This seems like kind of a big deal.
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.
This is the clearest evidence so far that the FBI had reason to believe during the 2016 presidential campaign that a Trump campaign adviser was in touch with Russian agents. Such contacts are now at the center of an investigation into whether the campaign coordinated with the Russian government to swing the election in Trump’s favor.
President Trump has been lying all along don’tcha know. There were no names to unmask because this didn’t happen.
😉
Bye bye fake Russian narrative … 😃
Decent analysis here:
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a54457/carter-page-fisa-warrant-fbi/
The question of “who leaked this?” is actually pretty salient. There’s no doubt this has been a leaky administration with a leaky congress, but the leaks have generally been selected to support their narrative. This one, though? It actively and brutally undermines several administration narratives simultaneously: that Obama ordered surveillance rather than letting law enforcement follow their own legal procedures (this leak supports the latter), and that there’s nothing to the Russia story, rather then enough to convince a court (twice) that not only was there probable cause that a crime was committed, but also that the target was acting as an agent of a foreign government (this leak supports the latter in surprising detail).
Unfortunately, there’s no shortage of conspiracy theories that this can’t still be worked into, as I’m sure it will. It could easily still be pinned on the Illuminati Elders of Zion Secret Obama Shadow World Government Run From a Surfboard in Hawaii That’s Linked via HAARP Signals to His Underground Volcano Lair and His Bald Cat.