Outline #1 – Criminal Conduct by DOJ/FBI During Russiagate
August 7, 2025 | Sundance
I have been asked to recap some of my research into cited formats of what I believe to be criminal conduct, with specific statutes against them. This is the first of my outlines.
DNI Tulsi Gabbard is not a lawyer. While I may be wrong, I find Tulsi Gabbard to be a patriot. Mrs. Gabbard is focused on providing evidence to the DOJ that essentially forces action. I support Tulsi Gabbard’s efforts.
Amid a series of documents released by the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2020 [SEE HERE] there was a rather alarming letter from the DOJ to the FISA Court in July 2018 that points toward an institutional cover-up. [Link to Letter]
Before getting to the substance of the letter, it’s important to put the release in context. After the FISA Court reviewed the DOJ inspector general report about the Carter Page FISA application, the FISC ordered the DOJ-NSD to declassify and release certain communication related to the Carter Page FISA application.
In the cover letter for this specific release to the Senate Judiciary and Senate Intelligence committees, the DOJ (then headed by DAG Rod Rosenstein for all things Russiagate during the Trump administration and Mueller investigation therein) cites the January 7, 2020, FISA court order:
The FISA Court was ordering the DOJ to tell the legislative branch about a letter the DOJ had sent to the FISA Court in 2018.
Prior to this forced release only the FISA court had seen this letter from the DOJ-National Security Division (DOJ-NSD). The DOJ never sent a copy to any relevant legislative committee. The DOJ was only talking to the FISA court about this matter (FISA predicate).
As we walk through the alarming content of this letter, I think you’ll identify the motive behind the FISC order to release it.
First, the letter in question was sent by the DOJ-NSD to the FISA Court on July 12, 2018. It is critical to keep the date of the letter in mind as we re-review the content.
Aside from the date the important part of the first page is the motive for sending it. The DOJ is telling the court in July 2018: based on what they know the FISA application still contains “sufficient predication for the Court to have found probable cause” to approve the application. The DOJ is defending the Carter Page FISA application as still valid.
However, it is within the justification of the application that alarm bells are found. The FISA Court noticed them after they reviewed the Horowitz report. On page six the letter identifies the primary participants behind the FISA redactions:
As you can see:
- Christopher Steele is noted as “Source #1”.
- Glenn Simpson of Fusion-GPS is noted as “identified U.S. person” or “business associate”; and
- Perkins Coie is the “U.S-based law firm.”
Now things get very interesting.
On page #8 when discussing Christopher Steele’s sub-source, Igor Danchenko, the DOJ notes the FBI found him to be truthful and cooperative.
This is an incredibly misleading statement to the FISA court because what the letter doesn’t say is that 18-months earlier Igor Danchenko, also known in the IG report as the “primary sub-source”, informed the FBI that the material attributed to him in the dossier was essentially junk.
Let’s look at how the IG report frames the primary sub-source, and specifically notice the FBI contact and questioning took place in January 2017 (we now know that date to be January 12, 2017):
Those interviews with Steele’s primary sub-source, Danchenko, took place in January, March and May of 2017; and clearly the sub-source debunked the content of the dossier itself. The FBI then hired Danchenko as a Confidential Human Source and paid him $200,000 to keep his mouth shut during duration of the Robert Mueller investigation.
Those interviews with Danchenko were 18-months, 16-months and 14-months ahead of the July 2018 DOJ letter to the FISC. The DOJ-NSD says the sub-source was “truthful and cooperative” but the DOJ doesn’t tell the court the content of the truthfulness and cooperation. Why?
CONTEXT FOR THIS LETTER IN JULY, 2018 – Keep in mind, according to the recently declassified annex to the Durham report we know FBI leadership, Comey and McCabe, refused to allow FBI agents to interview Carter Page until the FISA was renewed (January) and the operation against Trump gained specific enough speed (March) to warrant a special counsel demand.
The FBI eventually interviewed Carter Page on March 9, 10, 16, 30 and 31, 2017. [The FISA was leaked by James Wolfe and Senator Mark Warner on March 17th. FBI Director James Comey then testified to congress admitting for the first time that President Trump was under investigation for Russiagate on March 20th.]
Despite the five interviews, the FBI renewed the FISA application against Carter Page on April 2nd, 2017. Despite the FISA application accusing Carter Page of being “an agent of a foreign government,” Carter Page was never charged with any criminal conduct, including FARA violations.
Also, keep in mind this letter to the court was written by AAG John Demers in July 2018. Jeff Sessions was Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein was Deputy AG; Christopher Wray was FBI Director, David Bowditch is Deputy, and Dana Boente is FBI chief-legal-counsel.
Why would the DOJ-NSD not be forthcoming with the FISA court about the primary sub-source, Igor Danchenko and his admitted statements? This level of disingenuous withholding of information speaks to an institutional motive to frame Donald Trump. This institutional effort was ongoing in July 2018!
By July 2018 the DOJ clearly knew the dossier was full of fabrications, yet they withheld that information from the FISA court, instead saying predicate was still valid. Why?
It doesn’t take a deep-weeds-walker to identify the DOJ motive.
In July 2018 Robert Mueller’s investigation was at its apex.
This letter justifying the application and claiming the current information would still be a valid predicate therein, speaks to the 2018 DOJ needing to retain the validity of the FISA warrant…. My researched suspicion around motive was the DOJ needed to protect evidence Mueller had already extracted from fraudulent FISA authority. That was the motive.
In July 2018 if the DOJ-NSD admitted the FISA application and all renewals where fatally flawed Robert Mueller would have needed to withdraw any evidence gathered as a result of its exploitation. The DOJ in 2018, under the leadership of Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein for all things Russiagate, was protecting Mueller’s poisoned fruit.
If the DOJ had been honest with the court, there’s a strong possibility some, perhaps much, of Mueller evidence gathering would have been invalidated… and cases were pending. The solution: mislead the court and claim the predication was still valid.
This is not simply a hunch, because that motive also speaks to why the FISC would order the current DOJ to release the letter.
Remember, in December the FISC received the IG Horowitz report; and they would have immediately noted the disparity between what IG Horowitz outlined about the FBI investigating Steele’s sub-source, as contrast against what the DOJ told them in July 2018.
The DOJ letter is a transparent misrepresentation when compared to the information in the Horowitz report. Hence, the court orders the DOJ to release the July letter so that everyone, including congressional oversight and the public can see the misrepresentation.
The court was misled; now everyone can see it.
The content of that DOJ-NSD letter, and the subsequent disparity, points to an institutional cover-up; and as a consequence the FISC also ordered the DOJ to begin an immediate sequestration effort to find all the evidence from the fraudulent FISA application. The proverbial fruit from the poisonous tree…. And yes, that forced review fell into the lap of AG Bill Barr.
Moving on…
Two more big misstatements within the July letter appear on page #9. The first is the DOJ claiming that only after the application was filed did they become aware of Christopher Steele working for Fusion-GPS and knowing his intent was to create opposition research for the Hillary Clinton campaign. See the top of the page.
According to the DOJ-NSD claim the number four ranking official in the DOJ, Bruce Ohr, never told them he was acting as a conduit for Christopher Steele to the FBI. While that claim is hard to believe, in essence what the DOJ-NSD is saying in that paragraph is that the FBI hoodwinked the DOJ-NSD by not telling them where the information for the FISA application was coming from. The DOJ, via John Demers, is blaming the FBI.
The second statement, equally as incredulous, is at the bottom of page nine where the DOJ claims they had no idea Bruce Ohr was talking to the FBI throughout the entire time any of the FISA applications were being submitted. October 2016 through June 29, 2017.
In essence the claim there is that Bruce Ohr was working with the FBI and never told anyone in the DOJ throughout 2016 and all the way past June 29th of 2017. That denial is a lie. Once again, the DOJ-NSD is putting the FBI in the crosshairs and claiming they knew nothing about the information pipeline.
Bruce Ohr, whose wife Nellie Ohr was working for Fusion-GPS and assisting Christopher Steele with information, was interviewed by the FBI over a dozen times as he communicated with Steele and fed his information to the FBI. Yet the DOJ claims they knew nothing about it.
Again, just keep in mind this claim by the DOJ-NSD is being made in July 2018, six months after Bruce Ohr was demoted twice (December 2017 and January 2018) by the DOJ. The lie within the letter is clear by the action taken by the DOJ. If what the DOJ was saying is true, well, then the FBI was completely rogue and running an investigation outside the knowledge of the DOJ, while the source of the knowledge, Bruce Ohr, was the #4 ranking official within the DOJ.
Neither option speaks well about the integrity of either institution; and quite frankly I don’t buy the DOJ-NSD spin.
Why? The reason is simple, the DOJ is claiming in the letter the predication was still valid… if the DOJ-NSD genuinely didn’t know about the FBI manipulation, they would be informing the court in 2018 the DOJ no longer supported the FISA application due to new information. They did not do that. Instead, in July 2018, they specifically told the court the predicate was valid, yet the DOJ-NSD knew it was not.
The last point about the July 2018 letter is perhaps the most jarring. Again, keep in mind when it was written Chris Wray is FBI Director, David Bowditch is Deputy and Dana Boente is FBI chief legal counsel.
Their own FBI reports, by three different INSD and IG investigations; had turned up seriously alarming evidence going back to the early 2017 time-frame; the results of which ultimately led to the DC FBI office losing all of their top officials; and knowing the letter itself was full of misleading and false information about FBI knowledge in/around Christopher Steele; this particular sentence is alarming:
“The FBI has reviewed this letter and confirmed its factual accuracy?”
Really?
As we have just shared, the July 2018 letter itself is filled with factual inaccuracies, misstatements and intentional omissions. So who exactly did the “reviewing”?
This 2020 declassification release raised more questions than any other at the time. That is why the judicial branch sent it to the legislative branch for review. Unfortunately, the legislative branch never grasped the importance of why the FISA Court sent them a copy of the letter. More silo dilution.
Here’s the Full Letter. I strongly suggest everyone read the 14-pages slowly. If you know the background, this letter is not only infuriating, but also the purposeful misrepresentations to the court are completely illegal.
