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.
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.
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....
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
FBI Warns Republican Memo Could Undermine Faith In Massive, Unaccountable Government Secret Agencies
https://politics.theonion.com/...
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.
It seems he's too dumb to figure that out.
Either that or you're too dumb not to see past the puppet show.
Only if you know what you're doing and don't think you're the CEO of the country with the power to fire anyone you want who disobeys you.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
In other news J. Edgar Hoover probably was a Transvestite...
He's operating on the principle of "if you can't join 'em, beat 'em". This is nothing less than an attempt to build the case that the FBI needs to be cleansed of anyone who isn't more loyal to Trump than the country, the law, or the constitution.
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.
If all of these crimes are so evident then why is it that a questionable document with little to no verification was used as the sole basis? Must be internet hour in the loony bin.
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.
> Only if you know what you're doing and don't think you're the CEO of the country with the power to fire anyone you want who disobeys you
Except if he fires anybody, everybody will scream "obstruction of justice."
That has already been proved.
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.
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.
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.........
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.
Carter Page was under investigation before GPS Fusion was contracted by the GOP, which was before Clinton contracted them. FISA warrants were issued for the investigation well before the Steele dossier was even conceived.
.
At this point, if there is any politicization to be talked about, it is with regard to the creation and release of the memo.
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
I don't subscribe to the idea that Hillary Clinton is the country, the law, or the constitution. I don't even subscribe to the notion that she was a good choice to be president - I didn't vote for her, nor did I vote for Bill in the 1990s. You don't have to be a Hillbot to understand that Trump is incredibly corrupt and doing his damnedest to undermine any semblance of checks and balances on his presidency. Just able to see bullshit when it's in front of you.
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.
There seems to be an abnormal number of anonymous trolls spewing garbage.
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.
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.
Funny how that well known, established fact was left out.
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
You see, abuse of power is bad when the other side is doing it, but it's great when you get to do it to others.
I've never met a politician that wanted LESS power.
The cleansing of the FBI, which you accuse Trump of performing/contemplating, would target people to for being disloyal to him, but those so loyal to Hillary Clinton, that they were willing to subvert the democratic process by any means necessary, including leaks and other abuses of their offices.
To allude, as you do, that this is simply Trump's vendetta against "true patriots", is exactly the bullshit you claim to be so adept at discerning.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
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.
AC.. Whoa up..
Is it even possible that you have been mislead on this?
Few posters on Slashdot have first hand knowledge of any of this, so I'm left to wonder if you just *might* not have all the facts straight. It would be easy to get into left field on this..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
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>
It wasn't. The Carter Page FISA warrant was approved before the dossier existed.
Where are these facts you believe are real?
Deputy Director Andrew McCabe admitted that most of the document is unsubstantiated and even confirmed that the dossier was the sole reason for the FISA warrant all before Congress. Seems that these facts are completely opposite of what you are saying. The memo just released also says you are wrong. I am open to see any sources you have though that run counter to ALL reporting on this issue.
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.........
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.
What you said, plus this: Trump and his cabinet are corrupt as hell, probably being coerced or collaborating with Putin and Russia, have so many skeletons in their closet that they should open a haunted house, and Trump sees the hammer on it's way to falling on him (in the person of Robert Mueller) and is now desperately flailing about in what will be a futile attempt to avoid the consequences, which in the least will amount to being removed from office, and at most will result in criminal charges. This isn't going to be fun-and-games for anyone or for the country it's going to be BAD, BAD, BAD for the country, but allowing someone like Trump to continue would be worse. As is it'll take decades to repair the damage done to our government, and to the reputation of the United States with it's allies and with the rest of the world. Hell, it might destroy this country entirely. This particular political nuke is already on trajectory and can't be stopped; all that's left for us now is to sit and wait to see what happens.
Nah damnnit, I just need to ooze some more sarcasm in somehow. If my comment turned a bit Poe there I apologize to all.
An like everyone else that spouts this line you can't produce proof of it. I think its time to put up or shut up. This has been spouted for over a year.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
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.
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.
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/
Carter Page was exonerated once by the FBI before the dossier existed.
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.
The FBI had already exonerated Page before Steele even wrote the dossier.
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.
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.
Well, other than it being actually funded first by Republicans, then dropped like a hot potato once it was clear Trump was winning the nomination, I think we can all agree that it was paid opposition research.
What I'm unclear with is how you determine that such a status means none of it is true.
In general, if you're doing opposition research, you want some grains of truth in there, because if it's all smoke, generally people can see through it.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
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.
Under Oath....
5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
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
That would be a lot easier if there wasn't a contrived political release of a cherry picked memo designed to produce ammo to fire the very people doing that investigation.
Are you so impatient that you'd rather this bit of political shenanigans than the investigation run its due course? And exactly why do you think a year is an unreasonable amount of time to unravel a giant web of influence peddling, money laundering, and political favor trading? From my point of view, I think it's fine to take the time to do it right, rather than just release partial information which might hinder the investigation to satisfy the anger so well stoked by Fox News and the neocon twitter rampage.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
If you know for sure that you're probably illegally sharing state secrets.
I'm not aware of the FBI even making that statement, but even if they did, there's absolutely no reason for it to be true.
Why would you state this as fact, if you don't know whether or not it's true?
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
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.
You have evidence that he was exonerated, as opposed to having an investigation being shelved for a while? The FBI is not known for exonerating people. Indeed, the entire US justice system is not known for exonerating people. If the members of a jury are fairly sure that the defendant committed the crime he or she is accused of, they are supposed to vote to acquit.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
A) Time is money
B) if you found something, you have to indict and do your investigation. Until you file with the courts you have no legal obligation to witness for any investigation and you run the risk of influencing the witness or losing credibility of witnesses.
When the cops suspect you of murder they arrest you and you appear in front of a judge to set bail or let you go on your own recognizance during the investigation and set a court date, then they or the DA will investigate the facts and you prepare your defense, you get to interview witnesses in court.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
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.
How much of that limits HIS power?
He's curtailing other areas, not his own.
And yet he hasn't done a thing to limit the power of his own office. Why's that?
This isn't a "Trump" thing, it's a "politician" thing, or even more broadly, a "human" thing. Nobody wants to curtail their own power.
...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
How long do you think Benghazi was investigated? Iran Contra? The unibomber, Enron, The Olympic park bombing. One year is *nothing* in a complex or tricky investigation. What, they should just give up after a year? Investigations don't work like that. They never have.
"The bass, the rock, the mic, the treble. I like my coffee black, just like my metal" - Mindless Self Indulgence
Let me clarify. I'm not specifically referring to the investigation but to the hoards of idiots that keep spouting this without any proof what so ever. If they have proof put it on the table or shut up.
By all means let the investigation continue and when it concludes lets see what we have.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
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/
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
I kind of thought it was a reaction to the extreme skin pigmentation of the previous president...
Isn't that what the weird toad and tiki torches are all about?
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.
FISA warrants were issued for the investigation well before the Steele dossier was even conceived.
That is a lie.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Nope. The FBI can put whatever is convenient in the FISA application, sufficient to met the legal standard in the eyes of the judge. If they do not like the answer from the FISA court, they will then cough up more information and try again. They did not have to.
If they did not have Steele's dossier, maybe they would have been done. Or maybe they would have used other sources. I do not know. You do not know either. Pretending to know something you do not is just silliness, at best.
Please show me where I said Obama was not having power.
You're so rabidly in support of your team that you don't stop to think that they're ALL bad.
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 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...
It's wrong for us to catch a blatant traitor committing treason!
Can someone just fucking step back a moment and tell me what fucking treason has been committed?
Just that I'm entirely fucking confused by all this.
Russia's attack on America
What fucking attack?
All Russia appears to have done is encourage the fuckwits in America to get pissed off with each other. Which they were already doing anyway.
You come across as unhinged, so if there's some straightforward evidence then do please fucking share.
Not sure how these conspiracy theories get modded up so high. As I've always said, if things are as dire as you say, let's see a single shred of proof. Otherwise, Occam's Razor applies and the most likely explanation is sour grapes and grasping at straws from those who lost the election.
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
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
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.
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
carter page was first investigated in 2013
The FISA warrant was approved October 12th 2016. That is a fact. The 2013 investigation was used as past evidence coupled with the Steele dossier for the warrant. Are you having trouble understanding what a fact is?