The Carter Page FISA Application Dump

The FBI released a redacted copy of the initial FISA application to conduct sureillance on Carter Page. What does it show us? For one thing, it shows us that Devin Nunes is a liar. ‘

This is from Lawfare:

Now we have some additional information in the form of the redacted FISA applications themselves, and the Nunes memo looks even worse. In my earlier post, I observed that the FBI’s disclosures about Steele were contained in a footnote, but argued that this did not detract from their sufficiency: “As someone who has read and approved many FISA applications and dealt extensively with the FISA Court, I will anticipate and reject a claim that the disclosure was somehow insufficient because it appeared in a footnote; in my experience, the court reads the footnotes.” Now we can see that the footnote disclosing Steele’s possible bias takes up more than a full page in the applications, so there is literally no way the FISA Court could have missed it. The FBI gave the court enough information to evaluate Steele’s credibility.

It is clear that the FBI had all kinds of reasons to think Carter Page was working for the Russian government.

Trump, of course, is claiming that the application vindicates him, which it does not. He probably doesn’t understand any of this. The man is as dumb as a sock.  But the GOP, of course, has a vested interest in keeping its base bamboozled, so they’re all on the bobblehead shows repeating the same old lies.