On February 16, 2019, Lawfare posted the first episode of the Culper Partners Rule of Law Series. Hosts David Kris and Nate Jones interviewed Senior Judge John Bates. The episode page identifies him as a former FISC judge and former FISC presiding judge (2009–2013).
The Washington Examiner quoted Bates from that conversation: “I will note and note with some force that I have seen nothing that indicates that the court was misled, that the Department of Justice or the intelligence community made misrepresentations to the court.” He added, in the same Examiner extract, that he had “heard nothing that persuasively makes that case.” Lawfare editor Benjamin Wittes posted the same sentences to X the same weekend, pointing at the episode.
Bates was not on FISC when the four Page applications were filed. He said he had seen no evidence of misrepresentation. That is his public statement, recorded on a linked podcast and reprinted by the Examiner. It is not the December 9, 2019, Inspector General review, which later described significant inaccuracies and omissions in those applications. Do not collapse the podcast into the OIG report. Do not invent that Bates recanted on the record in a later cited primary.