FISA Abuse Memo, prediction thread (update post 120 maybe)

[HereticBD]

I tried to skim all 18 pages but quite frankly I don't want to invest the time. Can anyone give my lazy arse the tl/dr version please? Thanks in advance.

Conservatives: Yay!

Liberals: Boo!

 

[bobgeese]

I tried to skim all 18 pages but quite frankly I don't want to invest the time. Can anyone give my lazy arse the tl/dr version please? Thanks in advance.

See all the shilling @Fawlty just did? Seems like a lot of outrage for something that’s a “giant flop”, right?




It’s four pages, read it yourself.

 

[Bald1]

Giant flop. GOP shoots themselves in foot by admitting the dossier had nothing to do with the opening of the investigation. Memo is completely misleading about the evidence used to get a wire on Carter Page, who was under surveillance as a suspected Russian agent before this investigation even started. Officials might not have informed the FISA court that the dossier was paid for by Republicans and Democrats, but instead only that the dossier was politically motivated.

This was compared to the American Revolution for its significance, by Team Trump.

Thank you sir. So, like most of these big announcements it was more like a pep rally for the home team rather than anything of substance? Lame.

Conservatives: Yay!

Liberals: Boo!

Tl/dr.

 

[Fawlty]

Thank you sir. So, like most of these big announcements it was more like a pep rally for the home team rather than anything of substance? Lame.



Tl/dr.

Nunes is gearing up for a "round 2" that is supposedly something about Hillary. He seems to have a whole campaign lined up where he is going to create classified memos, and then declassify them and release them to the public, to fight a public relations war against the investigation. He's probably going to find himself charged with obstruction, if he doesn't calm down and let the investigators do their work. Just imo.

 

[Seano]

I tried to skim all 18 pages but quite frankly I don't want to invest the time. Can anyone give my lazy arse the tl/dr version please? Thanks in advance.

Put on Fox news for 5 minutes and then CNN for 5 minutes. That.

 

[Bald1]

Put on Fox news for 5 minutes and then CNN for 5 minutes. That.

Oh brother. No thanks. I find the WR a better source to point out inconsistencies and to get to the meat of a matter more than those two outlets.

 

[second sight]

Thank you sir. So, like most of these big announcements it was more like a pep rally for the home team rather than anything of substance? Lame.



Tl/dr.

People still give faulty any creditably?

 

[Bald1]

People still give faulty’s any creditably?

I take everything on here at face value. Unless, or until, I find out they're being disingenuous, or, if they've led me wrong in the past. Otherwise why bother even participating?

Fawlty and I have butted heads in the past over differences of opinion but never in a dishonest manner, so I'll take him for his word.

 

[blackhat]

UP TO 5 MORE MEMOS INCOMING

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/02/02/us/politics/kashyap-patel-nunes-memo.html

 

[AFCrookie]

So would you say Devin Nunes is a complete traitor to this country, or ...?

 

[second sight]

I take everything on here at face value. Unless, or until, I find out they're being disingenuous, or, if they've led me wrong in the past. Otherwise why bother even participating?

Fawlty and I have butted heads in the past over differences of opinion but never in a dishonest manner, so I'll take him for his word.

if he sold real estate you would have just bought on a one way dead end street

 

[waiguoren]

I tried to skim all 18 pages but quite frankly I don't want to invest the time. Can anyone give my lazy arse the tl/dr version please? Thanks in advance.

TL/DR:

The Nunes memo raises serious questions about the integrity of the FISA process and the potential for political biases to influence FBI investigations and FBI surveillance of US citizens. Trump's tweet that the memo "totally vindicates" him in the Mueller probe is absurd. The left-wing argument that the memo is a "dud" or a "flop" is also absurd.


Longer version:

I started writing but realized there are a shitload of preliminaries that you need to know. It's going to be really hard to grasp unless you've dug into it at least a bit.

Preliminaries:

In order to surveil Americans who are in contact with foreigners, the FBI needs approval from a special court (the FISA court, hereafter FISC). Surveillance orders and their extensions can be approved for up to 90 days. The FISC is supposed to strike a balance between privacy and national security in granting these surveillance requests. Any FISA applcation has to be approved at the highest levels of the Justice Department and the FBI.

Second, you need to know about the infamous "Peegate Dossier", also referred to as the "Steele Dossier". This is a collection of 17 memos, produced by a company called Fusion GPS, written by former British spy Christopher Steele and funded by anti-Trump political forces. As far as we know, the funds for the dossier came exclusively from the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign.

A man called Carter Page is key to the story. Brief summary of known background: five years in the Navy, had been VP of Merrill Lynch's Moscow office, started a New York-based "investment fund" in 2008 with a Russian oil executive. According a recent NY Times article, the "fund" has one employee (Page himself) and is headquartered in a small, windowless room that Page rents by the hour.

In April 2017, the NY Times began reporting that the FBI had been interested in Page since 2013. According to a CNN report from August 2017, Page had been the subject of a secret intelligence surveillance warrant since 2014 (it is not clear to me if the warrant request was approved). The FBI believed that a Russian spy was trying to recruit Page. Page says he did nothing wrong.

According to the Trump campaign, Page and President Trump have never met. From March 2016 to September 2016, Page worked as a volunteer foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign. Former Trump campaign officials have pointed out that Page had no campaign e-mail address, no desk and no ID badge.

In July 2016, Page visited Moscow and gave a speech at the New Economic School. Parts of the speech criticized the US government, even calling it "hypocritical".

As far as I can tell, we do not know when the FBI surveillance of Page began. We do know that the FISC approved a warrant request to surveil Page in the summer of 2016. The judge was convinced that there was probable cause to believe Page was working as a Russian spy. It's possible surveillance was also approved before that. Page has not been formally accused of any crime.

The Memo

The memo states that the FISC approved FBI surveillance of Page based on highly flawed evidence.

It claims:

1. According to FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, the FISC would not have approved the 2016 surveillance request of Carter Page if not for the inclusion of the Peegate Dossier, whose claims are almost entirely unverified.

2. Steele was terminated as an FBI informant after he disclosed to the press that he was an FBI informant. Then Steele turned around and leaked information from the dossier to Yahoo! News. The resulting Yahoo! News article was used as evidence in the warrant request.

3. Steele was "desperate" and "passionate" that Donald Trump not become US President, according to records maintained by former DOJ Associate Attorney General Bruce Ohr.

4. Speaking of Ohr:


Before and after Steele was terminated as an FBI source, he “maintained contact with DOJ via then-Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, a senior DOJ official who worked closely with Deputy Attorneys General *Sally) Yates and later (Rod) Rosenstein. Shortly after the election, the FBI began interviewing Ohr, documenting his communications with Steele. For example in September 2016, Steele admitted to Ohr his feelings against then-candidate Trump when Steele said he ‘was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president,'” the memo says, alleging that this evidence of Steele bias was not presented to the court granting the page warrant.




Complicating matters more, Bruce Ohr’s wife, Nellie Ohr, was on the payroll of Fusion GPS. “During this same time period, Ohr’s wife (Nellie Ohr) was employed by Fusion GPS to assist in the cultivation of opposition research on Trump,” the memo alleges. “Ohr later provided the FBI with all of his wife’s opposition research, paid for by the DNC and Clinton campaign via Fusion GPS. The Ohrs’ relationship with Steele and Fusion FPS was inexplicably concealed from the FISC.” Source

Shortly after some of these revelations hit the media, Ohr was removed from his position.

 

[Limbo Pete]

TL/DR:

The Nunes memo raises serious questions about the integrity of the FISA process and the potential for political biases to influence FBI investigations and FBI surveillance of US citizens. Trump's tweet that the memo "totally vindicates" him in the Mueller probe is absurd. The left-wing argument that the memo is a "dud" or a "flop" is also absurd.


Longer version:

I started writing but realized there are a shitload of preliminaries that you need to know. It's going to be really hard to grasp unless you've dug into it at least a bit.

Preliminaries:

In order to surveil Americans who are in contact with foreigners, the FBI needs approval from a special court (the FISA court, hereafter FISC). Surveillance orders and their extensions can be approved for up to 90 days. The FISC is supposed to strike a balance between privacy and national security in granting these surveillance requests. Any FISA applcation has to be approved at the highest levels of the Justice Department and the FBI.

Second, you need to know about the infamous "Peegate Dossier", also referred to as the "Steele Dossier". This is a collection of 17 memos, produced by a company called Fusion GPS, written by former British spy Christopher Steele and funded by anti-Trump political forces. The vast majority of the funds for the dossier came from the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign, although it was initially funded by an anti-Trump conservative website.

A man called Carter Page is key to the story. Brief summary of known background: five years in the Navy, had been VP of Merrill Lynch's Moscow office, started a New York-based "investment fund" in 2008 with a Russian oil executive. According a recent NY Times article, the "fund" has one employee (Page himself) and is headquartered in a small, windowless room that Page rents by the hour.

In April 2017, the NY Times began reporting that the FBI had been interested in Page since 2013. According to a CNN report from August 2017, Page had been the subject of a secret intelligence surveillance warrant since 2014 (it is not clear to me if the warrant request was approved). The FBI believed that a Russian spy was trying to recruit Page. Page says he did nothing wrong.

According to the Trump campaign, Page and President Trump have never met. From March 2016 to September 2016, Page worked as a volunteer foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign. Former Trump campaign officials have pointed out that Page had no campaign e-mail address, no desk and no ID badge.

In July 2016, Page visited Moscow and gave a speech at the New Economic School. Parts of the speech criticized the US government, even calling it "hypocritical".

As far as I can tell, we do not know when the FBI surveillance of Page began. We do know that the FISC approved a warrant request to surveil Page in the summer of 2016. The judge was convinced that there was probable cause to believe Page was working as a Russian spy. It's possible surveillance was also approved before that. Page has not been formally accused of any crime.

The Memo

The memo states that the FISC approved FBI surveillance of Page based on highly flawed evidence.

It claims:

1. According to FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, the FISC would not have approved the 2016 surveillance request of Carter Page if not for the inclusion of the Peegate Dossier, whose claims are almost entirely unverified.

2. Steele was terminated as an FBI informant after he disclosed to the press that he was an FBI informant. Then Steele turned around and leaked information from the dossier to Yahoo! News. The resulting Yahoo! News article was used as evidence in the warrant request.

3. Steele was "desperate" and "passionate" that Donald Trump not become US President, according to records maintained by former DOJ Associate Attorney General Bruce Ohr.

4. Speaking of Ohr:


Before and after Steele was terminated as an FBI source, he “maintained contact with DOJ via then-Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, a senior DOJ official who worked closely with Deputy Attorneys General *Sally) Yates and later (Rod) Rosenstein. Shortly after the election, the FBI began interviewing Ohr, documenting his communications with Steele. For example in September 2016, Steele admitted to Ohr his feelings against then-candidate Trump when Steele said he ‘was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president,'” the memo says, alleging that this evidence of Steele bias was not presented to the court granting the page warrant.




Complicating matters more, Bruce Ohr’s wife, Nellie Ohr, was on the payroll of Fusion GPS. “During this same time period, Ohr’s wife (Nellie Ohr) was employed by Fusion GPS to assist in the cultivation of opposition research on Trump,” the memo alleges. “Ohr later provided the FBI with all of his wife’s opposition research, paid for by the DNC and Clinton campaign via Fusion GPS. The Ohrs’ relationship with Steele and Fusion FPS was inexplicably concealed from the FISC.” Source

Shortly after some of these revelations hit the media, Ohr was removed from his position.

Tribalism rears its ugly head

 

[HomerThompson]

Tribalism rears its ugly head

As does the 80th percentile.

 

[Oliver Clothesoff]

TL/DR:

The Nunes memo raises serious questions about the integrity of the FISA process and the potential for political biases to influence FBI investigations and FBI surveillance of US citizens. Trump's tweet that the memo "totally vindicates" him in the Mueller probe is absurd. The left-wing argument that the memo is a "dud" or a "flop" is also absurd.

Good analysis. My main concern here is whether the FBI and DOJ withheld from the FISA court that the Dossier was funded by one Political party in order to spy on another political party. If true, this opens a very dangerous door. Trump could do the same on whoever runs against him in 2020. I think we can all agree this would not be good for anyone. No matter what side of the aisle you're on.

 

[Fawlty]

Tribalism rears its ugly head

Notice he didn't mention (didn't know) that Ohr was counternarcotics and had fuck all to do with the investigation. That's one detail. There are many more.

He's a bag of fucking wind and will never be 90th percentile.

 

[waiguoren]

Good analysis. My main concern here is whether the FBI and DOJ withheld from the FISA court that the Dossier was funded by one Political party in order to spy on another political party.

Two points here. First, as far as we know, the surveillance extends only to Carter Page. I think it would be a big stretch at this stage to suggest that the FBI was targeting the Republican Party or Trump, but that's not stopping Trump loyalists from doing so.

Second, it does seem that the FISC was not made aware that the Democrats funded the Peegate dossier. I am inferring this based on the leaks of the Democratic memo (here, for example). It seems the Democratic memo merely claims that the FISC was made aware the dossier was politically motivated but not of the funding source of the dossier. I'm also guessing the warrant application didn't mention Nellie Ohr.

If true, this opens a very dangerous door. Trump could do the same on whoever runs against him in 2020. I think we can all agree this would not be good for anyone. No matter what side of the aisle you're on.

It's troubling to think that the FBI/DOJ might be politicized. There ought to be a rigorous set of internal ethics rules in place governing the types of evidentiary material that FBI/DOJ can even insert into a FISC application. That said, unless there is corruption/bias on the Court itself, I don't think Trump or other presidents could reliably use this method to spy on opponents.

I think we can all agree this would not be good for anyone. No matter what side of the aisle you're on.

Totally agree.

 

[waiguoren]

Notice he didn't mention (didn't know) that Ohr was counternarcotics and had fuck all to do with the investigation. That's one detail. There are many more.

Ohr held two titles concurrently before being removed as Associate Deputy Attorney General in the wake of media reports on this matter (yes, he also leads a drug enforcement task force). What is your source that Ohr had nothing to do with the FISC application? I find that unlikely but am amendable to evidence.

 

[JJHouse]

Here's a breakdown for the slow Democrat's.

If you put all the pieces together here's what you get. The DNC rigs the Democratic Primary Election against Bernie Sanders so Hilliary can win the nomination.
Obama's administration starts to request surveillance on Trump, his family, his transition team, and anyone associated with him.
Donna Brazil gives Hilliary the questions to a debate.
The DNC pays Christopher Steele to come up with a smear dossier about Trump.
The mainstream media releases a taped conversation about Trump talking about grabbing women parts.
After all this Trump still wins the General Election.
Obama orders an investigation into Russia meddling in our elections.
Obama changes Executive Order 12333 to allow more agencies to have access to surveillance data.
The Democratic Party comes up with a scandal that Trump Colluded with Russia to win the election with no evidence or proof.
This wild claim is backed up by the mainstream media.
Obama hold overs start unmasking Trump's transition team and staff members then release the classified information to the mainstream media.
Why?
Because the DNC and the Obama administration colluded with the intelligence community to thwart Trump's campaign efforts to get him elected president.
All this Russia collusion is an attempt to cover up the fact that the Obama administration, the intelligence community, the DNC, along with the mainstream media used our nations surveillance as a political tool to try to get Hilliary elected President.

This makes Watergate look like a kindergarten play. Let that sink in.......

 

[waiguoren]

Ohr was counternarcotics and had fuck all to do with the investigation.

Top DOJ official demoted amid probe of contacts with Trump dossier firm

Until Wednesday morning, Bruce G. Ohr held two titles at DOJ: associate deputy attorney general, a post that placed him four doors down from his boss, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein; and director of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF), a program described by the department as “the centerpiece of the attorney general’s drug strategy.”

Ohr will retain his OCDETF title but has been stripped of his higher post and ousted from his office on the fourth floor of “Main Justice.”

The contacts between Ohr and Steele, and between Ohr and Simpson, have not been publicly disclosed nor shared with HPSCI staff.

The demotion of Ohr thus marked the second time within a matter of months that the Justice Department and the FBI have disciplined for misconduct a senior official connected in some form or fashion to the Trump-Russia case.

According to congressional sources, Simpson and Ohr met sometime around Thanksgiving last year, when President-elect Trump was in the process of selecting his cabinet, and discussed over coffee the anti-Trump dossier, the Russia investigation and what Simpson considered the distressing development of Trump’s victory.


How exactly Simpson and Ohr came to know each other is still being investigated, but initial evidence collected by the House intelligence committee suggests that the two were placed in touch by Steele, a former FBI informant whose contacts with Ohr are said by senior DOJ officials to date back to 2006.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...d-probe-contacts-with-trump-dossier-firm.html

Edit: notice the last paragraph fails to mention Nellie Ohr as an employee of Fusion GPS.