Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said he never would have signed off on the fourth and final Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant targeting Trump campaign associate Carter Page if he knew then what he knows now.
Rosenstein, who also appointed special counsel Robert Mueller while overseeing the Russia investigation after then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself, testified in a public session with the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that he was unaware of the serious flaws with the Page FISA process that were uncovered by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz.
Rosenstein replied in the affirmative when Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham pressed him on whether he read Horowitz’s lengthy December 2019 report on the Russia investigation.
“If you knew then what you know now, would you have signed the warrant application?” Graham asked.
Rosenstein replied: “No, I would not.”
Graham, a South Carolina Republican, asked whether “the reason you wouldn’t have is because Mr. Horowitz found that exculpatory information was withheld from the court, is that correct?”
Rosenstein answered: “Among other reasons, yes sir.”
Horowitz’s report criticized the Justice Department and the FBI for at least 17 “significant errors and omissions” related to the FISA warrants against Page in 2016 and 2017 and for the bureau’s reliance on British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s flawed dossier. Steele put his research together at the behest of the opposition research firm Fusion GPS, funded by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee through the Perkins Coie law firm.
Recently declassified footnotes show the FBI was aware that Steele’s subsources disputed the accuracy of his claims and knew that the dossier may have been compromised by Russian disinformation yet used it anyway.
Earlier this year, the Justice Department determined that the final two FISA warrants, including the one signed by Rosenstein, were “invalid.” The FBI told the FISA court it was working to “sequester” all the information obtained through the Page wiretaps, and FBI Director Christopher Wray testified to Congress that he was working to “claw back” information gleaned through the electronic surveillance of Page.
Rosenstein resigned from the Justice Department last spring.
During his initial line of questioning on Tuesday, Graham also referenced former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, whom Horowitz found to have altered a key document in the Page FISA process and was reportedly under criminal investigation by U.S. Attorney John Durham. Asked if that played a role in why he wouldn’t sign off on the Page FISA now, Rosenstein said that was “correct.”
“So there were 17 violations that Mr. Horowitz found, but I can’t stress enough to the country that he found the most egregious of all — the dossier was the only reason the Carter Page warrant was issued to begin with, and in January 2017 the man who provided Steele with all the information told the FBI it was a bunch of garbage, and they used it twice more,” Graham said. “What kind of country is this? What happens to people who do that? Did you know that? You didn’t know that, did you?”
Rosenstein replied, “No sir.”
Graham then pressed Rosenstein on whether former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who took over in an acting role following Director James Comey’s firing, would have known about all the Steele dossier flaws. Rosenstein said he hoped that wasn’t the case but stressed he did not know.
“Did he ever lie to you?” Graham asked of McCabe.
“I don’t believe, senator, that there were any occasions in which I identified that he lied to me,” Rosenstein said.
“Do you believe he was truthful to you?” Graham asked.
“I believe, senator, that Mr. McCabe was not fully candid with me, he certainly wasn’t forthcoming. In particular, senator, with regard to Mr. Comey’s memoranda of his interviews with the president and with regard to the FBI’s suspicions about the president, Mr. McCabe did not reveal those to me for at least a week after he became acting director,” Rosenstein said.
The former deputy director claimed he did not rely only on McCabe’s word when he signed off on the Page FISA.
“I had an understanding of what Mr. McCabe told me, but the document stands for itself,” McCabe said. “It’s a hundred pages, and I relied on what I understood to be in the application.”
