The Justice Department published the FBI's applications to spy on Carter Page

The Department of Justice on Saturday made public the FBI's applications for warrants to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in connection to Russian election interference.
The 412-page release says the FBI "believe[d] Page has been the subject of targeted recruitment by the Russian government ... to undermine and influence the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election in violation of U.S. criminal law." Page denies such accusations and has not been charged. "I'm having trouble finding any small bit of this document that rises above complete ignorance and/or insanity," he told The Hill.
The heavily redacted applications were made to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, also known as the FISA court, and were published thanks to information requests from media outlets and advocacy groups like the conservative Judicial Watch.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
The warrants obtained from this application were the subject of dueling memos released by the Democratic and Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee earlier this year. The memo from Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) alleged these FISA applications were illicitly based on the Steele dossier, which was created with funding from a Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer, not telling the court the information's source. A counter-memo released by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said the dossier was only narrowly used in the surveillance application, with proper identification of its political provenance.
Read Saturday's publication here.
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
-
5 museum-grade cartoons about Trump's Smithsonian purge
Cartoons Artists take on institutional rebranding, exhibit interpretation, and more
-
Settling the West Bank: a death knell for a Palestine state?
In the Spotlight The reality on the ground is that the annexation of the West Bank is all but a done deal
-
Crossword: August 23, 2025
The Week's daily crossword puzzle
-
Florida erases rainbow crosswalk at Pulse nightclub
Speed Read The colorful crosswalk was outside the former LGBTQ nightclub where 49 people were killed in a 2016 shooting
-
Trump says Smithsonian too focused on slavery's ills
Speed Read The president would prefer the museum to highlight 'success,' 'brightness' and 'the future'
-
Trump to host Kennedy Honors for Kiss, Stallone
Speed Read Actor Sylvester Stallone and the glam-rock band Kiss were among those named as this year's inductees
-
White House seeks to bend Smithsonian to Trump's view
Speed Read The Smithsonian Institution's 21 museums are under review to ensure their content aligns with the president's interpretation of American history
-
Charlamagne Tha God irks Trump with Epstein talk
Speed Read The radio host said the Jeffrey Epstein scandal could help 'traditional conservatives' take back the Republican Party
-
CBS cancels Colbert's 'Late Show'
Speed Read 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert' is ending next year
-
Shakespeare not an absent spouse, study proposes
speed read A letter fragment suggests that the Shakespeares lived together all along, says scholar Matthew Steggle
-
New Mexico to investigate death of Gene Hackman, wife
speed read The Oscar-winning actor and his wife Betsy Arakawa were found dead in their home with no signs of foul play