Sally Yates testified before a Senate committee on May 8, 2017. (Credit: Andrew Harrer/Getty Images)
“Another unredacted footnote pertained to the FISA signoff by then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, noting that her approval provided the requisite authorization required under Executive Order 12333, Section 2.5, which requires that the attorney general “has determined in each case that there is probable cause to believe that the technique is directed against a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power.” The unredacted footnote, number 293, reads:
“Her signature also specifically authorized overseas surveillance of Carter Page under Section 705(b) of the FISA and Executive Order 12333 Section 2.5”
During congressional testimony on Aug. 31, 2018, Trisha Anderson, the principal deputy general counsel for the FBI and head of the bureau’s National Security and Cyber Law Branch, highlighted the unusual nature of the Page FISA application process and the unusual roles of McCabe and Yates, who provided approvals of the Page FISA before regular FBI and DOJ approvals had been obtained:
“There were individuals, all the way up to the Deputy Director and the Deputy Attorney General on the DOJ side, who had essentially given their approval to the FISA before it got to that step in the process. That part of it was unusual, and so I didn’t consider my review at that point in the process to be substantive in nature,” Anderson told congressional investigators.
A major problem with the issuance of the Page FISA was that information had been provided to the FBI indicating that Page had previously worked with or on behalf of another agency, likely the CIA. That information, if provided to the Office of Intelligence (OI) or the FISA court, would have made it significantly more difficult for the FBI to claim that Page was “an agent of a foreign power.” (Read more: The Epoch Times, 4/16/2020) (Archive)