Good news everyone!

The Carter Page FISA warrant controversy over the basis for wiretapping him and to what extent it was relying on the Steele Dossier has finally been laid to rest.
Judicial Watch's FOIA request has come through and produced this fucking marvel:
https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/95-carter-page-fisa-documents-foia-release/full/optimized.pdf

You really need to read between the black bars on that one.

To give you an example:

The FISA warrant topic has been of particular interest to me. At first, I thought there were some pretty glaring faults committed in the process the FBI went about obtaining a FISA warrant on Carter Page and its subsequent renewals.

However, upon further research, it appears as if it's extremely easy to to get a FISA warrant and demonstrate probable cause to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Based on historical data, 99.7% of requests are accepted.

This seems problematic to me. How did the FBI define probable cause on 4 separate applications (1 initial, 3 renewals) despite never charging Page with any crime in the end? The FISC appears to be a secret, non-adversarial system of judicial review.

To me, this seems more like an issue with the FISC and the lax nature of obtaining a FISA warrant in general rather than one particular incident where protocol was not followed; the FISC has been operating like this for decades.

well yes, but what makes this different is that it was used in a highly politically charged way.
The FISC has long been a rubber stamp mock court where civil liberties go to die, but it was never weaponized for political battles. The lack of meaningful safeguards and rampant surveillance abuse has been a recurring theme whether its the NSA or FBI or CIA, nothing new there. But as I've posted a million times over, any FBI agents who were even considering wiretapping the top figures of a political party and presidential campaign would be very aware of how dangerous and volatile that is. Its like if you suspect the Queen of England is a carrying a bomb and you want to look up her knickers to take a peek- in any sensible world, you'd better have ironclad reasons before you take that peek. The burden of evidence shouldn't just be where they pretend it is with the FISC court approval process, but far exceed that due to the political toxicity.

In this case, the warrant here proves what the republicans alleged: The basis for the wiretap on Carter Page was indeed the Steele Dossier. Its laid out on Pages 16-17 with Steele as "Source #1".
And as you pointed out, we've seen no evidence that Carter Page has done anything wrong since then. He was never charged, and Muellers latest indictments poo-poo over the very allegations this old FISA warrant made based on the steele dossier, because there's no evidence or allegation of any knowing collusion between americans and russia boogeymen. But just the exoneration after the fact isn't enough to say the original warrants were wrong, what matters is whether they could have held probable cause back in october 2016.
And frankly, the Steele Dossier was never credible, never should have been imagined as credible given its bogus sources and genesis, and basic fact-checking like on the "Michael Cohen in Prague" story would have debunked it. And that FBI agents could knowingly take on such an incredibly politically charged case as spying on a presidential campaign while using oppo from the opposing campaign as their source, cannot be dismissed as mere negligence or lack of restraint. That's where Strzok & pals being anti-Trump partisans comes into play.

Rupert Murdoch predates Vietnam, he is a Demi Lich.

What about the other twenty media liberal drooling media organizations?

In my country Murdoch owns 80 percent of news related media.

So... not America

It appears to me that political foul-play in the wire-tapping of Page is multi-faceted.

First, the political nature of the generation of the Steele Dossier, which was Trump opposition research first funded by Conservatives and then by Democrats.

Second, in the use of the Dossier as probable cause in the initial FISA warrant application and subsequent renewals.

All of this seems pretty consistent with the fallout we've observed in the FBI over the past year: OIG report on Comey, Strzok testimony, OIG report on McCabe. Insubordination and politics run amok.

This leads me to two questions: Do you think we would still have a Special Counsel on Russian interference if not for Dossier or Page wiretap? For the folks of the Trump campaign facing potential legal consequences, is there any argument that potential evidence was illegally obtained?

dismiss all of it...hoax...criminals have been caught for the the most part

1. Didn't rosenstein say the Steele Dossier had little to nothing to do with FISA warrant application?

2. John McCain gave a copy of the dossier to Comey so if you were to believe there was malicious intent there you would also have to believe John McCain is "deep state" too which i believe is nonsense.