By putting what happened under a microscope, you get 500 pages of malfeasance and abuse of the system in such excruciating detail that most peoples eyes just glaze over. And no one is connecting it to the wider plot.
Most people dont understand the significance of Carter Page, so 500 pages discussing his FISA warrant seem like inside baseball. But the Carter Page warrant was their warrant to surveil the president and his entire team, but with no obvious paper trail. Its as if they want to surveil you, so they get a warrant on your neighbors brother-in-law. Crooked, but its what they did.
Yep, boil it down and make it understandable. I’ve always felt the big challenge was going to be getting the framing right. Unfortunately the complexity of this thing makes pretty good camouflage, especially when the media isn’t using its storytelling powers to help people understand.
Thread: https://twitter.com/jabeale/status/1204659952251555841
Jason Beale @jabeale
Havent heard much commentary on it - go figure - but I think the most remarkable example of FBI malfeasance in this whole debacle is this: Prior to submitting the FISA application, they asked other agencies in the IC to run @carterwpages name through their systems to see if anything popped. The CIA responded via email disclosing that Page was an operational contact who reported on Russian business, government and intelligence officials with whom he interacted from 2008-2013. The FBI official who received this report removed that information from the email, wrote not a source in it, then forwarded it to the office preparing the FISA application. Bad enough, but it actually gets worse. The FISA application included a section related to Pages contacts with these Russian officials, which they presented as evidence in support of probable cause that he was a traitorous agent of a foreign power, but did not inform the FISA court that he was reporting information gleaned from these contacts to the CIA. Its analogous to the FBI seeking FISA approval to surveil their own confidential source, Stefan Halper, using the fact that he was meeting with the suspected Russian spies he was tasked by the FBI to meet with, but not revealing his association with the FBI to the court. Of all the things I thought the FBI had done to fabricate probable cause to violate Pages civil liberties in order to gain access to Trump campaign communications, I never - ever - imagined they would stoop so low as to use an American citizens operational relationship with the CIA as an opportunity to falsely characterize his association with sketchy Russian officials as evidence of treasonous behavior. It was, quite literally, the opposite of treason. Regardless of how this all ultimately plays out, this will remain, for me, the most treacherous and unforgivable transgression of Pages rights and liberties.