By John Solomon | The Hill
Former
FBI Lawyer Lisa Page and fired FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok exchanged
anti-Trump text messages during their time at the bureau. (AP, File)
To date, Lisa Page’s infamy has been driven mostly by the
anti-Donald
Trump text messages she exchanged with fellow FBI agent Peter Strzok as the
two engaged in an affair while investigating the president for alleged election
collusion with Russia.
Yet, when history judges the former FBI lawyer years from
now, her most consequential pronouncement may not have been typed on her
bureau-issued Samsung smartphone to her colleague and lover.
Rather, it might be eight simple words she uttered behind
closed doors during a congressional interview a few weeks ago.
“It’s a reflection of us still not knowing,” Page told
Rep. John Ratcliffe
(R-Texas) when questioned about texts she and Strzok exchanged in May 2017 as Robert Mueller was being
named a special
prosecutor to take over the Russia investigation.
With that statement, Page acknowledged a momentous fact:
After nine months of using some of the most awesome surveillance powers
afforded to U.S. intelligence, the FBI still had not made a case connecting
Trump or his campaign to Russia’s election meddling.
Page opined further, acknowledging “it still existed in
the scope of possibility that there would be literally nothing” to connect
Trump and Russia, no matter what Mueller or the FBI did.
“As far as May of 2017, we still couldn’t answer the
question,” she said at another point.
I reached out to Page's lawyer, Amy Jeffress, on Friday.
She declined to answer questions about her client’s
cooperation with Congress.
It might take a few seconds for the enormity of Page’s
statements to sink in.
After all, she isn’t just any FBI lawyer. She was a lead
on the Russia case when it started in summer 2016, and she helped it transition
to Mueller through summer 2017.
For those who might cast doubt on the word of a single
FBI lawyer, there’s more.
Shortly after he was fired, ex-FBI Director James Comey told the Senate
there was not yet evidence to justify investigating Trump for colluding with
Russia. “When I left, we did not have an investigation focused on President Trump,” Comey
testified.
And Strzok, the counterintelligence boss and leader of the
Russia probe, texted Page in May 2017 that he
was reluctant to join Mueller’s probe and leave his senior FBI post because
he feared “there’s no big there, there.”
The Department of Justice (DOJ) inspector general asked
Strzok shortly before he was fired from the FBI what he meant by that text, and
he offered a most insightful answer.
Strzok said he wasn’t certain
there was a “broad, coordinated effort” to hijack the election and that the
evidence of Trump campaign aides talking about getting Hillary Clinton dirt from
Russians might have been just a “bunch of opportunists” talking to heighten
their importance.
Strzok added that, while he raised the idea of
impeachment in some of his texts to Page, “I am, again, was not, am not
convinced or certain that it will,” he told the IG.
So, by the words of Comey, Strzok and Page, we now know
that the Trump Justice Department — through Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein — unleashed
the Mueller special prosecutor probe before the FBI could validate a connection
between Trump and Russia.
Which raises the question: If there was no concrete
evidence of collusion, why did we need a special prosecutor?
Page’s comments also mean FBI and Justice officials
likely leaked a barrage of media stories just before and after Mueller’s
appointment that made the evidence of collusion look far stronger than the
frontline investigators knew it to be.
Text messages show contacts between key
FBI and DOJ players and the Washington Post, the Associated Press and the New
York Times during the ramp-up to Mueller’s probe.
And that means the news media — perhaps longing to find a
new Watergate, to revive sagging fortunes — were far too willing to be
manipulated by players in a case that began as a political opposition research
project funded by Trump’s Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, and led by a
former British intelligence agent, Christopher
Steele, who despised Trump.
Finally, Page’s statement signals that the nation’s
premier intelligence court may not have been given a complete picture of the
evidence — or lack thereof — as it approved an extraordinary surveillance
intrusion into an American presidential nominee’s campaign just weeks before
Election Day.
There was no fault to the FBI checking whether Trump was
compromised by Russia; that is a classic counterintelligence responsibility.
The real fault lies in those leaders who allowed a secret
investigation to mushroom into a media maelstrom driven by official leaks that
created a story that far exceeded the evidence, and then used that false
narrative to set a special prosecutor flying downhill ahead of his skis.
No matter where Mueller ends his probe, it is now clear
the actions that preceded his appointment turned justice on its head, imposing
the presumption of guilt upon a probe whose own originators had reason to doubt
the strength of their evidence.
__________________
By Scott Johnson | POWERLINE
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (AP, File)
Earlier this year I wrote a series of posts contra the dross
of April Doss.
The “dross” was found in the
Weekly Standard cover story by Doss.
The cover story disparaged House
Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes and asserted that he is retailing a
“conspiracy theory” involving the Obama administration’s misuse of FISA on
Carter Page to investigate the Trump presidential campaign.
Doss purported to
lay down the truth about Nunes and FISA.
The truth is that Doss’s cover story
was a disgrace.
The FISA warrant applications on Carter Page open a
window onto the biggest scandal in American political history.
I have embedded
them here previously and have embedded them again below. They are the ocular
proof of the scandal.
The invaluable Andrew McCarthy has now cracked open the
window a little wider in two columns with one theme: FISA Docs Show: Long
Before Mueller, Trump-Russia Was an Investigation Without a Crime.
The
first column (posted yesterday afternoon) is “Reading
the FISA redactions.” The second is “In
the Russia Probe, It’s ‘Qui S’excuse S’accuse’” (posted this morning — the
French expression is to the effect that “he who excuses himself accuses
himself”).
These are long, detailed, illuminating and educational
columns that draw on McCarthy’s professional expertise. Stick with them — both
of them. Do not miss either one.
Andy says he has read the FISA applications so you don’t
have to. He has performed a great public service in these columns. Even so, I
say you have to review the FISA applications with your own eyes.
They are
shocking. Drawing from my series on Doss’s Weekly Standard cover story, I want
to restate the relevant background in the context of Andy’s linked columns:
• Under Title I of FISA —
see this useful House Intel Committee summary
It was the burden of the government to establish probable cause that Page was
engaging in espionage, terrorism, or sabotage by or on behalf of a foreign
power that involved a violation of a criminal statute.
Doss stated: “Although
Page had left the campaign, the FBI feared Russia was using him for its own
purposes. The application states that the FBI alleged there was probable cause
to believe Page was an agent of a foreign power under a specific provision of
FISA that involves knowingly aiding, abetting, or knowingly conspiring to
assist a foreign power with clandestine intelligence gathering activities,
engage in clandestine intelligence gathering at the behest of a foreign power,
or participate in sabotage or international terrorism or planning or
preparation therefor.”
• Doss to the contrary notwithstanding, the allegations
cited by Doss in her article don’t make out probable cause that Page is a
Russian agent on any fair reading of the facts once the Steele dossier is seen
for what it is.
• The FBI relied in substantial part on the allegations
of the Steele dossier to obtain the FISA warrant on Page. Although the applications
swear otherwise, these allegations were unverified. I observed in my series
that Andy was one of the knowledgeable observers who disputes Doss on the
propriety of this reliance. Doss simply omitted any acknowledgement of the
related issues.
• The FBI nevertheless secured the FISA
surveillance warrant on Page in October 2016 and renewed it three more times at
90-day intervals. I held out the possibility that the cited
facts together with the redacted material fairly establish probable cause, but
we have yet to see it. McCarthy now demonstrates that this is highly unlikely.
• Whether or not the FBI made out probable cause, it must
have monitored Page’s every communication by text, email and cell phone for a
year. Yet Page remains a free man. No charge of any kind — not even a process
crime such the one used against Michael Flynn and George Papadoploulos — has
been brought against Carter Page. The circumstantial evidence strongly suggests
that Page is not a Russian agent.
• Given the year-long surveillance on him
without any resulting charge, Page might not only not be a Russian agent, he
might be the cleanest man in Washington.
• Carter Page was a victim of government
misconduct whose true object was Donald Trump.
Quotable quote: “[L]et’s dispense with the tired claim
that the Obama administration did not really spy on Trump and his campaign.
Every
one of the four FISA warrant applications, after describing Russia’s
cyberespionage attack on the 2016 election, makes the following assertion
(after two redacted lines): ‘the FBI believes that the Russian Government’s
efforts to influence the 2016 election were being coordinated with Page and
perhaps other individuals associated with Candidate #1’s [i.e., Trump’s]
campaign.]'”
One more: “For Mueller, the Russia counterintelligence
probe was cover to conduct a criminal investigation of Trump in the absence of
grounds to believe a crime had occurred.”
