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Hello and welcome to the Daily Beans for Thursday, August 27, 2020.

We are on vacation. We have two more days left to go. We will be back Monday with you with all of the news and swearing that you could ever possibly want.

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A lot of these interviews are extremely relevant today, so please take a listen and we'll be back Monday to guide you through the final 65 days leading up to this incredibly consequential election.

We'll see you then and enjoy today's show.

In my opinion, the lead story from the weekend has to do with a deliberate unmasking of an anonymous source, the FBI promised to protect. This is from the New York Times.

They say shortly after the Buzzfeed publication of the Steel Dossier in 2017, which we all remember, an expert in Russian politics told the FBI he had been a key source for the Steel Dossier.

The FBI had approached the expert, a man named Igor Danchenko. They did this as they vetted the dossier's claims.

He agreed to tell investigators what he knew with one important caveat that, you know, and this is according to people who are familiar with the matter, his caveat is that the FBI keep his identity a secret so he could protect himself and his sources and his family and friends in Russia.

We know people tend to fall out of the fourth floor windows when their identities are released.

But last week, Barr directed the FBI to declassify a redacted report about its three-day interview of Mr. Danchenko in 2017 and handed over to Senator Lindsey Graham, who then promptly made the summary public while calling the entire Russia investigation corrupt.

We already know that the Steel Dossier had nothing to do with what, you know, the opening of the Russian investigation.

We'll get into that in a minute, but the report was redacted at black, it blacked out Mr. Danchenko's name and other identifying information, but within two days, the post on a newly created blog entitled, I found the primary subsource identified him, citing clues left visible in the FBI document.

A pseudonymist Twitter account created in May then prompted the existence of the blog.

And the next day, RT, that's the Kremlin-owned Russian State Television, English language news propaganda outlet, published an article amplifying Mr. Danchenko's identification.

This outing, of course, and a lot of former law enforcement, current and law, former law enforcement have said that this outing will make it hard for FBI agents to gain the trust of people they need to cooperate in future and unrelated investigations.

And that could be one of the most damaging things about this, if not just the release of the identity of this person itself.

It's important to reiterate that the steel dossier, as I said, played no role in the FBI's opening of the Russian investigation in July 2016.

And Mr. Mueller, Mueller, you know, didn't, for the Mueller investigation, did not rely on it for his report any part of it, as a matter of fact.

But, you know, large chunks of it were used in obtaining a FISA warrant against Carter Page, which is why the Republicans have freaking out about this, even though Mueller didn't bring any charges against Carter Page.

And Carter Page, when those FISA warrants were signed by Rod Rosenstein and Republicans, by the way, those renewals were signed after, as well as the initial FISA warrant after Carter Page had left the campaign.

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