THERE ARE SOME PROBLEMS: Byron York: Assessing The New Democratic Intel Memo.
In sum, it appears that of the four bullet points listed by Democrats to support the most important assertion in their memo, three would not be sufficient to win a warrant on Page, and the fourth is — yes — the unconfirmed allegations in the dossier. Democrats say the FISA warrant application made just “narrow” use of the dossier, while Republicans say the application made extensive use of the dossier. (And not just Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, but also the Senate Judiciary Committee, which conducted a separate investigation and concluded the dossier’s allegations made up “the bulk” of the application.) We won’t know who is right definitively until the application is released to the public, but it seems hard to believe a warrant would have been approved absent the dossier’s allegations.
On to other parts of the Democratic memo. The next big point is a refutation of an assertion that Republicans did not make in their original memo. The Democratic memo says at one point that, “Christopher Steele’s raw intelligence reporting did not inform the FBI’s decision to initiate its counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016.” At another point in the memo, Democrats say that “Steele’s reporting…played no role in launching” the investigation.
But the Republican memo did not say that it did. Indeed, the GOP memo said, “The Papadopoulos information triggered the opening of of an FBI counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016…” There is some debate about the precise beginning of the FBI investigation, and whether it is of much importance given later reliance on the dossier. But the fact is, the Republican memo did not claim that Steele’s raw intelligence informed the decision to begin the investigation. So the Democratic memo has knocked down a straw man.
Much more at the link.