457

It’s rather amazing the party of Reagan has chosen someone who was a targeted Russian recruit as their patron saint and martyr of the Deep State ‘witch hunt.’ Long before the DOJ obtained a FISA warrant on Page-before he even spoke in Russia in 2016 as part of the Trump campaign and was allegedly offered a 19% stake in Rosnet in exchange for changing the RNC platform on Crimea-he was targeted for recruitment by the Russians. 

“Russian intelligence operatives tried in 2013 to recruit an American businessman and eventual foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign who is now part of the F.B.I. investigation into Russia’s interference into the American election, according to federal court documents and a statement issued by the businessman.”

“The businessman, Carter Page, met with one of three Russians who were eventually charged with being undeclared officers with Russia’s foreign intelligence service, known as the S.V.R. The F.B.I. interviewed Mr. Page in 2013 as part of an investigation into the spy ring, but decided that he had not known the man was a spy, and the bureau never accused Mr. Page of wrongdoing.”

“The court documents say that Mr. Page, who founded an investment company in New York called Global Energy Capital, provided documents about the energy business to one of the Russians, Victor Podobnyy, thinking he was a businessman who could help with brokering deals in Russia.”

“In fact, Mr. Podobnyy was an S.V.R. officer posing as an attaché at the Russian mission to the United Nations.”

Over the weekend the DOJ released the materials regarding the application for a FISA warrant on Page.

The demand for these documents was driven by Judicial Watch-who else? The same Judicial Watch that put out all those FOIA requests on Clinton’s emails during the 2016 election, as well as the same Judicial Watch that got access to Huma Abedin’s emails in August 2016-that later ended up on Anthony Weiner’s laptop.

Regarding that whole episode of just how the emails really showed up on Weiner’s laptop, consult Roger Stone who as usual talked way too much about it. I wrote about it in some detail in a previous chapter on the real bias at the FBI-though much more remains to be said.

In any case, while Trump and his GOP defenders claim the FISA docs somehow vindicate him the opposite is the truth.

Carter Page clearly was a person of interest long before the Trump campaign. It would have been malpractice if they didn’t look into someone with his paper trail. The Trump/GOP canard of a narrative is that the warrant was based on the Steele dossier and anything based on the dossier is poisoned fruit because part of the funding for it was from the Clinton campaign and the DNC.

Trump and his defenders then take the reductio ad absurdum to the next level by declaring that the entire Russia probe was based on the dossier and so the entire investigation is poisoned fruit and so a ‘witch hunt.’ True the ‘witch hunt’ has found an awful lot of witches:

Mueller has now indicted or secured guilty pleas from 32 people and three Russian companies.

Vox’s tally: “four former Trump advisers, 26 Russian nationals, three Russian companies, one California man, and one London-based lawyer. Five of these people (including three former Trump aides) have already pleaded guilty.”

But those are details. Steele dossier! Clinton funded it. The Deep State spied on me. It’s a total witch hunt!

In truth the Russia probe didn’t start with the dossier but with Australia’s top diplomat’s report to the US about what George Papadopoulos told him about the Russians having thousands of damaging emails on Hillary Clinton. But again-details! Steele dossier, Clinton funded it, Deep State spied on ‘our President.’ Total witch hunt.

It’s all too fitting that Trump is so happy to use Nixon’s tactic-‘LBJ spied on me, that’s the real crime.’

One zombie argument of the Trump defenders is that there was not proof beyond a reasonable doubt on Carter Page. But as April Dross, former head of intelligence law at NSA explains the standard for a FISA warrant is not beyond a reasonable doubt but probable cause.

There was certainly more than enough probable cause that Page was a Russian recruit. Trump/GOP focus on the dossier in large part because the Clinton campaign provided part of its funding-not all of it. During the primary GOP opponents provided the funding but this fact isn’t helpful so the Trump defenders ignore it.

But despite the heavy weather made over the funding, it’s not that important an issue. I mean it’s information that’s factored in but what the Trump defenders avoid is moving on from this one process question to the substance of the application. In the FISA court here’s what the FBI said regarding the funding:

“The FBI speculates that the identified U.S. person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit Candidate #1’s campaign,” it says.

“The document avoids making many direct references to people or institutions as part of national security Washington’s practices called “minimization.”

The application continues: “Notwithstanding Source #1’s reason for conducting the research into Candidate #1’s ties to Russia, based on Source #1’s previous reporting history with the FBI, whereby Source #1 provided reliable information to the FBI, the FBI believes Source #1’s reporting herein to be credible.”

While the FBI factored in the funding source this was factored against Steele’s fine reputation earned over a period of a number of years and that was seen as far more important.

So while Trump, Devin Nunes, and friends continue to lie and claim vindication from the release of the FISA warrant materials:

the opposite is the case. It shows that their claims are dishonest and baseless-the FISA warrant was not based solely on the dossier and the fact that the dossier was partially funded by the Clinton campaign was acknowledged but wasn’t seen as important as the substance of the information and Steele’s stellar reputation. The warrant wasn’t taken out because it was a ‘witch hunt against Trump’ but because there was probable cause on Carter Page who was recruited in 2013 and admitted to being an adviser to the Kremlin.

UPDATE: So a lot of developments since I first wrote this in July, 2018-to say the least!

With the Mueller Report there are some pretty important questions for Mueller when he testifies-it seems plausible he will at some point as the GOP co-conspirators now want to hear from him too-though their motivations are malign. 

Basically they hope that Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, Mark Meadows will embarrass Mueller on national-primetime?-television.

This likely overestimates Meadows-Jordan-Gaetz pretty dramatically. On the one hand you wonder if this is another tactic-are they trying to intimidate Mueller into not testifying? On the other hand they may sincerely want to hear from him but this is an admission that they know how damaging his short presser this week was. He said very little new but even so it was very damaging to Trump.

FN: Emptywheel notes he did make on significant change from ‘didn’t establish conspiracy’ to ‘insufficient evidence of conspiracy.’

“… he departed from the language of the report — which said the investigation “did not establish” a conspiracy — and said “there was insufficient evidence to charge a broader conspiracy.” The meaning is the same, but the emphasis is different. There was, obviously, a good deal of evidence that there was a conspiracy between Russia and people in Trump’s camp. Just not enough to charge.”

Whatever the motivation though if the Trump co-conspirators keep up the drumbeat on demands Mueller testify presumably he will-with both sides calling for it. It was always likely to happen at some point even if the Dems had to subpoena him but maybe this will hasten it?

To say there are a lot of questions for Mueller almost understates the case-in Chapter A-I provide a long list that is nevertheless far from comprehensive.

For starters I reference the list from the Senate Judiciary Democrats that runs to 60 questions for Mueller and this list is far from comprehensive.

Some important questions regarding this chapter are:

1. How much did Mueller do to corroborate the Steele dossier? What did he conclude regarding it’s (un)reliability?

2. Why wasn’t Carter Page charged? In the report Mueller states that he was unable to determine the nature of much of Page’s activities in Moscow.

3. Did he attempt specifically to corroborate/debunk the dossier claim that Page was offered a 19% stake in Rosnet during his Moscow trip? What about the eventual sale of Rosnet in December? Was any attempt made to see if Page was involved in this? He was actually at Rosnet headquarters the day of the sale.

(Find links Mike).

Emptywheel for her part argues Carter Page escaped being charged because of-what she believes is-the unreliability of the dossier. 

“I believe that Christopher Steele and his shitty disinformation dossier likely saved Carter Page from being prosecuted. I say that because the four FISA applications strongly suggest that the FBI had reason independent of the dossier to believe Page was happily serving as an agent of Russia, including new information in renewals. Nevertheless, it’s clear that a significant portion of the initial application did rely on Steele.

To be clear, I think most of the treatment of Steele is perfectly appropriate. As I’ve said before, FISA applications rely on a range of human sources, including informants and contractors like Steele. For each, the FBI will assess the source’s credibility, weighing things like his bias or personal animosity and past reliability. The applications did this at length for Steele, noting that he had an established history of quality reporting, explaining that he used subsources for his reporting, describing that this information came as part of politically motivated research, admitting that in follow-up Steele expressed real desperation about Trump, and describing how Steele got cut off for sharing information with the press. Four Republican judges assessed all this and approved these orders, and that seems like a reasonable judgment.

If this is so-Page escaped prosecution because the GOP had managed to make the dossier icky politically this might be yet another case of Mueller’s pretty extreme conservatism in conviction and declination decisions.

Note she published this on July 22, 2018-ironically pretty close to when I initially wrote this chapter on July 28 of 2018. After the redacted Mueller Report was released on late April it turned out that in fact Mueller had considered charging Page as a Russian foreign agent.

Useful, willful idiot?

In the section concerning whether any of Trump’s flunkies were agents of a foreign power (Flynn: Yes, but for Turkey; Manafort and Gates: Yes, for Ukraine, Manafort Maybe for Russia; Papadopoulos: Maybe for Russia and Israel) it describes the three people it considered charging as agents of Russia: along with Papadopoulos and Manafort, Page.

It then redacts, for personal privacy reasons, a sentence, that explains why — “as a result, the office did not charge [redacted] any other Trump Campaign official with violating FARA or Section 951.

The redaction — which must include a name and “or” — has to be of Page’s name, because of length. That suggests one of two things: either that, of the three people who embraced outreach from Russia, Page was the one against whom there was most evidence. Or, that because of all the publicity surrounding this question, Mueller thought it worthwhile to include one more sentence explaining what happened to Page. Though I would expect if it were the latter, the footnote describing the difference between the standard to get a FISA order and to charge someone criminally is different.

UPDATE: Actually in reading the MR passage quoted by Marcy Wheeler it seems Mueller didn’t charge Page because of insufficient evidence-not no evidence GOP co-conspirators.

The investigation did not, however, yield evidence sufficient to sustain any charge that any individual affiliated with the Trump Campaign acted as an agent of a foreign principal within the meaning of FARA or, in terms of Section 951, subject to the direction or control of the government of Russia, or any official thereof. In particular, the Office did not find evidence likely to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Campaign officials such as Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos, and Carter Page acted as agents of the Russian overnrnent-or at its direction control, or re uest-durin the relevant time eriod. 1282 As a result, the Office did not charge any other Trump Campaign official with violating FARA or Section 951, or attempting or conspiring to do so, based on contacts with the Russian government or a Russian principal. Finally, the Office investigated whether one of the above campaign advisors-George Papadopoulos-acted as an agent of, or at the direction and control of, the government of Israel. While the investigation revealed significant ties between Papadopoulos and Israel (and search warrants were obtained in part on that basis), the Office ultimately determined that the evidence was not sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction under FARA or Section 951.

Of course there are many things Mueller wasn’t able to find sufficient evidence-for beyond reasonable doubt-because evidence was destroyed, etc. As he wasn’t able to answer many questions regarding Carter Page’s time in Moscow this is far from exoneration-despite how Ari Melber made it sound-see chapter A for more.

 

 

 

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