It’s a dead giveaway.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., would consider it punishment were her city saddled with more undocumented migrants while they await their court hearings.

The thrust of a Washington Post report on Friday, citing anonymous Department of Homeland Security “officials,” was that the White House had asked Immigration and Customs Enforcement about unloading illegal immigrants detained at the border in places proudly known as “sanctuary cities.”

Pelosi’s office said the suggestion exposed the administration’s “cynicism and cruelty” in “using human beings … as pawns in their warped game to perpetuate fear and demonize immigrants…”

The whole point of sanctuary cities, from the standpoint of their lawmakers, is that illegal immigrants need a safe place to evade deportation. Illegal entrants and asylum seekers, after all, are only here to pursue a better life for themselves and their families (and all the better if Democrats can load them up on welfare).

Why, then, would a city like San Francisco, which lies in Pelosi’s district, not leap at the chance to bring in more of their well-meaning friends?

Outside of providing more beds, free healthcare, and free child services, courtesy of the American taxpayer, Democrats in Congress have shown no interest in doing anything about the hundreds of thousands of migrants making their way to the U.S. from Central America.

Wouldn’t these well-meaning foreigners be best served in cities like New York, Boston, and Seattle, where local authorities refuse to comply with federal agents in deporting illegal aliens?

The Post’s story never really demonstrates that the intent of the White House was to “retaliate against President Trump’s political adversaries,” as the article puts it. It cites unnamed sources who claim that was the purpose but, even though the story’s authors, Rachel Bade and Nick Miroff, said they reviewed “email messages,” the one email by a White House official in the report is completely innocuous.

“The idea has been raised by 1-2 principals that, if we are unable to build sufficient temporary housing, that caravan members be bussed to small- and mid-sized sanctuary cities,” White House deputy policy coordinator May Davis said in an email dated Nov. 16, according to the report. “There is NOT a White House decision on this.”

That’s it. That’s the one supposedly damning email sent by someone from the White House included in the Post’s story.

Acting Deputy Director of ICE Matthew Albence replied to the email, suggesting that transporting aliens long distances from the border would be yet another strain on the agency and that there were liability concerns if anyone were hurt during the trip. In a statement to the Post, Albence denied that he was ever “pressured by anyone at the White House on the issue” and that he was merely “asked my opinion” and that his advice was heeded. A statement from the White House said effectively the same thing.

Yet, even if the proposal was crafted as a politically cynical move, it doesn’t explain why Democrats wouldn’t eagerly invite more illegals or undocumented asylum seekers into the districts and cities that are supposed to be the most welcoming. Pelosi had said herself Thursday, “Of course there’s room and there’s a need” for more immigrants showing up at the border.

Okay, but not in San Francisco!

Carter Page, the former Trump campaign adviser who was suspected by the FBI of being a Russian spy, has written a foreword to an e-book version of the Mueller report, calling it “propaganda” and comparing his time in front of the Mueller grand jury to being at Guantanamo Bay.

Written in hyperbolic terms, Page compares the 448-page report put together by special counsel Robert Mueller, and lightly redacted by Attorney General William Barr, to the propaganda pushed by some of modern history’s worst dictators. And he blasts what he sees as a politically motivated “witch hunt” targeting himself and President Trump.

Venting his frustrations, Page wrote: “In Italy, Mussolini had his autobiography. In Libya, Gadhafi widely distributed his Green Book both to the masses, in the national media and even with featured quotes on billboards throughout the country. Iraq’s tyrannical Saddam Hussein wrote a series of novellas.” Benito Mussolini, Moammar Gadhafi, Saddam Hussein — and, according to Page, Robert Mueller.

Page, 47, claims that, if anything, the Mueller report is even worse: “Most of the prior historical propaganda endeavors are modest when compared to DOJ’s two-volume work which was created by a handful of despots in Washington.”

Mueller’s report concluded that although the Russians interfered in the 2016 election through cyberattacks and social media disinformation campaigns, there was no criminal collusion between the Russians and the Trump campaign — or any other American. Nearly half of Mueller’s report, however, was dedicated to leaving the door open to claims of obstruction of justice.

Page wrote that investigators were working on behalf of the Democratic Party during the 2016 election, and that the Mueller report is the end result, calling it “a shameful conglomeration of propaganda meant to sow further discord in the minds of Americans against their fellow citizens.”

In Mueller’s report, grand jury testimony is largely redacted. In a podcast interview with the Washington Examiner’s Byron York, Page was asked about this largely secret aspect of Mueller’s investigation: “I was wondering if you could give us a little preview of what it was like in the grand jury during your time with Mueller?”

Page said, “Basically it’s like Guantanamo Bay detention camp in a lot of ways, right? But I actually would’ve enjoyed being in Gitmo more than what I went through with these people, you know, in terms of the intense interrogation and strong arm tactics there.”

Page echoed these comments in his book foreword: “In comparison, a government-funded vacation down at Gitmo in the Caribbean might have seemed almost luxurious and relaxing.”

In his report, Mueller wrote that “the investigation did not establish that Page coordinated with the Russian government in its efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.” But Mueller draw attention to the fact that “Page advocated pro-Russia foreign policy positions and traveled to Moscow in his personal capacity” while associated with the Trump campaign.

It stated that “Russian intelligence officials had formed relationships with Page in 2008 and 2013 and Russian officials may have focused on Page in 2016 because of his affiliation with the campaign.”

Page contends that the investigation into him stems in its entirety from the “dodgy dossier,” in which he figured prominently. He claims that “sore losers tried to disrupt [Trump’s] presidential transition, then his presidency, by concocting an elaborate hoax based on a dossier funded by the DNC and fabricated by former Russian intelligence operatives.”

The so-called Trump dossier was written by Christopher Steele, a British ex-spy who was paid for his research by Fusion GPS, an opposition research firm that was funded in part by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee through the Perkins Coie law firm. The dossier was used extensively in applications presented before the FISA court to justify warrants against at least one Trump associate — Page.

Its explosive and unverified claims have increasingly come under greater scrutiny, as the Mueller report failed to present evidence for the dossier’s central allegations and as reports have emerged that FBI investigators knew that the dossier was problematic — and perhaps even based upon Russian disinformation — for well over a year.

In March 2018, DOJ’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz announced the launch of the FISA abuse investigation after requests from both then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Republican members in Congress. The lawmakers claimed the Justice Department and FBI had abused the FISA process and misled the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, or FISC, in their investigation and surveillance of Trump and his associates during the campaign, as well as during the Trump administration.

The inspector general stated it would “review information that was known to the DOJ and the FBI at the time the applications were filed from or about an alleged FBI confidential source. Additionally, the OIG will review the DOJ’s and FBI’s relationship and communications with the alleged source as they relate to the FISC applications.” This “alleged FBI confidential source” is Christopher Steele.

And the inspector general’s office also said it would “examine the Justice Department’s and the FBI’s compliance with legal requirements, and with applicable DOJ and FBI policies and procedures, in applications filed with the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court relating to a certain U.S. person.” That “certain U.S. person” is Carter Page.

Barr has said that the DOJ inspector general report could be finished as early as May.