Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review<\/p>\n
S<\/span>ome things still do not add up about the so-called Steele dossier, FISA warrants, the Nunes memo, and the hysterical Democratic reaction to it.<\/p>\n A Big Deal or a Nothing Deal?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n 1) Progressives and Democrats warned on the eve of the memo\u2019s release that it would cause havoc throughout the intelligence agencies, by exposing classified means and processes.<\/p>\n When no serious intelligence expert claimed that the released memo had done such damage, the official response to the memo was suddenly recalibrated by progressives. It went from being radioactive to a \u201cnothingburger.\u201d<\/p>\n The obvious conclusion is cynical: Cry Armageddon to prevent its release, then, after the release, resort to yawns to downplay its significance. An even more cynical interpretation is that Rod Rosenstein, James Comey, and other officials stridently objected to the release of the memo because they are named in it. Comey incoherently mocked the memo\u2019s purported unimportance even while listing all its deleterious effects and the crises that would ensue.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Congressional, DOJ, and FBI resistance to the release of most documents connected to FISA-gate apparently originates with fears that information will either reveal Obama-administration efforts to surveille Trump officials during a campaign or will suggest that the impetus for the Mueller investigation came as a result of illegal activities and a concocted dossier \u2014 or both.<\/p>\n 2) Critics scream, \u201cCarter Page is no big deal.\u201d Aside from the easy retort that neither, initially, was a petty break-in at the Watergate complex, or rumors of supplying arms to distant guerillas in Central America, Page is a big deal for a variety of reasons.<\/p>\n Democrats allege that, given Carter Page\u2019s familiarity with Russians, it was logical for the Obama administration to use the dossier\u2019s references to him to substantiate FISA warrants.<\/p>\n But is not the\u00a0opposite<\/em>\u00a0more likely true?<\/p>\n He was apparently known to intelligence agencies for years (supposedly under investigation variously by the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, the Director of National Intelligence, and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network), and he may have been the object of a 2014 FISA warrant. But such intelligence agents were\u00a0never<\/em>\u00a0able to bring charges against him, and it appears he even cooperated with American intelligence in gathering info\u00a0against<\/em>\u00a0the Russians. So why would the FBI and DOJ, suddenly in 2016, believe that mention of Page\u2019s name in an unverified opposition-research dossier warranted\u00a0four<\/em>\u00a0FISA warrants to find wrongdoing?<\/p>\n After all, if he was so well known to the FBI for so many years, during which they never charged him with being a Russian agent, and if the FBI nonetheless still regarded him as suspicious in 2016, why not simply go to a regular court to obtain a warrant to wiretap him? Such a\u00a0court, of course, would be less secretive, not known for a 99 percent approval rate, subject to far more deliberation, and less useful for surveilling Trump associates.<\/p>\n A more likely supposition is that it\u00a0was\u00a0not\u00a0<\/em>Page\u2019s past flirtations with the Russians (who supposedly dubbed him an \u201cidiot\u201d) that abruptly brought him back into the sights of the DOJ and FBI in 2016. Instead, it was his brief and minor relationship with Trump, and his appearance in a bogus dossier, that offered useful pretexts for court-ordered surveillance sweeps and indirect targeting of possible Trump associates.<\/p>\n Page was simply a tool, to be surveilled in hopes of also sweeping up other names and information that might corroborate some shred of the dubious Steele dossier. In that narrow sense, his name might as well have been Jones or Smith.<\/p>\n So far, all Carter Page has been found guilty of is momentarily working for the Trump campaign. His likely future lawsuits against Steele, Fusion GPS, the Clinton campaign, the FBI, and the DOJ will probably follow a number of avenues.<\/p>\n 3) The\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0and others strangely have claimed that the dossier-based FISA warrants were\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0the real basis of the Russian-collusion allegations, given, as the memo implies, that the FISA warrants were issued after FBI agent Peter Strzok had investigated George Papadopoulos, another minor Trump-campaign official of brief tenure.<\/p>\n But there has never been much connection between Page and Papadopoulos, as the Nunes memo also made clear. It is far more likely that Papadopoulos was written off as a dead-end functionary by Strzok, who also claimed to his paramour that there was likely nothing to be found at all in the Russian-collusion investigation. (And indeed Papadopoulos eventually pled guilty to making false statements, not collusion).<\/p>\n More likely, the collusion narrative gained ground only when the Steele dossier energized subsequent FISA requests in October and after the election, resulting in surveillance sweeps.<\/p>\n Moreover, given the admissions by Strzok that he detested Trump and pondered ways of stopping him, and given that he and the FBI were never able to find Papadopoulos indictable on intended collusion charges, it is entirely unlikely that Papadopoulos prompted much of anything.<\/p>\n If he was not a dead end, then the argument could just as well be that an admittedly biased FBI agent hounded a minor, former Trump aide to find collusion, failed to find it, tried to turn him by the usual \u201cfalse statements\u201d perjury traps, and then Strzok or others around him leaked information about collusion investigations to damage the Trump campaign.<\/p>\n