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How about Diane Feinstein? She's 83. She announced a few months ago she's running again. She'll win, easily, even if she strokes out between now and then, but seriously, 84-90 is her age for a Senator? NOBODY can think that's a good idea, can they? California doesn't have another power hungry lib crackpot that's wants to be paid a ridiculous amount of money to say stupid things into a camera every other month? Don't get me wrong, McCain is exactly the same, as are many others from both parties.
The memo seems to say that the Russian investigation was a sting operation coordinated by the Hillary campaign with cooperation from the FBI and DOJ.
I dunno. But if it's true the FBI used a Yahoo News article as a piece of credible information to obtain a secret FISA warrant, we are all completely screwed.
Kung Wu say, man who read woman like book, prefer braille!
I see where you're coming from, but the whole point of a warrant is that you say "look, here's what we have to go on." The guy who wrote the Yahoo News article is this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Isikoff. He's not Pulitzer, but it's not like he's nobody either. If he still worked with Newsweek or NBC News, a lot fewer people would be saying "haha, Yahoo News!" And it's not like he is the guy who said it either. Here's the article: https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-s-intel...75046002.html; it specifically cites to additional other people.
And that's probably too high of a success rate, but it's the nature of warrants that the information isn't going to be perfect. Do you honestly believe a secondary source written by a well known journalist is one of the 12 worst pieces of information in the 34,000 applications?
The fact that they pretended (as the memo alleges) it was corroborating evidence when in fact it was from the same individual, that's totally inexcusable. The Yahoo News portion is a nothing burger meant to bait people into thinking "the FBI relies on tabloid news!"
This feels like an ultimate reach to try to either (a) justify firing Mueller and/or Rosenstein or (b) to start laying the framework so that when Trump is accused of obstructing justice people will say "the Russian investigation was a sting operation coordinated by the Hillary campaign with cooperation from the FBI and DOJ."
This feels like an ultimate reach to try to either (a) justify firing Mueller and/or Rosenstein or (b) to start laying the framework so that when Trump is accused of obstructing justice people will say "the Russian investigation was a sting operation coordinated by the Hillary campaign with cooperation from the FBI and DOJ."
Also it's acting like the dossier was the basis for the FISA warrants when it wasn't. The Carter Page FISA warrant would have been justified by the 2013 investigation that found him to be a likely Russian agent. The dossier only comes in because that's what they were trying to verify. They wanted to tap Page to see if they could verify contents of the dossier. Not vice versa.
Also it's acting like the dossier was the basis for the FISA warrants when it wasn't. The Carter Page FISA warrant would have been justified by the 2013 investigation that found him to be a likely Russian agent. The dossier only comes in because that's what they were trying to verify. They wanted to tap Page to see if they could verify contents of the dossier. Not vice versa.
I don’t think you get to spy on someone to verify the information you got in order to spy on someone. I could be completely wrong, but that would make it seem that I could tell the FBI that my neighbor was a Russian spy. They could use that intel to spy on him to see if he was a Russian spy. I dunno. Shouldn’t the info be coorobersted by an independent source so that you would spy on the spook to find out what information he/she is presenting to the Russians?
But the unsubstantiated, highly known to be questionable, knowingly leaked to the media as a weapon, before and after the election, dossier was used. It was presented to the "secret society", oh wait, "Secret Court," to obtain authorization to spy on a political opponent (-ahem-duly elected one might add), er, Russian spy.
The FBI years before had come to the conclusion Page was a likely Russian agent. We know that. The reason he was tapped was to listen in to see if any of his conversations confirmed portions of the dossier. He was being used as a resource. They had already confirmed their suspicions on Page himself before.
I thought the FISA warrant had to be renewed every 90 days with new evidence (so the memo says). How could you use a prior investigation as evidence to obtain a new warrant? Wouldn’t that just be an infinite warrant once the first warrant was obtained? If that is the case, then isn’t the dossier the only new info used for the new warrant? And if that supposition is true, then it would seem there was a heavy bias against an American citizen running as president that presupposed the content of the dossier, and that the bias was funded by the opposition party.
So, the Hillary campaign paid a biased spy to write a partially untrue dossier against the Trump campaign which lead to allegations of collusion with a foreign government and a special committee investigation.
So if I understand correctly it's not a civil liberties issue (among others), according to Democrats and Bill Maher, because hey, #1 it's Trump, and #2 he's Caucasion.
It's been funny to listen to a bevy of "California Progressives" over the last few days claiming "WHAT'S WRONG WITH BIAS? It ain't against the law!" Hahahahahaha... The Emperor needs a new set of threads?
I have given up watching news from either CNN or Fox, so I'm not certain if this was actually a Fox News report or whether it's another spin of something innocuous to appear to be something sinister. It's being reported that the Nunes memo was created by Nunes - or perhaps that's my misinterpretation of this report. I'm not familiar with this site, so I don't know if it's trustworthy. It seems difficult to report something from Fox that's obviously false or it would be too easily rebuked.
I have given up watching news from either CNN or Fox, so I'm not certain if this was actually a Fox News report or whether it's another spin of something innocuous to appear to be something sinister. It's being reported that the Nunes memo was created by Nunes - or perhaps that's my misinterpretation of this report. I'm not familiar with this site, so I don't know if it's trustworthy. It seems difficult to report something from Fox that's obviously false or it would be too easily rebuked.
It is hard to believe, but Fox News allowed Shep Smith to do real journalism as he exposed GOP memo as a sham, a weapon of partisan mass distraction.
It is true that Nunes wrote the Nunes memo. That site is a hard leftist site. A couple of clues: instead of referring to republicans by their party affiliation, it calls them “right wingers”. Then the body of the article is an attempt to smear the memo’s author. Finally, the article concludes that the republicans are willing to “destroy the country” in order to give Trump a pass.
Finally if if you take a look at the owners “activist interests”, you will see that he is in favor of rewriting the constitution to remove corporate rights and install rights to clean air/water, etc. He’s a Green Party member, so not mainstream Republican or Democrat.
Aargh, where do you get your news? Curious as it is difficult to get relatively unbiased news. I tend to get about 50% from classical liberal on line content (these are people that were dems and want to be dems, but can’t side with the “regressives”), 25% from conservative podcasts, 15% from center/left leaning NPR, and 10% from far left on line articles like this one.
wufan - comment chains are difficult to track, so I'm bringing this out as a post.
So, the Hillary campaign paid a biased spy to write a partially untrue dossier against the Trump campaign which lead to allegations of collusion with a foreign government and a special committee investigation.
Did I get anything wrong?
I do think there are a few things wrong with your general point.
1. I don't think anyone was paid to write a partially untrue dossier. He was paid to come up with secrets. At that time, and frankly now, I'm not sure there's a ton that has been proven false. What portions of the dossier do you think are categorically false?
2. Warrants are always based on biased sources. Think about it: confidential informants are either trying to get a deal or they're being paid or whatever it may be. Other accomplices are almost always trying to get punished less severely. Now, the investigating agency still has to ensure some level of authenticity, but it's not like a biased source means you can't get a warrant.
3. As I posted earlier, fisa warrants are incredibly, incredibly easy to get (side note, maybe we should make them harder to get). We're talking about a ratio of like 2,000 granted for every single one that is rejected. Do we really think the dossier is in the bottom 0.05% of all evidence used for fisa applications?
4. Carter Page wasn't working for the Trump campaign in October 2016. Sure, he'd been associated with it, but it's not like Obama directed the wiretapping of Trump like Trump claimed for months and months.
And certainly the most important:
5. I think there's very, very little evidence to suggest the dossier had a major role in causing Trump to get investigated. Trey Gowdy himself said "There is a Russia investigation without a dossier." https://www.politico.com/story/2018/...a-probe-389083
I'm surprised that as an attorney, especially you, would say something like "I'm not sure there's a ton that's been proven false",
I suppose it really hasn't been proven that you aren't a pedophile either. See what I did there? Clearly I'm using hyperbole but to use it hasn't been proven false as a defense is stupid (or political) at best and criminal at worst.
I know you and many others on the left DESPERATELY want to find Trump guilty of ANYTHING. The blood flowing from your collective ears shows the desperation.
But right now the bottom line is this. The only collusion was by the DNC to elect Clinton instead of Bernie. And the only work with the Russians that's been proven is the fake news sponsored by the Dems which at least in part led to what can only be described as a political witch hunt, prompted by the Dems, furthered by left leaning (at least) members of the Intelligence services and signed off on by liberal FISA appointees.
There is also nothing reasonable to think that the Russians could gain from Trump being President instead of Clinton. Everyone that's fair thinks Trump is much more pro USA as compared to anyone, including Russia than Hillary ever would have been.
Does anyone know exactly how much the Russians spent on trying to undermine our election? Serious question. What did they actually do?
Last edited by WuDrWu; February 4, 2018, 10:35 AM.
WuDrWu, c'mon now... you know I wasn't trying to get you to believe the dossier by saying it hasn't been proven false. I was specifically refuting the idea that it had been proven false.
Do you really, honestly not think Russia preferred Trump? I thought we'd all gotten past that stage. Obviously we're still trying to see if Trump was personally involved, but I thought we'd all accepted the evidence that Russia preferred Trump. Primarily that essentially every branch of our government (other than Trump) has come to the same conclusion.
#1 He wasn't paid for sources and intelligence, because he couldn't satisfy the $50,000 offer from the FBI to do so.
#2 See #1
#3 Probably not .05. But probably still in the lower percentile concerning verifiable intel. And if that's not the case then bravo for Nunes exposing a secret (and President) court that has that kind of authority without any due process.
#4 Obama was certainly briefed, before the inauguration, on the dossier, by Comey. Did Lynch sign the FISA warrant? Still not proven or disproved.
#5 We get it. The whole Russia narrative is patently false as far as Trump is concerned, per Comey, and anyone with a set of eyes, including Ray Charles. He'll get impeached for bad manners before being impeached for obstruction due to firing someone like Comey who heavily peddled the dossier after the election.
wufan - comment chains are difficult to track, so I'm bringing this out as a post.
I do think there are a few things wrong with your general point.
1. I don't think anyone was paid to write a partially untrue dossier. He was paid to come up with secrets. At that time, and frankly now, I'm not sure there's a ton that has been proven false. What portions of the dossier do you think are categorically false?
2. Warrants are always based on biased sources. Think about it: confidential informants are either trying to get a deal or they're being paid or whatever it may be. Other accomplices are almost always trying to get punished less severely. Now, the investigating agency still has to ensure some level of authenticity, but it's not like a biased source means you can't get a warrant.
3. As I posted earlier, fisa warrants are incredibly, incredibly easy to get (side note, maybe we should make them harder to get). We're talking about a ratio of like 2,000 granted for every single one that is rejected. Do we really think the dossier is in the bottom 0.05% of all evidence used for fisa applications?
4. Carter Page wasn't working for the Trump campaign in October 2016. Sure, he'd been associated with it, but it's not like Obama directed the wiretapping of Trump like Trump claimed for months and months.
And certainly the most important:
5. I think there's very, very little evidence to suggest the dossier had a major role in causing Trump to get investigated. Trey Gowdy himself said "There is a Russia investigation without a dossier." https://www.politico.com/story/2018/...a-probe-389083
You are arguing my conclusion, not my premise. Are my initial premises incorrect (not quoted above)?
I’m okay with #1 and retract my statement that it was untrue because I’m not well versed enough on the dossier. Not okay with #2 (the source of the bias is important here). 3 is problematic (in that the number seems far too low on the surface) but easy to concede for the purposes of this conversation. 4 seems mostly irrelevant. For 5, what legitimate case did the government have in going after Carter Page if not for the dossier? Without Page, is there a collusion investigation?
I'll likely come back to the rest later, but the relevance of 4. is that the investigation at that time was about Carter Page, not the Trump campaign. You stated it showed a bias against someone running for president, but Page wasn't even working for him at that time. I'm just frustrated by the lack of nuance on this point. Everyone is trying to say "they were biased against Trump!" but the guy wasn't even working for Trump. If anything, it showed a bias against Page.
He's in more than one of the documents contained in the opposition sanctioned (Ohr's wife) Steele portfolio. This whole charade looks suspiciously like a trap. There's ton of evidence to claim so. Ohr is inside the DOJ.
They've found nothing on Page incriminating whatsoever. He's still walking the streets. Through the Title I surveillance guidelines that means the President, through past dealings with Page, could have been spied on as well. C'mon man.
I have given up watching news from either CNN or Fox, so I'm not certain if this was actually a Fox News report or whether it's another spin of something innocuous to appear to be something sinister. It's being reported that the Nunes memo was created by Nunes - or perhaps that's my misinterpretation of this report. I'm not familiar with this site, so I don't know if it's trustworthy. It seems difficult to report something from Fox that's obviously false or it would be too easily rebuked.
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