FBI Case Agent #1 = Stephen Somma
New York field office; handler of Stephan Halper
New York field office, also home to Gaeta, handler of Christopher Steele
Stephen Somma wrote FISA application #1 Carter Page. Failed
Stephen Somma buttressed FISA application July 2017 #2 with Steele Dossier. Issued
This is the guy.
This is the guy who faked the Carter Page FISA application, that was rejected the first time (One of 3 known failures out of 10,000 FISA warrant applications).
This is the guy who then applied with the Steele Dossier garbage, and the Carter Page FISA was issused.
This is the guy who made 17 errors on the Carter Page FISA application.
This is the guy Lindsay Graham wants to have testify.
Remember the 53 people to be subpoenaed? That turned into 33?
This is one of the 20.
Bet your bottom dollar.
FBI's 'Case Agent 1' Stephen Somma 'primarily responsible' for FISA failures
The Justice Department watchdog referred FBI agent Stephen Somma for disciplinary review after an investigation into alleged Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuses.
Somma, a counterintelligence investigator in the FBI's New York field office, was identified only as "Case Agent 1" in Inspector General Michael Horowitz's report, released in December. Sources told the New York Times that Somma is that official. The FBI did not comment for the report.
Somma was “primarily responsible for some of the most significant errors and omissions" during the process of obtaining FISA warrants to wiretap Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in 2016 and 2017, according to Horowitz. Horowitz confirmed the FBI relied heavily upon British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s salacious and unverified dossier when pursuing the secret surveillance.
The DOJ watchdog found 17 “significant inaccuracies and omissions” in the FBI's applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to wiretap Page, who was under suspicion of being an agent for Russia. He was never charged with any wrongdoing.
Horowitz wrote that Somma and an unnamed Staff Operations Specialist “were the original Crossfire Hurricane team members who had primary responsibility over the Carter Page investigation.” FBI documents showed that in late August 2016, Somma was told he had “not yet presented enough information to support a FISA application targeting Carter Page.” Somma told Horowitz’s investigators “that the team's receipt of the reporting from Steele [in September] supplied missing information in terms of what Page may have been doing during his July 2016 visit to Moscow and provided enough information on Page's recent activities that [Somma] thought would satisfy the Office of Intelligence.”
“Case Agent 1 said he prepared the FISA request form,” Horowitz wrote. “The FISA request form drew almost entirely from Steele's reporting in describing the factual basis to establish probable cause to believe that Page was an agent of a foreign power.
“We found no information indicating that the FBI provided the Office of Intelligence with the documents containing Page's denials before finalizing the first FISA application,” Horowitz wrote. “Instead, Case Agent 1 provided a summary that did not contain those denials to the OI Attorney and that the OI Attorney relied upon that summary in drafting the first application.”
Horowitz showed that Somma omitted significant information provided by confidential human source Stefan Halper — known as “Source 2” in the report. Halper met with and recorded Page in October 2016, before the FBI filed its first FISA application. Horowitz concluded Somma failed to include key “exculpatory” information from that meeting, including Page denying meeting with Russians mentioned in Steele’s report, denying knowledge of the WikiLeaks dissemination of the DNC emails hacked by the Russians, and denying any role in the GOP platform related to Russia.
Halper, 75, a Virginia resident and Cambridge professor, worked as an FBI informant in 2016 and had discussions with at least three Trump campaign members: Page, foreign policy aide George Papadopoulos, and Trump campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis.
Cambridge Intelligence Seminars, which involved gatherings of academics and intelligence officials, were put together by Halper and Sir Richard Dearlove, a former director of MI6 who spent decades with the British spy agency. Somma spoke at at least one of these seminars in November 2011, delivering a talk titled “The FBI and Russian illegals 2010” along with FBI agents George Ennis Jr. and Alan Kohler Jr.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/fbis-case-agent-1-stephen-somma-primarily-responsible-for-fisa-failures