Without the dossier, the case for spying on Page was "some Russians tried to get close to him and didn't." Which is pretty thin gruel. The dossier spices it up to say Trump and Russia are a thing, so it is no surprise that Page and Russians are close….Conservative Treehouse adds an argument, based on curiously lined-up background identification facts in court filings, that Carter Page was an FBI informant in Russian spy sting operations until very shortly before he became a surveillance target himself, on the heels of developing a relationship with the Trump campaign.
It stinks to high heaven. But as another Ace commenter put it, "Confused? Mission accomplished."
And another, assuming the nod-nod-wink-wink in the infamous footnote was duly heard and received:
FISA Applicant: Judge, Hillary Clinton would like us to open an investigation on her opponenet in the Presidential campaign.
FISA Judge: Well, what evidence of crime do you have?
FISA Applicant: We heard from a guy, who heard from Sydney Blumenethal, who heard from....
FISA Judge: OK, that's enough. Warrant granted.
9 comments:
A number of people have pointed out that Page went from being considered cooperative by the FBI regarding Russians who were contacting him (2013) to being suspected of being a foreign agent (2016) because they were asking for a FISA Title I warrant. Many of the same people were in leadership over that period. It would be fun to see them (McCabe, Comey, Storz) grilled on when and how they discovered they got played (or alternatively, were you lying about Page then or are you lying now?).
Someone at Maggie's Farm suggested that we quit calling it the "Steele Dossier" and give it the more appropriate tag of "Clinton Dossier."
The only problem with that move is that there are now known to be multiple dossiers tied to Clinton. Steele wrote two, and there’s a third out of Blumenthal’s crew.
We have reason to believe Steele managed to generate any of them independently of Clinton?
He was paid to do something. Maybe just stand there and look like James Bond (Remington Steele?).
My suspicion is that Steele was brought in because he had contacts at the FBI and in Russia. Getting the FBI to comment on the Dossier would make it newsworthy, as Comey proved by giving Trump and Obama 'briefings' on it, without them actually having to investigate it. Using it to bootstrap their FISA abuse might have been a side benefit. His Russian contacts could recycle the other allegations for appearance sake.
It's interesting to me that the FISC judge(s) didn't explore that dossier a bit more than they did.
But, then, what would we expect of a Star Chamber court dismayed by a non-standard candidate for President and prepared to rubber stamp the initiatives of their view of a normal world?
Eric Hines
In fairness to FISC, they turned down the first ask. They normally do rubber-stamp these requests, the numbers bear that out. But this one pre-Steele got shot down as inadequate. That raises the importance of this DNC/Clinton-backed scheme to build out a false front for the FBI.
Well, the House rejected the first bailout, too, 'way back in 2008. Both (to conflate things just a smidgeon) got to the wrong answer on the second try. And it's the wrong answer that matters here, since that's the one implemented.
Eric Hines
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