Although Strzok was still working on other aspects of Russia’s broader investigation, he was not part of the team working on the renewal of the listening, his lawyer said. Another senior FBI counterintelligence officer, Jennifer Boone, was supervising a team tasked with determining sources of information for the dossier and handling wiretapping directed at Mr. Page, according to people familiar with the investigation.
Strzok was later removed from the investigation in Russia after the Justice Department’s inspector general discovered several texts on his work phone expressing animosity over Trump’s election. The inspector general, however, found no evidence that he took or withheld any official action because of his personal opinions.
Strzok’s skeptical notes about the Times article, entitled “Trump campaign advisers repeated contacts with Russian intelligence,” were similar to the testimony in Congress months after former FBI director James B. Comey challenged him. Comey did not say exactly what he thought was incorrect about the article, which cited four current and former American officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential information.
Mr. Strzok’s notes challenged the article’s premise and other aspects. He wrote: “We are not aware of ANY Trump adviser engaging in conversations with Russian intelligence officials.”
Still, he also added, the agency identified contacts between Mr. Page and Russian intelligence officials before the campaign; contacts between an associate of Paul Manafort, the former president of the campaign, and Russian intelligence; and contacts between two campaign advisers, Jeff Sessions and Michael T. Flynn, and Russia’s ambassador to the United States.
Eileen Murphy, a spokesman for the Times, said: “We keep our reports.”
Page’s wiretapping was a small part of the general investigation into Russia’s covert attempt to help tip the election in favor of Trump and whether any affiliate of the Trump campaign had conspired in that effort. The inspector general’s report concluded that the opening of the investigation followed legal standards and that the Steele dossier had no role in that decision; the agents who worked on it did not know of its existence until later.
Still, the discovery of the inspector general’s report of serious flaws in wiretapping applications – including several errors and omissions, including the failure to alert the court to the doubts raised by the interview with Steele’s source – made them a political focus.