by Chuck Ross
The Justice Department attorney who signed the four surveillance warrant applications against Carter Page says they would not have done had they known of the information withheld by the FBI, according to a letter sent to the Senate this month.
Sen. Lindsey Graham read portions of the letter at the beginning of a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing with former FBI Director James Comey on Wednesday.
The attorney, who works in the Justice Department’s Office of Intelligence (OI), is not identified in the letter. The attorney signed all four of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants granted against Page.
Stephen Boyd, the assistant attorney general for legislative affairs, sent the document to Graham on Sept. 16.
“The OI attorney advises that had he/she been aware of the significant errors and omissions identified by the OIG and the errors in the Woods process, he/she would not have signed the filed Page FISA applications,” reads the letter, obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.
A Justice Department inspector general’s (IG) report said that the FBI made 17 “significant” errors and omissions in applications to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants against Carter Page.
The IG report said that FBI investigators withheld evidence that undermined the credibility of the Steele dossier, which the bureau cited extensively in its FISA applications.
Comey signed FISA applications granted against Page in October 2016 and January 2017.
Two other signees — former Deputy Attorney Generals Rod Rosenstein and Sally Yates — previously testified that they would not have signed the FISA warrants if they had known about the FBI’s omissions at the time.
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Chuck Ross is a reporter for the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Photo “Carter Page” by MSNBC. CC BY 3.0. Background Photo “FISA Court” by AgnosticPreachersKid. CC BY-SA 3.0.
