The narrative just changed from “there was no collusion” to “you can’t use this evidence of our collusion.”
Sure looks damning, doesn’t it? Except it’s a tissue of lies and cherry-picked evidence.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/02/us/politics/trump-fbi-memo.html
And yes, I have now read the memo. It’s a joke, as I expected. Something the Times article doesn’t mention: I’d like to see evidence that Glenn Simpson knew that the DNC was funding Fusion GPS’ project. Yet another reason this is a Trumped-up, toady-approved fantasy.
(I find it funny that the only redactions from the memo were the line “TOP SECRET/NOPORN” from each page. I guess it’s Safe For Work…)
“NOFORN”, not “NOPORN”. NOFORN = No Foreign Dissemination.
You sure you were in the Navy?
He was considered unreliable because he broke a signed agreement with the FBI not to disclose his relationship with the FBI as an informant, which is required of all individuals who enter into that relationship with the FBI. When Steele disclosed to Mother Jones and other media sources that he was working with the FBI, the FBI 86ed that relationship with cause, and he would be considered unreliable for any future work as an informant. In other words, they did not consider him unreliable or erratic before his violation of the informant agreement. This is a well-known procedure, and he would have been briefed on acceptable and unacceptable behavior and actions and agreed to them by signing the informant agreement.
I recall it was fairly well reported at the time, but I’m not going to dig through every article about the matter. Here’s one mention in the San Francisco Chronicle:
Steele’s last report for Fusion was submitted on Oct. 20. The Post reported that the FBI had reached an agreement with Steele to pay him to continue his work after the election but the arrangement fell apart after his research became public. He may have been reimbursed for some travel expenses.
Considering that I was never exposed to Top Secret documents, that’s not overly surprising.
Quite certain. Wanna see my copies of Lucky Bags?
And now, please provide evidence for your ‘feelings.’ How, specifically and in a substantiated way, is Simpson an unreliable witness?
If he’s believed to be unreliable, why did his former boss at SIS go on the record to say he is reliable?
One thing I’ve noticed is that the narrative has gone from “None of it is true”, to “The people who are saying this are untrustworthy, so let’s just chuck out the whole thing.” While ignoring, of course, that the person who wrote the memo (Nunes) has already been caught working directly with/for the target of the investigation (Trump), and had supposedly had to recuse himself from said investigation.
Furthermore, we’re not being allowed to hear the Democrat’s rebuttal to the memo- we’re just supposed to take Nunes’ word for everything.
Were the parties reversed, I doubt the Republicans would be so credulous.
Why did the corporate boss who employed Steele claim that his employee was reliable? I think you just answered your own question.
Were the parties reversed, and President Dubya’s FBI had obtained a FISA warrant against a member of candidate Obama’s staff to try to prove that he was colluding with Kenya by omitting exculpatory evidence, I don’t doubt that the media would be proclaiming it the crime of the century and calling for Bush to be arrested and executed.
In you’re heart, you know I’m right.
Don’t try to degrade an argument by claiming that when you advance an opinion, it’s “facts”, but when someone else does, it’s “feelings”. Stick to the argument if you want people to take you seriously.
Simpson said, per your post that Steele was reliable. The FBI did not consider him as such because he broke his agreement with them.
In other words, the FBI doesn’t trust him to honor a signed non-disclosure agreement. Which has nothing to do with their trust in the reliability of the work he’d done.
Of course. Were you confusing reliability with accuracy? Two different things in the intelligence community. But an FBI SA would not be able to reopen him as an informant based on his actions, as honesty is a combination of one’s reliability and one’s accuracy… That is an issue in assessing candor with an informant. He may tell you the truth, but is he telling you all the truth?
You know, I really don’t. Calling for death is pretty much a Republican thing, you know?
By the way, Nunes is now admitting that he didn’t even read the FISA applications before writing the memo. His hearsay is based on hearsay.
Ah - everyone who knows Steele and says nice thing is lying. And everyone who doesn’t know him and says he’s terrible is a disinterested party.
Don’t try to distract from the argument. You advanced the opinion that Simpson is an unreliable witness. I responded that, having read both of Simpson’s testimonies, I saw no evidence of that.
Then I asked for evidence of your assertion. Last I looked, that’s not an opinion. It’s a call for cites.
That is not a cite. It’s yet another assertion. Quote from the FBI, instead of parroting a spun-sugar conspiracy theory written by a Trump toady that has no supporting evidence itself.
What jumps out at me is that such an investigation into Obama would have turned up jack shit.
It the present case, it’s rainin’ Russians.
Despite the everyday Democrat’s switch to embrace FISA, I have to assume that there’s still a goodly number of people that think the government is spying on Americans, that the whole process is politicized, corrupt, and unconstitutional. The memo fundamentally degrades American trust in the legality, reliability, and standards of the FISA court, which it has taken a decade since GW Bush decided to start imprisoning Americans to re-establish trust in. (Strangley, Trump has done more to raise trust in FISA and the FBI than Obama ever did with the left.)
The intelligence community argues that FISA and related intelligence systems - like the massive phone and email metadata databases that Snowden leaked - are necessary and already at the bare minimum for their organizations to basically function, to prevent terror and crime on American soil. If those powers are diminished in any way, then (they argue) that will directly lead to the deaths of hundreds, thousands, or millions of Americans.
And if you watched any of the Intelligence or Justice Committee hearings over the last year, despite many of the ones I was watching being ostensibly about the Russia investigation, every single person from the DoJ, FBI, NSA, etc. would throw in a passionate defense of “702” every once in a while, if there was any possible excuse to throw one in. Every single hearing, every single person giving testimony, for a full year. And, more notably, there was significant congressional pushback against them on 702, with several of the congressmen outright calling the thing illegal, unconstitutional, and outright screaming at the person who was giving testimony, because they’d asked for documentation from the intelligence community that the community was giving them the runaround on.
The renewal of FISA (which happened just before Nunes posted his memo - and which Nunes voted for, we should note) does not seem to have been, by any means, a slam dunk. And the memo has a great potential to stir up the elements of the government and in the public who want to see the powers of the intelligence community to investigate Americans dismantled.
In this case, I don’t think it’s so much about “sources and means” so much as it’s a concern about the whole damn system itself being able to stay afloat. Of course, Trump himself doesn’t give two shits about that, so long as it conflicts with his not-in-jail self, so he was fine to release the memo without trying to tone it down.
I feel that this is also a good opportunity to share an essay by the estimable Carter Page, so that we all can ask ourselves if you really need to think all that deeply to decide that this is a man that could use to have an eye kept on him:
No, really. Go read it.
The man would be best friends with Harvey Lee Oswald. He’s a genuine nutball.