FBI Takes 412 Pages To Say Look At Carter Page, Dumb Fucking Idiot Spy LOL

BREAKING: More stuff for Devin Nunes and Donald Trump to lie about!

Good Monday morning! Late Saturday afternoon, the FBI released the heavily redacted warrants for FISA surveillance of Carter Page, the Trump campaign foreign policy adviser who is also literally the world's stupidest Russian intelligence asset. The release comes after Devin Nunes and his minions in Congress spent months libeling the intelligence community and creating conspiracy theories about how the FBI only started spying on Page because of a DODGY DOSSIER that was WRITTEN BY HILLARY. This is, of course, bullshit. Even according to the much hyped memo released by Devin Nunes, but not read by Devin Nunes, this was bullshit. The original FISA application and its subsequent renewals were released in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

The FISA application is a 412-page document, but it's heavily redacted, so if you haven't read it, go ahead and get started on that. Most of it just confirms what we already knew. 

The FBI documents released yesterday confirm that he government began wiretapping Carter Page a month after he left… https: //t.co/AnFllAcOAB

— Brad Heath (@Brad Heath) 1532259591.0 

We learned that in Devin Nunes's cow-fucking memo. As for the tweet from President Putin-Cheeks above, if you believe Trump has actually read these documents, that means you believe the president has the patience and reading comprehension skills to do such a thing, in which case you are a moron.

If you'll remember, one of the things Devin Nunes has been flogging his love-cow around in RAGE about the past few months is the assertion that the FBI didn't properly inform the FISA judge that some of the information about Page came from the Steele Dossier, which was paid for as part of an oppo research project. This, itself, is a red herring, because as we have written here ad nauseam,  IT DOESN'T MATTER WHO PAID FOR THE MOTHERFUCKING DOSSIER, YOU GODDAMN IDIOTS. All that matters is if it's true or not.

When it was pointed out that Nunes's own memo revealed the the FISA judge was told that information, Nunes and Trey Gowdy (who was also giving country squirrels RAGE-STROKING HANDJOBS about this on the Sunday shows this weekend) moved the goalposts to say it still wasn't fair because it was IN A FOOTNOTE! Can human beings even read those?

But of course, as with all things, Devin Nunes was lying about that, as these documents confirm (borrowing some screengrabs from NYT's Charlie Savage on Twitter, thank you, NYT's Charlie Savage!):

BUT BUT BUT! They just said "Candidate #1" and "Candidate #2"! It was indeed a Nunes talking point that the application wasn't specific enough because it didn't say the dossier funding came from the HIT-LERY CLINTON PIZZAGATE campaign, as if the FISA judge was too dense to know who the two main candidates in the 2016 presidential race were. As Savage notes, warrants like this hardly ever use proper names for Americans.

Charlie Savage goes through a lot of the other fun details in the FISA applications -- by which we mean things that prove that Donald Trump and Devin Nunes are full of lying fucking cow shit -- on Twitter and also in the  New York Times.    But again, it's mostly stuff we already knew, like for instance that all the FISA judges who approved the initial request and the renewals were appointed by Republicans. Also, each time FBI/DOJ came back to the FISA court, they added pages and pages of (REDACTED) information, which shows that their "wire tapps" on Carter Page were bearing fruit.

But the most important thing -- or at least what we see as the major fucking point of all this, the thing that suggests why Republicans might be so freaked out to discredit the investigation into Carter Page -- comes early in the document:

Look at ALL THAT BLACK REDACTED TEXT. "The FBI believes that the Russian Government's efforts are being coordinated with Page and perhaps other individuals associated wtih Candidate #1's campaign [REDACTED TO INFINITY AND BEYOND!]" That, dears, is evidence . It looks like they have a lot of evidence that Carter Page, a buffoon, an idiot, and also a known Russian intelligence asset, may just be more important to this conspiracy than we ever thought. Whoa if true, right?

Here's another:

If you want to read more analysis on this, check out David Kris at Lawfare, who spends some time talking about how unprecedented it is that we're seeing a FISA application like this, and the long-term damage that could come from that. But hey, desperate times call for desperate measures, we guess, and long-term damage to our intelligence community's ability to protect our national security is just collateral.

It would be really fun, of course, if this release actually changed the discourse, but as we've already seen, Trump and those who wish to protect him will just fucking lie about it, and their idiot followers will believe them.

But on the off chance there's a Trump supporter reading this who just wants to   verify that the dude in the White House is telling the truth, here once again is a link to the Carter Page FISA applications. 

We double-dog dare you to read them with your own eyes.

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[ the documents ]