In a podcast with Preet Bharara this week, Sheldon Whitehouse had the following exchange about whether he thought Carter Page should have been surveilled. (after 24:30)

Whitehouse: I’ve got to be a little bit careful because I’m one of the few Senators who have been given access to the underlying material.

Bharara: Meaning the affidavit in support of the FISA application.

Whitehouse And related documents, yes. The package.

Bharara: And you’ve gone to read them?

Whitehouse: I’ve gone to read them.

Bharara: You didn’t send Trey Gowdy?

Whitehouse: [Laughs] I did not send Trey Gowdy. I actually went through them. And, so I’ve got to be careful because some of this is still classified. But the conclusion that I’ve reached is that there was abundant evidence outside of the Steele dossier that would have provoked any responsible FBI with a counterintelligence concern to look at whether Carter Page was an undisclosed foreign agent. And to this day the FBI continues to assert that he was a undisclosed Russian foreign agent.

For the following discussion, then, keep in mind that a very sober former US Attorney has read the case against Carter Page and says that the FBI still — still, after Page is as far as we know no longer under a FISA order — asserts he “was” an undisclosed foreign agent (it’s not clear what that past tense “was” is doing, as it could mean he was a foreign agent until the attention on him got too intense or remains one; also, I believe John Ratcliffe, a Republican on the House Judiciary Committee and also a former US Attorney, has read the application too).

With that background, I’d like to turn to the substance of the dispute between Chuck Grassley and Dianne Feinstein over the dossier, which has played out in the form of a referral of Christopher Steele to FBI for lying. In the wake of the Nunes memo theatrics, Grassley released first a heavily redacted version of the referral he and Lindsey Graham sent the FBI in early January, followed by a less-redacted version this week. The referral, even as a transparent political stunt, is nevertheless more substantive than Devin Nunes’ memo, leading some to take it more seriously.  Which may be why Feinstein released a rebuttal this week.

In case you’re wondering, I’m tracking footnote escalation in these documents. They line up this way:

• 0: Nunes memo (0 footnotes over 4 pages, or 1 over 6 if you count Don McGahn’s cover letter)
• 2.6: Grassley referral (26 footnotes over 10 pages)
• 3.6: Schiff memo (36 footnotes, per HPSCI transcript, over 10 pages)
• 5.4: Feinstein rebuttal (27 footnotes over 5 pages)

So let me answer a series of questions about the memo as a way of arguing that, while by all means the FBI’s use of consultants might bear more scrutiny, this is still a side-show.

Did Christopher Steele lie?

The Grassely-Graham referral says Steele may have lied, but doesn’t commit to whether classified documents obtained by the Senate Judiciary Committee (presumably including the first two Page applications), a declaration Steele submitted in a British lawsuit, or Steele’s statements to the FBI include lies.

The FBI has since provided the Committee access to classified documents relevant to the FBI’s relationship with Mr. Steele and whether the FBI relied on his dossier work. As explained in greater detail below, when information in those classified documents is evaluated in light of sworn statements by Mr. Steele in British litigation, it appears that either Mr. Steele lied to the FBI or the British court, or that the classified documents reviewed by the Committee contain materially false statements.

On September 3, 2017 — a good three months before the Grassley-Graham referral — I pointed to a number of things in the Steele declaration, specifically pertaining to who got the dossier or heard about it when, that I deemed “improbable.”

That was the genius of the joint (!!) Russian-Republican campaign of lawfare against the dossier. As Steele and BuzzFeed and Fusion tried to avoid liability for false claims against Webzilla and Alfa Bank and their owners, they were backed into corners where they had to admit that Democrats funded the dossier and made claims that might crumble as Congress scrutinized the dossier.

So, yeah, I think it quite possible that Steele told some stretchers.

Did Christopher Steele lie to the FBI?

But that only matters if he lied to the FBI (and not really even there). The UK is not about to extradite one of its former spies because of lies told in the UK — they’re not even going to extradite alleged hacker Lauri Love, because we’re a barbaric country. And I assume the Brits give their spooks even more leeway to fib a little to courts than the US does.

The most critical passage of the referral on this point, which appears to make a claim about whether Steele told the FBI he had shared information with the press before they first used his dossier in a Page application, looks like this.

The footnote in the middle of that redacted passage goes to an unredacted footnote that says,

The FBI has failed to provide the Committee the 1023s documenting all of Mr. Steele’s statements to the FBI, so the Committee is relying on the accuracy of the FBI’s representation to the FISC regarding the statements.

1023s are Confidential Human Source reports.

I say that’s the most important passage because the referral goes on to admit that in subsequent FISA applications the FBI explained that the relationship with Steele had been terminated because of his obvious involvement in the October 31, 2016 David Corn story. Graham and Grassley complain that the FBI didn’t use Steele’s defiance of the FBI request not to share this information with anyone besides the FBI to downgrade his credibility rankings. Apparently FISC was less concerned about that than Graham and Grassley, which may say more about standards for informants in FISA applications than Steele or Carter Page.

The footnote, though, is the biggest tell. That’s because Feinstein’s rebuttal makes it quite clear that after Grassley and Graham made their referral, SJC received documents — which, given what we know has been given to HPSCI, surely include those 1023s — that would alter the claims made in the referral.

The Department of Justice has provided documents regarding its interactions with Mr. Steele to the Judiciary Committee both before and after the criminal referral was made. Despite this, the Majority did not modify the criminal referral and pressed forward with its original claims, which do not take into account the additional information provided after the initial January 4 referral.

Feinstein then goes on to state, several times and underlining almost everything for emphasis, that the referral provides no proof that Steele was ever asked if he had served as the source for Isikoff.

• Importantly, the criminal referral fails to identify when, if ever, Mr. Steele was asked about and provided a materially false statement about his press contacts.

• Tellingly, it also fails to explain any circumstances which would have required Mr. Steele to seek the FBI’s permission to speak to the press or to disclose if he had done so.

[snip]

But the criminal referral provides no evidence that Steele was ever asked about the Isikoff article, or if asked that he lied.

In other words, between the redacted claim about what Steele said and Feinstein’s repeated claims that the referral presents no evidence Steele was asked about his prior contacts with the press, the evidence seems to suggest that Steele was probably not asked. And once he was, after the Corn article, he clearly did admit to the FBI he had spoken with the press. So while it appears Steele blew off the FBI’s warnings not to leak to the press, the evidence that he lied to the FBI appears far weaker.

Does it harm the viability of the FISA application?

That should end the analysis, because the ostensible purpose of the referral is a criminal referral, not to make an argument about the FISA process.

But let’s assess the memo’s efforts to discredit the FISA application.

In two places, the referral suggests the dossier played a bigger role in the FISA application than, for example, Whitehouse suggests.

Indeed, the documents we have reviewed show that the FBI took important investigative steps largely based on Mr. Steele’s information–and relying heavily on his credibility.

[snip]

Mr. Steele’s information formed a significant portion of the FBI’s warrant application, and the FISA application relied more heavily on Steele’s credibility than on any independent verification or corroboration for his claims. Thus the basis for the warrant authorizing surveillance on a U.S. citizen rests largely on Mr. Steele’s credibility.

These claims would be more convincing, however, if they acknowledged that FBI had to have obtained valuable foreign intelligence off their Page wiretap over the course of the year they had him wiretapped to get three more applications approved.

Indeed, had Grassley and Graham commented on the addition of new information in each application, their more justifiable complaint that the FBI did not alert FISC to the UK filings in which Steele admitted more contact with the press than (they claim) show up in the applications would be more compelling. If you’re going to bitch about newly learned information not showing up in subsequent applications, then admit that newly acquired information showed up.

Likewise, I’m very sympathetic with the substance of the Grassley-Graham complaint that Steele’s discussions with the press made it more likely that disinformation got inserted into the dossier (see my most recently post on that topic), but I think the Grassley-Graham complaint undermines itself in several ways.

Simply put, the more people who contemporaneously knew that Mr. Steele was compiling his dossier, the more likely it was vulnerable to manipulation. In fact, the British litigation, which involves a post-election dossier memorandum, Mr. Steele admitted that he received and included in it unsolicited–and unverified–allegations. That filing implies that implies that he similar received unsolicited intelligence on these matters prior to the election as well, stating that Mr. Steele “continued to receive unsolicited intelligence on the matters covered by the pre-election memoranda after the US Presidential election.” [my underline]

The passage is followed by an entirely redacted paragraph that likely talks about disinformation.

This is actually an important claim, not just because it raises the possibility that Page might be unfairly surveilled as part of a Russian effort to distract attention from others (though its use in a secret application wouldn’t have sown the discord it has had it not leaked), but also because we can check whether their claims hold up against the Steele declaration. It’s one place we can check the referral to see whether their arguments accurately reflect the underlying evidence.

Importantly, to support a claim the potential for disinformation in the Steele dossier show up in the form of unsolicited information earlier than they otherwise substantiate, they claim a statement in Steele’s earlier declaration pertains to pre-election memos. Here’s what it looks like in that declaration:

That is, Steele didn’t say he was getting unsolicited information prior to the election; this was, in both declarations, a reference to the single December report.

Moreover, while I absolutely agree that the last report is the most likely to be disinformation, the referral is actually not clear whether that December 13 report ever actually got included in a FISA application. There’s no reason it would have been. While the last report mentions Page, the mention is only a referral back to earlier claims that Trump’s camp was trying to clean up after reports of Page’s involvement with the Russians got made public. So the risk that the December memorandum consisted partially or wholly of disinformation is likely utterly irrelevant to the validity of the three later FISA orders targeting Page.

Which is to say that, while I think worries about disinformation are real (particularly given their reference to Rinat Akhmetshin allegedly learning about the dossier during the summer, which I wrote about here), the case Grassley and Graham make on that point both miscites Steele’s own declaration and overstates the impact of their argued case on a Page application.

What about the Michael Isikoff reference?

Perhaps the most interesting detail in the Grassley-Graham referral pertains to their obsession with the applications’ references to the September 23 Michael Isikoff article based off Steele’s early discussions with the press. Grassley-Graham claim there’s no information corroborating the dossier (there’s a redacted Comey quote that likely says something similar). In that context, they point to the reference to Isikoff without explaining what it was doing there.

The application appears to contain no additional information corroborating the dossier allegations against Mr. Page, although it does cite to a news article that appears to be sourced to Mr. Steele’s dossier as well.

Elsewhere, I’ve seen people suggest the reference to Isikoff may have justified the need for secrecy or something, rater than as corroboration. But neither the referral nor Feinstein’s rebuttal explains what the reference is doing.

In this passage, Grassley and Graham not only focus on Isikoff, but they ascribe certain motives to the way FBI referred to it, suggesting the claim that they did not believe Steele was a source for Isikoff was an attempt to “shield Mr. Steele’s credibility.”

There’s absolutely no reason the FBI would have seen the need to shield Steele’s credibility in October. He was credible. More troubling is that the FBI said much the same thing in January.

In the January reapplication, the FBI stated in a footnote that, “it did not believe that Steele gave information to Yahoo News that ‘published the September 23 News Article.”

Let’s do some math.

If I’m doing my math correctly, if the FISA reapplications happened at a regular 90 day interval, they’d look like this.

That’d be consistent with what the Nunes memo said about who signed what, and would fit the firing dates of January 30 for Yates and May 9 for Comey, as well as the start date for Rosenstein of April 26 (Chris Wray started on August 1).

If that’s right, then Isikoff wrote his second article on the Steele dossier, one that made it clear via a link his earlier piece had been based off Steele, before the second application was submitted (though the application would have been finished and submitted in preliminary form a week earlier, meaning FBI would have had to note the Isikoff piece immediately to get it into the application, but the topic of the Isikoff piece — that Steele was an FBI asset — might have attracted their attention).

But that’s probably not right because the Grassley-Graham referral describes a June, not July, reapplication, meaning the application would have been no later than the last week of June. That makes the reauthorization dates look more like this, distributing the extra days roughly proportionately:

That would put the second footnote claiming the FBI had no reason to believe the September Isikoff piece was based on Steele before the time when the second Isikoff piece made it clear.

I’m doing this for a second reason, however. It’s possible (particularly given Whitehouse’s comments) Carter Page remains under surveillance, but for some reason it’s no longer contentious.

That might be the case if the reapplications no longer rely on the dossier.

And I’m interested in that timing because, on September 9, I made what was implicit clear: That pointing to the September Isikoff piece to claim the Steele dossier had been corroborated was self-referential. I’m not positive I was the first, but by that point, the Isikoff thing would have been made explicit.

Does this matter at all to the Mueller inquiry?

Ultimately, though, particularly given the Nunes memo confirmation that the counterintelligence investigation into Trump’s people all stems from the George Papadopoulos tip, and not Page (particularly given the evidence that the FBI was very conservative in their investigation of him) there’s not enough in even the Grassley-Graham referral to raise questions about the Mueller investigation, especially given a point I made out in the Politico last week.

According to a mid-January status report in the case against Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates, the government has turned over “more than 590,000 items” to his defense team, “including (but not limited to) financial records, records from vendors identified in the indictment, email communications involving the defendants, and corporate records.” He and Gates have received imaged copies of 87 laptops, phones and thumb drives, and copies off 19 search-warrant applications. He has not received, however, a FISA notice, which the government would be required to provide if they planned to use anything acquired using evidence obtained using the reported FISA warrant against Manafort. That’s evidence of just how much of a distraction Manafort’s strategy [of using the Steele dossier to discredit the Mueller investigation] is, of turning the dossier into a surrogate for the far more substantive case against him and others.

And it’s not just Manafort. Not a single thing in the George Papadopoulos and Michael Flynn guilty pleas—for lying to the FBI—stems from any recognizable mention in the dossier, either. Even if the Steele dossier were a poisoned fruit, rather than the kind of routine oppo research that Republicans themselves had pushed to the FBI to support investigations, Mueller has planted an entirely new tree blooming with incriminating details.

Thus the point of my graphic above. The Steele dossier evidence used in the Carter Page FISA application to support an investigation into Cater Page, no matter what else it says about the FISA application process or FBI candor, is just a small corner of the investigation into Trump’s people.

I did two pieces elsewhere on the Devin Nunes memo yesterday. At Vice, I tracked all the holes in the memo; subsequent reporting showed that I hit virtually all the big ones that Adam Schiff hit in his response memo: the memo misrepresented what FBI told FISC about the political nature of Christopher Steele’s, it misrepresents Andrew McCabe’s testimony, and the memo misrepresented why George Papadopoulos was mentioned in the application. At HuffPo, I described how on the twin FISA events of the last few weeks — 702 reauthorization and the Nunes memo — both Nunes and Paul Ryan were on the wrong side of the principles of rule of law and civil liberties.

Since the memo has proven to be such a dud, a lot of people are now questioning DOJ’s and Democrats’ claims that releasing the memo would harm national security. I want to lay out three ways (DOJ surely believes) it may well do that.

Tells Carter Page and any co-conspirators precisely when FISA surveillance started

The memo tells Carter Page — and any co-conspirators both within the Trump camp and overseas — precisely when the surveillance on Page started and what it consists of.

FBI obtained an electronic surveillance warrant against Page on October 21, 2016, and obtained 3 reauthorizations (so roughly January 19, April 19, and July 18). While Page’s interlocutors overseas were likely wiretapped, if possible, associates in the Trump camp can now assume any conversations they had with him before October 21 were not recorded and remain unavailable to Robert Mueller.

Mind you, we know the memo doesn’t reveal the full extent of surveillance directed against Carter Page, because it gives no details on the 2014 FISA wiretap reportedly used against him. That leaves open the possibility that he was surveilled using other means. I think the GOP would have included had FISC approved a physical search FISA warrant against Page, because that would include the possibility of obtaining stored communications from during the campaign. But I would also bet a lot of money that whatever Attorney General was in charge during periods when Page traveled overseas approved a 705(b) order on him, permitting surveillance to continue while he was overseas. I’ll have more to say on this in upcoming days.

Note, it is also possible that the surveillance against Page continues.

Tells subjects of the investigation the status of the investigation and FBI’s ability to validate the Steele memo

The memo provides other details about the investigation, too.

On October 21, per a quotation from FBI Assistant Director Bill Priestap, the investigation into Russian ties with the Trump camp was is its “infancy.” Again, this will let Russians and Trump associates know that anything they managed to destroy before that date may well be unavailable to Mueller.

Later in October, the source report on Steele reported that the dossier had been “only minimally corroborated.” If any of the events in the dossier are real, then the Russians (especially) will have a sense of how unsuccessful the FBI had been in finding the evidence to corroborate those events. If the dossier is, as I’ve suggested, disinformation, the Russians would know that their disinformation was wasting FBI Agent time at least for months.

Tells Australians and every other foreign partner shared intelligence may be officially declassified

The memo mentions the Papadopoulos tip and confirms that’s what triggered the investigation; it also confirms that nothing shared prior to then had triggered an investigation. While the description here doesn’t attribute that intelligence to the Australians, we know that’s where it came from. Now Australia and every other country will know that intelligence they share, including intelligence that makes it look like Five Eyes officials are reporting on the citizens of other Five Eyes countries, may be released by Devin Nunes for political gain. This will add to the many reasons why our friends will hesitate before sharing intelligence with us.

Makes it more likely defendants will get FISA review

In the 40 year history of FISA, no defendant who got notice that FISA data was being used against them in prosecution has been able to review the application used against them. Because Nunes released this information so frivolously, because White House Counsel Don McGahn, in his cover memo, suggested this was a time when “public interest in disclosure of [FISA materials] outweighs any need to protect the information, the memo lowers the bar for release of FISA-related information going forward.

I assume Carter Page, if he is charged, will successfully be able to win review of his FISA application (and think that would be entirely appropriate); that may mean he doesn’t get charged or, if he does, Mueller has to bend over backwards to avoid using FISA material.

But I also assume — and hope — that this disclosure ends the 40 year drought on the release of information, which the original drafters of FISA envisioned would be appropriate in certain circumstances. I think this the one salutary benefit of this memo; it makes it more likely that FISA will work the way it is supposed to going forward.

I even think it possible that the release of this information may affect the response to Keith Gartenlaub’s pending appeal in the Ninth Circuit. His is a case that merits FISA review, and whereas the court might have hesitated to give him that in the past, it would be far easier for them to do so here.

In other words, the release of this memo likely helped those Mueller is trying to investigate, provided another reason for our foreign partners to hesitate before sharing intelligence with us, and makes it more likely some defendants will get to review their FISA application going forward. I can see how DOJ would consider all of that harmful to national security.

Update: On Twitter some folks added that this makes people distrust FBI, making it less likely they’ll share information with the Bureau. In my opinion actually sharing interview reports with HPSCI already did that (though that Chris Wray was forced to do so wouldn’t be as widely known). I also think the sheer shittiness of the dossier minimizes the impact of that somewhat. But I think it’s a fair point.

There’s something funny about the story — first broken by NYT tonight, then confirmed by WaPo — that Trump wanted to fire Robert Mueller last June but backed off after White House Counsel Don McGahn threatened to quit.

Oh sure, the NYT version has all the trappings of the classic principled stand. McGahn threatened to quit which led Trump to back down.

After receiving the president’s order to fire Mr. Mueller, the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, refused to ask the Justice Department to dismiss the special counsel, saying he would quit instead, the people said.

But the WaPo lays out something that’s only hinted at in the NYT version: McGahn never told Trump himself he was going to quit.

McGahn did not deliver his resignation threat directly to Trump, but was serious about his threat to leave, according to a person familiar with the episode.

[snip]

Trump decided to assert that Mueller had unacceptable conflicts of interest and moved to remove him from his position, according to the people familiar with internal conversations.

In response, McGahn said he would not be at the White House if Trump went through with the move, according to a senior administration official.

Described that way, it sounds more like McGahn wasn’t going to take yet another action that exposed him, personally, to obstruction charges. After all, McGahn had already nudged close to that line on several occasions, though it’s not something foregrounded in either of these stories.

While the NYT admits that McGahn was just months off of trying to persuade Jeff Sessions to ignore DOJ ethics advice and not recuse, it doesn’t mention that McGahn helped orchestrate getting Jeff Sessions and Rod Rosenstein to provide cover for a Jim Comey firing that he knew, because he had insisted Trump rewrite his firing letter, was ultimately an effort to end the Russian investigation.

The other funny thing about both these stories is how they obscure one of the known sources of tension that led to John Dowd replacing Marc Kasowitz. Both stories describe Kasowitz’ efforts to discredit Mueller to make claims of partisanship — an effort that continues today, albeit largely though not entirely outsourced to the more venal Republican members of the House.

Around the time Mr. Trump wanted to fire Mr. Mueller, the president’s legal team, led then by his longtime personal lawyer in New York, Marc E. Kasowitz, was taking an adversarial approach to the Russia investigation. The president’s lawyers were digging into potential conflict-of-interest issues for Mr. Mueller and his team, according to current and former White House officials, and news media reports revealed that several of Mr. Mueller’s prosecutors had donated to Democrats.

But it doesn’t explain what Michael Wolff, at least, reports to be the precipitating cause of Kasowitz and Mark Corallo’s departure: their own concern that Trump’s July 7, 2017 lies about the June 9, 2016 meeting itself amounted to obstruction of justice.

An aggrieved, unyielding, and threatening president dominated the discussion, pushing into line his daughter and her husband, Hicks, and Raffel. Kasowitz—the lawyer whose specific job was to keep Trump at arm’s length from Russian-related matters—was kept on hold on the phone for an hour and then not put through. The president insisted that the meeting in Trump Tower was purely and simply about Russian adoption policy. That’s what was discussed, period. Period. Even though it was likely, if not certain, that the Times had the incriminating email chain—in fact, it was quite possible that Jared and Ivanka and the lawyers knew the Times had this email chain—the president ordered that no one should let on to the more problematic discussion about Hillary Clinton.

[snip]

In Washington, Kasowitz and the legal team’s spokesperson, Mark Corallo, weren’t informed of either the Times article or the plan for how to respond to it until Don Jr.’s initial statement went out just before the story broke that Saturday.

[snip]

Mark Corallo was instructed not to speak to the press, indeed not to even answer his phone. Later that week, Corallo, seeing no good outcome—and privately confiding that he believed the meeting on Air Force One represented a likely obstruction of justice—quit.

If this story is correct, then it wasn’t, just, the plan to attack Mueller that caused the break (and as I said, that plan has just been outsourced to people protected by Speech and Debate clause protections). Rather, it was also a subsequent incident of clear obstruction, one done in the wake of a meeting with Vladimir Putin.

Where was McGahn the principled attorney threatening to quit rather than permit obstruction to occur for that?

Several things may be contributing to the nonsensical parts of these stories. First, it may be that a number of these people are at some risk of obstruction charges themselves. To the extent they’re all trying to spin their activities in the best light (assisted, in McGahn’s case, because he shares a lawyer with Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon), they may have to blame others for their actions.

Add in the fact that some of this testimony might be surprising to others. While McGahn, with John Dowd and Ty Cobb, presumably has the most knowledge, it’s possible he didn’t know about Sessions’ testimony (and Sessions reportedly didn’t share details of his testimony with Trump).

So I don’t know what the truth is.

I do know, however, that threatening to quit but not telling Trump about it is a funny way of changing his behavior.

Update: The CNN confirmation of this emphasizes, like the WaPo does, that McGahn didn’t threaten to quit directly. It also quotes Anthony Scaramucci saying that the attempt to fire doesn’t matter because Trump backed off the decision — so it may be that’s how the leakers (all represented by the same lawyer, William Burck — spun this).

Also consider the possibility that NewsMax CEO Chris Ruddy, who is a Mike Schmidt source and who floated Trump’s plan to fire Mueller contemporaneously as a way of trying to get him to back down, is a key source for this. It may mean that Ruddy’s stance, far more than McGahn’s, is what led Trump to back down.

The Politico version of this emphasizes Ruddy’s June stance.

In mid-June, Chris Ruddy, a close Trump friend and Mar-a-Lago member, said after a visit to the White House that he’d overheard discussion about the president considering firing Mueller.

“It could trigger something well beyond anything they ever imagined,” he told POLITICO at the time. Later that day, Ruddy told PBS NewsHour anchor Judy Woodruff that Trump was “considering perhaps terminating the special counsel.”

Ruddy added during the interview he thought it would be “a very significant mistake” to oust Mueller. He noted Mueller had interviewed with Trump to succeed Comey as FBI director, though the president later went on to appoint former Justice Department official Chris Wray to the job.

Mueller should invite Ruddy in for a chat.

Politico also quotes an attorney representing someone else suggesting that it reflects an all-man-for-himself attitude among Trump’s associates.

“It’s one more brick in the wall,” said a Washington lawyer representing another senior Trump aide in the Russia probe who added that the most interesting aspect of the Trump-Mueller story to him was that “people are leaking this shit.”

“That is a sign to me people perceive this ship has sprung a leak and it’s time to make themselves look good,” the attorney said. “To some extent I think the fact of the leaking is almost the most significant, that we’ve reached an inflection point where people at the center of things feel the need to redeem themselves at the expense of the president.”

I do think the leaking of this is significant — and may have as much to do with news of Bannon or Sessions’ testimony as anything else — but given that at least two of the people involved here (McGahn and Reince Priebus) share a lawyer, it may only represent that particular lifeboat abandoning ship.

Update: The updated WaPo version of this makes it clear that Reince Priebus and Steven Bannon were both in the loop on this.

Trump’s ire at Mueller rose to such a level that then-White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon and then-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus grew “incredibly concerned” that he was going to fire Mueller and sought to enlist others to intervene with the president, according to a Trump adviser who requested anonymity to describe private conversations.

Both of the men were deeply worried about the possibility and discussed how to keep him from making such a move, this person said.

Priebus and Bannon did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In one meeting with other advisers, Bannon raised the concern that if Trump fired Mueller it could trigger a challenge to his presidency based on the 25th Amendment, which lays out the process of who succeeds a president in case of incapacitation.

Despite internal objections, Trump decided to assert that Mueller had unacceptable conflicts of interest and moved to remove him from his position, according to the people familiar with the discussions.

In response, McGahn said he would not remain at the White House if Trump went through with the move, according to a senior administration official.

The president, in turn, backed off.

So it seems this leakapalooza stems in part from Burck, the lawyer representing them all.

Update: As this Politico piece (linked by PINC below) notes, McGahn hired Burck in the wake of obstructing justice in the Comey firing, way before Mueller came calling.

So it wasn’t that McGahn took a principled stand in June. It’s that his lawyer told him to stop obstructing justice.

Update: CBS tells what feels like the real story. First, as noted, McGahn’s threat didn’t really make it to Trump. Indeed, the firing wasn’t really even an order. The response was more of an eye roll. And, as predicted, the other people involved were fellow Burck clients Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon.

Two sources directly involved in the deliberations tell CBS News chief White House correspondent Major Garrett that McGahn’s threat was not communicated directly to Mr. Trump, but adjudicated by senior staff, principally then-chief of staff Reince Priebus and then-chief strategist Steve Bannon.

Garrett reports that while Mr. Trump talked about firing Mueller, he never issued a direct “order” to do so in any written form, although he did say he favored it in the presence of senior staff.

[snip]

White House senior staff viewed Mr. Trump’s talk of firing Mueller skeptically, as he frequently mentioned firing people in his administration, but often quickly forgets about it.

In the Mueller instance, as in other potential firing cases, senior staff acknowledged the president with nods, but did not take action, in hopes Mr. Trump would simmer down or forget, sources tell Garrett.

Because of this, discussion of firing Mueller was not acted upon or elevated from the White House to Department of Justice.

Moreover, McGahn’s threat went beyond the Mueller firing to his own compromised position.

McGahn threatened to resign over an accumulation of stresses and frustrations with the president, rather than leaving for issues related to Mueller’s potential firing.

McGahn’s primary stress was being a “no” voice for Mr. Trump.

Suddenly, this looks not so much like McGahn heroically defending the Constitution as McGahn trying to fix a shitty work situation.

Devin Nunes has launched the next installment of his effort to undercut the Mueller investigation, a “Top Secret” four page report based on his staffers’ review of all the investigative files they got to see back on January 5. He then showed it to a bunch of hack Republicans, who ran to the right wing press to give alarmist quotes about the report (few, if any, have seen the underlying FBI materials).

Mark Meadows (who recently called for Jeff Sessions’ firing as part of this obstruction effort) said, “Part of me wishes that I didn’t read it because I don’t want to believe that those kinds of things could be happening in this country that I call home and love so much.”

Matt Gaetz (who strategized with Trump on how to undercut the Mueller investigation on a recent flight on Air Force One) said, “The facts contained in this memo are jaw-dropping and demand full transparency. There is no higher priority than the release of this information to preserve our democracy.”

Ron DeSantis (who joined Gaetz in that Air Force One strategy session with Trump and also benefitted directly from documents stolen by the Russians) said it was “deeply troubling and raises serious questions about the [the people in the] upper echelon of the Obama DOJ and Comey FBI,” who of course largely remain in place in the Sessions DOJ and Wray FBI.

Steve King claimed what he saw was, “worse than Watergate.” “Is this happening in America or is this the KGB?” Scott Perry said. Jim Jordan (who joined in Meadows’ effort to fire Sessions) said, “It is so alarming.” Lee Zeldin said the FBI, in using FISA orders against Russians and facilities used by suspected agents of Russia was relying “on bad sources & methods.”

It all makes for very good theater. But not a single one of these alarmists voted the way you’d expect on last week’s 702 reauthorization votes if they were really gravely concerned about the power of the FBI to spy on Americans.

Indeed, Gaetz, DeSantis, and King — three of those squawking the loudest — voted to give the same FBI they’re claiming is rife with abuse more power to spy on Americans, including political dissidents. Nunes, who wrote this alarming report, also wrote the bill to expand the power of the FBI he’s now pretending is badly abusive.

Even those who voted in favor of the Amash-Lofgren amendment and against final reauthorization — Meadows, Jordan, and Perry, among some of those engaging in this political stunt — voted against the Democratic motion to recommit, which would have at least bought more time and minimally improved the underlying bill (Justin Amash and Tom Massie, both real libertarians, voted with Democrats on the motion to recommit). Zeldin was among those who flipped his vote, backing the bill that will give the FBI more power after making a show of supporting Amash’s far better bill.

In short, not a single one of these men screaming about abuse at the FBI did everything they could do to prevent the FBI from getting more power.

Which — if you didn’t already need proof — shows what a hack stunt this is.

In the wake of Michael Wolff’s publication of Steve Bannon’s insistence that Donald Trump met with the attendees at the June 9, 2016 Trump Tower meeting, we got word that Bannon — who claims never to have interviewed with Robert Mueller’s team — has hired the same lawyer representing Reince Priebus and Don McGahn for an interview this week with the House Intelligence Committee.

Two sources tell us Burck is helping Bannon prepare for an interview with the House intelligence committee, which is currently scheduled for next week. Sources also said Bannon plans to “fully cooperate” with investigators.

Burck also represents White House Counsel Don McGahn and former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus for the purposes of the Russia probe, as Law360 reported last September.

It is not unheard of for one attorney to represent more than one client on the same matter. But the fact that several key players with Trump administration ties have the same lawyer could irk investigators.

Then, yesterday, news broke that Corey Lewandowski will interview with HPSCI this week. He, too, claims he has never interviewed with Mueller’s team.

Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski says that he has yet to be contacted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller as part of the ongoing Russia investigation.

Lewandowski, who was interviewed by WABC’s Rita Cosby on Sunday, also confirmed reports that he will be interviewed on either Wednesday or Thursday by the House Intelligence Committee as part of its Russia probe.

“I have nothing to hide. I didn’t collude or cooperate or coordinate with any Russian, Russian agency, Russian government or anybody else, to try and impact this election,” Lewandowski says he plans to tell the House panel.

Daily Caller is right — it’s odd that Mueller hasn’t interviewed Lewandowski, given that he had these critically timed interactions with George Papadopoulos.

April 27: Papadopoulos to Corey Lewandowski

“to discuss Russia’s interest in hosting Mr. Trump. Have been receiving a lot of calls over the last month about Putin wanting to host him and the team when the time is right.”

April 27: Papadopoulos authored speech that he tells Timofeev is “the signal to meet”

[snip]

May 4, Papadopoulos to Lewandowski (forwarding Timofeev email):

“What do you think? Is this something we want to move forward with?”

May 14, Papadopoulos to Lewandowski:

“Russian govemment[] ha[s] also relayed to me that they are interested in hostingMr. Trump.”

[snip]

June 19: Papadopoulos to Lewandowski

“New message from Russia”: “The Russian ministry of foreign affairs messaged and said that if Mr. Trump is unable to make it to Russia, if a campaign rep (me or someone else) can make it for meetings? I am willing to make the trip off the record if it’s in the interest of Mr. Trump and the campaign to meet specific people.”

The decision to call two key Trump people whom Mueller hasn’t met happens in the wake of events that haven’t gotten sufficient attention. On January 3, Rod Rosenstein and Christopher Wray met with Paul Ryan to request that he limit the documents Nunes had requested from FBI. Ryan backed Nunes, which led Rosenstein and Wray to agree to show a bunch of highly sensitive documents to HPSCI investigators, as well as agree to interviews with the FBI and DOJ people who had either touched the Steele dossier or been witnesses to Jim Comey’s claims that Trump demanded loyalty from him.

At Wednesday’s meeting — initiated at Rosenstein’s request — Rosenstein and Wray tried to gauge where they stood with the House speaker in light of the looming potential contempt of Congress showdown and Nunes’ outstanding subpoena demands, sources said. CNN is told the discussion did not involve details of the separate Russia investigation being led by special counsel Robert Mueller.

While Ryan had already been in contact with Rosenstein for months about the dispute over documents, Rosenstein and Wray wanted to make one last effort to persuade him to support their position. The documents in dispute were mostly FBI investigative documents that are considered law enforcement sensitive and are rarely released or shared outside the bureau.

During the meeting, however, it became clear that Ryan wasn’t moved and the officials wouldn’t have his support if they proceeded to resist Nunes’ remaining highly classified requests, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the meeting.

Sources also told CNN that the Justice Department and the FBI also had learned recently that the White House wasn’t going to assert executive privilege or otherwise intervene to try to stop Nunes.

The focus on all the reporting has been on the dossier; indeed, one of CNN’s sources says Mueller’s investigation didn’t come up. It’s not clear that makes sense, given the implication that Trump might claim executive privilege over something being discussed, unless the privilege claim pertained to the two-page summary of the dossier given to him and Obama.

Moreover, the letter memorializing what Nunes forced Rosenstein and Wray to give up suggests the discussion involved all “investigative documents that relate to the Committee’s investigations into (a) Russian involvement in the 2016 Presidential election,” as well as its efforts to find evidence of politicization at DOJ.

As agreed, designated Committee investigators and staff will be provided access to all remaining investigative documents, in unredacted form, for review at DOJ on Friday, January 5, 2018. The documents to be reviewed will include all FBI Form-1023s and all remaining FBI Form FD-302s responsive to the Committee’s August 24, 2017 subpoenas. The only agreed-upon exception pertains to a single FD-302, which, due to national security interests, will be shown separately by Director Wray to myself and my senior investigators during the week of January 8, 2018.

You further confirmed that there are no other extant investigative documents that relate to the Committee’s investigations into (a) Russian involvement in the 2016 Presidential election or (b) other investigatory documents germane to the Committee’s investigations regardless of form and/or title. If, somehow, “new” or “other” responsive documents are discovered, as discussed, you will notify me immediately and allow my senior investigators to review them shortly thereafter.

[snip]

It was further agreed that all documents made available to the Committee will also be available for review by the minority Ranking Member and designated staff.

If that’s right — if the document requests pertain to both the Steele dossier and the Mueller investigation, then on January 5, HPSCI would have been able to determine everyone who had been interviewed and what they had said (which is a good way to ensure that witnesses not cooperate with Mueller). And last week, Nunes, would have been able to review a 302 (the forms FBI uses to report their interviews with witnesses) that, for some reason, was even more sensitive than the FISA orders and confidential human source reports they had reviewed the previous Friday. From his language, it’s not clear whether Adam Schiff would have been included in that review.

Last Wednesday, Wray and Rosenstein gave briefings to Adam Schiff, reportedly by himself, and Richard Burr and Mark Warner together. If Schiff wasn’t included in the review of that 302, then that may explain what the briefing pertained to.

Just last month, Nunes was digging in and refusing to let Democrats call obvious witnesses. So the news that HPSCI will interview two key Trump people with whom Mueller has not yet met makes it clear — if it wasn’t already — that Nunes is trying to identify everything that Mueller might learn, so that he can then give Trump a clean bill of health and insist the entire investigation was just a political stunt drummed up from the Steele dossier (which is what Paul Manafort seems to have recommended last year).

And as all these machinations have gone on, Trump has vacillated about whether or not he’ll submit to an interview with Mueller. Perhaps Nunes has told him that the one thing that might make Mueller’s case is either a confirmation or denial from the President whether he knew or attended that June 9 meeting?

Congress is passing a continuing resolution with an extension of Section 702 today, giving Congress one month to figure out how it will reauthorize the surveillance program.

But the Intelligence Community is making one more bid to talk Congress into passing some bill today. The same Intelligence Community that has opposed bills that offer even lip service reforms — most notably the House Judiciary Committee bill — insist that anything else than a new authorization will make the country less safe.

Reauthorizing Section 702 before it expires is vital to keeping the nation safe. Let us be clear: if Congress fails to act, vital intelligence collection on international terrorists and other foreign adversaries will be lost. The country will be less secure.

And (again, from an IC that has refused to engage with the HJC bill) the IC wants its reauthorization now, without the short term extension, because short term extension don’t provide certainty.

We also believe it is important that Congress reauthorize Section 702 before it expires on December 31, 2017.  Although the current Section 702 certifications do not expire until April 2018, the Intelligence Community would need to start winding down its Section 702 program well in advance of that date.  Winding down such a valuable program would force agencies to divert resources away from addressing foreign threats. Short-term extensions are not the long-term answer either, as they fail to provide certainty, and will create needless and wasteful operational complications. We urge Congress, therefore, to act quickly to reauthorize Section 702 in a manner that preserves the effectiveness of this critical national security law before it expires.

Where the release gets truly inexcusable, however, is how they flip their demand that this reauthorization codify certain dubious practices and not limit other ones. Congress is not required to make changes, the spooks say, without telling you that even the SSCI bill makes at least one reform, and most of the bills on the floor today make more serious ones. Those are the bills the IC prevented from passing.

To be clear – Congress is not required to make any changes to Section 702. The Intelligence Community conducts and uses 702 collection in a manner that protects the privacy and civil liberties of individuals.

The spooks pretend, as they have before, that the Ninth Circuit approved back door searches, which it didn’t.

Every single court that has reviewed Section 702 and queries of its data has found it to be constitutional.

They then take their emphasis on the word targeting a step further than normal to avoid telling you that their “targeted surveillance” of location-obscuring servers like Tor and VPNs actually collects on US persons, and the “oversight’ of that collection allows entirely domestic communications collected via such “targeted” collection to be used in criminal cases.

The Intelligence Community’s use of Section 702, which permits targeted surveillance only of foreign persons located outside the United States, is subject to extensive oversight and incorporates substantial protections to protect the privacy and civil liberties of individuals.

Here, the spooks don’t acknowledge how much has changed in between the various passage of these bills.

In short, we believe Congress got it right in 2008 when it passed Section 702 and in 2012 when Congress reauthorized it.

Consider: if the 702 on the table today were 702 as it existed in 2008, Congress would pass it gladly. That’s because no backdoor searches were permitted (though FBI was already doing them), to say nothing of the 2014 exception that permits the collection of US person location-obscured communications. And upstream “about” collection wasn’t affirmatively permitted either.

In other words, if Congress could have Section 702 as it passed in 2008, it’d be a vast improvement from a privacy perspective than the program as it exists right now (and also wouldn’t include a counterproliferation certificate or approval to target cybersecurity targets).

Note, too, the spooks don’t admit that most of Congress didn’t know about backdoor and other kinds of US person searches in 2012.

All that said, even after saying that Congress had it right in 2008, the spooks return to the coded demands that Congress not do a single thing to limit the spying on Americans that has gotten added to the program since 2008.

Nevertheless, the Intelligence Community continues to be open to reasonable reforms to Section 702 to further enhance the already-substantial privacy protections contained in the law, but we simply cannot support legislation that would impede the operational efficacy of this vital authority.

There were many “reasonable reforms to … further enhance the already-substantial privacy protections contained in the law.” Those were the bills the IC refused to let pass, which is why we’re here on one of the last legislative days of the year, punting this legislation for a month.

I’m a bit bemused by the response to DOJ’s release of the texts between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. As Rod Rosenstein testified before HJC yesterday, the release came after notice to Strzok and Page through their lawyers. The release of the texts came with the approval of DOJ IG Michael Horowitz — who says the investigation into the underlying conduct may last through spring. And Rosenstein strongly implied he wanted them released, taking responsibility for it (while claiming not to know whether Jeff Sessions had a role in their release).

As he explained to Trey Gowdy — who, like a number of Republicans, claimed to be at a loss of what to say to constituents who asked “what in the hell is going on with DOJ and the FBI” — the release of the texts proves that any wrongdoing will be met with consequences.

Gowdy: What happens when people who are supposed to cure the conflict of interest have even greater conflicts of interests than those they replace? That’s not a rhetorical question. Neither you nor I nor anyone else would ever sit Peter Strzok on a jury, we wouldn’t have him objectively dispassionately investigate anything, knowing what we now know. Why didn’t we know it ahead of time, and my last question, my final question — and I appreciate the Chairman’s patience — how would you help me answer that question when I go back to South Carolina this weekend?

Rosenstein: Congressman, first of all, with regard to the Special Counsel, Mr. Strzok was already working on the investigation when the Special Counsel was appointed. The appointment I made was of Robert Mueller. So what I’d recommend you tell your constituents is that Robert Mueller and Rod Rosenstein and Chris Wray are accountable and that we will ensure that no bias is reflected in any actions taken by the Special Counsel or any matter within the jurisdiction of the Department of Justice. When we have evidence of any inappropriate conduct, we’re going to take action on it. And that’s what Mr. Mueller did here as soon as he learned about this issue — he took action — and that’s what I anticipate the rest of our prosecutors, the new group of US Attorneys, our Justice Department appointees. They understand the rules and they understand the responsibility to defend the integrity of the Department. If they find evidence of improper conduct, they’re going to take action.

So Congressman, that’s the best assurance I can give you. But actually, there’s one other point, which is you should tell your constituents that we exposed this issue because we’re ensuring that the Inspector General conducts a thorough and effective investigation, and if there is any evidence of impropriety, he’s going to surface it and report about it publicly.

I actually think Rosenstein did a much better job than others apparently do, yesterday, at distinguishing between the Strzok texts (which apparently were on DOJ issued cell phones and, in spite of having Hillary investigation subject lines may not have been logged into Sentinel) and the political views of Andrew Weissmann or the past representation of Jeannie Rhee. Furthermore, he repeatedly said he would only fire Mueller for cause, and made it clear there had been no cause. Several times he talked about how closely he has worked with Mueller, such as on the scope of what gets included in his investigation (even while defending the charges against Manafort as appropriately included).

That said, I wonder how Rosenstein distinguishes, in his own mind, what he did in approving the release of the texts from an ongoing investigation and what Jim Comey did on July 5, 2016, when he gave a press conference about why Hillary Clinton had not been charged. While Rosenstein’s biggest complaint in his letter supporting the firing of Comey was that he substituted his decision for that of prosecutors, he also argued that the Department shouldn’t release derogatory information gratuitously.

Compounding the error, the Director ignored another longstanding principle: we do not hold press conferences to release derogatory information about the subject of a declined criminal investigation. Derogatory information sometimes is disclosed in the course of criminal investigations and prosecutions, but we never release it gratuitously. The Director laid out his version of the facts for the news media as if it were a closing argument, but without a trial. It is a textbook example of what federal prosecutors and agents are taught not to do.

In response to skeptical question at a congressional hearing, the Director defended his remarks by saying that his “goal was to say what is true. What did we do, what did we find, what do we think about it.” But the goal of a federal criminal investigation is not to announce our thoughts at a press conference. The goal is to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to justify a federal criminal prosecution, then allow a federal prosecutor who exercises authority delegated by the Attorney General to make a prosecutorial decision, and then – if prosecution is warranted – let the judge and jury determine the facts. We sometimes release information about closed investigations in appropriate ways, but the FBI does not do it sua sponte.

In some ways this is worse because of the off chance that Inspector General Michael Horowitz finds that these texts don’t merit some kind of response; the investigation is not finished yet.

That said, I actually do think there’s a difference: Strzok and Page are department employees, rather than subjects of an external investigation. DOJ exercises awesome power, and usually DOJ is releasing the texts of private citizens in this kind of embarrassing way.

Even former clearance holders seem surprised that these texts were discovered. It is unbelievable to me how few people understand the great liberty that counterintelligence investigators like Strzok can have in obtaining the communications of investigative targets like he has now become, particularly during leak or insider threat investigations. That may not be a good thing, but it is what other targets have been subjected to. So I think it reasonable to have FBI’s own subject to the same scrutiny, for better and worse.

I do think it worthwhile for DOJ to show that it will hold people accountable for improper actions.

Plus, aside from one August comment — which we may obtain more context on when Horowitz does finish this investigation — about an “insurance” policy against Trump, the texts simply aren’t that damning (though they do raise questions about Strzok’s role in the investigation). Strzok agrees with Rex Tillerson, after all, that Trump is an idiot.

So as far as that goes, I’m actually okay with Rosenstein’s release of these texts.

Except I worry about something else.

I actually worry less about Mueller getting fired than just about every other Trump opponent on the planet. Rosenstein seems intent to let him do his work, and (notably at several times during the hearing) seems to agree with the gravity of the investigation. Trump can’t get to Mueller without taking out Rosenstein (and Rachel Brand). And I actually think Rosenstein has thus far balanced the position of a Republican protecting a Republican from Republican ire fairly well. I expect the next shoes Mueller drops — whenever that happens — will change the tone dramatically.

What bothers me most about the release of these texts, however, is that they are a response to the same pressure that Comey was responding to (and which he thought he was smart enough to manage, just as Rosenstein surely thinks he can handle it here).

They are a response — from the same people who ran the Benghazi investigation then ignored DOJ’s prosecution of the Benghazi mastermind — to a willingness to challenge the very core of DOJ functionality, all in a bid to politicize it.

Perhaps Rosenstein is right to bide his time — to create space for Mueller to drop the next few shoes — with the release of the Strzok texts.

But at some point, Republicans need to start calling out Republicans for the damage they’re doing to rule of law with this constant playing of the refs, this demand for proof that Democrats aren’t getting some advantage through the rule of law. If those next shoes don’t have the effect I imagine, it may be too late.

Former FBI Special Agent Asha Rangappa has a defense of back door searches at Just Security that (unlike most defenses of 702) actually takes on those searches as practiced in most problematic way at FBI, rather than as done in much more controlled fashion at NSA.

FBI does federated searches

I think she nitpicks a few issues. For example, she claims that back door opponents claim there is a “stand-alone computer in the middle of each FBI office with a big sign that reads ‘702 DATABASE ‘” but then goes on to claim “FBI uses one database for all of its investigative functions,” even while admitting that the FBI really does “federated queries” of multiple repositories. The distinction — particularly given that we know the database comes with access limits tied to job function — could offer solutions to concerns about 702 data (including providing access to just metadata, a proposal I’m not a fan of but one she attacks in the post). She also ignores the FBI’s use of “ad hoc databases” that have posed access and data protection concerns in the past.  Which is to say, the technical realities of how FBI Agents access this data soup are more complex than she lays out, and those complexities should be part of the discussion because they present additional risks and opportunities.

FBI’s raw data will be US-person focused

Rangappa minimizes what percentage of raw data obtained by FBI would include US person contact.

According to FBI Director Christopher Wray, the FBI receives about 4.3 percent of the NSA’s total collection – and since not every incidental communication will necessarily involve an USPER, the number of communications involving Americans are likely less than that.

While the FBI does have global investigations, the FBI is going to have few full investigations that have no domestic component. Investigations focused on US victims (say a US company hacked by Russian or Chinese state actors) won’t include many US interlocutors, but the other most likely 702 related investigations would all be focused on international communications: who suspected extremists were talking to in the US, what Iranians were buying dual use or other proliferation products, including from US companies, which Americans that Chinese scientists or Russian businessmen were engaging with closely. The 5,000 or so targets sucked into FBI would be the 5,000 targets in most frequent contact with Americans, by design. That has been the entire justification for this collection program since its inception as Stellar Wind.

And — as Ron Wyden recently made clear — it is permissible to target a foreigner if collecting on a US person is one purpose of the targeting, so long as the foreigner is targetable in his own right. Indeed, we can probably point to examples where that happened. That’s going to increase the US content pulled in with those 5,000 targets.

702 can target a whole bunch of selectors

And I believe this is misleading.

PRISM allows the NSA to target non-U.S. persons reasonably believed to be located abroad based on “selectors” – like an email address or a phone number (but not keywords or names) – which will reasonably return foreign intelligence information.

It is true that upstream collection doesn’t use keywords (and has halted about collection altogether). It is true that the most common selector provided in a directive to Google will be an email address. But there are a slew of other kinds of selectors that NSA and FBI can target. That includes IP addresses, which given the 2014 exception means entirely domestic communications can be collected. Even ignoring the targeting of IP addresses that Americans are known to also use (which will come into FBI’s possession a different way), the collection on chat room IPs, just as one example, might suck up a lot more US person content than individual emails might. And the FBI can also search for things like cookies or encryption tools, which will pull in different kinds of content.

FBI’s queries are not all routinely audited

I think Rangappa overstates the tracking of queries and makes an outright error when she claims that backdoor searches are “routinely audited.”

Every query, furthermore, is documented and placed in a case file. (If we learned anything from James Comey, it’s that the FBI puts everything down on paper.) In fact, every query conducted by the FBI is recorded and must be traceable back to an authorized purpose and a case file.  Agent queries are routinely audited, and a failure of an agent to provide an authorized purpose for conducting a query can be grounds for sanctions, suspension, or even termination.

She overstates the tracking of queries because by design there’s not a case file for many of the queries in question, because they’re done at the assessment stage. Moreover, if the FBI tracked its queries as well as Rangappa claims, it could provide documentation of what was going on to oversight bodies, but it has persistently claimed it could not do so, not in public, and not even in private.

More importantly, the FBI’s use of 702 is simply not audited adequately. That’s true, in part, because in 2012-2013, FBI moved much of its FISA activity to field offices, and not every field office gets audited every six months.

During this reporting period, however, FBI transitioned much of its dissemination from FBI Headquarters to FBI field offices. NSD is conducting oversight reviews of FBI field offices use of these disseminations, but because every field office is not reviewed every six months, NSD no longer has comprehensive numbers on the number of disseminations of United States person information made by FBI.

In 2015 — the most recent period for which we’ve gotten a Semiannual Report — NSD only reviewed minimization at 15 field offices (and ODNI did not attend all of these).

During these field office reviews, NSD also audits a sample of FBI personnel queries in systems that contain unminimized Section 702 collection. As detailed in the attachments to the Attorney General’s Section 707 Report, NSD conducted minimization reviews at 15 FBI field offices during this reporting period and reviewed cases involving Section 702-tasked facilities.

FBI has 56 field offices. And while I’m confident that NSD focuses its 702 reviews on the offices that work with FISA most often — places like DC, NY, LA, SF, and places with significant foreign population, like Detroit and Minneapolis — that means that when a field office that doesn’t use FISA often (say, if an Agent in Milwaukee were researching a hacker named MalwareTech), a combination of inexperience and lax oversight might be especially likely to result in problems.  And note, in any office, just a sample of queries gets reviewed, as the government explained to FISC last year, and the tracking isn’t detailed enough to figure out what occurred with a query without talking to the Agent who did it.

Additionally, NSD conducts minimization reviews in multiple FBI field offices each year. As part of these minimization reviews, NSD and FBI National Security Law Branch have emphasized the above requirements and processes during field office training. Further, during the minimization reviews, NSD audits a sample of queries performed by FBI personnel in the databases storing raw FISA-acquired information, including raw section 702-acquired information. Since December 2015, NSD has reviewed these queries to determine if any such queries were conducted solely for the purpose of retaining evidence of a crime. If such a query was conducted, NSD would seek additional information from the relevant FBI personnel as to whether FBI personnel received and reviewed section 702-acquired information of or concerning a U.S. person in response to such a query.

Notably, the one case where FBI reported a criminal return on a criminal search in 702 information only got reported after NSD did follow-up questioning. So yeah, NSD spends 4 days at Main Justice reviewing this stuff and goes to 27% of the field offices every six months, but that’s a far cry from “routinely auditing” queries.

The importance of investigative levels

The most remarkable thing about Rangappa’s post, however, is how well she exhibits the absurdity of what really goes on here. She correctly states — as I reported here — that FBI only obtains 702 content in full investigations. And she provides a short description of FBI’s three investigative levels.

Specifically, the NSA passes on to the FBI information collected on selectors associated with “Full Investigations” opened by the FBI. Full Investigations are the most serious class of investigations within the Bureau, and require the most stringent predicate to open: There must be an “articulable factual basis” that a federal crime has occurred or is occurring or a threat to national security exists.  (Two other investigative classifications, Preliminary Investigations and Threat Assessments, have lower thresholds to open and shorter time limits to remain open.)

She helpfully describes how investigations work through stages, with new investigative methods approved for each

Querying DIVS is, quite literally, the first and most basic thing the FBI does in its investigative sequence. Depending on the kind of information the search returns, an agent will then take the next prescribed step as outlined in the FBI’s Domestic and Investigative Operations Guide (DIOG) until a case is either opened for further investigation, or the matter is resolved in the negative and closed.

She then dismisses the concern that FBI does queries of 702 data at the assessment level without really addressing it.

Much of the criticism of the FBI’s use of 702 centers around the fact that agents can query subjects in their databases even if there is no evidence of criminal wrongdoing. However, as any law enforcement official will tell you, criminals and spies don’t show up on the doorstep of law enforcement with all of their evidence and motives neatly tied up in a bow. Cases begin with leads, tips, or new information obtained in the course of other cases. Often, the discrete pieces of information the FBI receives may not in and of themselves constitute criminal acts – and the identifying information provided to the FBI may be incomplete. However, anytime the FBI receives a credible piece of information that could indicate a potential violation of the law or a threat to national security, it has a legal duty determine whether a basis for further investigation exists. It is for this reason that a query of its existing databases is essential before proceeding further.

Somehow, the necessity of investigating a tip requires not an assessment of the lead itself, but querying a vast data store to see if the lead connects to any other known evidence even if that evidence is not itself evidence of criminal behavior. (One of the reasons FBI does that — which I’ve written about elsewhere — is to make it easier to find informants.)

That logic — which absolutely reflects the logic under which FBI operates — is all the more bizarre given the fact that the FBI is obliged, under the same DIOG Rangappa cites as the basis for the step-by-step development of an FBI case, to always consider using the “least intrusive” means as laid out by this language in the Attorney General Guidelines.

The conduct of investigations and other activities authorized by these Guidelines may present choices between the use of different investigative methods that are each operationally sound and effective, but that are more or less intrusive, considering such factors as the effect on the privacy and civil liberties of individuals and potential damage to reputation. The least intrusive method feasible is to be used in such situations.

DIOG section 4.4, which lays out what least intrusive means, says that “wiretaps … are very intrusive.” It says that “collecting information regarding an isolated event, such as a certain phone number called … is less intrusive or invasive of an individual’s privacy than collecting a complete communications … profile.” It states that, “If, for example, the threat is remote, the individual’s involvement is speculative, and the probability of obtaining probative information is low, intrusive methods may not be justified, and, in fact, may do more harm than good.”

Ultimately, though, the DIOG swallows all these rules by stating that, “FBI employees may use any lawful method allowed, even if intrusive, where the intrusiveness is warranted by the threat to the national security.” The logic must be — probably not born out even by FBI’s limitation to obtaining raw 702 data tied to Full Investigations — that for any person tied to a Full Investigation, any possible tie to an American about whom someone has submitted a tip, national security overrides all FBI’s rules about least intrusive methods.

But nonetheless, the FBI’s own guidelines admit how intrusive it is to start an investigation by looking at entire conversations rather than simply seeing the record of a email sent. That is, however, what the routine practice is.

As I have noted, thus far the surveillance boosters’ favored approach to Section 702 reauthorization has been to engage in ad hominem attacks against people engaging in good faith in the legislative process (even while they, themselves, make what would most charitably be called significant errors). Even when people make a concerted effort to avoid such sloppy attacks — as FBI Director Christopher Wray did at a recent appearance — they still accuse others of believing in myths while ignoring their own myth-making.

But now Richard Burr and the spooks he caters to are adopting another approach: legislating in secret.

The SSCI is reportedly moving to mark up their own version of Section 702 reauthorization this week — a bill crafted by Senators Burr, Warner, Feinstein, and Cornyn. The make-up of the team is key: because Cornyn and Feinstein are also on Senate Judiciary, they can sink any alternate bill that moves through that committee (something Feinstein has been doing since at least 2009).

As Wyden says in a letter objecting to the secret mark-up,

Section 702 has been the subject of extensive public testimony, while relevant FISA Court orders, minimization procedures and other documents have been declassified and released to the public. In this context, the public is right to expect that Congress debate the reauthorization of this authority in the open. Indeed, a transparent legislative process is a fundamental hallmark of our democracy.

A bunch of NGOs have also called on Burr to make this mark-up public.

There are several likely reasons why Burr and the spooks want to craft their legislation in secret.

Perhaps most importantly, by holding a closed session, you delay by about a month and a half what happened in the session, what the cleared Senators debated, and the tactical means the Chair (in this case Burr) used to shut down reform suggestions. That’s what happened in 2012, when Feinstein delayed the release of the bill report for about that long, hiding details about Ron Wyden’s attempt to get a count of US persons affected by 702 (see these three posts — one, two, three — for details, though Wyden did manage to call Feinstein out for lying about FISC always finding the collection to be constitutional).

Indeed, I’d bet a lot of money that one reason Burr wants to have a secret mark-up is to the very same thing Feinstein did four years ago: hide the government’s lies about their alleged inability to do a count of how many Americans get sucked up as part of 702, and how.

But the other reason Burr and the spooks likely want to have a mark-up in secret is precisely because of the transparency won since 2013, they don’t have winning arguments anymore. While courts, because of the secrecy reviewing cases without any adversarial process and often not getting a full picture of how 702 works, have found 702 itself constitutional (though the Ninth Circuit largely dodged the question of back door searches), as more and more people understand how it works (and as white men watching the Mike Flynn case come to understand how fragile life can get for those picked up incidentally), the program seems problematic.

And even those who believe 702 in its current form serves an irreplaceable role in our surveillance system can see the need for no-nonsense reforms, such as requiring an amicus help review yearly reauthorization.

In other words, by hiding this mark-up, Burr is conceding that he can’t win this legislative battle democratically. He, and the spooks, have to cheat. And they’re willing to do so, to codify parts of this program that likely wouldn’t pass court review if done in a real adversarial process.

We are at a critical tipping point with surveillance in this country, as the government chips away at the technologies that allow individuals to retain some kind of privacy. And to ensure we slide over that tipping point and down the dangerous slope on the other side, a bunch of spooks and their servants are cowering from democracy.

A few weeks ago, I laid out how the Keith Gartenlaub case made child pornography foreign intelligence information. I showed how the FBI moved back and forth from a criminal to a FISA to a criminal warrant, only to try to use evidence of child pornography to get Gartenlaub to flip on his Chinese in-laws regarding suspected spying.

In this post, I want to lay out circumstantial evidence that Section 702 was used in the case — probably to spy on communications of Gartenlaub’s Chinese in-laws as well as his communications with them. This is circumstantial, but important, particularly given FBI Director Christopher Wray’s claims last Friday that 702 doesn’t include child pornography and has only been used in counterterrorism cases.

FBI cites his communications on PRISM providers to obtain warrant for domestic records from those providers

The first reason to believe FBI used Section 702 with Gartenlaub is that the first warrant affidavit in the case, used to obtain his and his wife’s Yahoo and Google account data, looks like typical parallel construction. It provides a means to get the content from specific PRISM providers based in large part on the use of those providers to communicate with people in China.

The GARTENLAUB SUBJECT ACCOUNT, [email protected], is used by Keith Gartenlaub at work and at home based on information provided by Boeing regarding the use of his Boeing issued laptop computer . Information obtained from a court-authorized pen register and trap and trace device shows that he is in contact with a China based email account using a Shanghai IP address seven times since March 2013. The GARTENLAUB SUBJECT ACCOUNT is also used to communicate with his wife, as reflected in the results of a pen register and trap and trace device. Emails are also forwarded from Gartenlaub‘s Boeing e-mail account to the GARTENLAUB SUBJECT ACCOUNT, evidence of which exists on the results of the data pen and trap and trace device.

Given that this was a spying case, the Chinese interlocutors would have been solid Section 702 targets. Though, remarkably, nowhere in the unclassified legal documents does the government do anything more than cite him saying his wife’s family was “well connected” to explain who those suspected spying recruiters were.

Gartenlaub stated he never had to worry about his security while traveling in China because his wife’s family is “well connected.” Gartenlaub did not elaborate on what connections she has.

To get the later (or earlier!) FISA order, the FBI would have had to detail who in China he was talking about. And to get that they likely would have used 702.

The mysterious absence of Skype in evidence

In addition to Google and Yahoo, the affidavit asking for Google and Yahoo content also described his most frequent communications with people in China taking place on Skype.

I have also reviewed the records provided by Skype for the account subscribed to Keith Gartenlaub. Those records showed that in the period ‘of April 2011 to March 2013, the account contacted other accounts based in China approximately once every three days, on average. (Gartenlaub was interviewed on February 7 , 8, and 22, 2013). After Gartenlaub was contacted by the FBI to set up an interview, the Skype account subscribed to Gartenlaub contacted accounts based in China approximately three times per day 1 on average.

[snip]

His contact with Chinese-based Skype accounts spiked as soon as he was contacted by the FBI about the C– 17 investigation;

But not only does the affidavit not ask for a warrant for Skype (as part of Microsoft, a PRISM provider), as best I can tell no Skype data ever got introduced at trial.

In other words, a key reason they suspected Gartenlaub — his discussions with elites in China — never made it into the case in chief.

Which may be how they avoided giving him his legally mandated 702 notice.

The timing of the Section 702 NCMEC change

Then there’s the most obvious reason to think that Gartenlaub’s prosecution implicates Section 702: the coincidence between the the change in Section 702’s minimization procedures, as it pertains to sharing with the Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and the date of his arrest.

The government changed the standard minimization procedures for individualized FISA orders on August 11, 2014. Then, citing back to this earlier change, FISC approved an equivalent change in the Section 702 minimization procedures on August 26, 2014. The next day, the government arrested Gartenlaub. Particularly given how long they had had the child porn from the January 2014 search, it seems likely they waited until all relevant authorities included NCMEC permission before arresting him based off information that clearly relied on FISA information, if not earlier 702 information.

Mind you, the change in the 702 minimization procedures would only be necessary to cover Gartenlaub’s case if the government had found some evidence of the child porn before the FISA search. I can’t think of any way they could have done that unless they found him sharing porn with targeted people in China. That shouldn’t be possible — not according to regular targeting rules, anyway.

Still, the timing does make me think the government wanted both sets of minimization procedures available in time for the arrest.

Whatever the case, given how easily the government could have targeted Gartenlaub’s in-laws, and given the PRISM providers implicated (both in the known discovery and the missing Skype communications), I think it highly likely the government used Section 702 as part of this case.

Even if they didn’t provide notice.