Officials at the FBI and the Department of Justice had a fierce debate about the FISA application to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in 2016 over "possible bias" in claims that he was a Russian asset, according to a new report.
Fox News obtained text messages between FBI officials that showed there likely were discussions about the claim made by former British spy Christopher Steele, whose dossier on President Donald Trump made scandalous but unverified claims about the real estate mogul who won the 2016 presidential election and others in his inner circle.
The text messages between then-FBI lawyer Lisa Page and Andrew McCabe, the FBI's deputy director at the time, indicated that there were concerns about information regarding Carter Page, information that potentially came from Steele.
"OI [Office of Intelligence] now has a robust explanation re any possible bias of the chs [confidential human source] in the package," Lisa Page wrote to McCabe on Oct. 12, 2016. "Don't know what the holdup is now, other than Stu's continued concerns."
According to Fox, "Stu" likely referred to Stuart Evans, who at the time was the deputy assistant attorney general for the National Security Division at the Department of Justice.
Another message between the pair included a vulgar reference to South Carolina Republican Trey Gowdy, who at the time was serving in the House.
The FBI surveilled several people connected to the Trump campaign starting in 2016, and in May 2017 the DOJ kicked off a special counsel probe looking at whether the campaign worked with the Russians to defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton in the election. President Donald Trump has long proclaimed his innocence, saying there was no collusion between the two parties.
Special counsel Robert Mueller, a former director of the FBI, has yet to release any evidence that shows collusion may have occurred. Mueller's probe is ongoing, although a report this week speculated that it could wrap up soon without any additional indictments.
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