Welcome to Pushback. I'm Mary Mate. The first of two major inquiries into the origins of the Russian investigation is complete.

Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz found that the Steele DASier, the collection of DNC-funded reports that alleged a high-level Trump-Russia conspiracy and

blackmail scheme was essentially a work of fiction. It somehow, the FBI relied on the Steele

dossier to obtain a surveillance warrant on Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page. Even when the FBI

heard from Steele's own main source that Steele had made

serious errors, the FBI concealed those errors from the court and omitted other countervailing

and critical information. By documenting the FBI's deceit, the Horowitz report also exposes

the errors of prominent media and political

figures who promoted Steele's phony Trump-Russia narrative.

I think they followed all the correct procedures.

We found that investigators failed to meet their basic obligations.

Nonetheless, I think it's important that the American people see the actual facts that were

presented to the FISA court

and understand that the FBI was acting appropriately.

You did find that an FBI employee doctored an email in order to support the Carter Page FISA application, correct?

Correct.

I think the notion that FISA was abused here is nonsense.

Certainly our findings were that there were significant problems. There's a lot that the FBI knew about Carter Page that had nothing to do with Christopher Steele's reporting.

We concluded that the Steele reporting played a central and essential role in the decision to seek a FISA order.

A lot more there than simply the Steele dossierier which is what the republican memo would

have suggested to the American public was the key element of that

FISA application that of course is not true the FISA applications relied

...