from ZeroHedge:

Last weekend’s release of a FISA warrant application to spy on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page was quite revealing – perhaps most of all because we learned that the FBI in relied heavily on the Steele dossier, contrary to claims that it played a minor role.

What’s even more troubling, as noted by Chuck Ross of the Daily Caller, is a report contained in a new book by two journalists involved in the ordeal, David Corn and Michael Isikoff, who state that Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson had serious doubts about one of the sources used in the Steele Dossier.

Simpson called dossier source Sergei Millian a “big talker“ who overstated his connections to Trump, and had a “fifty-fifty” chance of being accurate.

“Had Millian made something up or repeated rumors he had heard from others to impress Steele’s collector? Simpson had his doubts. He considered Millian a big talker,” Isikoff and Corn, who are good friends with Simpson. Isikoff notably wrote a Yahoo! News article containing claims directly from Christopher Steele – a relationship the FBI lied about in Carter Page’s FISA application when they said Isikoff did not directly receive the information from the former MI6 spy, while Isikoff said he did in a February podcast.

Millian is both Source D and Source E in the dossier, according to The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. In the 35-page document, Source D alleged that the Russian government is blackmailing Donald Trump with video of a sexual tryst with prostitutes at a Moscow hotel room. Source E described an alleged “well-developed conspiracy of co-operation between them and the Russian leadership.”

“This was managed on the TRUMP side by the Republican candidate’s campaign manger, Paul MANAFORT, who was using foreign policy advisor, Carter PAGE, and others as intermediaries,” reads the dossier. –Daily Caller

Millian, meanwhile, operates a shadowy trade group called the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce. He denies being a dossier source, though he has refused to speculate as to whether he may have unwittingly provided claims that ended up in the report.

Millian did have one known link to the Trump campaign. In late July 2016, he reached out to George Papadopoulos, the Trump adviser who has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about the timing of his contacts with an alleged Russian agent.

Sources close to Papadopoulos have told The Daily Caller News Foundation that he met Millian for the first time several days after Millian reached out to the campaign aide on LinkedIn. Sources close to Papadopoulos have also said that Millian offered Papadopoulos $30,000 a month for a business deal that would require him to remain in the Trump orbit. Papadopoulos rejected the idea, according to TheDCNF’s sources.  –Daily Caller

Millian, a Belarusian American businessman, has denied being a Russian spy, though he does admit to having Kremlin contacts, and told the Daily Caller’s Chuck Ross that he was one of the “very few people who have insider knowledge of Kremlin politics…who has been able to successfully integrate in American society.”

While the 412-page release of Page’s FISA application and subsequent renewals were heavily redacted, GOP lawmakers who have seen less redacted copies say that the redacted portions don’t provide any evidence that they verified the dossier whatsoever, while it remains unclear what efforts – if any, the FBI undertook to corroborate any of the claims.

What’s more, the FBI stated several dossier claims as fact within the FISA application.

For example, the FBI says in the application that Page secretly met with Kremlin insiders Igor Sechin and Igor Diveykin during a July 2016 trip to Moscow – a claim directly out of the dossier, which Page has vehemently disputed.

FBI represented to a federal judge that investigators knew for certain that Carter Page met w/ Igor Sechin and Diveykin. Except, the FISA app acknowledges this intel came from Steele dossier. And FBI has acknowledged dossier was not verifieid. https://t.co/7ZstgwlVOh pic.twitter.com/NDYvBIhXB0

— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) 21 July 2018

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