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.”
The inspector general did not find that Somma or his immediate supervisors were politically biased. Horowitz also did not find evidence showing the “pattern of errors” were intentional, but he noted: “we also did not find his explanations for so many significant and repeated failures to be satisfactory.”
Horowitz said he did not have enough information to determine “whether it was sheer gross incompetence that led to this versus intentional misconduct or anything in between.”
When questioned by a lawyer from DOJ’s Office of Intelligence about Page’s prior relationship with the CIA, Somma claimed those “interactions took place while Page was in Moscow (which was between 2004 and 2007)” and were “outside scope.” Because of this, the attorney “did not include information about Page’s prior interactions” with the CIA in the FISA application. Horowitz said the information Somma provided was “incomplete, inaccurate, and in certain respects contrary to the information the other agency provided to the Crossfire Hurricane team on August 17, 2016 and that Carter Page had provided to the FBI in 2009 and 2013.” Page’s relationship with the CIA “actually overlapped with information alleged in the FISA application concerning his alleged ties to Russian intelligence officers.”
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.
When Halper’s role as an FBI informant was leaked to the media in May 2018, it led to accusations from Trump and Republicans in Congress that the Obama administration used Halper as part of an illegal effort to spy on the Trump campaign, dubbed “Spygate” by allies of the president.
Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, wrote to the Defense Department’s Office of Net Assessment in January asking whether any of the funds from Pentagon contracts awarded to Halper were used for the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation.
Kathleen Kavalec, then the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, met with Steele on Oct. 11, 2016, 10 days prior to the first FISA application, and Kavalec forwarded her notes to the FBI. During the meeting, Steele admitted he was encouraged by his client to get his research out before the 2016 election, signaling a political motivation. Kavalec’s notes also show she found flaws with Steele’s allegations and cast doubt on his credibility.
Horowitz said an FBI liaison informed Somma in late November “that Kavalec had met with Steele, she had taken notes of their meeting, the liaison could obtain information from Kavalec about the meeting, and, according to Kavalec, the information from Steele’s reporting about a Russian consulate being located in Miami was inaccurate.” But the FBI liaison “told us that he received no directives from the Crossfire Hurricane team to gather information from Kavalec regarding her contact with Steele.”
Earlier this month, FBI Director Christopher Wray testified that current FBI employees involved in some of the events described in the FISA report “were referred to our Office of Professional Responsibility, which is our disciplinary arm.”
The FBI, Congress, and the FISA court itself have also been considering and implementing reforms following the inspector general’s investigation.
Former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who altered a key document in FISA filings related to is the only person publicly known to be under criminal investigation by U.S. Attorney John Durham, who is conducting a review of the Russia investigation.
“Case Agent 1” was one of 17 officials Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham asked Attorney General William Barr this month to make available for a transcribed interview for his review of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation and FISA orders against Page.
