It is important to note that the FBI swore on Oct. 21, 2016, to the FISA judges that Steele’s “reporting has been corroborated and used in criminal proceedings” and the FBI has determined him to be “reliable” and was “unaware of any derogatory information pertaining” to their informant, who simultaneously worked for Fusion GPS, the firm paid by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Clinton campaign to find Russian dirt on Trump.
Mr. Horowitz is expected to answer whether Mr. Steele’s information played a role in opening the Russia investigation, code-named Crossfire Hurricane. Former law enforcement officials have insisted it did not, saying they opened the inquiry in July 2016. The Steele dossier did not reach the relevant agents until Sept. 19, 2016, nearly two months later, people familiar with the matter have said. But the primary focus of the inspector general’s inquiry is the role that Mr. Steele’s information played in investigators’ effort to obtain court permission to wiretap Carter Page, a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved the application on Oct. 21, 2016, about a month after Mr. Page had left the campaign, and the wiretap order — one of 1,559 the court issued that year — was renewed three times in 2017, including twice by Trump-era Justice Department officials. In August 2016, a month before agents on the Russia investigation received the Steele dossier, they had already started discussions with the Justice Department about seeking a wiretap order targeting Mr. Page, according to people familiar with the investigation’s timeline. Agents identified Mr. Page as a potential conduit between the campaign and Moscow, if there was any, because he had close business ties to Russia, had traveled there in July after joining the campaign, and had been targeted as a potential recruit by Russian intelligence agents in 2013 — yet did not seem concerned when the F.B.I. talked to him about it. Still, the arrival of the dossier in September kicked the deliberations over whether to seek a wiretap order into a higher gear, according to people familiar with the Russia investigation. By adding further weight to their reasons to be suspicious of Mr. Page, Mr. Steele’s information helped officials overcome bureaucratic reluctance stemming from fears that any leak of the existence of such a wiretap would be politically radioactive.
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