The "Political Party #2" that shall not be named

Byron York: "FISA warrant application supports Nunes memo."  For me, the critical question is whether the FISA judges knew the Steele dossier was basically opposition research.  Here's York:

Thus, the FISA application could easily have explained that the dossier research was paid for by "Candidate #2" and "Political Party #2," meaning the Democrats. And yet the FBI chose to describe the situation this way, in a footnote: "Source #1...was approached by an identified U.S. person, who indicated to Source #1 that a U.S.-based law firm had hired the identified U.S. person to conduct research regarding Candidate #1's ties to Russia...The identified U.S. person hired Source #1 to conduct this research. The identified U.S. person never advised Source #1 as to the motivation behind the research into Candidate #1's ties to Russia. The FBI speculates that the identified U.S. person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit Candidate #1's campaign."

Democrats argue that the FISA Court judges should have been able to figure out, from that obscure description, that the DNC and Clinton campaign paid for the dossier. That seems a pretty weak argument, but in any case, the Nunes memo's statement that the FISA application did not disclose or reference the role of the DNC and the Clinton campaign is undeniably true.

This was the basis for three separate renewals of the Carter Page FISA warrant that led to not the hint of a charge against Page.  No wonder they buried it with inscrutable writing in a footnote.