Russian Collusion, Pt. 2
Continuing my deep dive into the FBI's investigation into Donald Trump's 2016 campaign.
If you didn’t catch Part 1 of this series from last year, I highly encourage you to read it before reading the next portion. Below is my continuation of a closer look at the FBI’s investigation into Donald Trump’s campaign in 2016, why it matters, and what the hell actually happened. I hope it gives you some clarity and additional information to inform your own opinions.
Stuart Evans
Who?
Stuart Evans, the Deputy Assistant Attorney General responsible for Intelligence and Oversight, was responsible for the overseeing the staff of Justice Department attorneys and staff that take the FBI’s FISA applications and prepare them accordingly to be put before a judge. I apologize if my understanding is incorrect, as I’m learning this all as well.
Stuart Evans is important because he was one of the few (and probably the only one to admit publicly, as he no longer works for the Department of Justice) that he had reservations about the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, or more specifically, the application for a FISA warrant on Carter Page.
As a refresher, Carter Page was a foreign policy advisor for Trump campaign in 2016. His Wikipedia article is good enough if you want an overview.
On July 31, 2020, Stuart Evans gave an interview to the staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee for about five or six hours, answering questions, clarifying timelines, and being honest about his own opinions. The transcript is some 232 pages, so I’ve extracted what I think are some of the most valuable tidbits below. That being said, the interview in its entirety gives a fascinating look into how FISA warrants work, and if you’re a nerd and want to learn a bit more, give it a read. I’ve included the full file below, which was acquired by TheBlackVault.com via a FOIA request (I have no knowledge of what the website’s main focus is and found the document via a Google search).
This interview seems to have generally gone under the radar, but I think it’s critically important to the conversation for a few reasons that I’ll highlight at the end. Here’s that full file, in case you want a PDF:
Senate Staffer: “Just at a very high level, would it be fair to say that the FISAs we're going to talk about here today would not be that straightforward variety you're talking about?”
Evans: “I would agree with that.”
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Regarding whether the FBI should have informed the FISA court of the fact that the underlying research used to justify the warrant request was most likely opposition research. This ended up being true, as I covered in Part 1 of this series.
Evans: “So their answer back to us at that time was very firm: They do not know who was paying for this research. That said, we, myself and then the others on our team, we felt it was very important that the court be made apprised of, notwithstanding that the FBI can't definitively say: Hey, it's highly likely this is opposition research.” (p.141)
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Senate Staffer: “…You were not aware, I think will be your testimony, the information conveyed from the primary sub-source -- the primary sub-source was giving Steele information that was based, quote, ‘on conversations with friends over beer,’ that the primary sub-source characterized the information he gave Steele as word of mouth and hearsay, that the primary sub-source told the FBI the information was intended to be taken with, quote, ‘a grain of salt,’ that the corroboration on the information was, quote, ‘zero’? Those quotes are all taken from page 188 of the IG report. You were unaware of any of that?”
Evans: “To the best of my recollection sitting here today three-plus years later, I do not believe I was aware of that.”
Senate Staffer: “Information like that, given that it was the primary sub-source, should that have been conveyed to the FISA Court or maybe an application should not have been sought?”
Senate Staffer: “Yes. I think the way I described it to the Inspector General, which I would stand by now, is that at a minimum I would have expected the FBI to share that information with us and to proactively flag that information for us, to have a discussion about it. And then how to proceed from that could have been a range of things. At one end of the spectrum, that information could have been included in a FISA renewal with whatever caveats or assessments the FBI wanted to place on it. At the other end of that spectrum, it could have potentially warranted either delaying or stopping the FISA application entirely.” (p.176-177)
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