The FBI could not have verified the accuracy of a dossier used to obtain a warrant to surveil a former campaign aide because they don't know who the Russian agents were that supplied the information, Rep. Pete King said Tuesday.
King's remarks come in the aftermath of a weekend document dump that shows the FBI used the dossier authored by a former British spy as grounds for a FISA warrant against Carter Page.
"That application was based so much on the [Christopher] Steele dossier," King told Fox News' "America's Newsroom." "The Steele dossier was based on a foreign agent from the British government, who based his report on Russian agents ... the FBI says they verified the accuracy of it. How could they? They don't know who the Russian agents are."
The report, he added, was "paid for by the [Hillary] Clinton campaign, which means the only ones who had real contact with Russian intelligence was the Clinton campaign."
King said he also thinks the United States' intelligence agencies and government abused its privilege by using the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to obtain the warrant against Page, and that Trump did not have any idea who Page was.
"He never met or spoke with him," said King. "There was no contact at all ever between Carter Page and candidate Trump or President Trump, and there was absolutely minimal contact between Carter page and the campaign committee ... he had no influence on the campaign whatsoever."
He also noted that former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe told the Intelligence Committee they wouldn't have been able to get the FISA warrant if they hadn't used the Steele dossier, "yet in the application you would have to be a mind reader or genius to know it was the Clinton campaign or Democratic Committee which paid for the Steele dossier. It wasn't even mentioned."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.