Why was FBI so wrong in Trump-Russia wiretap warrant? by Byron York
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/byron-york-why-was-fbi-so-wrong-in-trump-russia-wiretap-warrant
A huge controversy erupted last year when President Trump declassified parts of the FBI’s secret request to wiretap former Trump campaign volunteer foreign policy adviser Carter Page. Defenders and critics of the president argued over whether the October 2016 warrant application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court relied extensively on the so-called Steele dossier, which was a collection of anti-Trump allegations compiled by the former British spy Christopher Steele on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign. They also argued over whether the warrant adequately informed the court that the dossier was, in fact, a work of political opposition research, rather than legitimate intelligence gathering.
The arguments ended in impasse, with defenders and detractors set in their positions.
Now, however, we have new evidence, in the form of the Mueller report, to evaluate the Page FISA application. We can ask: Was the information the FBI relied on true? Were the FBI’s representations to the court accurate? The answers do not bode well for the bureau.
The warrant application made a three-point argument. Point 1 was that Russia was trying to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Point 2 was that Page had a history of involvement with Russia and Russians. Point 3 was that Page was a Russian agent conspiring with powerful Russian officials to influence the election.
Point 1 was true. Point 2 was true. Point 3 was not, and that is when the application went off the rails.
Large parts of the publicly-released version of the application are blacked out. (Trump is said to be considering releasing some of the currently redacted sections.) There are sentences with a word blacked out. There are entire sentences blacked out. There are entire paragraphs and entire pages blacked out. All of that makes the application difficult to read and fully understand.
Nevertheless, it is still possible to make out just how grossly wrong the FBI was.
The application explained that Russia had a long history of hostile intelligence activities and that U.S. intelligence authorities believed Russia was behind the hacking and release of emails from both the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. The application also noted that Page, an energy consultant, had worked in Russia in the 2000s and had once been targeted for recruitment by actual Russian agents who were later prosecuted. Page, who was not accused of violating any law, cooperated in the case, and the application quoted from his earlier interviews with the FBI.
That was accurate. Then the application moved to 2016: “The target of this application is Carter W. Page, a U.S. person, and an agent of a foreign power,” the application said. “The FBI believes the Russian government’s efforts are being coordinated with Page and perhaps other individuals associated with Candidate #1’s [Donald Trump’s] campaign.”
At another point, the application said, “The FBI believes Page has been the subject of targeted recruitment by the Russian government [redacted] undermine and influence the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election in violation of U.S. criminal law.”
At yet another point, the application said, “Based on the Russian government’s historical efforts to influence U.S. elections, [redacted] and the information discussed herein regarding Russia’s coordination with Carter Page [redacted] to undermine and improperly and illegally influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.”
None of that turned out to be true. After two years of investigation, Mueller never charged Page with any wrongdoing. In 448 pages, the Mueller report did not allege that Page was an agent of Russia. “The investigation did not establish that Page coordinated with the Russian government in its efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election,” the report said. Mueller, of course, also concluded that the evidence did not establish that there was any conspiracy or coordination between Russia and anyone associated with Trump, or any other American, for that matter.
The FBI’s confident assertion — that Page was a Russian agent working with Russia to fix the election — was wrong.
To support its case against Page, the FBI provided specific evidence. In July 2016, Page traveled to Moscow to deliver a speech at the New Economic School. That was actually true, and was reported in the press at the time. While in Moscow, the FBI said, Page had a “secret meeting” with a man named Igor Sechin, head of the Russian energy giant Rosneft. The FBI said the two men discussed a quid-pro-quo deal of “future bilateral energy cooperation” in exchange for the lifting of U.S. sanctions against Russia.
That information came from the Steele dossier. At that point in the FISA application, the FBI included a lengthy footnote in which, referring to Steele as a “confidential human source” and “Source #1,” it said “the FBI assesses Source #1 to be reliable.” It also suggested the people who hired Steele might have had a political motive and were “likely looking for information that could be used to discredit Candidate #1’s [Trump’s] campaign.”
Regardless of motivation, it appears the FBI was wrong on the simple fact of a Page-Sechin meeting. The Mueller report never alleges such a meeting took place.
Next, the FBI said that Page, still on his Moscow trip, met with a senior figure in the Russian government and Putin associate named Igor Divyekin. The two met “secretly,” the FBI said, and “their agenda for the meeting included Divyekin raising a dossier or ‘kompromat’ that the Kremlin possessed on Candidate #2 [Clinton] and the possibility of it being released to Candidate #1’s [Trump’s] campaign.” That information also came from the dossier and was attributed to Steele.
It appears the FBI was wrong again on the basic fact of a Page-Divyekin meeting. The Mueller report never alleges such a meeting took place.
Two entirely blacked-out pages followed the FBI’s Divyekin allegation. When the declassified part of the application resumed, the FBI cited a July 2016 Washington Post article alleging, in the FBI’s words, “that Candidate #1’s [Trump’s] campaign worked behind the scenes to make sure Political Party #1’s [the Republican Party’s] platform would not call for giving weapons to Ukraine to fight Russian and rebel forces, contradicting the view of almost all Political Party #1’s foreign policy leaders in Washington.”
At the time the FBI wrote, the Republican platform story was a staple of Twitter and cable TV talk. Mueller investigated it at length and did not allege that it was part of any conspiracy or coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign. Carter Page was not involved at all.
Finally, the FBI discussed a September 2016 Yahoo News article which reported a number of allegations against Page. The FBI noted that the article referred to a “well-placed Western intelligence source” who told Yahoo that Page had met with Igor Sechin and Igor Divyekin. The “well-placed Western intelligence source” was, of course, Christopher Steele, but the FBI did not want to say that its confidential human source was blabbing to the press. So in a footnote, the bureau told the court that, “The FBI does not believe that Source #1 [Steele] directly provided this information to the press.”
The FBI was wrong on that, too. Steele did, in fact, directly provide the information to Yahoo News. And the Washington Post. And the New York Times. And CNN. And the New Yorker. And Mother Jones.
Several more blacked-out pages rounded out the application before the FBI reached its conclusion. “As discussed above, the FBI believes that Page has been collaborating and conspiring with the Russian government [redacted],” the bureau wrote. “Based on the foregoing facts and circumstances, the FBI submits that there is probable cause to believe that Page [redacted] knowingly engage in clandestine intelligence activities (other than intelligence gathering activities) for or on behalf of such foreign power, or knowingly conspires with other persons to engage in such activities and, therefore, is an agent of a foreign power as defined by 50 U.S.C. 1801(b)(2)(E).”
That allegation was at the heart of the Mueller investigation, and the special counsel did not allege that Page, or any American, was involved in what the FBI described.
Should the FBI have known that the information it provided the FISA court was so dreadfully wrong? Even by accounts most sympathetic to the bureau, investigators had the Steele allegations long enough to check at least some of them before including them in the wiretapping application. And the FBI certainly could have found out what happened at the GOP platform committee meeting a few months earlier without having to rely on a single Washington Post journalist. So the answer is yes, there seems little doubt the FBI, with proper care, could have made the application more accurate. Or not made the application at all.
Recently James Baker, who was the FBI’s general counsel at the time of the application, has been talking to the media. He has chosen friendly outlets — NBC’s Rachel Maddow and the Brookings Institution’s Lawfare blog — to defend his work, including on the Page wiretap.
Speaking to Lawfare, Baker emphasized how hard the FBI worked to verify the dossier’s allegations. “When a source shows up with a big stack of information, as in this case, you go to work,” he said. “It came in from what appears to be a reliable source. He gives you all this information. Go to work. Try to validate it. You don’t just swallow it hook, line, and sinker. That’s not what we do. That’s preposterous. That does not happen. You take the information and you try to vet it. And my recollection is we, the bureau, the folks in the counterintelligence division, spent a lot of time trying to vet that information, line by line.”
Baker was not asked and did not say what, if any, allegations in the dossier the FBI had validated by the time of the Page warrant. Asked about Mueller, Baker said he does not know whether the special counsel verified anything in the dossier. Baker did concede that some parts of Steele’s work, like the allegation that Trump associate Michael Cohen met with Russians in Prague to work out a conspiracy to fix the 2016 election, “seem to have washed out.”
Baker said he was closely involved in the FISA application. He wasn’t conducting the investigation himself, but he knew about it and he wanted to be kept up on the details. “I knew that we were looking at Carter Page,” he said. “At some point in time I found out that one of the investigative techniques that the agents wanted to use was a FISA. And when it did, my recollection is that I said to my teammates, when that application is gelled enough that it makes sense for me to read it, please bring it to me, because I would like to read it before it starts to go through the final processing.”
Baker explained that he wanted to know all about the FISA application because “I knew that it would be sensitive. I imagined having to go up and explain what we were doing to Congress.”
Baker was asked whether he is comfortable with the wiretap application that resulted. Baker said he recently went back and looked at it, although, as a private citizen now, he could only view the heavily-redacted version and try to remember what was in the blacked-out parts. “My recollection at the time is that when I read it, I asked questions about it, but nevertheless I was comfortable that the application that we were submitting to the FISA court was consistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States and was consistent with the requirements of the FISA statute and lawful,” Baker said.
The FISA court approved the application, and three renewals as well.
In the end, Baker might be right. It might have been entirely lawful to submit so much wrong information to the court and as a result be granted a warrant to wiretap a former Trump adviser in pursuit of a crime that had not actually occurred. And, given the extensive redactions, there is still much about the warrant that the public does not know. But even now, with the help of the Mueller report, the public knows that FBI was wrong, big time, about Carter Page. And that cannot create much confidence in the rest of the bureau’s long and wide-ranging investigation of the president’s 2016 campaign.
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