Carter Page was wise early on to the partisans using him to get President Donald Trump, because Hillary Clinton lawyer, donor, and bitter partisan Jeannie Rhee, an attorney for the special counsel, had it written all over her face.
"The first time I ever met Jeannie Rhee, I saw her in the courthouse hallway outside my grand jury room," reads a New York Post excerpt of Page's new book to be release Tuesday: "Abuse and Power: How an Innocent American Was Framed in an Attempted Coup Against the President."
"I politely introduced myself, 'Hello, I'm Carter Page.' Rather than identify herself, she angrily scowled and pointed a finger toward my holding pen area. Like a cold prison warden she barked orders . . . I was starting to get the picture of how the day was likely to go down."
Page is the CIA informant who was surveilled through error-laden FBI FISA warrants to gain access to the Trump campaign, and the Post excerpt details his day before the special counsel Robert Mueller grand jury.
"I struggled to comprehend: One of the financial funders who contributed cash to the Democratic organizations which launched this whole domestic political-intelligence operation is also among the same people now effectively leading this official US government interrogation against me?" Page's excerpt continued, per the Post.
"Such Democrat campaign donations were the same fuel that paid for the DNC-funded consultant Christopher Steele's infamous Dodgy Dossier. The fact that such individuals had now found a way to perpetrate this vindictive harassment against their political adversaries in their official roles as U.S. government prosecutors seemed to defy common sense and common decency."
Page's book goes on to detail how Rhee was apparently aware of the poor look of partisanship, writing sticky notes to another junior prosecutor to ask the questions she was frustratingly trying to get him to ask in the way she wanted.
"I started to wonder: If there's something she wants to know, why doesn't she just go ahead and ask all of these foolish questions herself?" Page's excerpt read, per the Post.
"I eventually figured out the likely reason for her methods," he continued. "Similar to many courthouse forums, the Democrat prosecutors were sitting next to a court reporter who kept record of who said what throughout the day. Certainly it would be a bad look if some independent-minded attorney sitting somewhere in the Justice Department noted that the stenographer had transcribed records showing Jeannie Rhee was the one asking all the highly aggressive and blatantly political gotcha questions.
"She clearly intended to trip me up but didn't want to be the one doing so on the official record."
Page is the "source" that was changed to "not a source" by FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith, another Clinton email probe veteran serving on the special counsel's team. Clinesmith pleaded guilty to knowingly making a false statement to get the FISA warrant to continue the Page surveillance in Operation: Crossfire Hurricane, The Washington Post reported:
"At the time, I believed the information I was providing in the email was accurate, but I am agreeing the information I inserted was not originally there and I inserted the information," Clinesmith, 38, told the judge in delivering his guilty plea, per The Washington Post.
"You agree you intentionally altered the email to include information not originally in the email?" the judge asked.
"Yes, your honor," Clinesmith responded.
Legal experts suggested Clinesmith's plea might be a precursor to cooperation with special prosecutor John Durham's investigation into the origins of the Russia election meddling probe.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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