Newly declassified documents spotlight the role of John Kerry’s State Department in fueling the FBI’s dubious Russia collusion probe, showing it was the State Department that provided “information” leading to the controversial surveillance of Carter Page.
Last Thursday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham released a trove of documents from the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Trump’s campaign, including a less redacted version of the Obama administration’s FISA warrant applications to spy on Page, who served as a tangential adviser to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
The disclosures focus renewed attention on the text of the warrant, which begins by claiming Page is “an agent of a foreign power” and that “the status of the target was determined in or about October 2016 from information provided by the U.S. Department of State.”
The newly declassified sections underscore that the FBI under its disgraced former chief, James Comey, relied heavily on the Christopher Steele dossier alleging debunked Russian collision charges. The dossier was produced by Fusion GPS, which was paid for its anti-Trump work by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
The centrality of the State Department in providing “information” purporting that Page was a Russian agent raises questions in light of previous reporting exposing connections on spreading the dossier claims between elements of Kerry’s State Department and Steele, as well as ties to longtime Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal and Cody Shearer, who is a controversial figure long tied to various Clinton scandals.
One previously declassified FBI document contains a charge that Victoria Nuland, a former Hillary Clinton associate who served as a senior State Department official, was in communication with Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson.
Also David Kramer, a long-time adviser to late Senator John McCain, revealed in testimony that he met with two Obama administration officials to inquire about whether the anti-Trump dossier authored by was being taken seriously. This was before Kramer obtained the dossier and McCain passed it officially to the FBI.
In a deposition on Dec. 13, 2017 that was later posted online, Kramer said that McCain specifically asked him in early December 2016 to meet about the dossier with Victoria Nuland, a senior official in John Kerry’s State Department, as well as an official from the National Security Council.
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