Witch Hunt!

[G]rowing evidence suggests both Trump campaign advisers [Carter Page and George Papadopoulos] made exculpatory statements — at the very start of the FBI’s investigation — that undercut the Trump-Russia collusion theory peddled to agents by Democratic sources.

The FBI plowed ahead anyway with an unprecedented intrusion into a presidential campaign, while keeping evidence of the two men’s innocence from the courts.

[...]

Papadopoulos was the young aide that the FBI used to justify opening a probe into the Trump campaign on July 31, 2016, after he allegedly told a foreign diplomat that he knew Russia possessed incriminating emails about Hillary Clinton.

Page, a volunteer campaign adviser, was the American the FBI then targeted on Oct. 21, 2016, for secret surveillance while investigating Democratic Party-funded allegations that he secretly might have coordinated Russia’s election efforts with the Trump campaign during a trip to Moscow.

[...]

First, the FBI must present evidence to FISA judges that it has verified and that comes from intelligence sources deemed reliable. Second, it must disclose any information that calls into question the credibility of its sources. Finally, it must disclose any evidence suggesting the innocence of its investigative targets.

Thanks to prior releases of information, we know the FBI fell short on the first two counts. Multiple FBI officials have testified that the Christopher Steele dossier had not been verified when its allegations were submitted as primary evidence supporting the FISA warrant against Page.

Likewise, we know the FBI failed to tell the courts that Steele admitted to a federal official that he was desperate to defeat Trump in the 2016 election and was being paid by Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to gather dirt on the GOP candidate. Both pieces of information are the sort of credibility-defining details that should be disclosed about a source.

[...]

Republican lawmakers have suggested for months that [evidence of Page and Papadopoulos' innocence] existed and was hidden from the courts, but none has emerged in public.

[...]

Multiple sources tell me none of the FISA applications the FBI submitted to judges over the course of a year’s surveillance of Page made any mention of exculpatory statements or protestations of innocence that Page made to informants.

  The Hill

Are investigators required to provide a desired FISA warrant target's protestations of innocence with their requests?  That doesn't strike me as "evidence suggesting innocence."  And as far as verifying their supporting documentation "comes from intelligence sources deemed reliable,"  Steele was a known source who WAS considered reliable.

If such statements exist, in the form of a tape or a transcript or an FBI interview report — three routine investigative tools the FBI uses when managing informers — then it would be a huge omission that likely violated FBI rules.

[...]

Sources familiar with the FISA applications say they contain no evidence that Papadopoulos made exculpatory statements unwittingly to an FBI informer.

Again, if such statements exist in transcripts, tapes or FBI reports, they’re a major omission.

[...]

If Page’s and Papadopoulos’s recollections of what they told Halper are accurate, former FBI officials Comey, James Baker, Andrew McCabe, Lisa Page and Peter Strzok — all of whom played a role in the Russia probe and the FISA warrants — have some serious explaining to do. So does departing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who signed the fourth and final FISA warrant.

My reporting suggests a much bigger scandal — the intentional misleading of the nation’s federal intelligence court — soon may eclipse the Russia narrative that has dominated the media the past two years.

I'll wait to be impressed until that happens.

The fastest way to know if that storm is on the horizon is for Trump to declassify the documents showing exactly how the FBI behaved in this case.

It's hard to believe he wouldn't have done so if indeed there were exculpatory documents. I know he's threatened it a few times, but color me highly skeptical that if he had anything that would prove the FBI had acted improperly in starting their investigation, he'd already have released it.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.