House Intel votes to release FISA memo...

[Mountain Man]

source...

And what does it mean when the FBI is forced to use false pretenses to secure surveillance warrents because they can't show probable cause otherwise? Does that suggest you're winning?

[JimL]

source...

It's like both Trump and Gen. Flynn who, speaking of Clinton aides during the campaign said, why do they need immunity, or why are they pleading the 5th if they are innocent.

Well, when you're attacking the FBI and trying to undermine the investigation, well, why would you do that if you have nothing to hide, if you're innocent? The truth is, you wouldn't!

[rogue06]

Funny how the left went after the FBI for investigating Hillary (they didn't know the fix was in and it was already determined she would be exonerated even before she would be interviewed), but now doubting their veracity is akin to attacking the Constitution.

[rogue06]

It is obvious if ALL the original papers were included, there is more than sufficient evidence. Your not going to fool the judge and their legal staff. When all the information, in fact as current evidence indicates, is revealed it will be found the judge had all the relevant evidence at hand.

I know of no effort to accuse the judge of judicial misconduct, and this would be the case if the Nunes memo was remotely true and comprehensive.

It looks like they suckered the judge rather than he was in on it by not telling him that the evidence they provided was nothing more than unverified gossip yet presented as the work of the intelligence community. And keep in mind the first attempt to get a warrant was turned down (by a court that only rejects 0.03% of such requests^[1]). Until Trump many on the left were quite upset with the FISA court calling them, among the repeatable things, a rubber stamp







1. To spell it out that's an approval rate of 99.97%

[carpedm9587]

Yep, and the way things are going, he's going to be very tough to beat on 2020.

We'll see...

[carpedm9587]

Funny how the left went after the FBI for investigating Hillary (they didn't know the fix was in and it was already determined she would be exonerated even before she would be interviewed), but now doubting their veracity is akin to attacking the Constitution.

Isn't it amazing how people change their stories when their political position changes?

[carpedm9587]

Yet again you are quick to hand wave things you don't like as "yet another right-wing meme" when even a cursory examination shows it isn't I just posted this (http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/sh...l=1#post514904) in response to jimmy claiming that Trump is no different than Hitler because he "disparaged the so called MSM." It contains mention (with sources) of Obama siccing the IRS after a local reporter in St. Louis along with several other things that garnered a collective yawn from the left (with a very few exceptions).

Actually, I owe you an apology for a sloppy post. I saw IRS and immediately went to that "great scandal" of how the IRS targeted right-wing groups. That was the meme I was referring to. You were referring to something different, which I actually knmew nothing about. I've followed the story through several sources, most with a right-wing bent. I've been trying to get to coverage from a neutral source, and so far the least biased source I've found is Al Jazeera, and they confirm that this occured and that the journalist was simply reporting about a missle strike that killed civilians. I'm trying to get to the discussion about it that was recorded, but haben't succeeded yet. So far, it appears this story is indeed true, and would be added to my list of "things I didn't like about Obama.

The Hitler comparison is just a tad over the top, Rogue. There is simply no way Obama was "like Hitler."

I have not had a chance to chase down the St. Louis story.

[Charles]

Give me a break, Chuckles. If this memo was about actions undertaken by Trump, you guys would be screaming for his immediate impeachment, but because it exonerates Trump and implicates his political enemies, you lot pretend it's no big deal.

I guess you missed the rather obvious point. You have got no facts but you want us to pretend that you have got them. That is why your question is misleading. We can all make all sorts of claims about how others would react under different circumstances and I could make a lot of claims about you in that regard but what would it change? It would just change focus. So, once again, you asked as if assumptions were facts. That is a misleading way of asking a question.

[Juvenal]

Huh. Wonder why Steele hasn't been indicted for lying to the FBI?

He was referred for an indictment by Grassley and Graham.

It should be remembered that Steele is a foreign national.

So why were the democrats and the FBI so worried about it and wanted it suppressed? They knew the contents.

At a rough guess because its composition seems to have been coordinated with the White House, as part of a continuing pattern by Nunes to derail the committee's investigation of ties between Russia and the Trump campaign.

This previous coordination by Nunes, when reported in the press, led to his initial, though less than consistent, recusal and resulting ethics investigation. He doesn't seem able to control this tendency. The suggestion that he has repeated the offense has led to a repetition of calls for him to step down as committee chairman.

Democrats on the committee have a disadvantage: they can't publish classified material. That's going to make it hard for them to be specific.

The memo itself appears scrubbed, containing little more than what has already been reported in the press, though even that much is clearly contentious. The clear concern is that the FISA warrant on Page is based on non-public information which, if released, would reveal currently undisclosed sources and methods. As such, the release of the Nunes memo creates a national security trap.

Notably, the memo, while focused on the Page warrant's connection to the Steele dossier, doesn't interact at all with previously released transcripts of Simpson's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, or even before Nunes' own House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, testimony which casts considerable doubt on the memo's characterization of Simpson, Fusion GPS, Steele, and the Steele dossier itself.

I'd be pleased to discuss that testimony with anyone else geeky enough to read it all, or the transcript of the committee deliberations on releasing the memo, or a Lawfare take on those deliberations.

[rogue06]

Isn't it amazing how people change their stories when their political position changes?

It's pretty much expected for politicians to do so. It's another thing when a self-professed impartial, objective press does so.

[rogue06]

Actually, I owe you an apology for a sloppy post. I saw IRS and immediately went to that "great scandal" of how the IRS targeted right-wing groups.

You mean the one where they issued an apology for but insisted it was only low level officials involved?

the least biased source I've found is Al Jazeera

Just. Wow.

[Juvenal]

Funny how the left went after the FBI for investigating Hillary (they didn't know the fix was in and it was already determined she would be exonerated even before she would be interviewed), but now doubting their veracity is akin to attacking the Constitution.

Not generally a place I like to go, but what's more amusing is how quickly the right has converted to the position that Page was central to the Trump campaign's interaction with Russia.


The memo is about one warrant, part of an investigation of one actor, Carter Page, who had been under suspicion for years before joining the Trump campaign, and was issued well after Page had left the Trump campaign. It has since been renewed three times, per regular processes by career professionals and appointees of both the Trump and Obama administrations.

Any suggestion that the full contents of this warrant and its renewal applications should be made public is irresponsible. Even a partial response, using further information from these warrants, is problematical.

I understand that not everyone has time or interest enough to spend hours reading through interview transcripts, watching committee hearings on CSPAN, and following the in-depth coverage in the mainstream press, but right wing partisans' previous case of minimal linkage between Page and the Trump campaign has always been, and continues to be, more compelling.

We know how the Steele dossier interacted with Carter Page (pp. 94, 170, 230, 236 ff.), and we know he wasn't central to the ties between Trump, his campaign, and Russia, e.g.:

Page 236

19 So we looked into Carter Page and we also
20 looked into Igor Sechin and whether Sergei Ivanov
21 was in a position to be managing the election
22 operation, which is what 94 talks about, and we
23 determined that he was. I, you know, independently
24 verified he does have a deputy who's very obscure
25 named Igor Divyekin. It's spelled two different ...

It should be noted that everything that's been reported in the press about the focus of the Mueller investigation can be sourced back (though at times not definitively) to witnesses speaking about what questions they've been asked, along with public plea deals and the release of previously sealed indictments which, for national security and strategic reasons, we should expect to omit significant detail in order to preserve sources and methods, and to avoid revealing the special counsel's hand to future witnesses.

Suggestions that more shoes are ready to drop, or that the Mueller investigation is actually barefoot, are equally arguments from silence, and will likely be mooted soon enough for those with enough patience to wait for Mueller to do his job. He appears to be moving with deliberative speed.

The Nunes memo adds nothing to this discussion, or the investigation itself, and isn't likely to influence any opinions beyond those who were still on the fence about his continued tenure as chairman of the HPSCI. It is inappropriate for an agent of the president to lead a congressional committee charged with providing checks and balances on the executive branch.

[carpedm9587]

It's pretty much expected for politicians to do so. It's another thing when a self-professed impartial, objective press does so.

Yeah - I noticed that about Fox

[carpedm9587]

You mean the one where they issued an apology for but insisted it was only low level officials involved?

The one where Obama took responsibility, and ordered an investigation. It turned out it was local decision making, and, from what I saw, it was a reasonably "innocent" error. They had been seeing a significant amount of application activity from the right for "tax free" status from organizations that had a pretty clear political agenda. Instead of saying, "let's up the check on all tax-free applications with potential political agenda," they focused it specifically on where they were seeing the most activity - from right-wing applicants. The optics were definitely bad - but I found myself somewhat underwhelmed by the "scandal."

Just. Wow.

They are assessed as left-center media bias (what I call "soft left" and their source accuracy is considered "high." (https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/al-jazeera/). So far, that is the least biased news source covering the event I have found.

[Mountain Man]

Source: Breitbart

Here are 16 things the media do not want you to know about the Nunes memo:

• All of this dishonesty occurred under Comey, the man our media now hold up as a living saint, a man so desperate to destroy Trump, he not only oversaw those committing the above abuses, he leaked classified information to the news media in order to see a Special Prosecutor appointed against Trump, which his pal, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, immediately did.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...not-want-know/

© Copyright Original Source

This makes Watergate look like a petty crime.