[Weekly Standard] What exactly does it mean for the FBI to suspend its relationship with a source? What does it mean when that relationship has been "closed"? The answers to those questions may provide insight into whether the FBI and Department of Justice, in their applications for surveillance warrants against Carter Page, were fully forthcoming with the secret federal court that considers such requests.The Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act documents released on July 21 after a FOIA lawsuit from USA Today show the government informing the court that the FBI had "suspended its relationship" with Christopher Steele. Steele is the former British spy who was the Justice Department’s "Source #1" for its warrant applications targeting Carter Page. FISA warrants must be renewed every 90 days, and in the first such renewal filing with the court in January 2017, it was revealed that the suspension came after Steele was caught talking to the press, which the FBI had told him not to do.
The FISA filing explains at length why Steele felt driven to break his word: In late October, FBI director James Comey had "sent a letter to the U.S. Congress, which stated that the FBI had learned of new information that might be pertinent to an investigation that the FBI was conducting of Candidate #2." That would be the inquiry into Hillary Clinton and her emails. Comey’s action made Steele mad: "Source #1 told the FBI that he/she was frustrated with this action and believed it would likely influence the 2016 U.S. Presidential election."
"In response to Source #1’s concerns," reads the January 2017 FISA renewal, "Source #1 independently, and against the prior admonishment from the FBI to speak only with the FBI on this matter, released the reporting discussed herein to an identified news organization." Steele had actually been briefing multiple news outlets on his dossier since September 2016, but it was this late October conversation with Mother Jones that got him into trouble.
"Although the FBI continues to assess Source #1’s reporting is reliable," the bureau states in the January renewal, "the FBI has suspended its relationship with Source #1 because of this disclosure." And that’s that for the warrant application’s discussion of Steele.
One might think from this that Steele was a spy left out in the cold. But he wasn’t quite the non-grata persona that the warrant application suggests. Indeed, Steele continued to feed his allegations to the FBI‐just not directly. The bureau continued to consume those allegations and went to great lengths to deal with Steele without directly talking with him.