Renzatic on 2/2/2018 at 19:43
Well, sorta. While the memo did end up being nothing more than a digest version of what we already know, it's already being used as an excuse by some to claim deep state level corruption perpetrated by the Democrats.
The FISA application seems to be the biggest stickler here, working under the assumption that our corrupt FBI used a faked dossier as an excuse to investigate the Trump campaign, which was granted by the Democrats. The thing it neglects to address is that the dossier was first spearheaded by a Republican organization, only later picked up by the Clinton campaign, used a non-partisan intelligence company to gather said information, which, up until this investigation, was considered trustworthy and respectable, freely used previously by both parties, and finally, that the FISA warrant was ordered after Page had left the Trump campaign, which was signed off on by two Trump appointees, and a old W. Bush appointee. It never gives any real reason why we should blame the Democrats solely for the dossier, nor gives us reason to doubt Rosenstein and Co.'s judgement on the FISA matter beyond opinion.
It's all but obvious that this memo wasn't released to reveal the truth, so much as spread more doubt.
nickie on 2/2/2018 at 19:48
I was reliably informed by several Republican 'lawmakers' that I would be shocked. I've only read a bit, a few highlights posted on the BBC site, but surely there must be some questions to answer. It can't be complete crap, can it?
I don't believe that it follows that people with strong political bias are incapable of doing the job in a professional manner. We all have biases, don't we? Setting that aside, though, I hadn't realised that Steele was so concerned about the future of the US. Does it make a difference? If he is, as reported, a previously reliable source, does that necessarily make his memos, his information, unreliable?
Edit. @ Renz - I'm told, over and over again, that Page was under investigation for a long time before Trump was even thought of. And that the 'dossier' was a tiny part of evidence presented to continue the granting of the FiSA application.
heywood on 2/2/2018 at 20:04
The worst I can conclude from this is that there's a low bar for getting a FISA warrant, which is something that we already strongly suspected given the court's extremely low rejection rate and some of the reports we've previously heard in the media about other targets.
Renzatic on 2/2/2018 at 20:06
I don't know if he has been under active investigation beforehand, but I believe he's been under suspicion as a potential Russian asset since about 2013.
As for Steele, his statement concerning Trump is concerning, since everyone should expect a lack of bias from their investigators. The question is, did he come to that conclusion before starting his investigation, which would cast doubt on any of his claims within the dossier, or was it a conclusion he came to afterwards, which would mean his bias wasn't inherent from the start? The Memo only states that he said it, making it look as if he's a biased source to the without backing up the assertion.
We don't know how much leverage the dossier had in influencing the granting of the FISA warrant exactly. It could be the only piece of evidence, or but one piece of many. This is something we won't know unless the warrant itself is declassified, which I doubt will happen anytime soon.
edit: (
https://www.redstate.com/patterico/2018/02/02/significant-inaccuracy-thememo-calls-credibility-question/) Oh, and even Red State is getting in on smearing The Memo.
nickie on 2/2/2018 at 21:09
I expect I'm missing something but I don't see that Steele's personal opinion necessarily indicates bias in his work whether he started out or ended up thinking Trump was a dork. (IMO Steele was correct in believing that Trump was harmful to the US, and the rest of the world). I've heard many times that Rosenstein/Mueller etc. are Republicans. And non-rabid Republicans and Democrats seem to believe that they are capable of doing a proper job despite political affiliations or beliefs. I expect they have beliefs, they're just not public.
Quote Posted by heywood
The worst I can conclude from this is that there's a low bar for getting a FISA warrant . . .
And yet, today, I heard a number of sources detail exactly what is needed to persuade a judge to issue/continue a warrant and that the care taken over the 'paperwork' was such that warrants were granted regularly. Not because it was a low bar but because so much care was taken. I don't know about other targets. Do I have to disbelieve ex-FBI people. It's so flipping hard to know, isn't it.
I know one thing though - Nunes is a wriggly little worm.
Starker on 2/2/2018 at 21:26
According to the memo, the FISA warrant was renewed three times, which requires a separate new finding of probable cause each time. It just confirms that there was more than enough to suspect Page. Also, the memo states that the Papadopolous thing was the cause of the Russia investigation, not the Steele dossier. Did they just score an own goal there?
Goldmoon Dawn on 3/2/2018 at 21:52
Quote Posted by Starker
According to the memo, the FISA warrant was renewed three times
More times than just three Im afraid... many more times.
Starker on 4/2/2018 at 02:57
Well, yes. Page has been under suspicion and hence quite likely under surveillance since 2013 when the FBI found out that he had been passing documents to a Russian intelligence agent. So there have probably been many more warrants and many more extensions. But this one warrant apparently got three 90-day extensions as far as we know.
Of course, the separate question is how much you can trust a memo by Nunes, the guy who was part of Lord Dampnut's transition team and who pulled that stunt of publicly delivering information from the White House to the White House.
Tony_Tarantula on 4/2/2018 at 19:27
So...memo.
* I was correct that it was a "nothingburger". The memo simply summarizes information that is already publicly available.
* Even dumber than the memo were all the people hysterically warning us that releasing this memo would somehow jeapardize national security. Instead....turns out that there's absolutely jack shit about anything dangerous to national security in the memo. The Snowden and Manning leaks were similar in that they were met with hysterical claims that the leaks would cause grave danger to the United States....when in reality nothing happened except that it caused damage to the propaganda efforts of imperalist/neocon foreign policy interests.
* That said, although the memo itself is dumb, the CONTENT addressed is not. If you put all the items together (which as I have mentioned, are already public domain items that can be independently verified) it looks like there was an active conspiracy to mis-use surveillance powers for political gain. That happening shouldn't be surprising because when you give people that kind of power with zero oversight it's INEVITABLE that those powers will be abused.
Quote:
The worst I can conclude from this is that there's a low bar for getting a FISA warrant . . .
FISA court warrants are a joke. It was documented literally five years ago how 99% (rounds to 100%) of all applications are approved. The number is so abnormally high that it's difficult to believe that any signficant scrutiny exists.
Quote:
he thing it neglects to address is that the dossier was first spearheaded by a Republican organization, only later picked up by the Clinton campaign, used a non-partisan intelligence company to gather said information, which, up until this investigation, was considered trustworthy and respectable, freely used previously by both parties, and finally, that the FISA warrant was ordered after Page had left the Trump campaign, which was signed off on by two Trump appointees, and a old W. Bush appointee. It never gives any real reason why we should blame the Democrats solely for the dossier, nor gives us reason to doubt Rosenstein and Co.'s judgement on the FISA matter beyond opinion.
We shouldn't. No partisan either her or elsewhere will admit it, but the overall impression seems to be that leaders from both party establishments were collaborating to attack Trump. Not entirely surprising given that BOTH parties have rigged their primary processes on separate elections (2012 and 2016 respectively) to shut outsider candidates out of any fair shot at winning the nomination.
It's also even worse than "A Republican Organization". There's a couple of 4-chan posts being floated around where they were discussing pranking reporters with a fake Trump Russian orgy story. Quite possibly these people literally fell for an internet troll job.
Democrats have a memo as well. They should release it too.
nickie on 4/2/2018 at 19:56
Sheesh, T_T, is it too much to ask that you properly quote who you're quoting. I know the first is from heywood because I quoted it but I haven't a clue about the second one.
I don't see your 3. as a given.