign that would be monitored.
The calls and emails were intercepted without warrant under current FBI Counter-Intelligence authorizations.
The communications were recorded and attempts to identify the US person(s) on the lines were conducted.
The now famous call between Gen Flynn and the Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak was captured in this sweep. ..."

Great find.
Got a link to that ?

Sounds like they were planting the seeds to justify the FISA warrant and now it's coming back to haunt them.

[txhurl]

And when they learned the relationships/data they were purposely stirring up to catch Comey’s attention was unusable because Comey’s warrant application was denied, they hustled together the MI6 guy as a cover for their having disseminated data from the original taps.

Sounds like meddling in an election using foreign assets.