Five Eyes has been in operation since the late 1990s after ECHELON was revealed
and his blabbing to Downer was a key trigger!
It just bears repeating, that our whinging & bleating Trump sycophants are just plain ignoring the established and indisputable facts.
Fact 1: The FBI received information from one of the Five Eyes co-operating allied foreign intelligence services who were spying on the Russians. During their own routine "SIGINT" surveillance of The Kremlin and Russian oligarchs, they noticed multiple members of the Trump campaign and other Trump associates kept repeatedly popping up in their investigations.
Hmmm, odd isnt that Hillary didn't pop up since many of these contacts also have ties to Clinton. "Hey, ignore that fellas"
Fact 2: As a result, those intelligence partners informed the FBI about what they had observed. They were so concerned about what they had been told, that only THEN did the start the counter-intelligence investigation - it was their duty to do so.
And what exactly was it they were told that's so alarming?
Fact 3: The Steele Dossier had nothing whatsoever to to with the appointment of the Special Counsel. Far from being some fabricated, fake document, the Steele Dossier has turned out to be devastatingly accurate in almost every aspect. Many things in the dossier have been confirmed as absolutely correct, a number of things have been unable to be confirmed, but there is nothing in that document that has been shown to be wrong.
Seriously? What in there is confirmed to be correct?
Fact 4: It was the firing of James Comey as head of the FBI, and Trump's own stated reasons for doing so, firstly because Comey would not protect Mike Flynn, and secondly, because Comey would not put a stop to "Crossfire Hurricane", the Russia probe, that led to Rod Rosenstein appointing Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
It appears Flynn was unjustly accused. However, even besides that it is completely within the Presidents power to fire Comey for whatever reason he so chooses.