Release the Krak... err FISA Memo!

[woolfe9998]

Also can anyone take a step back and realize how insane it is that the entire memo is about how the FBI was supposedly unfair to Carter Page, someone who wasn't even a part of the Trump campaign when the FISA warrant was issued.

And wasn't with the campaign yet when they first began wire tapping him years before...

 

[vi edit]

Also can anyone take a step back and realize how insane it is that the entire memo is about how the FBI was supposedly unfair to Carter Page, someone who wasn't even a part of the Trump campaign when the FISA warrant was issued.

Or the fact that they are hanging their remaining thin threads of credibility on Carter Page. A guy who can barely tell you the color of the sky without dancing around answer.

 

[K1052]

Read it. Whole lotta nothing.

Interesting that Dana Boenta approved one of the FISA warrants. Same guy who replaced Yates after she was fired for refusing to defend the travel ban 1.0 and then proceeded to in court. Not exactly somebody seen as a Trump poltical enemy.

 

[interchange]

This is the crux of this whole thing. Where the information came from really doesn't matter. If the information can be corroborated or not does since US citizens are implicated in a host of illegal shit plus the truckloads of foreign intelligence implications. The FBI's job is to find out and if in the course of that they discover other unseemly stuff to deal with that too.

As long as the source is legal, yeah. And even so, there are other exemptions to the fruit of the poisonous tree metaphor.

Oh, John McCain is still alive btw, just tweeted about the memo's release:

"The latest attacks on the FBI and Department of Justice serve no American interests - no party's, no President's, only Putin's.

Say what you want about McCain's political career and mixed motivations, but there is no doubt in my mind he is an actual American hero and cares deeply for the US.

What political bias? The fact that Steele said he was passionately opposed to Trump becoming POTUS after he had spent months investigating Trump? You relealize his "bias" may well have been a product of what he discovered during his investigation, right? I mean, read the dossier. If this is the information his sources were providing him, I'd be shocked if he wasn't vehemently opposed to Trump becoming POTUS.

I never used the word bias. I said political connection / funding source.

 

[ewdotson]

So ... they *did* obtain three FISA renewals on him. Just a friendly reminder: getting a renewal requires that the FBI shows that the surveillance has yielded foreign intelligence substantiating the original probable cause.

 

[fskimospy]

Yeah just finished reading it. It's basically complaining that Steele didn't like Trump and that the FBI didn't tell the FISA court that Steele was hired by the Democrats. It's interesting to see how desperately it attempts to dance around the fact that the FISA application clearly included a bunch of other evidence from the FBI.

Man is this some weak shit.

 

[fskimospy]

So ... they *did* obtain three FISA renewals on him. Just a friendly reminder: getting a renewal requires that the FBI shows that the surveillance has yielded foreign intelligence substantiating the original probable cause.

And had to be requested by the Trump-led FBI. Curious how the memo left that fact out. I wonder why?

 

[HomerJS]

Yeah just finished reading it. It's basically complaining that Steele didn't like Trump and that the FBI didn't tell the FISA court that Steele was hired by the Democrats. It's interesting to see how desperately it attempts to dance around the fact that the FISA application clearly included a bunch of other evidence from the FBI.

Man is this some weak shit.

When police gather evidence let's say on a serial killer is it required police like the suspect??

 

[K1052]

As long as the source is legal, yeah. And even so, there are other exemptions to the fruit of the poisonous tree metaphor.

Looks like the entire GOP case for this thing is that Steele didn't like Trump and the FISA court wasn't told that that so the warrants shouldn't have been issued. Don't think I buy that argument considering the intel that was clearly worthy of some investigation.

Incidentally they undermine themselves in the memo by confirming that the Papadopoulus info is what really kicked off the investigation to begin with.

 

[deathBOB]

Yeah just finished reading it. It's basically complaining that Steele didn't like Trump and that the FBI didn't tell the FISA court that Steele was hired by the Democrats. It's interesting to see how desperately it attempts to dance around the fact that the FISA application clearly included a bunch of other evidence from the FBI.

Man is this some weak shit.

Remember we’re in the malevolence limited by incompetence era.

 

[fskimospy]

Also, the memo really fucks up when it admits the basis for the Russia investigation was Papadopoulos, not Carter Page. It means the FBI started investigating Trump because a member of his campaign bragged to a foreign ambassador about how he had secret knowledge of Russian activities to attack Hillary Clinton.

Man, these clowns can't even smear people right.

 

[MomentsofSanity]

Michael Beschloss‏Verified account @BeschlossDC
AP’s Jonathan Lemire reports that in Oval Office, Trump was just asked if he was more likely to fire Rosenstein and if he still had confidence in him, and that President said, "You figure that one out."

9:10 AM - 2 Feb 2018

 

[K1052]

Also, the memo really fucks up when it admits the basis for the Russia investigation was Papadopoulos, not Carter Page. It means the FBI started investigating Trump because a member of his campaign bragged to a foreign ambassador about how he had secret knowledge of Russian activities to attack Hillary Clinton.

Man, these clowns can't even smear people right.

This effort is so breathtakingly incompetent that the odds of it aging well are real bad.

 

[Puffnstuff]

The memo is in the wild now.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/02/politics/republican-intelligence-memo/index.html

 

[Moonbeam]

With sufficient capacity to deny reality in favor of an altered one, a person can become a traitor

 

[vi edit]

So while the news cycles have been absolutely dominated by this low energy memo lets step back and look at other things that have happened in the last few days...

1) Rick Gates (the guy indicted with Manafort) just lost all but one of his lawyers. Hmmmm....
2) Three Russian intelligence officials who are sanctioned and not even allowed in our country met with the heads of our intelligence community ON OUR OWN TURF
3) Hope Hicks is in quite a legal pickle and a caught between a perjury conviction, obstruction of justice conviction or being a willing to testify.
4) Ben Carson handed out half a million no-bid contract to his kid-inlaw.
5) Sanctions against Russia passed as law to vote of something like 531-4 in favor of sanctioning. The deadline to impose came and Trump has done NOTHING.

While we are spinning our wheels on this massive non-story all that other stuff is going on.

The Grand Deceptor is hard at work.

 

[interchange]

Yeah this is actually kind of funny reading it. I'm glad they released it. They should have made it much shorter to have the effect they desired. I find the following things interesting:

• 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.
• The Carter Page FISA application also cited extensively a September 23, 2016, Yahoo News article by Michael Iskoff...

The first I thought about a little bit. There is nothing to the Republican narrative that the Steele information was especially pertinent to the surveillance of Carter Page. The statement only indicates that the dossier contained an important lead. How much, if anything, more is unknown.

The second was kind of funny because I can't imagine a news article being used as evidence in court, but so it is. Anyway, there is a problem with their sequence of this. They claim that Steele was not a reliable informant because of sharing information with Yahoo! News, invalidating the article as being independent validation of whatever was important from Steele's findings. OK. They also said the FBI found out about the disclosure Oct 30, 2016, after the warrant had been issued. So the FBI didn't know of any potential problems here. And, obviously, the warrant has been renewed multiple times since this information was known, suggesting the information was credible regardless.

 

[K1052]

1) Rick Gates (the guy indicted with Manafort) just lost all but one of his lawyers. Hmmmm....

The growing Mueller stable of likely cooperating witnesses should be really concerning to anybody who knows/did something but isn't a Trump, cause they aren't getting pardoned. Only so many seats on the immunity/plead down lifeboat.

 

[UNCjigga]

So ... they *did* obtain three FISA renewals on him. Just a friendly reminder: getting a renewal requires that the FBI shows that the surveillance has yielded foreign intelligence substantiating the original probable cause.

DING DING DING DING DING!!!!!!

Just read the whole thing...whole lotta nothingburger. Not sure exactly what "sources and methods" are revealed but perhaps I'm not reading between the lines.

I think Nunes and the WH are all idiots for releasing this, because it confirms a couple of things:

1) FISA warrants and subsequent wiretaps were yielding intelligence on Carter Page
2) At least some part of the Steele Dossier, however insignificant, had already been corroborated by October 2016 by the time Steele was terminated as as a source. This is YUGE. Nunes is trying to downplay this, but that means a part of the Steele Dossier had been corroborated, and before the election. This would paint Steele's urgency on "not wanting to see Trump elected" as a race against the clock, not so much partisan bias.
3) Papadopolous had already necessitated a separate counterintelligence operation by JULY 2016. PAY ATTENTION TO THE TIMELINE PEOPLE! THIS IS SIMULTANEOUS with Steele *starting* his research and source work for the FBI--Republicans cannot claim that one led to the other! This explains so much about why they were trying to get rid of Strzok from Mueller's team, this guy had already been investigating separate from Steele! They will continue to try and paint him as a partisan investigator because that's the only hope they have of tainting whatever it was he found.

 

[vi edit]

I feel like I've watched this before...

 

[Commodus]

I really want to see how our resident Trump fans try to spin this. Their usual propaganda sources have been hyping up the memo to make it sound like it's some career-shattering, game-changing revelation. "This, this will be the memo that shatters all opposition to Trump!" And... it fell flat.

If the Mueller investigation is a road, Nunes' attempted distraction is a speed bump.

 

[UNCjigga]

I really want to see how our resident Trump fans try to spin this. Their usual propaganda sources have been hyping up the memo to make it sound like it's some career-shattering, game-changing revelation. "This, this will be the memo that shatters all opposition to Trump!" And... it fell flat.

If the Mueller investigation is a road, Nunes' attempted distraction is a speed bump.

There whole "GOTCHA!" hinges on McCabe telling the committee in December 2017 that "no [FISA] warrant would have been sought without information from the Steele Dossier" and an insinuation (straight from Nunes/WH) that poltical motivations of the Steele dossier's author were "hidden" from the FISC judges granting warrant/renewals.

Two problems:
1) McCabe made this statement in December 2017--we know that in October 2016 at least some part of the dossier had already been corroborated by the FBI (who knows if additional corroborations were made in 14 months between 10/16 and 12/17.) So McCabe's statement could be taken out of context--would need an additional statement from McCabe clarifying his testimony.

2) The FBI/DoJ intentionally hiding Steele's political motivations is a stretch--so many acting directors/deputies from both administrations signed off on subsequent renewals without raising this as an issue. The political motivations may be immaterial to the underlying dossier, and the FISC Judge may only be interested in the merits of the dossier itself.

 

[vi edit]

And in unrelated news, Dow is down almost 400 points today. Weeeeeeeee!

 

[Pens1566]

So, they're conveniently ignoring that :

1) he was on radar in 2013, far before any Steele dossier or campaign
2) that the warrant had been initially approved and re-approved several times without dossier
3) that multiple random judges thought the evidence was enough to satisfy FISA rules
4) that initial warrant periods provided sufficient evidence to justify continuing warrant regardless of any dossier info

Yeah, that's going to be a tough sell to the non mouth breathing crowd that isn't binge watching Alex Jones.

 

[zinfamous]

Trump approved this release, so you almost think that Trump is desperate to find whatever way it takes to get himself excused from this godawful job that he absolutely hates. I wonder if he's painting himself into a method of "going away willingly" while he still protests and fumigates loudly about how unfairly he is being treated while only wanting to do good things for very good people like coal miners.