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.
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.
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.
If it weren't for the double stadards, Illiberals wouldn't have had any.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
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.
Are you insane? This is to clean out the EXACT people who have no regard for the Constitution, who will actively use the intel apparatus to violate the 4th amendment rights of citizens, who will withhold information from judges, who openly conspire with one political party against another political party. These people have corrupted the DOJ and FBI, from the top down, and need to be cleaned out for the good of us citizens.
Comey is the problem, not some poor innocent guy who was pushed out, and has too much free time to tweet out poetry and quips about liberty. He signed the FISA applications knowing that the DNC paid for the dossier, and withheld that information from the FISA court. He used media reports on the dossier as evidence the dossier was true when it was time to renew the FISA application? He misled the congress, those who by constitution are empowered to oversee him. He misled the chief executive, when asked why he didn't work to disavow the Russia investigation (which is alleged by the way).
There's a very good reason why the FBI and DOJ has lost the trust of the people. What proof do we REALLY have that there was any Russia involvement by anyone, other than the word of the same people who openly lied?
And this is just the tip. This openly proves that the FBI was "wiretapping" the Trump Campaign. They sniffed the whole campaign headquarters to get conversations of one person, Carter Page. What did the DOJ do with the results of the FISA 702 evesdropping of the Trump campaign? Inside information says that it went straight to the President's Daily Briefing (PDB) reports, where names were unmasked by the DOJ and fed back to the DNC. Just wait for the next round.
Hillary committed felonies, and got a pass from her Cronies looking forward to her election. THAT is what fascism looks like.
But she lost an election, which is what freedom looks like. Freedom actually won here, even if just for a moment.
Just because the Democrats lost an election doesn't mean it is fascism.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Andrew McCabe confirmed that no FISA warrant would have been sought from the FISA Court without the Steele dossier information.
So..no, no probable cause. The also excluded the information about the origin of the Dossier.
It is an invalid warrant.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Here are some undisputed facts about the Russia probe that did not come from the Steele dossier
https://www.axios.com/10-undis...
https://www.realclearpolitics....
You are welcome on my lawn.
The Steele Dossier was actually commissioned by a right wing group, The Washington Free Beacon, and was created by Fusion GPS. There's some speculation that the WFB was acting under prompting from Ted Cruz, though the Cruz campaign has denied that.
It's true that after Trump won the primary, the WFB ceased to find the project, and a DNC lawyer then started funding the project, but it certainly started off as a conservative project. It's also the case that Steele was never told who was funding it, merely asked to research.
It is a "paid for" report, but I'm not sure why you think that's a criticism. There aren't many unpaid for reports. If you mean it's "biased", that makes little sense, Trump's opponents on the right, and then left, were looking for things to use against Trump, they didn't commission the report with the aim of publishing it. It was extremely important to them that the report be factual - if it wasn't, there's no point in creating the report to begin with.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.