They had one thing on Carter Page in July 2016. It was an unproven claim from the infamous Steele Dossier that he’d gone to Moscow to cut some sort of sinister energy deal with Russia.
But we now know, definitively, that it didn’t happen. Page was never even indicted. And the Mueller Report makes no effort whatsoever to confirm the false claim in the Steele Dossier.
Well, Barr is now investigating the provenance of the Trump-Russia probe. And his team at the Justice Department is reexamining the 35-page Steele Dossier to determine whether its allegations were part of a Russian disinformation campaign.
Here’s how Politico framed it:
Barr is conducting the review in parallel with the Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, who has been examining the FBI’s efforts to surveil a one-time Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page. The application to monitor Page was based in part on information from Christopher Steele, the former MI6 agent who authored the bombshell dossier and served as a confidential source for the bureau.
The FBI code-named its Carter Page operation “Crossfire Hurricane.” But quoting “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” doesn’t make it authentic. And the Carter Page was exceedingly thin gruel – certainly not enough to support a counterintelligence investigation. He was a nobody in the Trump campaign. He presented exactly zero threat to national security.
“To the extent that there was any overreach, I believe it was some – a few people in the upper echelons of the bureau and perhaps in the department,” Barr said. “We’re working together on trying to reconstruct exactly what went down.”
So, here’s the thing… and it far outweighs all the tonnage of the Mueller Report… plus the Barr Letter… plus the Barr Press Conference… plus the Mueller Letter…
There was no basis for mobilizing the intelligence community’s surveillance machinery against Carter Page.
It was evident he had nothing to do with military secrets. There was no excuse for wiretapping him. That’s even if he’d been a paid energy advisor on Vladimir Putin’s personal payroll.
The Obama administration committed the gravest possible assault on individual constitutional rights. They misused the vast machinery of national security to meddle in a presidential election for partisan advantage.
That’s heinous. It cuts right to the quick of democracy’s survival in America.
The FISA application – slathered in redaction ink as it is – proves the real meddlers in the 2016 election are its signers. That’s the very top tier of Obama’s national security team, including John Brennan, Susan Rice, James Clapper, and the secretaries of Defense and State.
Indeed, it’s their criminality that’s established by the Mueller Report.
AI
