House Democrats' Counter-Memo Released, Alleging Major Factual Inaccuracies (vox.com)

Long-time Slashdot reader Rei writes: Three weeks ago, on a party-line vote, the U.S. House Intelligence Committee voted to release a memo from committee chair and Trump transition team member Devin Nunes. The "Nunes Memo" alleged missteps by the FBI in seeking a FISA warrant against Trump aide Carter Page; a corresponding Democratic rebuttal memo was first blocked from simultaneous release by the committee, and subsequently the White House. Tonight, it has finally been released.

Among its many counterclaims: the Steele Dossier, only received in September, did not initiate surveilance of Page which began in July; the Steele dossier was only one, minor component of the FISA application, and only concerning Page's Moscow meetings; Steele's funding source and termination was disclosed in the application; and a number of other "distortions and misrepresentations that are contradicted by the underlying classified documents". Perhaps most seriously, it accuses Nunes of having never read the FISA application which his memo criticized.
Vox argues the memo proves that no one was misled when the surveillance was authorized. "The FBI clearly states right there in the FISA application that they believe Steele was hired to find dirt on Trump... After the Schiff memo was released on Saturday, House Republicans released a document rebutting its core claims. Their response to this damning citation is -- and I am not making this up -- that the vital line in which the FBI discloses the information about Steele was 'buried in a footnote.'"

Comments

Mueller Time

[PopeRatzo]

Twenty-two indictments so far. Five convictions, and counting.

Over 100 Trump officials who have been unable to pass FBI background checks, including the President's son-in-law.

It took over 2 years for the Watergate investigation to nail Nixon. Special Prosecutor Mueller's been at it only 10 months.

Re:Mueller Time

[PopeRatzo]

Manafort's conviction has nothing to do with Trump.

Manafort hasn't been convicted yet, and the indictment unsealed this week have a lot to do with Trump. Manafort was in deep in debt to some very dangerous Russians and tried to help them in their war with the Ukraine while he was Trump's campaign manager. And THEN he had the RNC change their party platform making it more friendly to Russia. And then had his flunky Rick Gates commit bank fraud to try to get out from under.

So, two possibilities: either 1) Trump had to know all this was going on, or 2) Trump had no clue about the guy he hired to chair his campaign and that's even worse because those are the kinds of useful idiots the Russians love to cultivate.

I realize you guys will defend Trump to the last breath, because if he goes down, it shakes your entire worldview. But Trump is already the administration with the most indictments and convictions and officials resigning in disgrace in history. He's crooked and he's losing his mojo.

Re:Mueller Time

[PopeRatzo]

Those Russians that got indicted will never be tried because Russia won't extradite them.

They don't have to be tried. The indictments form the outline of conspiracy charges against people in the US who can be charged.

Now, there is no allegation in this indictment that any American was a knowing participant in this illegal activity.

Notice the part that says, "this indictment"? There have been new indictments coming every few days now. New guilty pleas. New Trump officials (and former Trump officials) cooperating with Mueller.

Every time there are new indictments, the alt-right hollers, "IS THAT ALL HE HAS?" as if the investigation was over. The investigation is going to go on for a long time and the Russian indictments create a shield around Mueller, protecting him from Trump firing him. The shit has barely started hitting the fan, and it's fun watching you all rationalizing and minimizing and pretending it's not happening. Oh, it's happening all right, and when it's over there will be a smoking crater where the Trumpublicans used to be.

Re:Sounds like old news to me.

[ravenshrike]

Are you honestly trying to say that Schiff, who is the ranking democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, wouldn't know exactly what type of information would get redacted? Pull the other one, it's got bells on. If the redacted information was information that shouldn't have been redacted Schiffy would be howling from the rooftops about the redactions. He's not, which means every piece of redacted info in that memo which he demanded be released was there solely to provide cover for useful idiots like you. As for Mueller not going away, that would be evident to anyone who watched his hounding of Steven Hatfill.

Re:Nunes did not - and advertised that

[Anonymous Coward]

The DOJ and FBI refused to comply with the House Oversignt comittee, even ignoring lawful subpoenas (this is getting into scary territory for a Constitutional Republic when unelected bureaucrats who despise their elected leaders refuse to obey them).

Yes, the FBI, that famously Democratic institution (pop quiz: identify the last Democratic director of the FBI). Getting their warrant signed off by four judges - two appointed by George W. Bush, one by George H.W. Bush, and one by Reagan, in that bastion of liberalness, the FISA courts.

The FBI states that it has met all of the subpoenas issued to it (even other House Republicans refused to sign onto Nunes's threatening subpoena letter). “We disagree with the chairman’s characterization and will continue to work with congressional committees to provide the information they request consistent with our national security responsibilities.” The FBI has given the committee hundreds of pages of requested documents and cleared McCabe and Strzok to testify.

It's just like the bogus ethics charges they filed against him that got him off the case for months until the ethics comittee had to admit there was nothing and Nunes could go back to work on this case

Yeah, it's totally ethical for a Trump transition team member to investigate the Trump administration for events that occurred before, during and after the transition. Totally. Nunes totally deserves an ethics prize.

I urge everybody to do what literate and responsible citizens should do:
1. Read the Nunes memo... 2. Read the Schiff memo ... read the Nunes response

Wow - we're in total agreement! Except it amazes me how a person with more than two brain cells could reach the conclusions you have after doing so. Literally every key complaint made in the original Nunes memo was false or highly misleading. "FISA application was fundamentally built on the dossier" becomes "started months before the dossier was even received, and it only made up a minor portion of the FISA application, and with multiple unrelated corroborating sources". "News article based on information from Steele was used to back up the Steele dossier" becomes "Multiple news articles cited only in the context of quoting Carter Page's response to claims about him". "Courts were not informed about Steele's funding and termination" becomes "FBI was proactive in keeping the court up to date with all information related to Steele, including funding and termination". And on and on and on.

And here we have the Nunes response memo literally confirming the rebuttals. We've gone from "The FISA court wasn't informed!" to "The font size was too small when they wrote ''The FBI speculates that the identified U.S. Person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit Candidate #1's campaign"! Sneaky, sneaky FBI and their sneaky, sneaky font sizes! Heck, the Nunes response memo to the Democratic memo starts out by confirming that the investigation started in July 2016 (and offers no rebuttal to the claim that the Steele dossier wasn't received until September), arguing that the investigation was "then fueled" by the dossier. Apparently "then" is a two month gap against the self-described "adviser to the Kremlin". My favourite part of the reponse-response is #3:

However, four times DOJ repeated to the FISA Court (FISC) an incorrect assessment that Steele had not been a source for an earlier, September 2016 Yahoo News article by Michael Isikoff. In May 2017, before the final renewal application, Steele admitted in a publicly-available U.K. court filing to personally briefing numerous U.S. media outlets, including Yahoo News, in September 2016

Damn the FBI for not using their FBI Time Machine to go