Late last week, Sen. Lindsey Graham announced a webpage dedicated to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s probe into the Crossfire Hurricane illicit investigation into the Donald Trump campaign. Graham’s staff uploaded the four Carter Page Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) applications, which were recently further declassified.
These declassifications reveal more devastating details in the SpyGate saga. Here are seven new revelations.
1. The FBI Always Intended to Spy on the Trump Campaign
When news first broke that the Obama administration had obtained a FISA order to surveil Page, Democrats and the left-leaning press argued the FBI’s surveillance of the former Trump foreign policy advisor didn’t constitute spying on the Trump campaign because the court-ordered surveillance didn’t begin until after Page had left the campaign.
...
However, Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on FISA abuse later confirmed that, yes, “the FBI gathered substantial evidence of Page’s past electronic communications,” including multiple “emails between Page and members of the Donald J. Trump for President Campaign concerning campaign related matters.”
The recent declassifications of the FISA applications now expose a further reality: The FBI didn’t just seek access to past electronic communications with campaign members, the FBI believed Page would continue to communicate with the Trump campaign and sought the FISA court order to intercept those conversations.
...
2. FBI Failed to Brief Trump About Its Page Suspicions
This newly declassified information highlights another huge impropriety in the FBI’s handling of Crossfire Hurricane: The FBI failed to provide the Trump campaign a defensive briefing about Page!
Here, it is helpful to remember what Counterintelligence Division Assistant Director E.W. “Bill” Priestap told the IG about why he opened the Crossfire Hurricane investigation instead of providing the Trump campaign a defensive briefing:
we provide defensive briefings when we obtain information indicating a foreign adversary is trying or will try to influence a specific U.S. person, and when there is no indication that the specific U.S. person could be working with the adversary. In regard to the information the [Friendly Foreign Government] provided us, we had no indication as to which person in the Trump campaign allegedly received the offer from the Russians. There was no specific U.S. person identified.
...
Andrew McCabe, President Obama’s former deputy director of the FBI, likewise told the IG “that he did not consider a defensive briefing as an alternative to opening a counterintelligence case” because, “based on the [Friendly Foreign Government] information, the FBI did not know if any member of the campaign was coordinating with Russia and that the FBI did not brief people who ‘could potentially be the subjects that you are investigating or looking for.’”
...
So why didn’t the FBI provide the Trump campaign a defensive briefing about Page? Why didn’t the FBI warn Trump that it had evidence that Page was acting as an agent for Russia and that the campaign should be aware of that fact in communications with Page?
3. The FBI Spied on the Trump Administration
...
Significantly, both the April 7, 2017 and the June 28, 2017, FISA renewal applications, after redacting “FISA-Acquired Information,” noted that “the FBI assesses that Page continues to have access to senior U.S. Government officials. Moreover, the FBI further assesses that Page is attempting to downplay his contacts with the Russian Government and to dispel the controversy surrounding him, so as to make him more viable as a foreign policy expert who will be in a position, due to his continued contacts with senior U.S. Government officials, to influence U.S. foreign policy towards Russia.”
These assertions raise significant questions and concerns. Who were these “senior U.S. Government officials”? Did the FBI intercept Page’s communications with Trump administration officials? And why would the FBI not provide President Trump a defensive briefing about Page and his supposed role as a Russian agent?
4. Rep. Adam Schiff Is a Rotten, No-Good, Two-Faced Liar
The latest declassifications also expose—yet again—that Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) lied about everything in his “response memo” to Rep. Devin Nunes’s (R-Calif.) memo on FISA abuse.
...
Schiff knew this. He also knew that with dueling memorandums, the press would 100 percent back the Democrat, and put Republican Nunes’s memorandum on FISA abuse down to politics.
Schiff was right. He just didn’t expect Trump to survive long enough for proof of his duplicity to come out. But luckily for Schiff, the press backs lying Democrats at the same rate.
5. FBI Relied Solely on Fake News to Support Portions of the FISA Applications
The additional FISA application declassifications reveal another disconcerting fact: The FBI relied completely on media reports that ended up being inaccurate to “assesses that, following Page’s meetings in Russia, Page helped influence [the Republican Party] and Trump’s campaign to alter their platforms to be more sympathetic to Russia.”
...
More:
https://thefederalist.com/2020/04/20...-new-releases/
Connect With Us