Horowitz's Footnote 350 -- A Correction

This article corrects my earlier blog article Horowitz's Footnote 350.

In my previous article, I speculated that the footnote's redacted dates were a few days after the publication -- on January 6, 2017 -- of the Intelligence Community's joint assessment of alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election. I speculated that President Obama requested an explanation for the NSA dissent from the CIA's and FBI's "high confidence" in the joint assessment that Russia had meddled. The NSA had expressed only "moderate conference".

I indicated that the dates on the footnote were redacted because the dates were so close following the joint assessment's publication. The dates thus provided a context for the public's understanding somewhat more about the NSA's dissent.

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Now, however, I think that the footnote's dates were redacted because they followed closely the inauguration of President Trump on January 20, 2017. I speculate that Trump had been advised by NSA Director Michael Rogers to read NSA's dissent to the joint assessment.

I speculate further that Trump read that dissent on Monday, January 23. When Trump did read it, he saw that his own lawyer Michael Cohen was accused of being an intermediary between his election campaign and the Kremlin. Therefore, Trump requested an elaboration about Cohen, and Trump subsequently read the NSA elaboration five days later, on Friday, January 27.

With those dates in mind, I revise my speculation about the footnote's total text as follows:

Sentence 1
350 [S/NOFORN] In addition to the information in Steele's Delta file documenting Steele's frequent contacts with representatives for multiple Russian oligarchs, we identified reporting the Crossfire Hurricane team received from NSA's assessment indicating the potential for Russian disinformation influencing Steele's election reporting.

Sentence 2
A January 23, 2017, report relayed information from NSA's assessment outlining an inaccuracy in a limited subset of Steele's reporting about the activities of Michael Cohen.

Sentence 3
The NSA assessment stated that it did not have high confidence in the subset of Steele's reporting and assessed that the referenced subset was part of a Russian disinformation campaign to denigrate U.S. foreign relations.

Sentence 4
A second report from the same NSA assessment five days later [on January 27, 2017] stated that a person [i.e. Michael Cohen] named in the limited subset of Steele's reporting had denied representations in the reporting and the NSA Assessment assessed that the person's denials were truthful.

Sentence 5
A REDACTED report dated REDACTED 2017, contained information about an individual [Sergei Millian] with reported connections to Trump and Russia who claimed that the public reporting about the details of Trump's prostitute activities in Moscow during a trip in 2013 were false, and they were the product of RIS [Russian Intelligence Service] "infiltrat[ing] a source into the network" of a double-agent who compiled a dossier of information on Trump's activities.

Sentence 6
The REDACTED noted that it had no information indicating that the individual [Millian] had special access to RIS activities or information.

Of course, the dates January 23 and 27 are merely notional. My fundamental idea here is that the dates were shortly after Trump's inauguration.

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When Horowitz's team was researching the FISA's history, the team obtained the documents dated January 23 and 27, 2017. The first such document, dated January 23, explained to President Trump that one reason for the NSA's dissent was that Christopher Steele apparently had fabricated the story about Cohen's visit to Prague. This fabrication discredited Steele severely in the NSA's assessment.

When Trump read that first document, he focused on the document's mention of Cohen, Trump's lawyer. Trump asked for more information about Cohen's involvement in this history. Five days later, the NSA provided the additional information that Cohen had denied visiting Prague and that the NSA had been able to confirm Cohen's denial.

Horowitz obtained these documents dated January 23 and 27, 2017, and used them as a basis for Footnote 350.

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I no longer think that the REDACTED expressions in sentences 5 and 6 necessarily refer to NSA assessments. Those expressions might refer to FBI or CIA reports.