The Unlikely Martyrdom of Carter Page

The meta-fight over releasing a memo prepared by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee has at times obscured what exactly is in the memo, but its contents are slowly starting to come into view.

A New York Times story Monday provides one crucial element. According to that report, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein signed off on an application for a warrant to surveil Carter Page, a former Trump campaign foreign-policy adviser, that was based on information gathered by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer who was paid in part by the Democratic National Committee. But when the Justice Department requested (and was granted) the warrant, the memo contends, it did not inform the judge of the source of the information underpinning the warrant.

The claim here is as complicated and convoluted as it sounds. The underlying theory seems to be this: If the warrant was obtained based on Steele’s own research and other.”