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Instead, the heavily-redacted application for a warrant to surveil U.S. citizen Carter Page obscures the source. It never says, at least in the unredacted portions, that the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee paid operatives to dig dirt on Donald Trump.
This allows the warrant to talk of “research” and not “opposition research.” The warrant application shields the partisan origins of the “dossier” and talks of a “law firm” hiring the investigators. In reality, Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the DNC paid the law firm, which paid Fusion GPS, which paid Christopher Steele (and, given the reference to a “U.S. person” in the warrant, perhaps others — unless that “U.S. person” was, in fact, a U.K. person, which complicates the narrative of foreign interference) to conduct opposition research.
Quoting a footnote in the application..
Source #1, who now owns a foreign business/financial intelligence firm, was approached by an identified U.S. person, who indicated to Source #1 that a U.S. based law firm had hired the identified U.S. person to conduct research regarding Candidate #1’s ties to Russia (the identified U.S. person and Source #1 have a long-standing business relationship). The identified U.S. person hired Source #1 to conduct this research. The identified U.S. person never advised Source #1 as to the motivation behind the research into Candidate #1’s ties to Russia. The FBI speculates that the identified U.S. person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit Candidate #1’s campaign.
On Sunday, Page said that it was “ridiculous” and a “complete joke” to believe he had been an agent of the Russian government.
“I’ve never been an agent of a foreign power by any stretch of the imagination,” Page said on CNN. That echoed President Trump’s own statements on the documents — issued via Twitter from Trump’s golf club in New Jersey — that the wiretap on Page was part of politically motivated spying on Trump’s presidential campaign.
the DOJ and FBI never thought anyone would ever be looking at this issue; they thought Hillary Clinton was going to win. To quote the disposition of FBI Counterintelligence Agent Peter Strzok: “I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office that there’s no way he gets elected – but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.” Key word: “unlikely“, they never contemplated -until later- the full scope of justification that would be needed…. they were setting up something no-one really thought would need to be utilized…. all of the legal apoplexy and ass-covering came in hindsight.
So when we review the FISA application, it is worth reminding yourself this was a tool, a temporary means to an end, they never thought they would actually need…. so they didn’t spend a great deal of time hammering out the finer points. The political surveillance was useful, but it was likely never to be known how it was utilized. Ms. Lisa Page was focused on empowering Hillary Clinton, stupid -albeit useful and obnoxiously arrogant- Pete was in charge of the less-than and likely unneeded insurance.
Republicans portrayed the Steele dossier — which also contained salacious claims about Mr. Trump apparently not included in the wiretap application — as dubious, and blasted the F.B.I. for using material from it while not telling the court that the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign had funded the research.
But Democrats noted that the application also contained evidence against Mr. Page unrelated to the dossier, and an unredacted portion of the application discussed efforts by Russian agents in 2013 to recruit Americans as assets. It has previously been reported that Mr. Page was one of their targets, although any discussion of Mr. Page’s interactions with them in the application is still censored.
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