Trisha Anderson: Andy McCabe and Sally Yates Read The FISA Application "Line By Line"

Gregg Jarrett at Fox News has a new article up, just over an hour ago: Testimony in Russia probe shows FBI and Justice Department misconduct in effort to hurt Trump. This appears to be another in a series of leaks of testimony given by FBI and DoJ officials before the House Intelligence Committee, going back to when Republicans were still in control. Jarrett leads with this:

Newly revealed testimony by a former top FBI counterintelligence lawyer shows that former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe examined “line-by-line” the faulty warrant applications to spy on Trump presidential campaign adviser Carter Page.

The former to FBI lawyer in question is Trisha Beth Anderson, an Eric Holder protege. She was working at Holder's firm, Covington & Burling, and was recruited for DoJ. The Covington web page provides this summary of Anderson's stint with the Federal government before returning to Covington:

Ms. Anderson rejoined the firm after over a decade of service in the federal government. She held senior positions at the Department of Justice and the Department of the Treasury. Most recently she served as Principal Deputy General Counsel at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where she handled complex and sensitive matters relating to national security and cyber intrusions. 

Previous Experience 

• Federal Bureau of Investigation, Principal Deputy General Counsel
• U.S. Treasury Department, Assistant General Counsel for Enforcement & Intelligence
• U.S. Department of Justice, Associate Deputy Attorney General; Attorney-Adviser at the Office of Legal Counsel  

Obviously these were all sensitive positions. Principal Deputy General Counsel at the FBI means she was the principal deputy to James Baker, currently leaking to the NYT and under criminal investigation for other leaks as well. Since she handled "complex and sensitive matters relating to national security and cyber intrusions" she would very likely have been knowledgeable about such "cyber intrusions" as the potential intrusions into Hillary Clinton's illegal home brewed email server as well as the DNC "hack."


A press release dated 9/18/18 provides a somewhat fuller account:

Trisha B. Anderson, an experienced national security and cybersecurity lawyer who has held senior positions at multiple federal agencies, has rejoined Covington as a partner in Washington. Ms. Anderson most recently served as Principal Deputy General Counsel of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where she handled complex national security and cyber legal issues. 

Ms. Anderson’s practice will focus on a range of national security and government enforcement matters, including surveillance and law enforcement compliance and litigation, cybersecurity and data privacy, economic sanctions, and CFIUS, with a particular emphasis on clients in the information technology, communications, and financial services industries.  

Ms. Anderson brings more than a decade of high-level government experience. From 2007 to 2014, she held a number of senior positions at the Department of Justice, including Attorney-Adviser in the Office of Legal Counsel and Associate Deputy Attorney General. In 2014, Ms. Anderson moved to the Treasury Department where she served as Assistant General Counsel for Enforcement & Intelligence, overseeing the legal support to the agency’s national security functions. She joined the FBI’s Office of the General Counsel in 2015. Prior to her time in government, Ms. Anderson was an associate at Covington.

So, what did this lawyer with "more than a decade of high-level government experience" have to tell the House about her time in the top echelons of the FBI, during the 2016 Presidential campaign and its aftermath, when so much was happening? It may be helpful to first recall what we discussed in The FBI: Working Hand In Glove With Clinton Operatives, helpfully summarized by Jarrett:

Newly revealed testimony by a former top FBI counterintelligence lawyer shows that former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe examined “line-by-line” the faulty warrant applications to spy on Trump presidential campaign adviser Carter Page. 

...

Even though the applications to spy on Page were deficient and deceptive, Yates and McCabe affixed their signatures to at least one of the four warrant applications. They then submitted the applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and obtained warrants to wiretap Page, who worked briefly on a foreign policy board advising presidential candidate Donald Trump in 2016. 

The bulk of the information contained in those applications was based on an anti-Trump “dossier” that was not verified and was funded by Trump’s opponents – the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign and Democrats. 

It’s of critical importance that this vital information was deliberately concealed from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. 

... 

And on top of this, the judges on the court were never advised that the author of the “dossier” – ex-British spy Christopher Steele – had expressed severe bias against Trump and may have had a motive to lie. 

Specifically, the judges were not told that Steele had confided to Justice Department official Bruce Ohr that he “was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president.”

With that in mind, here's the portion of Anderson's testimony that was leaked to Jarrett:

“The sensitivity level of this particular FISA resulted in lots of very high level attention both within the FBI and DOJ. The general counsel (Baker) … personally reviewed and made edits to the FISA, for example. The deputy director (McCabe) was involved in reviewing the FISA line-by-line. The Deputy Attorney General (Yates) over on the DOJ side of the street was similarly involved, as I understood, reviewing the FISA application line-by-line.” 

“I would not say that this was a circumstance where there was any deference given to Jim Baker. In other words, when Andy McCabe looked at it, certainly when Sally Yates looked at it, I don’t believe they were simply relying on the judgment of Jim Baker having reviewed the application,” Anderson said. “My understanding and my impression at the time was that they very much gave it their own de novo independent review and that, you know, it was very carefully reviewed by those individuals.”

(Parenthetically, I hope I'm not the only reader who read this and was amused to recall Rod Rosenstein's testimony that he basically just flipped through the application when it was his turn to review it, rather than submitting it to a "line by line" "de novo review" as Yates did. Different personal style of lawyering, or was Rod maybe pulling the Committee's collective leg a bit? Haha! Rosenstein Testifies He Doesn’t Need to Read FISA Applications He Signs)

Anyway, as Principal Deputy to James Baker, Anderson was obviously in a position to know all about the FISA process, specifically with regard to the Carter Page FISA. Unfortunately, these leaks are highly selective, so we have no way of knowing how deeply the House questioners probed. Here are some of the issues that come to my mind.

As we learned from Ohr's testimony, Ohr claims to have gone directly to Andy McCabe with the Steele material--Lisa Page also being present. Ohr claims that from then on he dealt with lower officials at the FBI as well as at DoJ. He was adamant that he warned McCabe and Page that Steele--his good friend--might be a highly biased source. So, when it came time--only about two months later--to write up the FISA application on Carter Page, did McCabe mention this important caveat regarding material that McCabe later testified was "crucial" to obtaining the FISA? Did McCabe mention this caveat to any of these people who worked on the application? Baker, Anderson, Yates? Ohr says he didn't mention any of this to Yates, but did McCabe mention it--and Ohr's role--to Yates? In my considered opinion McCabe or perhaps Comey would have been remiss if they hadn't done so. Moreover, if I were in Ohr's position I would have wanted to be in the right with my superior, Yates. Moreover, how could he know that McCabe or Comey wouldn't mention his name to Yates, like: Hey, Sally, your deputy is turning out to be a great source for us! Sally would not have been happy to have learned about this from the FBI rather than from Ohr. Something doesn't add up here, on way or the other.

Another matter of interest to me is this: Did Ohr and Anderson ever discuss the whole Russia Hoax, in any aspect? We know that Lisa Page, who appears from her texts to have been on good terms with Anderson, had worked for several years with Ohr, and that she attended at least one meeting with Ohr and Steele. We also now know that during the years from 2007 to 2014 when Anderson occupied "a number of senior positions at the Department of Justice" Ohr was also rising into senior positions. And since they both worked in broadly national security areas, it would surprise me if they weren't acquainted. There appears to have been a relatively small group of people "in the know" regarding the Russia Hoax. It seems to me more likely than not that they would have been largely aware of one another's involvement, at least in a general way as persons to be trusted.

All of this also goes to Lisa Page's interesting statement, which I flagged recently. Page appeared to be genuinely puzzled that political appointees at DoJ appeared to know about the ongoing Russia Hoax, despite the fact that to the best of her knowledge they had never been briefed into it by the FBI. As I pointed out, that surely points to a separate line of communication at levels above Page's need to know, which would have been very high:

Page: “I do know that at least John Carlin, for example, who is a political appointee, was kept abreast of the sort of investigative activity that was going on. And the only reason I know this is because when there was conflicts between us and DOJ, John might call over to—John Carlin might call over to Andy McCabe, and sort of make his team’s pitch, and then Andy would, you know, sort of the back-and-forth would go on. So it is clear that John had, was getting some sort of briefing, but he was not, it was, it never occurred by the FBI, which is, in my view, atypical.”

Finally, one other point of interest.

The testimony of another FBI lawyer, Sally Moyer, has also been partially leaked: Investigators had '50/50' chance of securing FISA warrant for Trump aide without dossier: testimony. Take it with a grain of salt. Or compare it to McCabe's testimony that the dossier was "crucial."