The FISA application that the FBI submitted to spy on President Donald Trump associate Carter Page has been released to the public thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request, and it contains all the dirty details that the “Nunes Memo” said it would. (RELATED: Nunes Memo Released, Detailing FISA Court Abuse Against Trump Campaign).
As you’ll remember, Page was targeted by Obama’s FBI, which submitted a FISA warrant to spy on Page in July 2016, which was then renewed three consecutive times. In total, Page was surveilled for about a year. While this was supposedly over concerns that Page was colluding with the Russians, that was just cover to get an “in” to spy on the Trump campaign. While filing a FISA in an attempt to spy directly on Trump himself would leave an obvious paper trail, surveilling Page is a way to launder that surveillance. Since the FBI will also indirectly surveil every single person Page speaks to because they’re listening to his phone conversations.
Even CNN admitted in the case of the FBI’s spying on Paul Manafort, that “It’s unclear whether Trump himself was picked up on the surveillance.” Translation: Trump himself was picked up on the surveillance.
Mollie Hemmingway of The Federalist read through the entire Carter Page FISA application, and here’s a rundown on what she learned:
- Christopher Steele’s partisan-funded and politically-motivated anti-Trump dossier was an “essential” part of the warrant. The warrant cites two Russian officials that Page was allegedly in cahoots with, and the bogus dossier was the only claim for that.
- While Page had left the campaign by the time this wiretap was obtained, the warrant makes it clear the FBI believed its wiretap would find information on the Trump campaign, stating the “Russian government’s efforts are being coordinated with Page and perhaps other individuals associated” with the Trump campaign.
- None of the information cited from the dossier in the application was verified.
- The application also cited a Yahoo! News article that was sourcing their information from Christopher Steele. How could the FBI possibly not realize that Steele was leaking information, when they cited an article that contained information which could only come from him?
- In the application, the FBI says that Steele’s research (identified as Source #1) had been corroborated and used in criminal proceedings and that Steele was deemed “reliable” by the FBI. This is despite the fact that the FBI admits Steele relies on secondary sources in his dossier. The dossier was NOT corroborated at the time of the FISA application, nor is it today. In fact, just the opposite.
The application also made a whole host of simply bogus claims including the following from a footnote. Note that “Source #1” is how the FBI refers to Steele:
- Footnote 18, initial application: “Source #1 told the FBI that he/she only provided this information to the business associate and the FBI. REDACTED The FBI does not believe that Source #1 directly provided this information to the press.” Steele DID leak to the press, including to Yahoo News, which the FBI themselves cited in that very application.
In all three renewals, however, the footnote is as following:
- Footnote 19, first renewal: “Source #1 told the FBI that he/she only provided this information to the business associate and the FBI. REDACTED The FBI does not believe that Source #1 directly provided this information to the identified news organization that published the September 23rd News Article.”
This is a bold-faced lie. The FBI knew that Steele leaked, and only included this updated footnote to try to claim they didn’t know any better in the event that they were exposed.
If there was a legitimate case to spy on the Trump campaign to thwart interference with Russia, why the need to lie? Why the need to rely primarily on a bogus partisan dossier, and an article from a leftist journalist over at Yahoo News? Because there wasn’t a legitimate case to be made, of course.
Now we know that for sure.
