Peter Strzok, an FBI agent who called Donald Trump an "idiot" and rooted against him in 2016, was nevertheless reluctant to join the investigation of possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russians who sought to influence the presidential election. Strzok, who was removed from the probe after his anti-Trump comments came to light, expressed his qualms in a May 19 text message to FBI lawyer Lisa Page, his girlfriend at the time: "I hesitate in part because of my gut sense and concern there's no big 'there' there."

It is looking more and more like Strzok's gut was right. The FBI's surveillance of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, which Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee criticize in a memo that was declassified last week, shows investigators putting a lot of time and effort into a line of inquiry that apparently led nowhere.

Given the low legal bar for wiretapping suspected foreign agents, it seems likely that the FBI could have obtained permission to wiretap Page even without the evidence that the memo portrays as questionable and tainted by partisan bias. But that does not mean the bureau's investigation of Page, an oil industry consultant known for his pro-Russian views, was fruitful.

The FBI questioned Page in 2013 about his encounter with a Russian intelligence agent (who he apparently did not realize was a spy) and reportedly monitored his conversations in 2014. In October 2016, after press coverage of Page's chumminess with the Russian government led him to part ways with the Trump campaign, the FBI obtained a new warrant, which lasted 90 days and was renewed three times, meaning he was under FBI surveillance for a full year.

Despite all this interest in Page, a peripheral figure in the Trump campaign who served as a foreign policy adviser for half a year, he was never charged with a crime.