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Since Trump is twitterin' this morning about the Carter Page FISA materials the NYT and others obtained yesterday via FOIA litigation, here are some takeaway observations about the documents /1 
Many of these observations were in my article last night which is here, but I'll convert them into bullet points for Twitter /2 nytimes.com/2018/07/21/us/…
The importance of seeing these docs is that the public can judge for itself whether Devin Nunes and HPSCI Republicans were telling the truth in February when attacking the FBI and Russia investigation on Trump's behalf; Dems said they were mischaracterizing the docs and lying. /3
One issue was whether the FISA Court was given enough information about the funding of the Steele dossier to understand that it was campaign opposition research, even if Steele had been a neutral source in the past, in order to decide how much weight to give it. /4
Speficially, the Nunes Memo said the docs fail to "disclose or reference the role of the DNC, Clinton campaign, or any party/campaign in funding Steele’s efforts, even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior DOJ and FBI officials." /5
The Dem rebuttal said the court *was* told that the person who hired Steele was politically motivated. We can see that is the truth: the court was clearly told why Steele was looking into Trump-Russia ties. /6
Part of the complaint is that the court should have been told it was DNC/Clinton campaign, by name, that funded Steele. We see that the practice of FISA applications is to bend over backwards not to name Americans. Here's a renewal "masking" Trump's identity, for example. /7
Another big part of the fight was the Nunes Memo's suggestion that the FBI included a Sept. 2016 Yahoo News article as false corroboration of Steele info -- we now know that Steele was actually a source for that article. /8
Specifically, the Nunes Memo underlined with emphasis: "This article does not corroborate the Steele dossier because it is derived from information leaked by Steele himself to Yahoo News." /9
Democrats in February said that was misleading because the purpose of including the article was instead to tell the court that Page had denied the allegations about his meetings in the July 2016 Moscow trip. And that is indeed how the application presents that material: /10
We also learned the identities of the judges who approved the wiretaps. All were appointed by GOP presidents. (That's not surprising since Chief Justice Roberts, who decides who sits on the FISA Court, has a history of stacking it w/ GOP appointees nytimes.com/2013/07/26/us/…) /11
Finally, each renewal application grew by a significant # of pages. Bc of heavy redactions we can't know why for sure, but that dovetails with chatter that the renewals (by Trump-era DOJ), to justify extensions, included discussion of useful info the wiretaps had gathered. /12
Some say the Steele dossier was the sole basis of the application. That's false. There are redacted pages of other facts + we can see it cited info from a prior investigation into Russian spies who sought to recruit Americans. (They targeted Page nytimes.com/2017/04/04/us/… )/13
