Carter Page Redux

CTH has raised the topic of Carter Page again—a very important topic that gets the interested observer into the inner workings of the Russia Hoax. You can read the typically lengthy CTH post here:

BIG QUESTION and A BIG COVERUP – Durham Report Brings Sunlight on Detail Never Released by IG Michael Horowitz About FBI Targeting Trump

The post contains a fair amount of what I consider to be jumping to conclusions without a sound basis. Nevetheless, CTH does at least point to a real key in the whole business of the Carter Page FISA, albeit without following up on the important issues that it raises.

Most people who have taken an interest in the Carter Page episode are aware that Page was a CIA source for quite a few years, and was well regarded by the agency. This was mostly when Page was based in Russia. The relationship continued when Page returned to the US (2007) and was based in New York—a hotbed of Russian diplomatic and intelligence activity. However, something happened that caused the CIA to close Page as a source. What we know is that shortly thereafter Page surfaced as a UCE for the FBI—an Under Cover Employee. “Employee” suggests to me that Page was being paid by the FBI.

My belief is that the CIA handed Page over to the FBI for use as a UCE when the FBI became aware that Page was in contact with three Russians that the FBI was targeting. The reason for the “handover”, in my opinion, would have been that the FBI was hoping to arrest and prosecute the three Russians and they anticipated using Page to testify at the trial. Thus Durham, in his Non-Report, states somewhat disingenuously that Page was being considered by the FBI as a “potential trial witness”:

1202 Other parts of this report discuss the fact that Page had been interviewed several times previously by the FBI, most recently in March 20 I6, when he was interviewed as a potential trial witness for the government in the prosecution of three Russian nationals in the case known as US. v. Buryakov, et al., I: 15-CR-00073 (S.D.N.Y.); see supra§ IV.A. l.a. [p.197]

In fact, Page was potentially a very important part of the FBI/SDNY case, and so would no longer be of any use to the CIA as a confidential source. This Buryakov case was hugely important to the FBI and the US government because it followed on some high profile revelations about Russian spying. In fact, Peter Strzok made his name in the FBI in connection with one of those cases:

Strzok had been a lead agent in the FBI's "Operation Ghost Stories" against Andrey Bezrukov and Yelena Vavilova, a Russian spy couple who were part of the Illegals Program, a network of Russian sleeper agents who were arrested in 2010.

Relations with Russia were prickly at best at the time of the Buryakov case. The FBI almost never has the opportunity to prosecute Russian spies—they’re typically tossed out of the country—but this time was different. The US was looking for a high profile Russian case. For that reason, and because of the highly unusual prosecution, I have previously stated that disgraced former FBI Director Comey would certainly have been briefed on this case as one of the most important cases the FBI had at the time. I assume that he would be familiar with the name “Carter Page”. Further, I have previously asserted that the “White House”—the NSC but possibly also the President—would also have been briefed. This was a very big deal.

So, imagine the New York FBI’s chagrin when they learned—after the arrest of Buryakov in January, 2015—from Page himself that Page had told some Russian diplomats that he (Page) was “Male 1” in the complaint filed against Buryakov. Page made this revelation to the FBI in March, 2016, shortly before Buryakov pled guilty. The New York FBI was enraged, naturally enough, to discover that an important witness had turned out to be a loose cannon who might jeopardize their case. There has also been the suggestion that this information might put the Russians on to identifying a possibly sensitive investigative technique of the FBI.

The result was that the New York FBI was determined to go for a pound of Page’s flesh, even though the Buryakov plea meant that things had worked out in the end. The New York FBI opened an investigation of their erstwhile UCE as soon as possible, i.e. virtually overnight, and contacted none other than Peter Strzok at FBIHQ about getting a FISA on Page. Then, lo and behold, Page turns up as a foreign policy adviser for the Trump campaign. Now, the New York FBI may not have understood where that was going to go, but my bet is that Comey did know. As I wrote back in December, 2019—and this is a bit of long quote because it draws in Rod Rosenstein, as well:

With regard to disgraced former FBI execs Comey and McCabe vis a vis former AG Loretta Lynch, the issue is whether Lynch was ever briefed on Crossfire Hurricane and the Carter Page FISAs. She says she didn't know anything about the FISA--which can't possibly be true--but that Comey told her about the investigation of Page as a Russian agent. That, of course, is highly likely, but Lynch says that happened in "spring of 2016." Woops! Not good for Comey and McCabe, since they claim they weren't doing much of anything until the end of July, so they have to deny Lynch's story. Uh oh! Deep State, we have a conflict!

Got that? “Spring of 2016.” In other words, as soon as Comey heard that Page was now on the Trump campaign he ran over to Main Justice to tell Lynch. But they didn’t brief Trump on Page. Funny how that works, right? That strongly suggests that they were already looking for ways to torpedo Trump—possibly dating back to the day Trump announced his candidacy—and they thought that Carter Page on the Trump campaign could be an important part of that.

As interesting as all that is--and TGP has lots of details--the Rosenstein information is, to me, the most fascinating for the long run, because it inevitably leads right into the Mueller Witchhunt. I've called Rosenstein a "weasel" in the past, but I've never suggested he's stupid. But you'd have to be stupid yourself to believe the things he told the IG. Check this out:

Rod Rosenstein made some suspect claims as well concerning this topic. Again, on page 74 of the FISA Report:

Rosenstein claims that he was “most focused on information that had developed into criminal investigations”. Rosenstein recalled Page was suspected of being a foreign (Russian) agent and didn’t recall details of what was the predication for the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.

This too doesn’t make sense because there were already three FISA warrants signed out on Carter Page by the time Rosenstein arrived in office as DAG. You would think Rosenstein would be fully briefed and aware on all aspects of that issue? Also, they were calling somebody a foreign spy which no doubt qualifies as a criminal investigation.

And Rosenstein didn’t even find out until 2018 the predication for Crossfire Hurricane?

Think about that. Rosenstein finds out that there's a big FBI investigation that everybody knows is all about Trump , and he tells the FBI and his DoJ subordinates--"OK, guys, just tell me about any criminal investigations on little people like Carter Page that are ongoing and don't bother telling me how it all got started."

As TGP points out, since there were FISAs on US persons, that means we know there were criminal violations being alleged --so none of what Rosenstein said there makes any sense at all. Since the FISAs arose out of Crossfire Hurricane related cases, CH would have had criminal elements, too. And then, to compound the idiocy of this narrative, Rosenstein wants us to believe that he didn't know what the predication for Crossfire Hurricane was until 2018? Excuse me, but RR approved the Mueller Witchhunt in May, 2017, and that investigation was explicitly a continuation of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation that Comey had described to Congress in March, 2017. Rosenstein approved a Special Counsel--and, once again, no matter what was said, everyone knew this was all about Trump --without knowing the predication for it all? Really?

OK. You get the point.

Now, recall that I said that FBI New York wanted to go for a FISA on Page based on their experience of Page—in their view—double crossing them. But all you need to do is read the FBI’s account of what happened with Page in the Buryakov case (pp. 13-15) and know just the basics of what’s required to obtain a FISA to realize that New York was never going to get a FISA on that basis.

Coincidentally, not much more than a month later Fusion GPS started collecting stories about Page that ended up being used to justify the Carter Page FISA. Funny how coincidences work. The Steele stuff from Fusion GPS started really coming together at the end of July, exactly when Comey and McCabe says things started heating up. To me that means that they knew they couldn’t get a FISA on Page based on the Buryakov case—even though they were desperate to get that FISA as soon as they learned Page had hooked up with the Trump campaign. And then along comes Fusion GPS. Funny.

However, here’s the thing that everyone seems to miss about the Page FISA application. Go back to the FISA application and scan through pp. 13-15 again. Do you see anything in what the FBI told the judge that even hints that Page was a UCE for the FBI and a potentially important trial witness in the Buryakov case? Me neither. Not just “a potential witness” but a person with a formal relationship with the FBI—probably a paid relationship—who had provided the FBI with valuable information in a very important case. And that would have been highly relevant information for the FISC judge when it came to evaluating the actual almost totally conclusory allegations that the FBI made about Page. They make a big deal about a quite illogical deduction that Page was being “recruited” by the Russians, but somehow fail to include anything that Durham later found in the court documents:

According to the criminal complaint and subsequently returned indictment in that case, Page had been approached by the [Russian] intelligence officers in an apparent failed recruitment effort. 175 In the criminal complaint, one intelligence officer referred to Page, anonymized as "Male-1," as an "idiot," and Page does not seem to have been receptive to the recruitment efforts. 176

Does this amount of deception in the FISA application suggest to you that the FBI was just about desperate to get a FISA on Page? And we know from the rest of the circumstances—Page being one of the Crossfire Hurricane subjects—that Crossfire Hurricane was all about Trump. The FBI was desperate to get a FISA on someone close to Trump. And that’s what CTH points to, but fumbles a bit:

Inside the recently released report by John Durham [CITATION], the special counsel outlines how former FBI Director James Comey was intimately involved in the creation of the Carter Page FISA application.  Durham notes that Comey kept asking the DOJ National Security Division and FBI counterintelligence investigators, “Where’s the FISA, we need the FISA.”  However, John Durham never interviewed James Comey or Andrew McCabe.  The former FBI Director and Deputy refused to cooperate or give testimony to John Durham.  So, how did John Durham have details about the demands of Comey?

The answer is found in the footnotes.  Durham reviewed transcripts of interviews given by Andrew McCabe to the Office of the Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, who previously investigated FBI conduct in the origin of the Carter Page FISA.  Durham pulled quotes from that transcript. [Footnote #1207, page 199 – Durham Report]

What CTH gets right out of this is that there’s a much bigger story that we’re not being told. Durham probably knows, and his Non-Report hints at it broadly, but the devil is in the details.