Carter Page; the canary that didn't die

The phrase "a canary in a coal mine" come from the use of canaries, which are very sensitive to atmospheric pollutants, as sensors to warn coal miners of the build up of toxic gases while they still had time to escape.

Carter Page was the canary in the whole Russian collusion attempted coup.

The dishonest FBI/DOJ repeatedly told a FISA judge that they had verified intelligence that Page was either currently or imminently going to commit crimes at the behest of his Russian masters.

We know they were being dishonest since after having the full power of the US Intelligence Community(IC) focused on him for ages Mueller didn't find anything to indict Page on. Which means that the FBI/DOJ lied when they certified to the FISA judge that they had compelling evidence to justify treating a US citizen as a foreign agent.

To see just how absurd the FBI/DOJ were remember that in 2013 Carter Page actually acted as an informant and helped the FBI to capture real Russian spies.  We've never seen anything to indicate that some magical event occurred in the interim to turn Page from a patriotic American who helped throw Russian spies in to jail into a traitor; the FBI/DOJ's claim.

Sharyl Attkisson has a great article that covers all the reasons that the FBI/DOJ's claims about Pager were ridiculous.

It's now clear that the FBI/DOJ lied about Page in order to use the IC to collect political intelligence about the Trump campaign in order to help Hillary win the election.  That's why Democrat political appointees in the Obama administration unmasked so many US citizens.

When the IC collects data that includes US citizens the identity of those citizens is masked, i.e. US Citizen 17, because the Constitution prohibits warrantless searches.  This applies for example to a US citizen whose phone call to an ISIS agent overseas is monitored.  Unmasking should occur only when there is credible reason to believe that there is a need to know just who that citizen is.

There was no need for Democrat political appointees in the Obama administration to know which Americans Carter Page was talking to especially since we now know that Mueller didn't find any collusion so there would have been no evidence to support unmasking.

The fact that Page wasn't indicted is an example of a canary that didn't die; i.e. proof that no matter what details show up in the Mueller report there was no Russian collusion and that the motives of the FBI/DOJ weren't to protect America but to protect Hillary.

One last thing. When the FBI found a questionable member of the McCain campaign they informed McCain and the issue was resolved.  But the FBI never talked to Trump or his campaign about Page being a possible threat.  Clearly their intent from the get go wasn't to neutralize a potential threat but to take down Trump by any means necessary.