MSNBC's Rachel Maddow ignores FISA abuses during exclusive sit-down with ex-FBI lawyer Lisa Page

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Former FBI attorney Lisa Page sues DOJ, FBI for publishing her text messages

Page says leaking her messages to the press was 'not only wrong, it was illegal'; David Spunt reports from the Justice Department.

MSNBC's liberal star Rachel Maddow scored a major interview with former FBI lawyer Lisa Page and the two of them spoke in defense of the Russia investigation, but the cable news host failed to mention the damning abuses of the highly controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) application process uncovered by Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz.

During the lengthy sit-down, Page defended the foundation of the Russia investigation, which has been scrutinized by President Trump and his supporters ever since former Special Counsel Robert Mueller concluded earlier this year that there was no proof evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election.

"There is no one on this set of facts who has any experience in counterintelligence who would not have made the exact same decision," Page said. "This is a question about whether Russia is working with a United States person to interfere in our election. We were obligated to figure out whether that was true or not and to figure out who might be in a position to provide that assistance."

Maddow asked the former FBI official about the provocative texts she had with her lover, former FBI agent Peter Strzok, that were released by the DOJ, including the so-called "insurance policy" Strzok had noted.

BRENNAN ADMITS 'THERE WERE MISTAKES MADE' IN FISA APPLICATIONS, SUGGESTS FBI WAS 'OVERLY AGGRESSIVE'

"It's an analogy," Page began. "First of all, it's not my text, so I'm sort of interpreting what I believed he meant back three years ago, but we're using an analogy. We're talking about whether or not we should take certain investigative steps or not based on the likelihood that he's going to be president or not."

She continued, "You have to keep in mind... if President Trump doesn't become president, the national-security risk, if there is somebody in his campaign associated with Russia, plummets. You're not so worried about what Russia's doing vis-à-vis a member of his campaign if he's not president because you're not going to have access to classified information, you're not going to have access to sources and methods in our national-security apparatus. So, the 'insurance policy' was an anology. It's like an insurance policy when you're 40. You don't expect to die when you're 40, yet you still have an insurance policy."

Earlier in the interview, Page shed light on her heavy involvement during the Clinton email investigation as the "eyes and ears" of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and how the agency heavily scrutinized everything involved in that sensitive probe. She also revealed that she was one of the officials whom former FBI Director James Comey consulted about his infamous July 2016 announcement about the conclusion of the Clinton investigation.

However, in a stunning omission, Maddow did not mention the 17 significant errors that were made by the FBI when applying for FISA warrants in order to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

Even Maddow's primetime colleague, Chris Hayes, questioned former Obama-era CIA Director John Brennan about the FISA abuses in the previous hour on MSNBC.

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"Well clearly, there were mistakes made based on the inspector general's reports," Brennan said. "I know that a lot of people attribute it to, either to incompetence or politicization. Well, I might just attribute it to, these were FBI agents who were doing their level best to try to prevent Russia interference in the election."

He continued, "They were probably overly aggressive, they didn't pay careful enough attention to some of the details, they may have ignored some aspects of the work that was uncovered, but I think the IG was very clear that politicization did not seem to creep into any aspect of their work, either at the initiation of the investigation or throughout."