This is significant.
The Washington Post reported that, "The professor's interactions with Trump advisers began a few weeks before the opening of the investigation, when Page met the professor at the British symposium."
A few weeks before the opening of the investigation — those are the words that have raised eyebrows among Hill investigators. If it was before the investigation, then what was an FBI informant doing gathering undercover information when there was not yet an investigation?
The question has pointed investigators back to the issue of when the probe began — not when a piece of paper was formally signed but when the FBI, and perhaps other U.S. intelligence agencies, began investigating the Trump campaign.
And that has taken them back to March 21, 2016, when candidate Donald Trump met with the editorial board of the Washington Post.
At the time of that meeting, Trump had been under criticism for not having the sort of lists of distinguished advisers that most top-level campaigns routinely assemble. That was particularly true in the area of foreign policy. A frustrated Trump ordered his team to compile a list of foreign-affairs advisers.
Trump was preparing to announce his advisory board when he met with the Post. The paper's publisher asked Trump if he would reveal the names of his new team.
"Well, I hadn't thought of doing it, but if you want I can give you some of the names," Trump said. He then read a brief list, among them Page and Papadopoulos.
Trump's announcement did not go unnoticed at the FBI and Justice Department. The bureau knew Page from a previous episode in which Russian agents had tried, unsuccessfully, to recruit him. It's not clear what the FBI knew about the others. But then-Director James Comey and number-two Andrew McCabe personally briefed Attorney General Loretta Lynch on the list of newly-named Trump foreign policy advisers, including Page, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.
Lynch told the House Intelligence Committee that she, Comey, and McCabe discussed whether to provide a "defensive briefing" to the Trump campaign. That would entail having an FBI official meet with a senior campaign official "to alert them to the fact that … there may be efforts to compromise someone with their campaign," Lynch said.
It didn't happen, even though it was discussed again when Comey briefed the National Security Council principals committee about Page in the "late spring" of 2016, according to Lynch's testimony.
So, the most generous explanation for the start of the spying was that the FBI became concerned when Trump announced his foreign policy team would include Carter Page, a man on the FBI's radar, which raised legitimate concerns.
But rather than inform Trump's people that Page was potentially sketchy, the Obama DOJ instead uses it as a pretext to spy on the Trump campaign. This is the part that is inexcusable. I don't see any other way to view this. Rather than make a simple phone call out of concern for national security, the DOJ used this as an opportunity to try and take out the opposing party's candidate. Everything done after this point, the spying, the constant leaks to the media, the outright false articles, the sketchy FISA warrant, the threats of prosecuting people for violating the freaking Logan Act, was all done with an intent to harm Trump - either to prevent him from being elected, or to impeach after the election. This is third world dictatorship stuff - using the apparatus of the government to destroy the opposition.
