BOOM!! DOJ RELEASES Carter Page FISA application!!!

Well this is it. This is what the Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee said would prove that Carter Page was surveilled for political reasons and not with national security intentions.

Here’s the Carter Page FISA application, partially redacted.

412 pages??! Ugh. Someone read this and get back to me with the relevant details please.

The New York Times has some assessment of the document:

On Saturday, those materials — an October 2016 application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to wiretap Mr. Page, along with several renewal applications — were released to The New York Times and several other news organizations that had filed Freedom of Information Act lawsuits to obtain them.

“This application targets Carter Page,” the application said. “The F.B.I. believes Page has been the subject of targeted recruitment by the Russian government.” A line was then redacted, and then it picked up with “undermine and influence the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election in violation of U.S. criminal law. Mr. Page is a former foreign policy adviser to a candidate for U.S. president.”

And more:

Visible portions showed that the F.B.I. in stark terms had told the intelligence court that Mr. Page “has established relationships with Russian government officials, including Russian intelligence officers”; that the bureau believed “the Russian government’s efforts are being coordinated with Page and perhaps other individuals associated with” Mr. Trump’s campaign; and that Mr. Page “has been collaborating and conspiring with the Russian government.”

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.

People are going nuts tweeting it:

I’ll update with any important conclusions.

UPDATE:

Former FBI Agent Asha Rangappa says there’s no there there:

And there’s this:

You can download the entire document here.


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