December 16, 2019

Carter Page Has Nothing To Do With Impeachment

Ukraine is the big pink country on this map. This is what the articles of impeachment are about.

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Just to make sure everyone knows this: The Trump impeachment is about Ukrainegate. It’s about the fact that Donald Trump tried to extort the president of Ukraine into announcing an investigation of a political opponent, which is an obvious and flagrant abuse of power.

It has nothing to do with Carter Page. Even if you believe that the FBI horribly mishandled its FISA request to surveil Page, that was an issue only in the FBI’s investigation of Trump’s ties to Russia. Ditto for the “Nunes memo,” which was all about Page. Neither of these things matters right now.

Everyone knows this, right? The investigator general’s report about the FISA warrants for Page ought to spur some changes in how FISA warrants are handled, but it has no bearing on impeachment. Which is all about Ukraine.

Right? We all get this, don’t we?

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THE BIG PICTURE

You expect the big picture, and it's our job at Mother Jones to give it to you. And right now, so many of the troubles we face are the making not of a virus, but of the quest for profit, political or economic (and not just from the man in the White House who could have offered leadership and comfort but instead gave us bleach).

In "News Is Just Like Waste Management," we unpack what the coronavirus crisis has meant for journalism, including Mother Jones’, and how we can rise to the challenge. If you're able to, this is a critical moment to support our nonprofit journalism with a donation: We've scoured our budget and made the cuts we can without impairing our mission, and we hope to raise $400,000 from our community of online readers to help keep our big reporting projects going because this extraordinary pandemic-plus-election year is no time to pull back.

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