Trump Oath: "Preserve, Protect and Defend" Our Laws Except the FISA Court Law

Carter Page giving speech in Moscow, December 2016

The basic story is below. I see two key points re: the FISA warrant application that was used to wire-tap former Trump aide, Carter Page. Those points are critical to analyzing this coverage, I believe as follows:

WASHINGTON (NY TIMES via MSN by Charlie Savage)  — The Trump administration disclosed previously top-secret documents related to the wiretapping of Carter Page, the onetime Trump campaign adviser who was at the center of highly contentious accusations by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee that the FBI had abused its surveillance powers.

First Point: Since February, even as Mr. Trump and his allies have continued to portray the Russia investigation as a “witch hunt,” it has produced indictments of two dozen Russians and Russian government officials for efforts to covertly manipulate American social media and for hacking and releasing Democratic emails during the campaign.

Noting that the original application and its three renewals were approved by senior law enforcement officials in two administrations and by federal judges, for example, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, portrayed the threat from Russia that the FBI was investigating as real and severe. 

Nadler said: “Anyone aware of these facts would recognize that these applications were necessary and appropriate. Those who say otherwise are trying desperately to protect President Trump from a broader investigation that must be allowed to take its course without interference.”

While applications for criminal wiretap orders often become public, showing what the government’s basis was for seeking it, the government until now has refused to disclose FISA materials even when using evidence gathered through such wiretaps to prosecute people.

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Second Point: The spectacle of the release was itself also noteworthy, given that wiretapping under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, is normally one of the government’s closest-guarded secrets. No such application materials had apparently become public in the 40 years since Congress enacted that law to regulate the interception of phone calls and other communications on domestic soil in search of spies and terrorists, as opposed to wiretapping for ordinary criminal investigations.

The fight over the surveillance of Mr. Page centered on the fact that the FBI, in making the case to judges that he might be a Russian agent, had used some claims drawn from a notorious Democratic-funded dossier compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent. 

The application cited claims from the dossier about a meeting Page purportedly attended with a person close to Russian president Vladimir Putin, while Page was on a trip to Moscow in July 2016, two months before leaving the Trump campaign.

The FISA application shows that the FBI told the FISA court it believed that the person who hired Steele was looking for dirt to discredit Trump. But it added that based on Steele’s previous reporting history with the FBI, in which Steels had “provided reliable information,” the bureau believed his information cited in the application “to be credible.” It did not use the names of who hired Steele.

My 2 cents: From what I read, the FBI’s application to the FISA court to wiretap Carter Page was valid then and remains so today.

The Trump team I also believe was wrong to pursue this release of FISA documents in fact, practically demanding its release. They thought it would show that the FBI was in cahoots with Hillary Clinton was ensure her win… nothing could be further from the truth so in the end on this Trump conspiracy hype, they have egg on their collective face. No big surprise in that regard.

Trump Empire, Inc. vs. the FISA Court

More later I am sure. Stay tuned and thanks for stopping by.