Given that a dossier funded by the DNC and Hillary's campaign was part of the impetus and justification to obtain surveillance warrants against Trump's campaign I agree with him that more scrutiny is fully warranted.
Yes, another Trumpleforeskin who still believes Nunes' bullshit memo that tried to misconstrue the FISA warrants, and wants to talk about the Steele Dossier
The most important things we learned are that: 1) the government relied on information developed over the course of several years 2) the Steele dossier was only part of the information relied on by the FBI 3) the government informed the FISC that the dossier information had been developed for the purpose of discrediting then-candidate Donald Trump's political campaign and 4) each time that the application was renewed, the government submitted enough evidence that an impartial federal judge believed there was probable cause to allow the government to continue its investigation."
https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/23/politics/fisa-carter-page-trump/index.html
EVEN Gowdy (who would love for there to have been legitimate anti GOP corruption in Obama's DOJ) after seeing the intelligence has unequivocally said that this whole thing was, surprise surprise like all of the other times Trump played Cyrano De Bergerac through Nunes, not a real thing:
"I am even more convinced that the FBI did exactly what my fellow citizens would want them to do when they got the information they got, and that it has nothing to do with Donald Trump," the South Carolina Republican said in an interview on Fox News.
As for the Steele Dossier itself:
The Fusion GPS investigation was originally funded by a "never Trumper" and the funding stopped after it was clear that Trump was the GOP candidate in May of 2016, and then the Dems took over. The man at Fusion GPS though who wanted to keep it going though was Glenn Simpson, because of his concerns about Trump's "sinister" Russian ties, not as a partisan hack for Clinton: "I had no interest in working for Hillary fucking Clinton, I covered those people, Hillary and Bill Clinton for years. They were an old fashioned political machine."
By the time the Dems took over, Simpson already had intelligence suggesting that the Russians might be seeking to influence the election on behalf of Trump, before Simpson recruited Steele, hoping that Steele's history investigating Russian influence operations in western Europe would allow him to pick up intelligence on what the Russians were doing in the US, but he did not tell him the intelligence he already had that the Russians might be seeking to influence the election on behalf of Trump. He told Steele "Tell me what Trump's been doing over there" and they agreed to a 30 day contract with an option to renew for $30K. Steele was already working on projects in Russia for other clients involved in commercial litigation, and he though he could "easily hand this new assignment to his contacts in Russia whom he paid to search out information and prepare reports."
And from the New Yorker: "Within a few weeks, two or three of Steele’s long-standing collectors came back with reports drawn from Orbis’s larger network of sources. Steele looked at the material and, according to people familiar with the matter, asked himself, “Oh, my God—what
is this?” He called in Burrows, who was normally unflappable. Burrows realized that they had a problem. As Simpson later put it, “We threw out a line in the water, and Moby-Dick came back.”
"Burrows told me that he and Steele made a pact when they left M.I.6: “We both agreed it was a duty to alert U.K. and allied authorities if we came across anything with national-security dimensions. It comes from a very long government service. We still have that ethos of wanting to do the right thing by our authorities.”
Steele also felt a duty to get the information to the F.B.I. Although Trump has tweeted that the dossier was “all cooked up by Hillary Clinton,” Steele approached the Bureau on his own. According to Simpson’s sworn testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, Steele told him in June, 2016, that he wanted to alert the U.S. government, and explained, “I’m a former intelligence officer, and we’re your closest ally.” Simpson testified that he asked to think about it for a few days; when Steele brought it up again, Simpson relented. As Simpson told the Senate Judiciary Committee, “Let’s be clear. This was not considered by me to be part of the work we were doing. This was like you’re driving to work and you see something happen and you call 911.” Steele, he said, felt “professionally obligated to do it.” Simpson went along, he testified, because Steele was the “national-security expert,” whereas he was merely “an ex-journalist.”
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/12/christopher-steele-the-man-behind-the-trump-dossier
" I just want to make it clear, thinking back on all the different colloquies here, that I am not saying that improper surveillance occurred,” “I am saying I am concerned about it and looking into it, that’s all.” Barr offered at the close of the hearing.
