Posted on 12/12/2019 12:23:44 PM PST by Red Badger
One section of the Justice Department’s Inspector General (IG) report that hasn’t gotten as much attention highlights how the FBI not only altered evidence against one-time Trump campaign aide Carter Page, but also ignored exculpatory evidence to continue obtaining FISA warrants against him.
The FBI had believed Page was a foreign agent working with the Russians to help Donald Trump steal the 2016 election. In reality, Page had previously worked with an unnamed U.S. intelligence agency dealing with Russians for years at the beginning of the Obama administration. After the FBI started surveilling Page, he made several public statements about his past role as an asset for the intelligence community.
It wasn’t until the third FISA application, however, that the FBI apparently learned this was the case. Instead of realizing that the basis for their application was always bogus, they doubled down and simply omitted that information from the third FISA renewal application.
Near the middle of the IG report, a text message exchange between a person identified only as “SSA2,” who would be the affiant on the third renewal application, and someone identified only as “OGC Attorney,” who is believed to be FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith. The two went back and forth about whether Page was, indeed, working for another U.S. agency. At one point Clinesmith claimed this agency “confirmed explicitly [Page] was never a source.” He then told SSA2: “I mean, at least we don’t have to have a terrible footnote.”
SSA2 pushes back saying it was “interesting” this agency claimed Page was not a source, considering what the agency had written.
IG Michael Horowitz’s team spoke to Clinesmith about this exchange. He claimed his statement about being “explicitly” told Page was not a previous asset was meant as “shorthand” and that he had no reason to use the word “explicitly,” as he had been told no such thing. He claimed the message about a “terrible footnote” was in reference to the “laborious” process it would take to add such a footnote to the FISA application and claimed it had nothing to do with whether that footnote would completely undermine the application.
SSA2 felt differently. This person told Horowitz’s team that he took Clinesmith’s use of the word “explicitly” to be “the confirmation that I need[ed]” to report that Page had never been a source. Further, SSA2 told the IG that he believed the “terrible footnote” comment to mean they would be able to avoid having to explain in the renewal application that the FBI had “just now come to determine that [Page] was an asset of the [other agency] and probably being tasked to engage … [with] Russians which is … why we opened a case on him.”
SSA2 went on to tell the IG that “the optic” of such a footnote “would be terrible.”
Clinesmith, readers may recall, is the one who altered an email from the other U.S. intelligence agency that said Page did have a previous working relationship with them. Clinesmith inserted the words “not a source” into the email to make it appear as though a liaison from the other agency had said Page was “not a source.” Clinesmith sent this email to SSA2 and the FISA application was granted.
When Horowitz testified before the Senate on Wednesday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) offered his own explanation for why this information about Page was omitted.
“What does that matter?” Graham said. “Because if the court had known, then there is a lawful reason for Mr. Page to be talking to the Russian guy. He wasn’t working against his country. He was working with his country, which undercuts the idea he is a foreign agent. That’s why Clinesmith lied: because he didn’t want to stop this investigation.”
The didn’t “learn” it. They knew all along and simply used him as a way to do the two-hops to Trump. It was a backdoor way to run surveillance on the Trump campaign.
The FBI ran a criminal anti-American operation.
Perhaps he was biased.
So Dr Carter Page is a graduate of Annapolis and was a Navy intelligence officer. How come we never hear about his bona fides?
Nasty is in too deep. She loses her gavel now by not delivering or when the house flips in a year. She has to count on the election, it’s her only hope. You can smell the toast burning.
“The FBI had believed Page was a foreign agent working with the Russians to help Donald Trump steal the 2016 election”
Bullshit. This is the coverup for a failed coup attempt and nothing else. They never believed Page was a foreign agent, they never believed the Russians were trying to get Trump elected. And they never “learned later” that Page was also with the CIA.
And I’m not entirely sure Page wasn’t an FBI/CIA plant in the Trump world and that he simply managed to land on his feet when the coup fell apart. Had hillary won, he would have been a shadow in the background.
“””””That’s why Clinesmith lied: because he didn’t want to stop this investigation.””””””
Because ORANGE MAN BAD
So, Page ( a USNA graduate and eastern energy market stock analyst once sent to Merrill Lynch office in Moscow) is ‘talking’ to a Russian source and dutifully reporting to the CIA
FBI reports Page is talking to a Russian and uses it to clueless FISA judge as proof Page is being used against or by Trump, FBI spies on Page, and spies on everyone connected to Page and everyone connected to them....yada yada yada
How dirty does it get
why didn’t Brennan say something....even after he went to TV
The Mueller investigation was just part of the cover-up. It prevented the Reps in the House from pursuing further the hoax. The Mueller investigation helped the Dems regain the House.
Ignored? Nay nay, the fbi lawyer altered the CIA confirmation email to read the exact opposite of the message; Page was a CIA asset to read was not a CIA asset. Criminal conspiracy is afoot and the media is trying to slowly change the truth.
Someone told him to do it. He didn’t just automatically do it for no reason.....................
Rosenstein was part and partisan to the whole scheme.................
His bona fides? He was intelligence, CFR member, joined the Trump campaign which magically let the CIA and FBI spy on Trump. “On November 2, 2017, Page testified to the House Intelligence Committee that he had kept senior officials in the Trump campaign such as Corey Lewandowski, Hope Hicks, and J. D. Gordon informed about his contacts with the Russians and had informed Jeff Sessions, Lewandowski, Hicks and other Trump campaign officials that he was traveling to Russia to give a speech in July 2016”
But Mueller, who indicted anyone else in the Trump campaign on the slightest fake set up charges, let Page go without a scratch.
He was a CIA/FBI plant into the campaign if you ask me.
The lawsuits Page is launching tell you he was a legitimate actor from before the Crossfire crap began. The FBI had used him to nail Russians in the past. If he was not legitimate his lawsuits would expose him, so in following the lawsuit path we can know he has always been legit. Discovery is a bitch for liars.
You realize that Page was referred to the Trump campaign to advise on its GOP policy positions vs Russia and Ukraine...by Richard Nixon’s son in law, Ed Cox, the chairman of the NY Republican party?
But please, continue the conspiracy speculatiion..
She doesn’t seem to get that the “blue wave” was a result of the phony Mueller investigation.
No, the lawsuit is part of the post coup scramble. Rats leaving a sinking ship. He’s dirty.
Mueller knew from day one as SC that Page was a CIA asset that the fbi had purposely mischaracterized to get a FISA court approval. Mueller though he coulod doge that truth. Mule Ears is the one who should be in prison for rest of his natural life.
Bttt.
5.56mm
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