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Looking at the memo for details. The only claim that I think is clearly untrue is in 1.a: that none of the documents "disclose or reference the role of the DNC, Clinton campaign, or any party/campaign in funding Steele's efforts." No matter how specific you think the contents of the footnote are, they do relate to such.
Besides that, i think a fair amount is misleading. (e.g. it conflates exculpactory evidence with that bearing on credibility), or irrelevancies worked in to imply misconduct where it's not relevant (e.g. section 5 is irrelevant red meat wrt Carter's FISA warrant-its just an excuse to shoehorn Strozk's texts in), or doesn't exist (Yahoo article, discussed below). Consequently, I disagree with some of the conclusions in the first paragraph dealing with legality.
I agree with you insofar as this is an irrelevant bothsides argument.
The standard (of evidence) is probable cause. This is well-established outside FISA law. The thing that needs to be established to that level is whether someone is a foreign agent. Most FISA cases I found were heavily redacted such that it's not possible to see what was used to establish probable cause in those cases, but they rely heavily on non-FISA caselaw dealing with probable cause. The thing to be established is different (foreign agent v crime) but the analytical framework has a lot of overlap.
Fwiw, challenges like this to evidence used to obtain a warrant usually come under Franks v delaware. Franks has been applied to FISA warrants. (Franks is most narrowly interpreted to challenge the credibility of the affiant if they make false statements by govt agents, not the nongovt source they rely on). Some circuits, including the dcc, apply Franks to intentional nondisclosure by the affiant/applicant of material evidence instead. They usually apply this to non-disclosure of exculpactory evidence, though.
Didn't check all but I think the 9th at least has expanded Franks to apply to the affiants' nondisclosure of evidence relating to reliability of an informant, as here. Analysis was that the officer applying for a warrant deliberately or recklessly omitted info that materially impacted an important informant's credibility. (The DCC has rejected this in Becton). I didn't find any applying this to FiSA, but that's not surprising for such a specific use of that doctrine.
Mostly adding this to refer to a previous post: if FISA acts at all like other warrants in this respect, this would be nice information, but not something that makes a material difference, even under the 9th standard.
Its actually not asserted in the memo. Theres a clever bit of legerdemain here. He notes that the Yahoo article is cited extensively, and that it isn't corroborating. But he doesn't come out and say that it was actually the evidence presented as corroborating.
I'll further note that the memo has a timeline issue that renders this meaningless: its "not corroborating" of Steele's dossier because it was leaked by Steele. Sure, that makes sense. But the FBI didn't learn that Steele was leaking until after they submitted the warrant application -- see the first paragraph. At that point, treating it as corroborating evidence would have been incorrect, but not wrongdoing-theres no bad faith. By splitting those up, the memo hides the ball and implies that the FBI improperly let Steele corroborate himself.
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