Six key takeaways from the GOP memo

Here’s a quick breakdown of the allegations in the memo.

1 .The dossier put together by ex-British spy Christopher Steele and partially funded by Democrats formed “an essential part” of the FBI’s application to spy on Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

Getting a secret court to approve spying on an American citizen is no small thing. It requires an application that former FBI director James Comey has said is “thicker than my wrists.” Former FBI Agent Asha Rangappa told The Post that a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act application likely involved a dozen people’s insights and intelligence.

Page was also on the FBI’s radar at least since 2013, so it would be remarkable if the dossier, which was shared with the FBI in late 2016, was the essential piece of information used for the application.

2 .Senior Justice and FBI officials knew Democrats were funding this research but didn’t tell the court of the party’s role.

When BuzzFeed published this dossier in January 2017, we didn’t know who funded Steele’s work. A conservative publication hired opposition research group Fusion GPS to get dirt on Trump during the GOP primaries. After Trump won the Republican presidential nomination, the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign started paying Fusion GPS to continue the research. That’s when Fusion GPS hired Steele.

This memo alleges that the FBI and top Justice officials knew Democrats were funding the dossier, but it did not share that with the court.

3 .The FBI should have terminated a contract with Steele after he spoke with the media.

The rest of the memo attempts to provide corollary evidence that Steele was not a reliable source for the FBI.

Here, House Republicans argue that the FBI hired Steele during the campaign as one of its informants and then didn’t let him go after he talked to the media — including a September Yahoo News article. The FBI only cut him off after he disclosed his relationship with the FBI in an Oct. 30 Mother Jones article.

The memo also alleges Steele lied to the FBI about talking to Yahoo News and other media outlets more than a month earlier, ostensibly to keep his job: “Steele improperly concealed from and lied to the FBI about those contacts,” the memo reads.

4 .Steele had his own political bias that the FBI “ignored or concealed.”

Here’s another reason Steele’s information can’t be trusted, House Republicans allege: He had it in for Trump.

The memo alleges that Steele told a top Justice official he “was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president.” The memo says that Justice official told the FBI of the “clear evidence of Steele’s bias,” but it was “not reflected in any of the Page FISA applications.”

5 .At least two FBI officials had a clear bias against Trump At the very end of the memo, its authors also mention FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, who were having an affair and texted frequently about the investigation, including exchanging pro-Clinton texts and expressing anti-Trump sentiments.

6.Republicans released this memo because “the public interest in disclosure outweighs any need to protect the information.”

Legal experts, Democrats, intelligence officials, and even some Republican members of Congress have heavily criticized this memo for needlessly declassifying information to prove a political point. The process this memo went through to get released is highly unusual, say former congressional staffers.

The White House pushes back on that characterization by saying “the public interest in disclosure outweighs any need to protect the information.”