What all that boils down to is that one or more FBI agents swore, under penalty of perjury, to information from Steele’s dossier that was unverified. It remains so until this day.

Thus, the Memo demonstrates a pattern of abuse of power by the FBI and Justice Department during the 2016 election and extending through Donald Trump’s transition period to the presidency. Again, the FISC was never told of the political motivations of Steele and GPS, information key to the credibility of the FBI’s affidavits and directly relevant to the FISC warrant applications. In literal terms, the FBI’s sworn affidavits were a fraud on the court.

A Saturday story in the Washington Post claims — on the basis of anonymous sources which must be either in the FBI or the Democrat members of the HPSCI — that the FBI did tell the FISC about the political nature of the warrant applications.

But one of the authors of the Memo, Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy, has said that the information in the memo was all taken from materials supplied to the HPSCI by the FBI.