Slashdot Mirror
GOP Memo Criticizing FBI Surveillance is Released (washingtonpost.com)
The controversial four-page memo created by Republican staffers on the House Intelligence Committee alleging abuse of surveillance authority by the Justice Department and FBI has been released Friday after being declassified by the president. The memo is unredacted. (Alternative link for the memo.) The Washington Post: The four-page, newly declassified memo written by the Republican staffers for the House Intelligence Committee said the findings "raise concerns with the legitimacy and legality of certain (Justice Department) and FBI interactions with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) calling it "a troubling breakdown of legal processes established to protect the American people from abuses related to the FISA process."
The memo accuses former officials who approved the surveillance applications -- a group that includes former FBI Director James B. Comey, his former deputy Andrew McCabe, former deputy attorney general Sally Yates and current Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein -- of signing off on court surveillance requests that omitted key facts about the political motivations of the person supplying some of the information, Christopher Steele, a former intelligence officer in Britain. The memo says Steele "was suspended and then terminated as an FBI source for what the FBI defines as the most serious of violations -- an unauthorized disclosure to the media of his relationship with the FBI." The FBI Agents Association on Friday said that agents "have not, and will not, allow partisan politics to distract us from our solemn commitment to our mission." The full statement: The men and women of the FBI put their lives on the line every day in the fight against terrorists and criminals because of their dedication to our country and the Constitution. The American people should know that they continue to be well-served by the world's preeminent law enforcement agency. FBI Special Agents have not, and will not, allow partisan politics to distract us from our solemn commitment to our mission.
The memo accuses former officials who approved the surveillance applications -- a group that includes former FBI Director James B. Comey, his former deputy Andrew McCabe, former deputy attorney general Sally Yates and current Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein -- of signing off on court surveillance requests that omitted key facts about the political motivations of the person supplying some of the information, Christopher Steele, a former intelligence officer in Britain. The memo says Steele "was suspended and then terminated as an FBI source for what the FBI defines as the most serious of violations -- an unauthorized disclosure to the media of his relationship with the FBI." The FBI Agents Association on Friday said that agents "have not, and will not, allow partisan politics to distract us from our solemn commitment to our mission." The full statement: The men and women of the FBI put their lives on the line every day in the fight against terrorists and criminals because of their dedication to our country and the Constitution. The American people should know that they continue to be well-served by the world's preeminent law enforcement agency. FBI Special Agents have not, and will not, allow partisan politics to distract us from our solemn commitment to our mission.
Government website DDOS'd itself... Also, not https Service Unavailable HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable.
The memo's so short, its interesting they choose not to reprint it instead of trying to add their spin to it.
From reading the actual memo, it's clear there's nothing in it that reveals anything detrimental to national security. On the contrary, it reveals top FBI officials acting in a way that is clearly not designed to protect US persons rights.
Hopefully this will be the start of a process leading to some much needed reforms of FISA.
So busted!
I know all these entities think their networks are the hot thing (and spent crazy $ on them), but honestly, consider putting this type of stuff on something cheap like S3 and if you think it'll go really huge cloudfront.
FUD, FUD, FUD, FUD, FUD.
This is a great day for the FISA court system, which has been viciously attacked for decades right here on Slashdot.
Now that there's pretty solid evidence that the DNC basically used the DOJ to lie to the FISA courts as part of its campaign... SUDDENLY FISA IS OK! That's because the abuses were against Trump. Just remember, if it had been against a terrorist or an actual foreign spy, that would have been unconstitutional.
But against Trump? Fuck the constitution the ends always justify the means.
Remember, principles should be sacrificed as long as the end result is reinforcing the narrative that OMG TRUMP RUSSIA is true no matter what.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
The whole world has caught Donald Trump committing treason, colluding with Russia's attack on America, and demonstrating the subservience to Russia after it hacked our election systems and his political opponents.
Whining that you have been caught committing treason is not a winning strategy.
Just yesterday the heads of 3 Russian spy agencies met with the director of the CIA to talk about sanctions.
You know - the guy whose wife got almost $1 million from Hillary! cronies - while he was "investigating" Hillary!'s illegal email server.
Nah, no bias there.
A guy like that would never conceal the political origins of the Steele dossier from the FISA court....
These hero's get rubber stamped warrents allowing them to murder innocent people in their homes after busting down the door.
These bastions of democracy are spying on people in direct convention of the obviously fake news created constitution.
I solute these brave peeping toms and murders for their devotion, and for putting their very lives on the line from behind offices and phones hundreds of miles from where anything remotely dangerous could touch them. Made of steel these ones are for sure.
If only we could give these brave angels some sort of symbol that they could use to help reflect their values towards our society, maybe some kind of tetraskelion, perhaps something egalitarian like black on a red background.
If you want to be an authoritarian despot, the first thing you do is get the military and intelligence people on your side. It seems he's too dumb to figure that out.
Apparently the argument boils down to the fact that the accusations in the Steele dossier were cited as a reason to surveil Page, therefore he shouldn't have been surveilled. But it doesn't say what other reasons were cited. One of them could be "Was spotted taking a stack of cash with the note 'FOR ALL THE COLLUSION' on it from head of the KGB" for all we know.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Now I even miss J. Edger Hoover but realistically, the zombie Hoover would be problematic.
Trump basically incriminating himself
FBI Warns Republican Memo Could Undermine Faith In Massive, Unaccountable Government Secret Agencies
https://politics.theonion.com/...
It's wrong for us to catch a blatant traitor committing treason!
That's the real scandal! Leave that traitor alone!
The only thing he's done wrong is colluding with and then covering up Russia's attack on America, trading sanctions relief for a Russian crime wave in our country which targets his political opponents.
If that's treason, then sign me up to commit obstruction of justice with a transparently false memo, which still rests on the claim that Carter Page, a known Russian agent who has been caught with Russian spies multiple times should not have had a FISA warrant during his treason on behalf of the Trump campaign.
This release was entirely for the purpose of ANNOUNCING a big thing, TEASING a big thing, then DEBATING it as a black box, then acting as if the release was some big lesson of punishment against those that disagree with the administration.
The actual details don't really matter, so much as they constitute an illusion that they have a big argument, and that for their captive audience on their news sources, they are winning on their terms.
And yes, this is very much how despotic regimes have operated for centuries.
I'm always still more than a little confused why anyone actually plays any of the particular roles in these scenarios though - does Devin Nunes think he's actually serving his own self interest in ANY way, given how basically every other person that has served Trump in this way has ended up over time?
I can see why the FBI and Democrat's did not want the memo released. But some of this just confirms what some already were saying. Yes, its very much embarrassing to see what lengths were taken to try and affect the election. But more important is how any evidence Muller has obtained in his investigation that was directly or indirectly obtained through this FISA warrant is now defunct. The warrant was obtained with improper and false information already proven. Talk about collusion, now this stuff is collusion in the biggest way.
Except for an obvious omission, when Mr Steele went to the FBI about his concerns about Trump Russian connections, the FBI said, Yep we know about already.
In other news J. Edgar Hoover probably was a Transvestite...
Your entire case rests on the premise that Carter Page, a known secret agent with a history of being caught with Russian spies should not have had a FISA warrant on him while he committed treason on behalf of the Trump administration.
Good luck with that...
>The Onion
>Democratic
I bet you also think Mad Magazine is some sort of liberal propaganda machine.
McCabe said they couldn't go to the FISA court without Steele's information (in the memo during his Congressional testimony)
They also cites news sources (Yahoo news) writing about Steele's information, so their second source was a news report about their first source. really?
They then renewed the FISA warrant, without additional information (illegal), even after they knew Steele was an unreliable source and was fired for it.
It was renewed AFTER they knew the information was all false.
They LIED to wiretap Trump Tower during an election
Roseinstein signed off on it, the guy who appointed Muller.
I'm not sure how you could destroy the Muller investigation any more unless Muller signed off himself (he wasn't in the FBI at the time).
Not only is this the smoking gun, it couldn't be a worse smoking gun even if the GOP was literally making up what would work for them best.
The FBI used the Fusion GPS Memo, to get a FISA warrant on Carter Page, so they could spy on him and the people around him.
If you don't like the FISA laws, this is your smoking gun of how they are abused.
I think that the Slashdot editors owe all of us readers a big apology, at the very least.
For many months now the Slashdot editors have repeatedly forced one "Russia narrative" submission after another upon us readers.
It was pretty clear from the very beginning of this sad "Russia narrative" ordeal that there was no basis to it, in my opinion.
Now we have this memo which pretty much confirms that this whole "Russia narrative" really is total nonsense.
In my opinion, the Slashdot editors have done a huge disservice to our community here by pushing this nonsensical "Russia narrative" so hard.
Slashdot's community is now more divided than I've ever seen it, and I've been a reader here since the early Malda days.
Additionally, this editor-led emphasis on politics has resulted in the lowest quality submissions and comments I've ever seen at this site. I think it has been worse than even the dark days of the Slashdot Beta debacle.
So I think we, as a community, should be entitled to an apology from the editors for what they've put us through this past year.
Although I doubt it will happen, I also think that all of the current editors should be fired. I know that I will never be able to trust them ever again.
I really hope that this memo helps close what has been perhaps one of the worst, if not the worst, chapter in Slashdot's history.
Perhaps with a new team of editors, who aren't fixated on pushing discredited political agendas, Slashdot could return to being one of the premiere technology/science/math/computing-focused news web sites.
Actually it unmasks the fact that the Democrats organized the wiretapping of presidential candidate (hello, Watergate anyone?) based on unverifiable rumors, including nonsense from /pol about peeing on a bed, that was "corroborated" by information Steele himself leaked to Yahoo News. This is the same pattern everywhere: reporters have "reliable sources" which they keep secret which are all the same source playing smoke and mirrors to appear to provide "corroboration" of the stories they are telling people.
This is what everyone has been saying since before the election, that you can't believe any of the stories citing nothing but anonymous sources. And no, don't take my word for it, read the memo.
I am terribly sorry your crackpot theories are not mainstream.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Republicans are alleging that FISA was abused. If that's true, regardless the reasons or motivations, it only re-affirms what a lot of us were thinking would happen when the warrantless wiretapping program and "unmasking" was made public back in 2005.
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. If you build a giant surveillance machine with limited checks and balances and without regard for the constitution, things like what the memo alleges are eventually going to occur. It's human nature. What's more disturbing than the memo is that BOTH Democrat and Republican lawmakers allowed this sort of surveillance to proceed. There is no place for a FISA (Secret Courts) in a free society.
The Nunes memo revolves around the assertion that Carter Page's collusion with Russia's spy agency should not have been caught by a FISA warrant.
By the time Carter Page was caught committing treason for the Trump campaign, he had already been caught communicating with and offering help to Russian spies in a completely separate spy ring.
In other words, the Trump / Russia collusion is the second time Carter Page has been investigated in connection to Russian spies he was working for.
Interestingly the Russian spies in the first investigation (1 did prison time, 2 fled to Moscow) thought Carter Page was an idiot who craved money. Watch one of his bumbling television appearances where he incriminates himself multiple times while trying to pretend nothing happened. Really quite amazing spectacle, and you have to conclude the Russians are right about this guy...
Both of Devin Nunes' degrees are in agriculture, not law. In other words, he is much more of an expert on bull manure than he is on the laws governing valid probable cause for a warrant!
This shit all started when the Democrats blamed Russia for Seth Rich handing WikiLeaks proof the DNC rigged primaries in favor of Clinton. The only foreign government with troublingly disproportionate influence on our lives is Israel.
Certain congressmen are beginning to realize that Trump himself may be indicted in the upcoming months, so they need to move NOW to stop that if at all possible.
#DeleteChrome
Deny that most of the artists and writers learned the liberal arts at college. I dare you. That's why we need to defund education, there is no reasoning with these people.
No they didn't. Carter Page had been under investigation since 2013. The dossier wasn't even the reason for the warrant.
But when Mr Steele went to the FBI, the FBI said we are already aware of your information, I don't believe Mr. Steele told them anything new, it just confirmed that both entities arrived at similar independent conclusions.
weird troll
The release of this memo is a tremendous own goal for the Republicans. It confirms that the FBI's investigation started with Papadopoulos in June 2016, which completely dismantles the narrative that Republicans have been pushing that everything is based on an illegitimate warrant on Carter Page. And Nunes goes further and admits that he hasn't actually read any of the documents that would show whether the Carter Page warrant was in fact illegitimate in the first place, which proves that the narrative was never based on anything that anyone pushing it actually believed. This is stuff that we all suspected, but I guess it's nice to have it confirmed in print.
Carter Page is the lynch pin that will sink Trump and his children and son in law. This memo is a looky loo to turn real criminal infractions by these people into a partisan football where facts do not matter. The Steele Dossier was merely corroborating information. The FISA application is classified so no one can dispute this memo without leaking classified information, means and methods. Trump is the true heir to P.T Barnum. Mueller's team hasn't said anything. What are they afraid of? Criminals know the crimes they committed.
While political topics shouldn't be the focus of this site, the story addresses government surveillance. The FISA court has been the subject of many stories on this site, so it is actually relevant. There have also been many stories for over a decade about issues with the voting process and electronic voting. This is at least tangentially relevant.
The memo reflects a Republican point of view, and the Democrat memo has not been released. Neither have the underlying documents upon which this memo is supposedly based. It is biased and suspect, as is generally the case with the motives for declassifying this memo.
I wish Paul Ryan's stated goal of protecting American civil liberties was sincere, but it's not. Transparency with the FISA court should apply to all citizens, not just to Carter Page.
If it weren't for the double stadards, Illiberals wouldn't have had any.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Here's your cigar. You win this one. You are correct, this is the thing that shows how FISA was misused. The willingness to do so by the FBI and the willingness of political leaders to keep it under wraps is the scary part. It almost makes the FBI and FISA a Star Chamber.
Fusion testified UNDER OATH - that when they went to the FBI with their info, the FBI told them they HAD ALREADY BEEN ON TRUMP!!!!
Someone went to the FBI, from inside the Trump camp, before GPS.
The memo is bull shit
So let me get this straight; We know Christopher Steele an ex-MI6 agent got info from the Russian Kremlin and sold it to FusionGPS, who intern sold it to the DNC who then gave it to the FBI. This sounds the Russians are playing the DNC as the fools they are?
Or, maybe, your very premise is incorrect and Trump does not, actually, want to be an authoritarian despot?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
One is whether there was in appropriate surveillance. That seems to be true, but personally it is exactly what I would expect for secret courts. I suspect that points more to an overall design failure of this type of surveillance system.
To me a bigger question is who had access to the information. If it was internal and classified by the FBI, that is not nearly as serious as if the Clinton campaign was given access.
But, perhaps, this dissemination of information could be the start of more transparency for everyone?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Absolutely correct. Paul Ryan is a hack, but this whole incident demonstrates the unaccountable, absurd, over the top craziness of the regime. NO PARTY or person should wield this power. The time has come to abolish the FBI.
It's fascinating looking at these comments - all of the Pro-Trump propaganda is from ACs. It's amazing how fast the trolls jump into a story like this. Also, the trolls seem to store up mod points on various accounts and then mods the trolling up as "insightful" as soon as possible. Come back in a day or two and then you find that all the ACs have been modded down by real readers for trolling. It would be really interesting to have access to the IPs for the ACs, and who's doing the modding. I wonder how many /. commentators have been "exposed" to comments from the trolls.
.
At this point, if there is any politicization to be talked about, it is with regard to the creation and release of the memo.
The FBI knew the partisan origins of the Steele Dossier, knew that it was funded by the Clinton campaign, then omitted that very material information from the FISA warrant requests. That's the documented and unambigious use of national security surveillance powers to spy on American citizens to further the partisan political objectives of the party controlling the Executive branch.
That's the abuse.
That's why this is bigger than Watergate.
If the republicans are so worried about FISA violations then why did they just vote to renew it? Is hypocrisy a prerequisite to holding office as a Republican?
+1 Funny ?
I think you need to go back to school to learn the what liberal arts means and what the political term liberal means...
"Liberal arts" I do not think that phrase means what you think it does...
For our friends in the US, this is a very important issue (I would argue that it's "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters") but is there any surprise that there are hyper-partisan comments (and moderations)?
I don't think putting this article up is going to a) inform anybody (this is probably the easiest thing on the net right now to download/see) or b) change anybody's mind - I can't see a supporter of Mr. Trump converting the other side that the FBI was working at removing him from office.
So... Why put it up here, other than to generate clicks and traffic?
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
His wife got campaign contributions AFTER she lost? You are a moron.
She got the money 4 months before the investigation, and THAT is your proof it wasn't a bribe?
"I'll pay you $1 million to look the other way in 4 months" Yea, that couldn't possibly happen.
You are a double moron.
Your argument is that the President is above the law. That's what fascism looks like.
No, the President is above the FBI. The FBI reports to the president. That's why it's under the executive branch. There is no such thing as an "independent" office under the executive - they all report up the chain of command back to the president. This is how the government is designed to work.
The checks on presidential power are the other two branches of government. This is why congress can convene inquiries. This is why the supreme court can overrule executive orders. If the congress has found that the president has been breaking the law, they can vote to impeach and remove, then the FBI can investigate and charge the president with a crime.
Why, then, did seek to pay him? Quoting from an unimpeachable source:
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
So it seems the FBI/DOJ under Obama used smear information bought from Russian intelligence sources by the Clinton Campaign to justify secretly wiretapping and investigating their political rivals during a presidential election. Did someone say Russian Collusion?
None of it was Russian, Steele was an ex British Intelligence officer. The Russian angle was the made up part, out of whole cloth, by Steele.
You're confusing the Author with the story. Like saying "Pennywise the Clown" is real because Stephen King said so.
The misdirect seems to be "FISA reforms", as if the problems were a direct result of problems with the FISA process and if only those problems didn't exist, this wouldn't have happened.
In actuality, FISA (the court) was given bad information, but worked as expected. For example, in addition to the dossier the FBI cited a newspaper article as corroboration evidence and told the court that Steele did not provide the info for the article. In reality, Steele did, in fact provide the information for the newspaper to print the article, the FBI knew this, and didn't tell the court.
That's a clear-cut case of lying to the court in order to get the warrant. That's not a problem with the FISA process, it's a problem with the people involved, which is why everyone is running around right now.
To be clear: this is not a problem with the process, it's a problem with the people.
Certain people broke the law, and broke it in a way that tried to seriously compromise our political system.
Take a moment and think through the issues here. These people tried to take an axe to our tree of democracy.
Had they succeeded, the Deep State could have easily ended up running the country.
Take a moment and let that sink in.
Bigly great the POTUS is at reading and the general reading comprehension level of his most devout followers, it doesn't seem like a big surprise that they all think this memo says something it doesn't.
You mean this part?
"The Page FISA application also mentions information regarding fellow Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos, but there is no evidence of any cooperation or conspiracy between Page and Papadopoulos. The Papadopoulos information triggered the opening of an FBI counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016 by FBI agent Pete Strzok. Strzok was reassigned by the Special Counsel's Office to FBI Human Resources for improper text messages with his mistress, FBI Attorney Lisa Page (no known relation to Carter Page), where they both demonstrated a clear bias against Trump and in favor of Clinton, whom Strzok had also investigated. The Strzok/Lisa Page texts also reflect extensive discussions about the investigation, orchestrating leaks to the media, and include a meeting with Deputy Director McCabe to discuss an "insurance" policy against President Trump's election."
They are implying that the Papadopoulos investigation was politically motivated. It may or may not be true, but I'm not sure how you get 'own goal' from that piece of information.
Whenever I encounter anyone espousing such idea, I always ask them: "indicted for what?" For some reason, I'm yet to hear a coherent answer... Once people realize, there is no such crime as "collusion", they tend to shut up...
You are next — please, elaborate, which criminal statue(s) you suspect President Trump to have violated. Not asking for proof — just state the actual accusation, please — the crime(s) he's committed. I'll wait...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Funny how that well known, established fact was left out.
When the underlying information is released, then yes. But until then, this is just a spin press release, it's not a dissemination of information.
You are welcome on my lawn.
it goes back to summer 2014.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/11/a_timeline_of_carter_page_s_contacts_with_russia.html
One thing I know, the Steele dossier was initial funded by the anti-Trump republicans. This aspect is not addressed in the memo, so taking information out context is very possibly done by Nunes. With his previous out of norms intel sharing (the norms allowing others in congress before sharing with Trump is a good norm) makes this very likely it was taken out of context. The only way I see now to get a good understand if or not the memo is out of context, is to release the entire Carter Page FISA application. Which obviously isn't going to happen
Using the DOJ and FBI (or like entities) to spy on political opponents and US citizens using known false information is the typical tool of fascists, and other authoritarians.
Perjury by the DOJ and FBI to the court.
The memo was edited by the Republicans after a bi-partisan vote to release it. Committee Republicans do not deny this. Nothing in it can be trusted, and the process used to "liberate" it is entirely bunk.
If your allegations are true, then the moderation system here is severely broken and is being abused to censor and/or push political narratives here.
Clearly the use of accounts here isn't helping, if your allegations about them being used to "storing up mod points" for later use are true.
The only sensible thing to do is to remove the moderation system completely.
This means that all comments, regardless of who posts them, are shown at all times.
They would be displayed in chronological order, oldest first, based on when they were submitted.
If moderation of comments isn't even possible, because the moderation system no longer exists, then it can't be gamed.
When somebody doesn't like a comment, it is preferable that they reply and give their own rebuttal that others can then consider, rather than downmodding the disliked comment just to censor it.
Likewise, people shouldn't be able to give certain comments greater attention by mass upmodding them.
The solution to the problems you allege to exist is clear: the moderation system needs to be removed immediately.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/politics/bush-lets-us-spy-on-callers-without-courts.html
So....if you use bogus material to get a warrant....um...that's bad, m'kay.
However, not even bothering to get a warrant....um....well...that's okay.
<rolling eyes>
So, maybe at least a start, but then again, I may be getting too hopeful.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The Steele Dossier was merely corroborating information.
Wrong. The Steele Dossier was an opposition research product purchased and paid for by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton Campaign. It is nothing more. It's not "intelligence" nor is it corroborating information like you wish it was. It was a paid-for report by political operatives.
If they had probable cause to surveil Carter Page, then they wouldn't have included the dossier in the FISA application. The dossier is absolutely the reason that the FISA warrant was issued. Without the dossier, the warrant would not have been granted. By the way, those aren't my words.....that's what Rod Rosenstein told Congress.
"That's why we need to defund education, there is no reasoning with these people."
The least self-aware comment ever posted here. Well. Done.
cuz this is how you get the fbi up your ass.. without lube.
anyone whose name is on this document is done.
Decades of illegal, immoral war mongering and fucking with democratically elected governments around the world is finally coming back on you USAmericans and the best you can do is play internal party politics?
No wonder the chinks and slavs are laughing at you. Your cuntry is so over.
Nah damnnit, I just need to ooze some more sarcasm in somehow. If my comment turned a bit Poe there I apologize to all.
(https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/read-the-full-text-of-the-nunes-memo/552191/)
January 18, 2018
To: HPSCI Majority Members
From: HPSCI Majority Staff
Subject: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Abuses at the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Purpose
This memorandum provides Members an update on significant facts relating to the Committee’s ongoing investigation into the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and their use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) during the 2016 presidential election cycle. Our findings, which are detailed below, 1) raise concerns with the legitimacy and legality of certain DOJ and FBI interactions with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), and 2) represent a troubling breakdown of legal processes established to protect the American people from abuses related to the FISA process.
Investigation Update
On October 21, 2016, DOJ and FBI sought and received a FISA probable cause order (not under Title VII) authorizing electronic surveillance on Carter Page from the FISC. Page is a U.S. citizen who served as a volunteer advisor to the Trump presidential campaign. Consistent with requirements under FISA, the application had to be first certified by the Director or Deputy Director of the FBI. It then required the approval of the Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General (DAG), or the Senate-confirmed Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division.
The FBI and DOJ obtained one initial FISA warrant targeting Carter Page and three FISA renewals from the FISC. As required by statute (50 U.S.C. ,1805(d)(l)), a FISA order on an American citizen must be renewed by the FISC every 90 days and each renewal requires a separate finding of probable cause. Then-Director James Comey signed three FISA applications in question on behalf of the FBI, and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe signed one. Then-DAG Sally Yates, then-Acting DAG Dana Boente, and DAG Rod Rosenstein each signed one or more FISA applications on behalf of DOJ.
Due to the sensitive nature of foreign intelligence activity, FISA submissions (including renewals) before the FISC are classified. As such, the public’s confidence in the integrity of the FISA process depends on the court’s ability to hold the government to the highest standard—particularly as it relates to surveillance of American citizens. However, the FISC’s rigor in protecting the rights of Americans, which is reinforced by 90-day renewals of surveillance orders, is necessarily dependent on the government’s production to the court of all material and relevant facts. This should include information potentially favorable to the target of the FISA application that is known by the government. In the case of Carter Page, the government had at least four independent opportunities before the FISC to accurately provide an accounting of the relevant facts. However, our findings indicate that, as described below, material and relevant information was omitted.
1) The “dossier” compiled by Christopher Steele (Steele dossier) on behalf of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Hillary Clinton campaign formed an essential part of the Carter Page FISA application. Steele was a longtime FBI source who was paid over $160,000 by the DNC and Clinton campaign, via the law firm Perkins Coie and research firm Fusion GPS, to obtain derogatory information on Donald Trump’s ties to Russia.
a) Neither the initial application in October 2016, nor any of the renewals, 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.
b) The initial FISA application notes Steele was working for a named U.S. person, but does not name Fusion GPS an
When your only rebuttal is the opponent's sources, you are usually done for. Because none of them are lying, nor have any obvious conflict of interest. But, hey, how about the below citations, this time from unimpeachable sources?
FBI agents discussing "insurance" policy in case Trump wins Later in a text from August 15, 2016, Strzok tells Page: "I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's office" -- an apparent reference to Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe -- "that there's no way he gets elected -- but I'm afraid we can't take that risk. It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40 . . . . " FBI agents talking of "secret society" to sabotage Trump "... an exchange between Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page in which one noted: “Are you even going to give out your calendars? Seems kind of depressing. Maybe it should just be the first meeting of the secret society.” Senior agent reworded"gross negligence" into "extreme carelessness" to help Clinton avoid prosecution “A draft statement former FBI Director James Comey prepared in anticipation of concluding the Hillary Clinton email case without criminal charges was heavily edited to change the ‘tone and substance’ of the remarks, a Republican senator said Thursday. Some of the edits proposed to the May 2016 draft, obtained by The Associated Press, appear to soften the gravity of the bureau’s findings. Comey, for instance, initially wrote that the FBI believed that Clinton and her aides were ‘grossly negligent’ in their handling of classified information, language also contained in the relevant criminal statute." Comey admitting to orchestrating a leak "James B. Comey’s testimony on Thursday that he orchestrated the disclosure of his account of his discussions with President Trump"Remember to logout.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
How much longer is this going to go on? I'm in danger of overdosing on popcorn.
Red to red, black to black. Switch it on, but stand well back.
who is in turn accountable to the American People and to Congress? You might be thinking of the CIA, which is more a military organization.
I suppose an argument could be made that the President isn't accountable to the American people, since there's a strong argument to be made that America isn't really a Democracy (something like 85% of passed legislation is opposed by the American people IIRC, and then there's the whole "Sheldon Primary' thing).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Actually a Dem congressman made that exact argument, that releasing it would make the population mad.
the president is suppose to fire people if the FBI isn't being handled the way it should be. He's not supposed to engage in off handed pissing matches. This is Gas Lighting to distract from the corruption he and his administration are being investigated for. And not that Russian nonsense either, but actual money laundering, bribes and outright corruption.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
In what possible world could you interpret that "no one should wield that power" as an endorsement of George Bush wielding that power?
The FISA application is classified so no one can dispute this memo without leaking classified information
Nonsense. The FBI owns the underlying information and is the one that classified it in the first place, and they can opt to declassify it if the facts are significantly different than reported in the memo. If they choose not to, we can safely conclude they don't have squat.
means and methods
Nope -- if the relevant information the FBI needs to disclose to set the record straight are the supposed other facts that would have caused the warrant to be approved anyway, whatever these "means and methods" are can be redacted as needed.
Try again.
Missing is any claim that the Steel document contains actual falsehoods. The only claim is that Steel was biased. Note that Steel was a highly regarded source with a reputation for accuracy.
Note also the timeline. The FBI had the document in their hands in September 2016, but Steel was only terminated as a source in October 2016. He had little reason to falsify his report, because it would have jeopardized his reputation and with it, his income.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
It is important that you read the memo itself and then explore who these people are, what their actual role was and why that is important to currently affairs. If you don't you will not understand what really happened.
For instance, Comey knew about the dossier and testified before Congress stating it was an unconfirmed salacious work, and that work was partially paid for by the FBI and later by Hillary and knowing this he signed off on using it to obtain a fisa warrant. Bear in mind also that he was sending worrying tweets prior to the memos release and when he found out what was in the memo he seemed relieved, indicating he was expecting so thing else. Also Rod Rosenstein signed off and he was the man that appointed the special counsel. He had been involved from the beginning and either personally signed off or knew it was being signed off by others. Bear in mind also that the dossier was used by the Obama administration's doj & fbi to surveil a campaign member because he "went" to Russia for a meeting, and that permitted them effectively to surveil the whole campaign. Also bear in mind that they knew even before the fisa warrant was issued that Hillary had paid for the dossier, that Steele had been fired for leaking to the press and that Hillary paid for the dossier.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
An ongoing warrant on a person described by his russian handlers as an idiot that has been going on since 2013 is some major scandal?
Why the GOP is committing suicide for an ignorant orange turd is a mystery I doubt they could even explain and is simply stunning.
Have you even READ the memo?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
You are forgetting McCabe said under oath the dossier was needed to get the FISA warrant. Why would he have said that if it was not true. Until McCabe gets brought up on charges for lying to Congress there is NO reason for anyone to doubt the Nunes memo's veracity that there was not warrant without the dossier.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
This is a memo, not a FISA application. And of the assertions that the the FISA warrants were based on a source the DOJ knew was extremely biased - both politically and because Steele was getting paid by the DNC - which are being specifically disputed here? The FBI getting all petulant at having its credibility questioned is not specific.
Deny that most of the artists and writers learned the liberal arts at college. I dare you. That's why we need to defund education, there is no reasoning with these people.
Yes, Conservatives and Republicans are *much* more reasonable, compassionate and inclusive. /rolls-eyes
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Because maybe I've been a registered Republican after I switched from Libertarian for Ron Paul in 2012.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
And recalling the bias, political leanings, and conversations between FBI agents etc about how they feared a Trump presidency, and their connections to Clinton via campaign donations in one case to a wife, you think their interest in Trump was somehow NOT politically motivated?
Wow. Please, if you're not going to pay attention, at least lean back and be quiet.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Many of the same Dem screaming the loudest that Trump is in Putin's back pocket just voted to give Trump vast spying powers.
2) They've been utterly and completely full of shit on Russiagate since day one
Either way, grandstanding from Nunes is insignificant in comparison.
Carter Page is just a self proclaimed "advisor" to the campaign.... had almost Zero influence on the campaign...
The campaign’s communications director, Jason Miller, said that Page had “never been a part of our campaign. Period.”
And when Trump was asked about Page, he said, “I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to him. I don’t think I’ve ever met him. And he actually said he was a very low-level member of I think a committee for a short period of time. I don’t think I ever met him. Now, it’s possible that I walked into a room and he was sitting there, but I don’t think I ever met him.”
5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
Probably John McCain... using the same memo.
5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
ROFLMAO
Which is interesting in the historical trivia sense, not so much in the Democrats-have-been-Swiftboating-for-18-months sense. Not only were Democrats guilty of what they've hysterically accused Trump of doing - colluding with foreign intelligence agents to swing a general election - they paid for it.
msmash does the write up ... absurd title (yeah, I guess you could say they "criticize" surveillance being abused to try to win and then to overturn an election) ... the usual +5 "the real villains are the Republicans ... er ... somehow ... " comments.
Yep, good old Slashdot.
...but that doesn't detract from the monumental shit show the FBI orchestrated and how badly the FISA courts can be abused. This dossier doesn't answer every question but it sure does answer quite a few and highlights various abuses of FISA and the FBI.
Cool, lets investigate them, too.
The GOP seems to think that 'But, Hillary...' somehow constitutes a defense or excuse of illegal and immoral behavior. I hear this whenever someone comments on unethical GOP behavior within earshot of a right wing supporter. Perhaps there was some sort of internal collusion in the FBI to 'get' Trump. It doesn't matter. Light has been shined on his questionable actions and justice will be severed. I have no problem with investigations into Donald, Hillary, and every other fucking clown in DC, regardless of political affiliation. If this memo raises questions, add them to the list of people who are being scrutinized. We will get to them all in good time. 'Illegal' isn't a term that allows for relative morality.
I want every one of our representatives to be held to the highest standards of ethical behavior. If there are people who have engaged in contact with Russian agents in an illegal fashion, I want them (literally) lynched as an object lesion to others who might be weighing the risk / reward of selling out the country for their own gain. Putin is far to dangerous to treat with kid gloves or to be fucking around with petty partisan political games.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
"Liberal arts". I do not think that phrase means what you think it means. In fact, I'm pretty darn sure of it. The "liberal" in "liberal arts" has precisely nothing to do with politics.
That's why we need to fund education a lot more, assuming there's some reasoning with you people.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
You lack clue one about what's appropriate in an ongoing investigation. Law enforcement ALWAYS keeps information confidential while investigating, because you can't investigate properly when everybody knows what you're doing and what you'll do next.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
You have completely failed to explain why Comey leaked information on emails that turned out to be inconsequential but hurt Clinton's approval rating at a critical point. Comey was either a total incompetent, or preferred that Trump win.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Homer Badman
Clinton and all the other people responsible for this should be hanged.
Someone didn't read the memo..... Mabye you didn't get the memo. I could send you a copy of the memo.
Trump just wants to be rich and liked. Trouble is, the folks he's hanging with who are making him rich and liked are authoritarian despots. And he does whatever they tell him as long as the money and the likes keep rolling in. Trump's a lot of things, a leader isn't one of them.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Stop making excuses. If yâ(TM)all know someone who loves their KKK-member dad, like Donald Trump, that person has decided to be a villain, and so have you.
The only decent way a white male can conduct themselves these days is anti-racist and pro-womenâ(TM)s-rights. If you canâ(TM)t honestly say you are anti-racist and feminist as a white man, you are deciding every day to be a villain. Sorry if thatâ(TM)s a tough reality for yâ(TM)all, your forefathers set you up, be mad at them if you need to be mad.
We white men all have to keep paying the price of being villans, or being activists for the less fortunate. This will be the case until youâ(TM)d be just as happy being brown and female as white and male - unless youâ(TM) *really* happy with being a villain and supporting a systematically oppressive society for your own meager benefit, which, yea, is why oligarchs are evil, too.
Donâ(TM)t be evil, and donâ(TM)t make excuses. None of you would have voted Trump if you were anti-racist or feminist in the least, sorry. Your friends and family who have not ditched the GOP and conservative thought are just bad people making racist, sexist decisions that harm their country and our world. Stop being nice to them! Cut them out, make this stop, or civil war is right around the corner.
All they did was try to tie everyone involved to a democratic campaign donation. Fails to mention this research started under GOP dollars. They just resold part of it and added more after the dems came calling. If every democrat and person who ever donated to a democrat left the government workforce it would collapse.
They keep saying that, but everything in the memo was already leaked. Also, to suggest that the DOJ and FBI are unbiased, when there is plenty of evidence to suggest otherwise, is just out and out propaganda.
The dossier wasn't even the reason for the warrant.
Somehow, I don't think you're arguing in good faith. Either that or you failed to read the memo.
Regardless, Deputy Director McCabe disagrees with you (from the memo that you totally read):
While the FISA application relied on Steele's past record of credible reporting on other unrelated matters, it ignored or concealed his anti-Trump financial and ideological motivations. Furthermore, Deputy Director McCabe testified before the Committee in December 2017 that no surveillance warrant would have been sought from the FISC without the Steele dossier information.
At first the memo was a Top Secret security nightmare if released.
After release, it's a nothing burger of bogus conclusions.
In GOD we trust, all others we monitor.
It looks like there was some bullshit in the application. Nobody seems to be contradicting that, as far as I can tell. (Correct?) Is Nunes saying the bullshit was the ONLY thing in the application? Nobody is showing it, so we can't see. But the DoJ does seem to be disputing it and hinting they had probable cause but can't reveal it to public. And Nunes doesn't seem to be really disputing that, though I think he's trying to imply it. Maybe I need to read it again more carefully?
All that aside, it sounds like Nunes might support abolishing FISA. If letting a crook (Carter) get away is the price for this, it might be worth it. We can always get more crooks. ;-)
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Remember when Snowden told us that NSA was *ROUTINELY* passing around nude intercepts so often they coined them 'LOVEINT'. What a way to spin an epic state invasion of privacy as something to do with LOVE.
Good Luck seeing the 'big picture' in the level of detail one would presume an informed democratic citizen would need to make a wise choice at the ballot box.
Trump's best joke is where he talks about the RIGGED SYSTEM.
catering to your own bias is bad.
People who join in groupthink and hero worship without strong self-doubt will always make bad decisions. Nationalists and racists will always make bad decisions.
I do not see how this is complex.
change the US, whch they did... they brought Chicago pollitics to the whole world.
This is how you play ball in Chitown.
You are referring to the Logan Act.
Now, what if I told you, that in the Act's over two centuries of existence, only 2 people were indicted under it (in 1802 and 1852)? And neither of them convicted? You may as well bring up anti-sodomy laws, which Trump may well have violated too, in his wilder days...
Now, if we start using the Act, we ought to begin not with Trump, who's communications with any foreign government was entirely ordinary, and protected by the First Amendment, but with folks like Hanoi Jane (who went to Vietnam while the US was in actual war with the country), or Jesse Jackson (for his, ahem, intercourse with Fidel Castro)?
Are you sure, you want to throw those folks into the furnace of your hatred of Trump?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Comey was either a total incompetent, or preferred that Trump win.
Or Comey decided he didn't have a choice. He didn't know the extent of Clinton's emails on Weiner's laptop and he had a duty to report to the congressional oversight committee. Concealing would have been a terrible gamble if previously unknown classified emails had turned up. Comey's motives may be questionable but he isn't stupid, and has made his disdain for Trump well known.
Jews believe this of all they call goyim/gentiles (any non-jew): Jews = biggest racists of all (for which they "jew guilt" you for no less! They're hypocrites known as thieves all thru history or were Argentines in the 1940 under Perrone, Spanish inquistion & Spain 1492 (Christopher Columbus the jew https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22C... sailed to the US for them to create it), France (1306), Egypt (despoiled/robbed by jews), Arabs (pre & post 1948), England (1330 Edward longshanks), Romans under titus, Russia pogroms and Germany who got rid of them from their nations nazi german's too? No. Driven into DESERTS ages ago! Don't wonder why after all those exilings above. Should anyone doubt any of this see Jacob Javits' crony Rosenthal spill the beans on it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4zMVZ8HnFI/ where he called all Christianity fools for helping Israel and the biggest scam of all time per their beliefs below from their Talmud. This is the province of the synagogue of Satan (Khazar/Pharisees whom Jesus Christ himself kicked to the curb out of the temple & they killed him for it. Jeremiah did the same to them also + the Essenes could not stand them either breaking away from the pharisee corruption):
Maria Abramovic satanist spirit cooker pal of Hillary Clinton the Voodoo queen is a jew https://www.google.com/search?... just like Hillary Clinton's mentor Saul Alinsky author of rules for radicals book dedicated to Lucifer
"Most Jews do not like to admit it, but our god is Lucifer â" so I wasnâ(TM)t lying â" and we are his chosen people. Lucifer is very much aliveâ Harold Rosenthal http://www.thetruthseeker.co.u...
Jewish rabbi openly admits to satan worship use white children's blood they kill for passover bread, infiltrating and subverting the catholic church, creating the Jesuit order https://www.youtube.com/watch?... and https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Barbara Spectre, a jew, tells everyone it's jews orchestrating the muslim migrant problem in Europe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFE0qAiofMQ/ . No migrant raping of women in Poland. Tons in Sweden. Do the math. Use common-sense. This is to get muslims and other goyim/gentiles to wipe one another out as incompatible cultures that will clash and always have.
Rabbi A. Finkelstein ADMITS their greatest enemies are ARABS and WHITES (blacks too) whom they wish to kill one another in a 'theater of war' which they find AMUSING https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Finkelstein also admits JEWS DID 9/11 https://www.youtube.com/watch?... profiting by it (and that 3,000 jews employed there did not show up for work that day knowing about it beforehand).
Finkelstein also admits JEWS are going to destroy the U.S. Dollar and dumping it for other world currencies and gold to destroy the United States.
George Soros who funds groups to create division in the USA?? A jew. One who sold his own jew people into death for the nazis.
Zucker now FIRED @ CNN is another frying publicly for lying about "russians" and John Bonifield a producer @ CNN said it is bs. Van Jones did also.
Bernie Madoff (who made off with everyone's money, especially construction union pensions) shows the thieving nature of the JUDEN!
Eric Schmidt had to step down @ JEWgle (a jew).
"stacked with Democrats during the Obama administration"
Mueller (Republican) and appointed by Bush was FBI director for most of Obama's term, and then Obama appointed Comey (also a Republican). With the leadership Republican it is hard to believe that the FBI was stacked with Democrats.
It is truly amazing how many people here are making excuses for this and think it's acceptable to pass off campaign propaganda as an Intel document and lie to a foreign intelligence surveillance court to spy on political opposition. If Bush did this or trump did this he would already be swinging from a Rope.
The GOP (Gay Old Party) just released a schocking declassified memo written by .. wait for it ... a GOP member of Congress that ... wait for it ... attacks the FBI for doing its job.
The GOP (Gay Old Party) has no sense of shame.
Fusion GPS was indeed hired by a mix of [a] The Washington Free Beacon and [b] the Ted Cruz team to do oppo research on Trump DURING THE PRIMARIES.
That was BEFORE Fusion GPS hired British spy Steele.
Once funded by the DNC (via one of their law firms, which enabled them to try to pretend to the courts that they could hide all this under "attorney-client priviledge") the Fusion GPS team hired ex-British-spy Steele who in-turn paid Russian spies to create dirt on Trump. Given that we now know (thanks, Donna Brazille!) that Hillary Clinton had hijacked the DNC during the primaries (making Bernie's run an impossible fantasy) and was indirectly running the organization, that means HILLARY (via GPS and Steele) was the candidate with financial and intel ties to Putin's spies.
The bad part for former FBI director Comey, is that he testified under oath to congress that the dossier was unsubstantiated, but he apparently repeatedly certified to the FISA courts that the document was verified and reliable enough to justify the warrants to spy in team Trump.
NOTE: the other thing we now know is that Trump was right and all but one of America's news outlets were wrong when they mercilessly criticized him for over a year for his claim that he was spied upon by the Democrats using agencies of the government.
The GOP has been pushing to release ALL of the stuff including the underlying docs and the Democrats have had their heels dug-in for months opposing the release of ALL of it. In every vote held thus far, the Democrats have insisted ALL of this remain classified and hidden from the public, while their friends leak any anti-Trump tidbits they can get to the NYT and WaPo and NBC of course.
The Republicans are on-record saying they will happily release the Democrat 10 page memo, but it will need a delay to get cleared because the Democrat memo is apprently intentionally littered with names that will need redacting. Interesting that the Dems who KNEW what was in the Republican memo which they were allowed to read, kept publicly demanding it be hidden from the public and that if made public the Republican memo would expose "sources and methods" and do terrible damage to national security - it seems the Democrats were lying very boldly on those counts.
In fact, the reason we can all be sure Trump did NOT collude with Putin is very simple: Democrats, both in government and out of government, have been desperately searching for any such dirt for a year and a half and they have leaked every single ACCUSATION no matter how absurd (like the idea that Trump, while supposedly an extreme germaphobe, paid a bunch of Russian priostitutes to pee on his bed) to the press, and thus far no such evidence of Trump and Putin colluding has leaked. Occam's Razoe applies here folks... Trump's probably the "cleanest" (in a legal sense) politician in decades.
Right before Rosenstein appointed him, to investigate Trump, Meuller was invited to the White House to be interviewed by Trump to run the FBI. Trump decided he did not like Meuller and therefore turned him down for the job. So, having been dissed by Trump, Meuller was suddenly given (Meuller's pal Comey's buddy Rosenstein) a job that would let him destroy Trump.... and Meuller immediately began hiring lawyers who had financial ties to Hillary, Obama, or both.
Interestingly, Rosenstein violated the applicable law here, by giving Meuller VERY wide investigatory leeway by NOT LISTING A SPECIFIC LEGAL VIOLATION he was to investigate. His charge is a very vague "investigate collusion, and anything related" sort of nonesense, where there is no specific US law against something called "collusion".
This is looking VERY suspiciously like the political establishment (mostly of Democrats, but with a few establishment Republican like John McCain mixed-in) have attempted a political coup right in fron of the American people, aided by establishment-tied journalists and establishment-tied career bureaucrats buried within the execututive branch agencies like the DOJ and the FBI, to prevent an outsider from rising to the Presidency. Both establishment Democrats AND establishment Republicans have a LOT to lose from a "loose canon" business guy who owes them nothing occupying 1600 Penn. Think: "Dave" (the movie). There are hundreds of billions of dollars on the line in contracts and foreign relationships etc that people all throughout Washington DC do not want anybody asking basic questions about (like "WHY are we spending X billion dollars on THIS?", fill-in X and THIS with anything you like).
the FBI can use false documents to obtain warrants to spy on ANY American citizen, and can lie to the courts about it, as long as they have previously looked with some curiosity at that citizen first, right???
I have news for you: ANY American who goes to certain countries (like most middle-east countries, Russia, China, certain central American countries, etc) gets the attention of the FBI. ANY American in such a situation can find him/herself being "investigated" and even getting a one-on-one interview. Most never knew they were examined, and some who get the one-on-one interview are fine with it because they are usually friendly, sorta like a "courtesy call" in which the feds basically say "we noticed you went to country X, what was the purpose of your visit there?" This constitutes "under investigation" and is what happened with Carter Page.
Still like that idea?
Additionally, FBI representatives have already testified under oath to congress that the warrant would not have been sought from the FISA court without the dossier..... so you're statement was either false becasuse you are dishonest, or false because you are ignorant.
THOSE pages do contain all sorts of classified data which would require congressional activity to declassify and the Democrats have spent months blocking the declassification of any of it. Those thousands of pages contain names, sources, methods, etc and all those details must be redacted or else legally redefined as unclassified before those pages can be released.
This memo could be declassified by Trump without a law change for a simple reason: The Democrats have spent weeks lying to the public about its content. The Dems claimed the GOP summary memo contained classified "sources and methods", but it did not, therefore the Repubs in congress just had to send it over to the executive branch to get it reviewed and effectively stamped as declassified (just a certification that it did not contain any national-security-risking details)
With the publication, all Americans can now see that the document contains no such details and that all the Democrats and nearly everyone at ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, MSNBC, CNN, the NYT, and the Washongton Post have been boldly LYING to them for weeks.
A Republican campaign opposed to Trump (the Cruz team) and some of their backers funded the work of Fusion GPS during the Republican primaries.
After Trump became the Republican nominee, that all ended. Fusion GPS, looking for cash, shopped the work around to the highest bidder and the Hillary Clinton campaign bought it. Once Hillary's team was pouring cash into Fusion GPS, they hired ex-Brit spy Steele - who went to work with some Russian spy pals to create the "dossier".
So: the Republicans had NOTHING to do with Steele or his dossier. Steele and his dossier came along AFTER the Cruz people were no longer funding Fusion GPS.
Thanks for playing.
"have not, and will not, allow partisan politics to distract us from our solemn commitment to our mission."
Is that why Hillary got away with her email server?
https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/statement-by-fbi-director-james-b-comey-on-the-investigation-of-secretary-hillary-clinton2019s-use-of-a-personal-e-mail-system
"To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now."
As someone who genuinely despises anyone who makes a career out of politics (read: lying for profit) and also someone who doesn't have a horse in the elephant and donkey race: this seems like it's about nothing but partisan political support. The problem seems to be that the agency is split down the middle with two groups of people partisanly supporting a political party and blaming the other for supporting the other political party partisanly.
The memo is based on documents Nunes now admits to never reading. Trey Gowdy did the reading and has said that the memo doesn't discredit in any way the Mueller investigation.
So there you go. And having a vendetta against someone has never been a legally disqualifying factor in getting a warrant, although that really doesn't matter.
(Axios, but video @ Fox News)
https://www.axios.com/nunes-re...
Dems say its bad to release. Other Dems say "is that all?" Which is it?
How about Republicans get a dossier made up and seek a FISA for Hillary? Seems fair...
Haha, this wasn't the 1st FISA warrant on Carter Page, who became a person of interest to the FBI in 2013. The Steele document was a thing until 2016!
This has NOTHING to do with Manafort's laundering and Russia connections, contact between Papadopoulos and Russia, or Russia hacking the DNC to help the GOP win the election, or Trump's son and son-in-law meeting with Kremlin connected Russians, or Trump firing the FBI director, because, by his own admission, he wanted to hinder the Russia investigation.
It's fun seeing Nunes go to battle with the people investigating the campaign _he_ worked on. A decent person would recuse themselves. This has all the hallmarks of political theater aimed at confusing rubes who will jump at anything that makes their side look good. I'm sure McCabe said lots of things, but the simple fact is that Carter Page is marginal to the Trump-Russia investigation, and besides, this wasn't even the first warrant application. And it's easy for Nunes to omit details to pull the wool of partisan nitwits, because partisanship makes people dumb.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I think Carter Page is marginal at best. He has nothing to do with Manafort's money laundering, or the Russia-DNC hack, or Trump's son and son-in-law meeting with kremlin connected Russians, or Flynn's Russian connections, or Trump firing Comey to thwart the investigation... Carter Page strikes me as a fool, an idiot, and a wannabe. The aforementioned people almost certainly laugh at him behind his back.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
With this memo's release, The Donald now has all he needs to conduct a full-scale purge of the FBI so that he can fill the ranks with people loyal to him and him alone. The FBI will become his Stasi.
What he reported was essentially nothing. That came out after the impact on the polls. If Comey didn't want Trump elected, and he wasn't stupid, why the October announcement?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
These are the last people in the world that ought to be crying foul over any sort of out of control and easily abused intelligence programs being run here in America, considering that Republicans were the ones who created most of them in the first place. That the Democrats might have taken control of the Frankenstein's monster that they created is the sole offense here, not the monster's creation itself.
Nobody can say that they weren't warned. They were just too arrogant to consider that they might not always be in power. Granted, that's an easy assumption to make when your opponents are those worthless limp dicks, the Democrats, but foolish nevertheless.
The release of the memo seems to have changed few minds, but did increase the height of the flames.
Hmm. Maybe Wikileaks or Snowden can cast some light on the situation. Just pondering out loud.
BTW, I think I remember reading that when Bush II got into office, the administration slowed to a crawl requests for surveillance warrants through FISA. Right up to 911.
What time does Slashdot think it is? Surely there should be a better way of seeing the latest contributions to such a huge and hairy conversation?
Yeah, I know the moderation is supposed to help, but we all know the moderation is hopelessly broken. I do suspect there are some gems here buried in mountains of professional trollage. However the evidence of my suspicions would depend on a time-based analysis of the story's comments, and Slashdot doesn't even have a way to see the last few hours of comments. (Hence my twisted search algorithm...)
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
I suspect that points more to an overall design feature of this type of surveillance system.
Sorry, had to fix that for you. If the goal wasn't to ignore the rule of law and do inappropriate things, the secret courts would have zero need to be secret in the first place.
Mostly trying to decide if you [green1] are sincere or just another troll. It's also possible that we are partly in agreement but you haven't thought some of these things through. I actually think secrecy is fundamentally bad, but there are times it is justified, mostly by prior secrecy. For example, if we already knew everything about the governmental criminals and their mechanisms for extracting revenge, then we wouldn't need any protection for whistleblowers, would we?
Actually came across your comment while searching for ANY mention of the "mission" part of the original story summary. In contrast to the FAKE threat of a search warrant that could have failed to find any real evidence of a crime, the REAL threat here is that #PresidentTweety will redefine the mission of the FBI. I'm sure he'd prefer to convert the FBI into his personal detective agency to handle such YUGE problems as getting embarrassingly cuckolded by one (or more) of his wives and girlfriends. (Stormy Daniels was smart to take the money and shut up, eh?)
We already know that the FBI did find REAL evidence of REAL crimes. If not, they could not have renewed the warrant. The main thing we don't know now is how much add and comfort America's REAL enemies will be able to get from the hints and clues exposed in this partisan hatchet job.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
For a search warrant, the judge doesn't evaluate the sources, and most particularly doesn't evaluate the possible motives for the sources-- the judge just verifies that they do have some reason for the warrant, other than whim.
You'd be the first to cry foul if they could do this - because they'd get a warrant to snoop on everyone's internet activity "who might" commit some crime.
Not everybody who "might" commit some crime. Everybody for whom they have reasonable suspicion: that is, a named informer alleging that a crime is being committed, evidence of which would be revealed by surveillance.
That's the way wiretaps work, yes; sorry, but it's the way they work. If they already had the proof, they wouldn't need the wiretap, they'd just arrest them. Wiretaps are for when they don't have proof.
You have to remember that the secret courts can be both designed specifically to support breaking the law and ignoring the constitution, AND still be doing the right thing in any particular case. It's not an either/or proposition.
The sole goal of the secret courts is to allow the government to do things that would never be allowed if the public knew about them. There's no other reason for it to exist. That said, just because it was designed with the explicit purpose of doing illegal things, does not mean that everything it does is in fact to support illegal activity.
If I'm doing things I'm worried other people will find out about, and I hide only the suspect activities, people will quickly realize that any time I'm hiding something it's an activity I don't want people to see. If instead I hide ALL my activities, people will have no way of knowing which ones are routine things that I should be doing, and which ones are things I should not. Same idea here. If the secret court is only used for unconstitutional activities, it becomes too obvious too quickly. If instead it's used for everything, it's seen as just the way things are.
As for the real risks. The real risk in any government is always that those in charge want more power. No politician ever seems to vote to limit their own authority. It does appear that the current situation is even more extreme in this regard than most, but the fact that the american people have ignored the accumulating power in the hands of a single person for an incredibly long time is the real problem here.
It's funny that the USA is so proud of not being a monarchy or dictatorship, but there is no single person anywhere in the world with more power than the president of the USA. Not to mention that the office of president tends to be revered even more so than any monarch. Concentrating so much power in one place is the real "YUGE" problem.
Still can't decide whether or not you are a troll. You might be a sincere ideologue or fanatic of some sort. Perhaps you could not understand what I wrote, though you did not ask for clarification of such key notions as "prior secrecy" that you apparently did not grok. Or perhaps you simply lack the imagination to perceive your self-contradictions?
Whatever. I see no reason to continue the discussion along the lines of your reply, which seems basically irrelevant to my comment. I think I understand what you are repeating, and I think you're still incorrect. (Of course, I could also be mistaken in my interpretation, but if so then your repetitions were not enlightening.)
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
The memo is a pretty transparent partisan attack:
- Written by a person with a full-time job as a politician? Check!
- Attacks the FBI when the POTUS is also attacking the FBI? Check!
- The author is in the same political party as POTUS? Check!
- The current administration has a big Russia problem and needs it to go away? Check!
- The memo claims facts not in evidence? Check!
The motivations here are on full display. If a Democrat wrote the memo, or it had a non-partisan or bi-partisan authorship, or if the FBI wrote something like this as an internal critique, then we'd have to take it more seriously. As it is I feel entirely justified in dismissing this partisan hack.
Not even worth the breath required to debate it.
You have to look at it from Comey's perspective. He didn't know the full extent of classified information on Weiner's laptop, discovered in an case unrelated to the Clinton investigation. He'd already strained his credibility by doing everything within his power to let her off the hook, and the cracks were showing in his facade of impartiality. The Weiner laptop was a potential ticking time bomb and there was just no way that Comey was going to sit on it, especially since Clinton was projected to win anyway. He chose to CYA by doing his job.
I think this point, right here, is the big question. We don't actually know what McCabe said, nor do we know what all was in the FISA application.
The only people who know McCabe's testimony are Congresscritters. (And I'm not sure who all knows what was in the FISA application, but it seems to be even fewer people than Congress.) Near as I can tell, they're divided on partisan lines about what, exactly, McCabe said.
Correct?
It seems the McCabe transcript (Nunes said he's going to release it) should mostly clear this up. Seeing the actual FISA application would be even better and clearer, but we're probably never going to be allowed to see that, so McCabe's words are going to be the closest we get unless the FISA court talks.
Do I have this right?
(And if McCabe's testimony isn't published, then it's going to come down to which Congresscritters you most believe, which means this will be an eternal flame war without either side having evidence to back up their position.)
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump