The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Saturday released heavily-redacted documents related to the surveillance warrants on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. This is a key part of the federal investigation into the Trump campaign and Russia.
The documents show the FBI lied. They also presented circular evidence reliant on the unverified dossier. The warrant gave the FBI permission to spy “incidentally” on anyone in the Trump campaign.
There are 412 pages including the initial application and several renewals, but it whittles down to very little because of the redactions. The President released the documents despite objections from the FBI. He should now order the declassification. These docs do not appear to reveal sources and methods. Rather, the material is embarrassing or worse to certain FBI officials.
Two of the four judges who rubber-stamped the illegal FISA surveillance warrants are U.S. Judge Anne C. Conway [appointed to FISC 2016] and U.S. Judge Raymond J. Dearie [appointed 2012 to FISC].
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The warrants were signed by Jim Comey, Andrew McCabe and Sally Yates. They approved spying on the Trump campaign. It is unheard of.
THE FBI FALSELY CLAIMED THE EVIDENCE WAS VERIFIED
The document on page 53 says the FBI “verified the application for accuracy in accordance with its April 5, 2001 procedures…”. That is a lie. It was never verified.
According to the documents, the FBI relied on the dossier. Hillary’s campaign and the DNC commissioned the dossier as opposition research. It was put together by Steele subcontractors. They got it from Russian spies who took it from the Russian rumor mill.
“The FBI takes seriously its obligations to the FISA Court and its compliance with procedures overseen by career professionals in the Department of Justice and the FBI,” the FBI said in its statement at the time.
Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, said his first read of the documents released by the DOJ on Saturday seemed to “confirm the FBI and DoJ misled the courts in withholding information about Clinton-DNC being behind the information used to get the FISA warrant.”
“Given this corruption, President Trump should intervene and declassify the heavily redacted material,” he continued in a statement.
THE FBI WAS ALLOWED TO SPY ON PAGE, AND “INCIDENTALLY” SPY ON OTHERS IN THE CAMPAIGN
The documents show the FBI wiretapped Carter Page, a Trump foreign policy adviser. They said he “was recruited by and conspiring with the Russian government”.
Carter Page has never been charged or even arrested.
The materials include an October 2016 application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to wiretap Page as well as three 90-day renewal applications.
The first three applications were signed by then-FBI Director James Comey, and the fourth by his deputy Andrew McCabe, after Trump fired Comey in May of 2017.
It showed the FBI believed or said they believed Page has been the subject of targeted recruitment by the Russian government.
The FISA documents gave the FBI the authority to “INCIDENTALLY acquire other information” against additional targets while monitoring Page, a Trump campaign adviser.
In one section, it states the FBI believes the Russian Government’s efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election were being coordinated with Carter Page and perhaps other individuals associated with [Trump’s] campaign”. That would include George Papadopoulos.
THE DOSSIER IS THE FIRST PIECE OF EVIDENCE CITED
The dossier is the first piece of evidence cited in the FISA application section laying out the allegations that Page coordinated with Russian government officials on election-related “influence activities.” The FBI has said they did not rely on the dossier.
That section cites information from “Source #1” who alleged that during a trip to Moscow in July 2016, Page met secretly with two sanctioned Kremlin insiders, Igor Sechin and Igor Diveykin, as part of a collusion scheme involving the Trump campaign.
The source is Christopher Steele, the former British spy who wrote the dossier.
The documents show that the FBI revealed in a footnote that ‘Source #1’, as it refers to Steele, had been hired by an opposing campaign to dig dirt on the Trump campaign, but noted he had a history of providing ‘reliable information’ to the FBI.
There is NO OTHER EVIDENTIARY source [Source #1] other than the dossier.
The renewal applications include a footnote in bold saying that the FBI had severed its relationship with Steele because he had shared some of his claims with a news organization in October 2016.
That organization is likely Yahoo News. The article in Yahoo was from the same source — Steele — and meant to bolster his other creation — the dossier.
THE SAME EVIDENCE WAS PRESENTED FROM SEVERAL SOURCES BUT PRESENTED AS CORROBORATING EVIDENCE — BRENNAN AND REID WERE INVOLVED
In other words, it makes it clear that FBI bought into the wild accusations and unsubstantiated claims of Clinton’s spy — Steele. Furthermore, they even pretended they didn’t know the “Western intelligence source” in the Yahoo article was Steele.
Over and over, the newly released FISA application on Carter Page reveals the FBI cited liberal media articles, along with the Clinton-paid political dossier, as evidence to support the warrant to spy on Page, and by extension, the Trump campaign.
In other words, Tom Fitton writes, the FISA documents cite the Clinton-DNC Dirty Dossier, the leak of the Dossier to the media, and leak of the Dossier information through Democrat Senator Harry Reid as different pieces of evidence to get court approval to spy on Trump’s campaign team.
“Senate Minority Leader” Harry Reid’s 2016 letter to Comey is actually cited in the FISA warrant as “evidence” to spy on the campaign. In other words, it cites information Reid got from John Brennan who got it from the Clinton dossier. That is certainly circular evidence.
STRZOK APPEARS TO HAVE COMMITTED PERJURY
It shows lead investigator — the biased Peter Strzok — did in fact use Carter Page’s September 2016 letter to Jim Comey as a “pretext” to open the investigation on him. Strzok suggested as much in email to Lisa Page in September, labeled Re:”Crossfire FISA.” However, Strzok testified this month he had nothing to do with the Page FISA application.
While Strzok didn’t actually write the actual applications, a “Supervisory Special Agent” under him did. Strzok can’t claim ignorance. There are ten steps for each of the four FISA applications for a total of forty. It’s not believable that he was unaware.
The FBI claimed the dossier sent in different forms were multiple pieces of evidence. It all came from the same Dossier — circular evidence.
THE FISA COURT DIDN’T KNOW IT CAME FROM HILLARY
The FISA court never knew the requests came from a ‘dossier’ created by Fusion GPS as agents of the Clinton campaign and the DNC. The first warrant to spy on Carter Page came only weeks before the 2016 election.
If Hillary had won that election, we would never have known any of this. Innocent people might have been imprisoned [remember the videographer accused of causing the Benghazi attack].
It corroborates the Republican memo detailing how the “minimally corroborated” Clinton-DNC dossier was an essential part of the FBI and DOJ’s applications for surveillance warrants to spy on Page.
Carter Page Wiretapping by M Mali on Scribd
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