Bill Barr just made a bizarre play involving Donald Trump and Carter Page

| 8:00 pm EST January 23, 2020
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Now that Donald Trump’s impeachment trial is underway, he’s in need of a distraction. And now that Attorney General Bill Barr’s recent DOJ Inspector General report gambit failed to help Trump at all, Barr is under more pressure than ever to come through for Trump. This has all led up to a bizarre move by Barr today, involving Carter Page of all people.

Bill Barr just had his Department of Justice declare, out of nowhere, that two of the four FISA warrants against Carter Page were improper. Given the timing, it’s quite clear that regardless of how legitimate or illegitimate these FISA applications may have been, Barr is suddenly doing this because he thinks it helps Donald Trump. After all, Page was a Trump 2016 campaign adviser, and so this helps further Trump’s longtime assertion that the United States government was somehow “spying” on his 2016 campaign.

Carter Page will be thrilled, because he’s long argued that the FISA warrants against him were improper. Donald Trump will also be thrilled, because he thinks this announcement somehow helps his chances in 2020. Trump’s base will hold up this announcement as “proof” that the Deep State was plotting against Trump all along. But Trump’s base is already planning to vote for him in 2020 anyway. Outside of Trump’s base, literally not a single person in the entire country will care one bit about today’s announcement.

But that part doesn’t matter. Donald Trump is deeply lost in a haze of conspiratorial nonsense to be aware that “the FBI spied on my campaign” is a narrative that will gain him zero new votes. Further, because this nonsense is being announced during the impeachment trial, it won’t get nearly the headlines that it could have otherwise gotten; it’ll be completely forgotten by the end of the weekend. But Barr isn’t actually trying to help Trump here; he’s trying to help himself by giving the increasingly addled Trump precisely the kind of pointless stunt that Trump thinks will help his 2020 chances.