So you’re saying that a FISA judge is unlikely to be familiar with raw Intel from Intelligence sources?
What exactly do you think they are most likely looking at every day?
I’ve not seen the memo. But the reporting on the memo, citing people who have, indicates that the application did not disclose that the Steele dossier was from a guy who was specifically hired to do opposition research, and was not neutral information from a disinterested party.
If they told the judge that we have such-and-such information from a reliable intelligence source, and fail to disclose that the guy was specifically hired to produce this type of information, that’s a material difference. It’s like if you quote a distinguished legal scholar about some legal issue and fail to disclose that the guy is the lawyer for one of the parties to the dispute. I think it’s reasonable to assume a judge would be more skeptical of raw intelligence gathered by a guy whose job it was to dig up dirt on someone than on raw intelligence gathered up by a guy who took an objective approach to it. Certainly a judge should be more skeptical.
An invasion of space aliens would be even more concerning, but is about as likely.
There is no evidence at all that the FBI/DOJ investigations are politically motivated. There is no logical reason to even suspect they are. You are putting forth a theory unsupported by either facts or reason.
The entire Trumpist narrative is ludicrous. I don’t think a lot of people realize how far they’ve ventured through the looking glass on this. This is the most insane, divorced-from-reality thing I have ever seen a modern democracy tear itself up over.
Some of this has been covered before. I was under the impression based on stories released earlier this year that a couple of Russian spies were caught on tape discussing Carter Page and the fact that Carter Page was unwittingly passing them useful information. IIRC, they called him an idiot. This happened in 2013, long before the Trump campaign.
IIRC, Page confirmed this himself
Seems to me that this would be grounds for survellience on Page. At least one would hope so. And that “unmasking” his identity in these circumstances was a fairly routine procedure that happened at levels way below Obama and Susan Rice. At least one would hope so.
And it would only seem proper that, considering these circumstances, that the intelligence agencies would be very concerned when he insinuated himself into Trumps inner circle.
What wouldve concerned me is if the FBI said” he’s with Trump now so he must’ve cleaned up his act. Let’s drop this, he’s a good guy if the Pres vouches for him”
But maybe this memo will highlight the fact that Trump put Russian assets on his foreign polic y team. Even though Page is the Kato Kaelin of Stupid Watergate ( yeah, I’m mixing my crime metaphors ).
Your post here is ludicrous. (In general, your posts on Trump-related matters seem unhinged, IMHO.)
In this case, suggestions that there might have been a politically motivated aspect to the investigation rest partially on the fact that one key agent was extremely hostile to Trump, and that a senior FBI agent’s spouse received substantial financial support from Clinton allies (he eventually recused himself, but only after the WSJ exposed this), and he was suspected by other FBI agents of dragging his feet on Clinton investigations. But also on the fact that one other senior DOJ official had a spouse who worked for Fusion/GPS and was presumably involved in the dossier (she was a Russia expert).
That’s before getting into relatively minor details (e.g. whether McCabe tried to suppress the Weiner email discovery etc.)
Does all this mean that the investigation was marred by political bias? Absolutely not. But it certainly suggests that it might be possible, and if there are allegations that it was, that it’s worth looking into. Anyone who suggests that it’s as likely as an invasion by space aliens, or that there no support from either “facts or reason” has their own biases in play.
As I quoted a legal expert before, judges are not stupid. They know that evidence doesn’t come from disinterested parties, so that it irrelevant except in extreme cases (which were mentioned in the article.)
But I must note again that you’re veering back and forth between two equally bad arguments: when pointed out that case law is perfectly clear that bias in witnesses or tipsters is expected by judges, you said this wasn’t an issue of the law, but ethics (?).
Now you’re back to making the case that not putting bias in front of the judge makes a legal difference in how the judge would evaluate the evidence, which is a question that is exactly on point to the article I cited earlier. And for like the fifth time, that article makes it abundantly clear that judges aren’t stupid, and they generally assume that evidence doesn’t come from disinterested parties.
The incoherence in your argument – even you can’t tell if this is a legal issue or not – speaks to the ridiculousness of the entire allegation. Add to this that Nunes is committing the sin of omission, since there seems to be substantial evidence that the FISA warrant is not based solely on the Steele investigation, but that it was one piece among several/many pieces of evidence used to obtain the warrant.
So I ask you, FP, which do you find more misleading:
(1) an application for a warrant given to an experienced judge that doesn’t contain complete and total disclosure of just one of the pieces of evidence used to support the application; or
(2) a declassified memo written by an ally of the President, who last year was recused from this investigation for improper behavior, that asserts that the warrant was based on a single piece of evidence that was inadequately explained while omitting that other highly classified evidence was used, and this memo is presented to the public who have literally no experience in how such warrants are obtained or how intelligence matters work?
This is a question that a brain-dead labradoodle could probably nail. The ethics of scenario 2 is a million times worse than the perceived slight in number 1.
The warrant was not based entirely upon the dossier, so that isn’t all that relevant.
But, even if it were. Why would the source of intel be important, if the intel is credible on its own? If I hire a private investigator to dig up dirt on someone, and that PI uncovers criminal activity, is there a reason that that information would be not admissible?
The FISA warrant wasn’t a conviction, it was part of the investigative process. The judge looked at the intel provided, and said, “Yes, there does seem to be enough here to warrant a closer look.”
Now, we may be talking about a basic issue with the FISA court in and of itself. It denies warrants very rarely. I have little doubt that FISA warrants have been sworn out with far less probable cuase than this one.
Now, they are classified, so it is hard to tell for sure, but if you could show another dozen or more FISA warrants that were requested and granted based on even less information collected by private agencies, would you still feel that this particular one was granted for political reasons?
I found it interesting that the FBI’s complaint against the memo was that it contained “material omissions of fact”. Isn’t that exactly what the memo supposedly shows the FBI did to FISA?
It appears to be the reference to the Nunes lie of omission, in which he implies that the Steele investigation is the only source of information presented to the FISC; when in reality there was almost certainly more to the application than a single source.
I’ve noted before that your article was irrelevant.
You’re completely failing to understand the most basic matters.
Of course it’s a legal issue. Anything involving a judge ruling on something is a legal issue. Anything involving police submitting warrants to a judge is of course a legal issue.
The reason your cite is completely irrelevant is not because the entire concern is not a “legal issue”. It’s because your cite is about the specific legal question of “is evidence seized based on a warrant in which the judge was misinformed admissible?” That’s not what we’re discussing here. Even if we grant that all evidence against Carter Page is admissible, there’s still reason to be concerned if the FBI and DOJ was misleading judges in applying for warrants, especially if due to political bias. (If you’re really incapable of understanding this, let me know.)
The reason I discussed whether a judge might have ruled otherwise is not because I’m asserting it makes a difference as to whether the evidence is admissible (note: if I start discussing whether the evidence is admissible, I’ll let you know - until then don’t assume that). It’s because if this omission couldn’t conceivably make a difference to the judge, then the judge is not being misled, and it’s not an abuse of police powers (any more than if they omitted what color shoes the guy was wearing). But since it could make a difference, then omitting it is an abuse of police powers, which is a Terrible Thing, even if the evidence is legally admissible.
That’s very possible. I don’t know to what extent the application relied on the dossier versus other evidence, and neither do you. (Only one of us appreciates that fact, however.) Need to see the memo and counter-memo etc. to have a good sense of that.
If judges are being misled, then the warrants ought to be considered improper. But you are holding up the lack of impartiality of the evidence as the reason the judge may have been misled, and the case law seems abundantly clear that the impartiality of the evidence, and any disclosure issues relating to it, is a red herring being thrown to the President’s political base.
And here we are getting to the real reason the memo is being promoted by partisans: they want to allege that even if the FBI and DOJ did everything legally, it is still wrong, and that damn fool Republican Rod Rosenstein is at fault. Oh… does Rod Rosenstein oversee the Russia investigation? Mon dieu, we had no idea!..
You are relying on selective readings of what has been reported about this issue, and I’m relying on the totality of the reporting on this issue. It’s like a microcosm of the issue at hand, actually. How very interesting.
One other interesting thing about this line of argument that surveillance of Carter Page implies that the FBI was wiretapping the Trump campaign. The timeline is illuminating here.
From what has been publicly discussed, the warrant to monitor Carter Page was proposed in mid-October 2016. Cite, sorry it may be paywalled.
However, on or about September 24, Trump campaign spokesmen Jason Miller and Steven Cheung said this:
So the FBI was out to get the Trump campaign by spying on someone who, according to these spokesmen, had nothing to do with the Trump campaign? How does that work?
Why are you not telling people who paid to start the investigation; who was the opposition? Why are you covering up that fact?
Because it doesn’t fit into Trump’s insane narrative.
Another thing that doesn’t fit is that the so called deep state conspirators (Mueller, Comey, Rosenstein and Wray) are all Republicans with Rosenstein and Wray being appointed by Trump himself, who are all supposedly biased in favor of Democrats? Yeah it really is that stupid. It’s scary how many people are so willing to swallow this swill just because it confirms their existing Republicans=Good, Democrats=Bad worldview.
The mark you continually miss, and miss and miss and miss, is that it is irrelevant where the underlying factual information comes from in support of the application for the warrant – in this case, renewal of an existing, ongoing warrant.
To use your own exact words, what is at issue is whether the FBI obtained a warrant under false pretexts, possibly due to political bias. The answer to that is no, because the warrant would not have been renewed under those circumstances. FISA warrants are issued or renewed based on fact-based evidence, not innuendo. You keep making the assumption that because something was asserted in the Steele dossier, it remains unproved. This ignores the fact that many elements of the dossier has been shown to be factually true. That is all the FISA judge cares about.
Moreover, you make the fatal and stupid assumption that information that comes to light as a result of opposition research is automatically tainted and untrue. Stop making this dumb mistake.
Also accept that Christopher Steele is a former spy for Britain, specializing in Russia, and a very well-regarded one. His information has proved reliable to the FBI in the past. Show the man some respect. But also understand that his assertions in the dossier, on their own, would never rise to the level of issuing a renewal of a FISA warrant. Either the assertions were shown to be true as a result of independent investigation by the FBI, or the dossier was buttressed by additional information gleaned from the wiretap when it was previously issued.
Lastly, stop equating facts that arise from Democratic opposition research as bad or wrong. Facts are just facts, and it doesn’t matter where they came from. And by the way, FISA judges know this.
I was starting to think they might not release the memo since they were getting so much mileage just talking about it. I’m sure it will resonate with the hard-core base, and seem like a great big nothing burger to everyone else.
It doesn’t (to me) appear to have anything in it that hasn’t already been discussed openly. But, I admit that I very well might be missing something.
Amazing how things work in Trump world.
A career British intelligence operative = why would we believe him?
A bunch of rano Russians showing up in Trump Tower = dump ALL the Clinton dirt on us, baby!!!
Not much. Certainly not anything explosive.
Item #1 is what we were all expecting. #3 is along the same lines. I think the source of the info should definitely have been disclosed. But as to how significant it is, the key question remains how much else beyond that dossier was included, and the memo is vague about this (the final sentence of #4 notwithstanding).
I don’t get the significance of Item #2 saying that the FBI didn’t disclose that the Yahoo News article was itself based on Steele, since the memo goes on to say in #2a that Steele concealed this from the FBI. (Unless they mean it should have been corrected in future re-filings.)
I also don’t get the significance of #5. That’s something a judge could figure out, and I don’t see any allegation of anything improper there.
Not a huge deal in any event, but let’s see what the counter-memo has to offer.