On Oct. 28, 2013, President Barack Obama and James Comey participate in the installation ceremony for Mr. Comey as FBI director at the bureau’s Washington headquarters. PHOTO: CHARLES DHARAPAK/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Former U.S. District Court Judge Joe diGenova appeared on “Lou Dobbs Tonight” Thursday evening and made an extraordinary claim. He said the DOJ Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, has “concluded that the final three FISA extensions were illegally obtained.”

He added, “The only question now is whether or not the first FISA warrant was illegally obtained…As a result of those disclosures from John Solomon today, which he was unaware of, the Bureau hid those memos from Horowitz. As a result of that, they are doing some additional work on the first FISA. It may be that all four FISAs will have been obtained illegally.”

DiGenova is referring to two bombshell reports from The Hill’s John Solomon this week. The first, entitled “Steele’s Stunning Pre-FISA Confession: Informant Needed To Air Trump Dirt Before Election” discussed an October 2016 meeting between Christopher Steele and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec.

In Kavalec’s written account of the meeting, which took place ten days before the FBI submitted their first FISA application, she wrote that Steele admitted his work was political and that “Steele’s client is keen to see this information come to light prior to November 8.” She also wrote “You may already have this information but wanted to pass it on just in case.” In her handwritten notes, Kavalec quoted Steele as saying he was “managing four priorities — Client needs, FBI, WashPo/NYT, source protection.” She understood the man and his agenda after only one brief meeting.

Solomon’s second article, entitled “FBI’s Steele Story Falls Apart: False Intel And Media Contacts Were Flagged Before FISA,” provides further details about Kavalec’s meeting with Steele. For example, He told her, “Payments to those recruited are made out of the Russian Consulate in Miami.” She wrote, “It is important to note that there is no Russian consulate in Miami.”

In her typed summary, Kavalec wrote that Steele told her the Russians had constructed a “technical/human operation run out of Moscow targeting the election” that recruited emigres in the United States to “do hacking and recruiting.”

Solomon wrote:

It is almost certain the FBI knew of Steele’s contact with State and his partisan motive. That’s because former Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland says she instructed her staff to send the information they got from Steele to the bureau immediately and to cease contact with the informer because “this is about U.S. politics, and not the work of — not the business of the State Department, and certainly not the business of a career employee who is subject to the Hatch Act.”

Even if the FBI didn’t get Kavalec’s memo, it is just as implausible that the bureau couldn’t figure out, during the many hours that its agents spent with Steele, what Kavalec divined in a few short minutes: He was political, inaccurate, spinning wild theories and talking to the media.

The memos were obtained this week through a FOIA request by Citizens United. The FBI had retroactively classified this material for obvious reasons. It’s impossible to know to whom Kavalec sent the memos because the FBI redacted the names of the recipients, the subject line and the attachments. Solomon said that only three sentences were unredacted.

At any rate, the documents were sent to Horowitz this week. DiGenova said the inspector general had been unaware of them.

Horowitz began his investigation of the FBI’s FISA Court application process and related activities last March and his final report is expected in the next three or four weeks.

Stay tuned.

Joe Digenova shared the conclusion of the OIG report on FISA abuse today on @LouDobbs – because of the recently uncovered information from the FOIA release and John Solomon today, he is now having to add and investigate that. Thanks for the clip @detachedaz pic.twitter.com/e8ihB4h2Wr

— Tracy Beanz (@tracybeanz) May 10, 2019