Yay The Trump Russia Scandal Is BACK WITH A VENGEANCE! Today: Carter Page, FISA Warrants, And Martin Luther King

sharpest knife in the drawer

Oh hey, Trump Russia scandal, we have missed you these past few days, bein' all distracted by BOOM BOOM SYRIA and OOH UNITED AIRLINES IS THE WORST and SEAN SPICER STOP SAYING HITLER LIKE RIGHT NOW. Time for an update!

Remember Carter Page, that former Trump foreign policy adviser with weird connections to Russia who was a star of the Steele Dossier for maybe facilitating the transfer of a 19% stake in Russian oil conglomerate Rosneft to secret buyers? We most recently visited with Li'l Carter, a fresh-faced boy who can't definitively say whether or not he met the Russian ambassador, but he can be sure it happened in Cleveland at the RNC, unless it didn't, when we learned he had been named in government court filings as a dumb idiot guy who had been unknowingly recruited by secret Russian spies back in 2013. No, for real, the spies called him an idiot!

Well! The Washington Post got leaked some super-secret information and went to press Tuesday evening about how in 2016, once Page was acting as an adviser to Trump, the FBI pulled a super-secret FISA warrant on him, because it apparently had ample suspicion -- and it was able to show its work to the FISA court judge! -- that Page had been knowingly working as a secret agent guy for the Russians:

The FBI obtained a secret court order last summer to monitor the communications of an adviser to presidential candidate Donald Trump, part of an investigation into possible links between Russia and the campaign, law enforcement and other U.S. officials said.

The FBI and the Justice Department obtained the warrant targeting Carter Page’s communications after convincing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge that there was probable cause to believe Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power, in this case Russia, according to the officials.

Whoa if true!

Back when it was uncovered that Page was in the previous court filings about the Russian spies, listed as "Male-#1," Buzzfeed called him and said, "Hey bro, you Male-#1?" Page was like "Yes I am Male-#1, HOORAY, I am so famous! Would you like my autograph?" But in this case, the WaPo reached out to Page, and instead of getting excited about how he is a big important guy being targeted by the FBI, he queened out:

“This confirms all of my suspicions about unjustified, politically motivated government surveillance,” Page said in an interview Tuesday. “I have nothing to hide.” He compared surveillance of him to the eavesdropping that the FBI and Justice Department conducted against civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

AW SHIT YO. Carter Page has a dream, that someday men will be judged by the content of their character, and not just whether they might have maybe done espionage with the Russians. Carter Page HAS BEEN TO THE MOUNTAINTOP, but uh oh pisketti-o, he fell off it into a pile of Russians, but just Russian spies and not the finest Russian pee hookers in all the land, allegedly!

We should note that this has NOTHING to do with Trump's accusation that Obama did "wire tapps" to him, and it also has nothing to do with Devin Nunes and his stupid attempts to make the Trump Russia investigation about "unmasking." This is about James Comey's FBI going to the FISA court and saying "Look at this pipsqueak fucknugget, we would like to eavesdrop on him and here's why." And the FISA judge agreed!

The WaPo gives some context on how FISA warrants work:

The judges who rule on Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) requests oversee the nation’s most sensitive national security cases, and their warrants are some of the most closely guarded secrets in the world of U.S. law enforcement and intelligence gathering. Any FISA application has to be approved at the highest levels of the Justice Department and the FBI.

Applications for FISA warrants, Comey said, are often thicker than his wrists, and that thickness represents all the work Justice Department attorneys and FBI agents have to do to convince a judge that such surveillance is appropriate in an investigation.

The government’s application for the surveillance order targeting Page included a lengthy declaration that laid out investigators’ basis for believing that Page was an agent of the Russian government andknowinglyengaged in clandestine intelligence activities on behalf of Moscow, officials said.

KNOWINGLY. We put that word in bold, to differentiate this from the 2013 thing where Page didn't know he was being recruited as some Russian boys' sexxxy Male-#1. KNOWINGLY. When he was advising Donald Trump. KNOWINGLY. And according to the WaPo, the FISA court's warrant has been renewed "more than once" since it was issued. So to KNOWINGLY, we should add ONGOING.

Maybe this is why Page has been such a hysterical baby lately. He was one of the first ones to jump forward and offer to testify publicly before the House Intelligence Committee, to clear his "good" name. Now it may be that he wants to do that because he knows deep down he is guilty, guilty, guilty, and he wants the feds to send him to the fun jail where nice ladies read you The Poky Little Puppy before bed, and they have those fun square school cafeteria pizzas on Fridays. Or maybe he just can't wait to tell everybody about how the REAL crimer here is Hillary Clinton, who has been violating his civil rights and doing election fraud to him, by planting mean stories in the press about how maybe he is a secret spy for Russia. At least that's what he alleged in the crazy-pants letter he sent to the very same Justice Department what was apparently pulling FISA warrants on him as long ago as last summer.

Being hate crimed by Hillary also made Carter Page feel a lot like MLK, according to that letter.

Anyway, we've said it before, but boy is going to sing like a canary, because he already sort of has been this whole time, if you translate his nutbag weirdo ding-dong behavior correctly. The only question is if he's really a linchpin he is in this scandal, or if he's just some douche who was in the wrong Russian place at the wrong time, doing espionage with the Russians while he advised the guy who is now somehow president of America.

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[ Washington Post ]