CAN SOMETHING FALL APART IF IT NEVER HELD TOGETHER?:

What we now know from the declassified documents is that the FBI submitted the Page application to the FISC in October 2016, after Page had left the campaign. During the summer of 2016, news outlets had reported on a speech that Page made in Moscow that was highly critical of the United States and on Page's ties to prominent Russian figures with connections to the Kremlin. It sounded entirely too reminiscent of the heat the Trump campaign was taking in the press for the ties its campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, had to shady Russian oligarchs. By September 2016, both Manafort and Page had left the Trump campaign.

In October, the FBI noted a string of activities that raised concerns about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. These were laid out in the initial application: The FBI described Russia's clandestine intelligence activities; its historical attempts to interfere in U.S. elections; its particular efforts to interfere in the 2016 election--including the cyberattack on the DNC and the release of hacked emails by WikiLeaks--and the intelligence community's joint assessment, a version of which was released to the public on October 7, 2016, concluding that the intelligence community was confident that Russia's senior-most officials directed the targeting of the DNC.

Although Page had left the campaign, the FBI feared Russia was using him for its own purposes. The application states that the FBI alleged there was probable cause to believe Page was an agent of a foreign power under a specific provision of FISA that involves knowingly aiding, abetting, or knowingly conspiring to assist a foreign power with clandestine intelligence gathering activities, engage in clandestine intelligence gathering at the behest of a foreign power, or participate in sabotage or international terrorism or planning or preparation therefor.

The FBI then laid out its case. Many of the details specific to Page in the initial application are redacted. However, it appears to be a chronological narrative that includes references to Page's years in Moscow in the early 2000s as well as a discussion of Page's interactions with three intelligence officers of the Russian SVR (the country's CIA equivalent), all of whom were indicted in the United States for various crimes that amounted to spying for Russia. Two of the SVR agents fled the country, and the third was convicted of conspiracy to act as an unregistered agent of a foreign government and sentenced to 30 months in prison. (These charges, coincidentally, are the same ones leveled against Maria Butina, who is in custody and awaiting further criminal proceedings in the U.S. district court in Washington.)

At this point in the application, the narrative shifts to Page's actions during the campaign, in particular his July 2016 trip to Moscow to speak at the New Economic School, where, according to the FBI application and the now-infamous Steele dossier, Page met with high-ranking Russian government officials. It's this portion of the application that has engendered the greatest controversy. In January and February 2018, the HPSCI--the same committee that had so soberly and thoughtfully laid out a balanced structure for oversight of electronic surveillance activities--exploded into a chaos of dysfunction.

The HPSCI had been operating as a bit of a circus from the beginning of its Russia investigation in early 2017, with Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) lobbing wild accusations about the unmasking of the identities of U.S. citizens in intelligence reporting by Obama administration officials--a series of accusations that led Nunes to make bizarre late-night trips to the White House and convene press conferences on the White House lawn. Nunes briefly recused himself, although it was unclear just how distant he remained from the HPSCI majority's efforts during the investigation. Despite the constant sense that this once-sober committee was on the verge of running off the rails, it managed to cling to just enough credibility to stay on track until the winter of 2018, when Nunes insisted on releasing a memo that endorsed a new conspiracy theory about how a Democratic administration had: abused the FISA process by using salacious opposition research (with the implication that the funding source made the information itself suspect), incorporated that suspect research into a FISA application, and sent the application to the secret proceedings of the FISC without telling the court there could be bias in the information. Through this complicated string of subterfuges, Nunes claims, the Democrats managed to pervert justice in order to spy on the Trump campaign.

Over time, the conspiracy theory would deepen: Since the dossier included information from sources in Russia, that meant that the Hillary for America campaign had colluded with Russia to provide fake information to Christopher Steele, who slipped the fake news to the FBI, which then pulled the wool over the eyes of a succession of four FISC judges, each of whom signed off on further surveillance against Carter Page.

It's an exhausting theory to contemplate, and yet one that many people, fueled by conspiracy-mongering rumors on the Internet about the workings of the "deep state," believed. What the newly released documents show is that the theory is utterly bunk.

On page 15 of the initial application, the FBI offers a lengthy explanation of the sourcing of information about Page's 2016 trip to Moscow. In sum, the Steele dossier was only one part of the case against Page and only one part of the dossier was cited; it focused on a single event against a much larger background of Russian activities and Page's own activities and interactions with indicted and convicted Russian spies. Page was, after all, a man who had boasted in a 2013 letter that he was an informal adviser to the Kremlin.

So against this fuller background of facts (not the complete facts, since the released applications are full of redactions, and since there may be other facts that haven't yet come to light), it is apparent that the FBI would have been derelict in its duty if it didn't at least investigate whether there was cause for concern. Page had longstanding ties to Russia, including past ties to indicted and convicted Russian spies; the intelligence community had concluded that Russia was undertaking active measures to influence the 2016 U.S. election; and Page made a trip to Russia, possibly meeting with Kremlin officials, while he was an adviser to Donald Trump's campaign. Taken together, it appears to be probable cause.

In a tantalizing partial sentence, the FISA application states that "the FBI believes that the Russian government's efforts are being coordinated with Page and perhaps other individuals associated with Candidate #1's campaign"; the rest of the sentence trails off into a lengthy redaction.

The full 412 pages of the application and its three renewals follow much the same pattern. The FBI explains the context, the foreign power, and why it's concerned about Page in particular. It describes the nature of the source information and the status of the FBI's relationship with the source as well as its confidence in his reliability, pointing out that the FBI did indeed tell the FISC about this potential bias in lengthy footnotes in all four applications that explained that a U.S. law firm (now known to be Perkins Coie) had hired a U.S. person (who we now know is Glenn Simpson) "to conduct research into Candidate #1's ties to Russia." Per the footnote, that U.S. person then hired "Source #1" (Steele). Although the FBI didn't believe Steele was aware of who had originated this request or for precisely what purpose, it noted in the first application, "The FBI speculates that the identified U.S. person [who hired Steele] was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit Candidate #1's campaign." The later applications explain that the FBI severed its relationship with Steele because, after giving his information to the FBI, he had also talked to the press. However, per the applications, "notwithstanding Source #1's reason for conducting the research," because of Steele's past reliability in providing useful and accurate information, "the FBI believes Source #1's information herein to be credible."

From all of this, somehow, Devin Nunes spun a crazy conspiracy narrative. Now that the underlying FISA documents have been released, that narrative--along with the HPSCI--is falling apart.

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