Given the opportunity to hector, speculate, and conjure in the vacuum left by those redactions, Fox News has shared the pronouncements that follow with its listening public. Despite the first public release of a FISA application in history, the compelling need to protect intelligence sources and methods produced large swaths of redactions to each of the four Carter Page applications. Ironically, the essential secretive nature of FISA and of the operations of the FISC has, for months, afforded valuable cover to President Trump and Trump supporters like Devin Nunes and the Fox News cheerleaders in their ceaseless attacks on the FISA surveillance of Carter Page. A Sampling of the Fox News View of the Carter Page FISA Applications FISA, its mechanisms, and the critical intelligence operations conducted under its statutory auspices are simply too important to be become collateral damage in the political bloodsport that now all too frequently passes for national governance. Still, some effort must be made to peer beyond what produces the best decibel intensity, and ascertain whether the applications seeking authority to surveil Carter Page satisfy FISA’s requirements. For Fox News, at least, there is no story or ratings in that approach. As for his Fox News consorts, at least on the issue of the Carter Page FISA warrants, their perpetually uneasy relationship with fact is all the more apparent.īecause the Page FISA applications are part of the broader political debate that surrounds the investigation into Russian election interference, there is little chance that they will ever be extricated and judged solely on their factual merits. ![]() For its part, the Nunes memorandum, released in February of this year after the White House conveniently declassified its details, reflects the accuracy you would expect from the man who later admitted that, despite having access to the full text of those Carter Page FISA applications prior to releasing the memo, never took the time to read them. Whatever else the investigation into Russian election interference may ultimately produce, it should be increasingly obvious that there is no material substance to the charges that Nunes and the Fox News echo chamber have leveled condemning the FISA applications to surveil Carter Page. ![]() ![]() First approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) in October 2016, and later extended by those three renewal applications at 90-day intervals, each one approved by a different, Republican-appointed judge serving on the FISC, the Page surveillance has become a cause célèbre for Devin Nunes, his coterie of Republican comrades on the House Intelligence Committee, and their daily provocateurs at Fox News. Much has been said and written about the initial (and three subsequent) applications used to obtain authority under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to electronically surveil former Trump foreign policy advisor Carter Page.
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