Below is my column in The Hill newspaper on what the recent Horowitz report says about the treatment of former Trump adviser Carter Page. While the media has been quick to call developments as “vindication” for figures like Comey, it is largely silent on the poor treatment shown Page and the lack of evidence against him (and supporting the Russian investigation as a whole). Page has emerged as the Richard Jewell of the Russian investigation.
Here is the column:
After he was acquitted in a major fraud trial, former Labor Secretary Ray Donovan asked, “Which office do I go to to get my reputation back?” The trial was ruinous for Donovan, personally and financially, and the question was a fair one. Donovan, however, at least received a trial. Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page has never been given a fair hearing, let alone a trial, to clear his name. As the two political parties spin the results of a report by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, one matter remains unaddressed. Someone needs to apologize to Page.
I do not know Page and have had only one conversation with him that I can recall. Indeed, my only impression of him was shaped by the image, repeated in endless media segments, of a shady character who was at worst a Russian spy and at best a Russian stooge. Page became the face and focus for the justification of the Russia collusion investigation. His manifest guilt and sinister work in Moscow had to be accepted in order to combat those questioning the allegations of Trump campaign collusion with the Russians. In other words, his guilt had to be indisputable in order for the Russia collusion investigation to be, so to speak, unimpeachable.
Ultimately, special counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence of collusion or conspiracy by Trump associates or the campaign with those Russians intervening in the election. However, Horowitz found that the FBI never had any real evidence against Page before beginning its investigation, codenamed Operation Crossfire Hurricane. Soon after the investigation was opened, it became clear that Page had been wrongly accused and was, in fact, working for the CIA, not the Russians. Page himself later said he was working with the CIA, yet the media not only dismissed his claim but was very openly dismissive while portraying him as a bumbling fool.
Horowitz found that FBI investigators and lawyers had determined that the allegations involving Page fell short of a case for probable cause to open a secret warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Those investigators were then told by the eventually fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe to look at the Steele dossier, which was actually funded by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. The Clinton campaign denied repeatedly that it funded the dossier but finally admitted doing so after being confronted by media with new information.
Despite warnings about the credibility of Steele and red flags over the unreliability of the dossier, Horowitz found that “FBI leadership” used the dossier to justify its application for a FISA warrant. Democratic members of Congress and a wide array of media outlets have long told the public that the dossier was just one part of the FISA application. That is false. Horowitz states that the dossier played the “central and essential role” in securing the secret surveillance of the Trump campaign, including four investigations with both electronic surveillance and undercover assets.
Early on, Horowitz found that an unnamed government agency, widely acknowledged to be the CIA, told the FBI that it was making a mistake about Page and that he was working for the agency as an “operational contact” in Moscow. Indeed, he was working as an asset for the CIA for years. While it was falsely reported that Page met with three suspicious individuals there, he had no contact with two of those individuals. More importantly, Page did the right thing and told American officials about being contacted by the third person, because he felt they should know.
It gets even worse. Throughout Operation Crossfire Hurricane, evidence continued to flow into the FBI that Christopher Steele, the former British spy who wrote the infamous dossier, was unreliable and working against the election of Trump. Not only was he known to be trying to get this false information to the press, but evidence mounted that he misrepresented sources and stated false information. While it took long, someone at the Justice Department finally decided to act on the FISA matter regarding Page. The official in charge of FISA applications, Kevin Clinesmith, was told to ask the CIA again about whether Page had been working for the agency. He was again told that Page in fact was, yet Clinesmith allegedly changed the CIA response to describe Page as not working for it. He is now being criminally referred by Horowitz for falsifying that information.
Investigators also found an array of messages against Trump on the social media accounts of Clinesmith, including one declaring “vive le resistance” after Trump won. Meanwhile, throughout this period, the FBI was leaking aplenty but no one leaked the Page was actually a CIA asset. Instead, he was left to twist slowly in the wind. Media reports all but convicted Page of being a Russian spy. Evan Hurst wrote about him last year asking, “Why the hell are Republicans dying on this hill to defend Carter Page,” whom Hurst described, in all caps, as “a literal actual Russian intelligence asset.”
Natasha Bertand later wondered why anyone would question the case against Page. After all, she wrote, Senator Mark Warner, who is ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, had warned reporters to “be careful what you wish for” and one of his aides told her that is is “simply impossible to review the documents” on Page and conclude anything other than that the FBI “had ample reason” to investigate him. Her article was published long after the FBI had been told that Page was working with the CIA, but many other stories ran with similar comments from senators suggesting that anyone defending Page would be ridiculed after the release of some damning evidence. Mueller and Horowitz have now confirmed that there was never such evidence showing Page was a Russian asset. Indeed, the evidence showed he was an American asset.
As Horowitz has now stressed, there is a difference between starting an investigation based on mere allegations and continuing the investigation based on known falsehoods. His report documents how direct exculpatory information was quickly shared with the FBI. I do not know anything about Page other than what I have read in these reports. All I know is that he is an American citizen put under a secret surveillance operation based on a dossier shown to be both unfounded and unreliable. He then remained under surveillance with three renewals of secret warrants, even though the FBI was told repeatedly that Page was working with the CIA and that the dossier used to obtain those warrants was considered unsupported. Finally, Page was the subject of an alleged falsification of a document presented to the FISA court to obscure that exculpatory information.
At what point does someone apologize to Page? He is, in fact, the victim of this criminal referral. He is the victim of what Horowitz describes as a “misleading” basis presented to the FISA court. He is a victim of media “groupthink” that portrayed him as the sinister link proving collusion with Russia, an allegation rejected by the FBI, by the inspector general, and by the special counsel. Of course, Washington does not work this way. Page served his purpose and the trashing of his reputation was a cost of doing business with the federal government for many members of Congress and the media. In recalling the question by Donovan, there is no such office. Page is simply supposed to disappear and leave his reputation behind.
Jonathan Turley is the chair of public interest law at George Washington University and served as the last lead counsel in a Senate impeachment trial. He testified as a Republican witness in House Judiciary Committee hearing in the Trump impeachment inquiry. Follow him @JonathanTurley.
“Treason doth never prosper: what ’s the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
– John Harrington
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It’s not time for “apologies” to the victims, it’s time for guillotines for the perpetrators of the coup d’etat.
Interesting that you mentioned Richard Jewell. Robert Mueller and James Comey worked the Jewell case and never admitted they were wrong in accusing him of being the bomber.
Demps – the final scene with the FBI will infuriate you.
“vive le resistance”? He couldn’t even get that right!
General Flynn is owed an apology, too. Even more has come out since the two articles, below.
The FBI improperly targeted Trump’s campaign, and administration.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-flynn-entrapment-11544658915
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-questionable-case-against-gen-flynn-11545066054
Will Comey be brought to justice? Will there be any repercussions? We need to clean house in the FBI. I don’t think this would fly in the CIA.
This was the systematic targeting of an American citizen, a violation of his civil rights, for political purposes.
Activists weaponize government agencies against conservatives. An FBI agent went so far as to criminally alter an email from the CIA to hide the fact that Carter Page was working with our government, not against it.
Thank you for your service, Carter Page. FBI: Now let’s lie about it and ruin you so we can get rid of Trump by any means necessary.
Why would an FBI agent engage in a criminal act, and alter an email from the CIA to try to make an innocent man look guilty to the FISA Court?
Why would the FBI not inform the FISA court that the dossier was paid for by Hillary Clinton as op research on Trump?
Why would the FBI not inform the FISA court that MI6 warned them Steele had poor judgment and had political motivation?
Why would the FBI not inform the FISA court that Steele’s sub source told them the information in the dossier was just bar talk, and a comment in a blog post, and none of it was supposed to be presented as fact?
Why would the FBI continue to pursue allegations of Trump colluding with Russia when the entire case fell apart at the beginning?
Why wasn’t the media corrected, at the beginning, that the dossier was fake, and sourced from Russian intelligence?
Why did they lie and claim the dossier did not form the basis of the FISA court application for surveillance? The Horowitz Report confirmed that it did. Prior, there was insufficient cause.
Why the illegal unmasking, that Susan Rice lied about?
What about the scandal of FBI misconduct that has rocked General Flynn’s case? General Flynn gave up fighting and plead out. He had to sell his house. He was worried about his family. He thought he was doing the responsible thing and falling on his sword. Turns out, the government engaged in serious misconduct to target him. General Flynn did nothing illegal in his contacts. He was allowed to make those phone calls. He was charged with misstating what happened to the FBI. I don’t remember what I talked about on the phone last week. If the FBI ever interviews me, I’m toast. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton and her staff lied with impunity to the FBI. Can we even call them the FBI anymore? It appears they are the Democrat Bureau of Investigation. All this has ruined its reputation.
The Horowitz Report pointed out that an investigation may be started without any bar at all. The bar can be on the ground. So any investigation at all would be deemed to have begun properly. The rumor passed on by George Papadopoulos, begin by Mifsud, who may be one of those anti-American academics employed by Russia, would reasonably have been followed up on, and dismissed. I, myself, have said that Russia probably has Hillary Clinton’s emails. How could they not? Along with China, North Korea, and our own allies. She uploaded them to The Cloud. It’s like shouting them in the street. There is no way they haven’t been lifted. That’s not inside information. That’s common sense. I could see them investigating this to see if they could turn up those emails, considering she deleted them while under Congressional subpoena.
So I could see how there would be no bias in simply following that thread.
But what is the reasoning for the rest of the FBIs actions? Why did they lie? Why is Comey still lying?
No one admitted political bias. It seems the most logical motivation to target Trump, his campaign, and his administration, breaking the law and standards of conduct to do so.
I appreciate this article. There is NO WAY that the actions taken over months and years by the FBI were “mistakes” or the result of “poor policies.” This was malicious and evil, and Horowitz (remember, he works for the FBI) missed that because when he asked, the answers he got were “reasonable.” Bull. This was a coordinated (many knew) set of acts that needs to be prosecuted and those who committed them, approved them, or even knew and kept silent need to be punished and ousted from the FBI. That those people continue to be on the payroll of the government (which is all of us taxpayers) is almost as unconscionable as what they did. I’m tired of waiting for justice. Calling it “the Justice” Department is flat out Orwellian.
Bob Lawblaw – I hope we can depend on Durham and Barr to do their jobs.
in the case of Papadopoulos, the media, which is so aggressively “unbiased” that it smears everyone it doesn’t like as a Russian asset, there was a lot of winking and nodding implying that his obvious “Greekness” was another point of affinity with the Russians. Nothing explicit, and he was a minor figure, but, it was there at times.
And in fact Greece does have an affinity with Russia, based the shared Orthodox Christian religion and other cultural and historic things. This is not a point of shame in the slightest bit, rather, one of pride, for both peoples.
But ethnics in America usually group alongside the Democrats. Italians, Irish, and Greeks too. For whatever reasons. Now, an American with a Greek name, would never get the kind of sly looks that Papadopolous got, if, IF he was a Democrat, when people accused him of being a Russian asset. But Republicans of any ethnic stripe always get a sort of sneaky snarky look from vaunted “journalists” who only respect “diversity” when it serves their patrons in the Dem party. Today on NPR they were dicing and slicing the black Republicans too. It never ends.
Carter Page, had a distinguished Anglo-Saxon name, by contrast, but it didn’t stop them from defaming him.
Bottom line: the vaunted fake news and mass media lackeys, are equal opportunity slanderers, however, their main bias is to always and everywhere favor the Democrat party leadership.
Their biases towards various people is usually revealed in body language, which, if you can read it, is plain as day. This comes across best on TV & video, which is why people keep watching it, even though overall it stinks and nobody should pay a dime for it, it’s so awful.
what we have seen by the criminal actions of the f.b.i. to carter page can only be absolved if they the f.b.i.have to pay back his lawyers and court costs along with that lowlife and criminal jim comey going to prison along with the rest of his j.edgar hoover gang. if this wasn`t a government coup against our president of the united states nothing is.
The entire premise of Law & Order, that circumscribes a constitutional “rule of law” society – is that the “ends” never justify illegal or unconstitutional “means”. In other words solving crimes or preemption policies is contrary to a Law & Order system. Local , state and federal officials swear an oath of office NOT to violate anyone’s constitutional rights – as a condition of retaining authority and retaining employment. One can’t be a cop, FBI agent or other official in the USA without agreeing to this loyalty oath.
Tom Hanks played Page in “The Man With One Red Shoe”
Americans now get it: the Democrats are against them and lie to get power.
It is unfortunate that Maxine would choose to propagate the lie that blacks seem stupid because of her. Blacks are shifting to Trump bc they tire of the lies from Dems. However she cant help herself because as a very wealthy, crooked, low IQ Member of Congress who just hapoens to be black, she does a great dishonor to minorities in general for appearing so stupid…all too well
#playtheracecard
Maxine Waters: Senate Republicans “Don’t Care About Democracy,” “Opening The Door For Putin And Russia”
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/12/15/maxine_waters_mcconnell_and_senate_republicans_dont_care_about_democracy_opening_the_door_for_putin_and_russia.html
I am about halfway through the IG report and it is becoming obvious to me that Page was set up. As for Steele, he was using the FBI to put his (invented) reports for the Clinton campaign before the public eye and make a little more money. NONE of the “facts” Steele presented were first-hand, but were actually third, fourth, fifth and God-only-knows how many hands away from him. Although I didn’t watch his testimony, I understand that Horowitz testified that his report “didn’t exonerate anybody.”
President Trump is a victim. Where does he go for his apology?
Papadopolous too, among others.
The portside dispensation as a culture is now sociopathic in essence. They don’t admit error, ever. The closest they get to it is a ‘confession’ that they didn’t follow a certain logic extensively enough – e.g. not railroading enough male college students or not calling enough people racists. Liberals who make good faith discussions of error are generally considered functional antagonists – see RM Kaus, Camille Paglia, Alan Dershowitz, Nat Hentoff, and Ronald Radosh. Especially Radosh. If you’re distant enough in time you can regret a subsidiary feature of a phenomenon, but not the phenomenon itself. Hendrick Hertzberg’s retrospective complaints about communism and pacifism among elements protesting the VietNam War would be an example.
If you go to work for the government then you put your reputation at risk. Better to go to work for a trash pickup private company.
Such are the casualties of kangaroo courts.
Using the government’s own records, there are more than 40,000 Americans blacklisted (or watchlisted) after 9/11. The worldwide blacklist exceeds 1 million persons. If you compare “terrorism justified searches” versus “terrorism-convictions” the success rate is less than 1/10 of 1% or a 99% failure rate. These people, mostly innocent, have been harassed by local police and DHS officials for more than 18 years (more than 6500 consecutive days of abuse). 6500+ days of abuse equate to torture. One way to find probable cause would be to compare the Social Security income statements from 2001 compared to today. Employment Tampering and income destruction is a major weapon used against these innocent Americans. The Inspectors General of all the security agencies should be auditing these cases also.
“Which office do I go to to get my reputation back? ~ Ray Donovan
A critic of Mr. Donovan offered that he’d played piano for 20 years in the whorehouse of the New York – New Jersey construction industry and said he never saw anyone go up the stairs.
I presume he and his partner Ronald Schiavone were not guilty of any discrete crimes, but they were willing to do business with a mess of shady characters, among them Wm. Pellegrino Masselli (aka ‘Billy the Butcher’). One oddity about the case is the menu of associates-of-associates of Donovan and Schiavone who turned up dead during those years.
It was the same deal with John Zaccaro and his wife. He was shnagged and humiliated on a couple of matters: receiving political patronage in the form of court-appointed conservatorships and overstating his net worth in disclosures co-incident with a real estate transaction. The deal never went through and no one was materially harmed, but he did tell a huge lie in the documents (overstating his net worth six-fold). A reporter for the Village Voice said in twenty-odd years of covering New York City politics, he had never encountered a pol with so many skeevy characters around her as had Mrs. John Zaccaro. He offered it was very disconcerting that she and her husband were so at home having dealings with such people. Then you look at their family history. John Zaccaro had taken over the family business in 1960 and largely cleaned it up. The intersection between the Zaccaro family and the outfit ca. 1957 was sufficient to get his uncle rubbed out; the firm was hit in 1959 with a 100-odd count indictment for extortion on city contracts and subcontracts. As for his wife, her father was almost certainly a civilian employed by La Cosa Nostra if not a mob associate himself (his assigned task was acting as manager and straw owner of a nightclub).
No, no, not criminal. But reaallly discomfiting. That sort of person does have a .. reputation.
TIA:
No question Donovan hung out with a shady group but some say that’s why he was targeted. Other’s say he was dirty and got away with it. A friend of mine in the FBI said he was a borderline figure but the Bureau thought he’d roll on others. He didn’t — at least publicly. Either way the guy was right and the FBI was dead wrong.