White House Releases Declassified Memo Alleging Bias in FBI Surveillance of Trump Campaign Staffer (UPDATE: Dem Memo Details Leaked)
Nunes report claims Democratic Party-origins of Steele dossier concealed from court.
This morning the White House cleared House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) to release "The Memo," a document that contends that officials within the Department of Justice deliberately concealed the politically motivated origins of the information behind its surveillance of a Donald Trump advisor during the presidential election.
The highlights:
- The memo says that FBI officials knew that the infamous "Steele dossier" used to get permission by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to snoop on adviser Carter Page had been partly funded through a research firm (Fusion GPS) connected to the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign. They concealed this information from the court.
- The memo says that some additional information included in the warrant application used to corroborate the "Steele dossier" also actually came from Steele himself that Steele leaked to Michael Isikoff at Yahoo News.
- Steele was in regular contact with Bruce Ohr, a top DOJ official who really, really didn't want Trump to be elected and said so. The memo claims Ohr's wife assisted in the Trump opposition research used by Fusion GPS.
- Deputy Director Andrew McCabe (who announced his resignation earlier in the week) told the Intelligence Committee in December that a surveillance warrant would not have been sought without the Steele dossier.
(The full response from the White House and the memo will be embedded below the fold.)
Remember that this is one party's description of what happened with the warrant. The underlying intelligence contained in the warrant application and the warrant itself has not been released.
It's also worth the memo's claims in context. Carter Page's ties to Russia were well-known by intelligence officials before he was ever involved with Trump's campaign. And one of the surveillance requests submitted to the court happened in October, after Page's contacts with Russian officials had publicly reported and he stepped down from the campaign. And courts have typically ruled that it's not necessarily disqualifying if the evidence used for a warrant comes from biased sources.
Arugably, what's been exposed here is an investigation of Page, not surveillance of the Trump campaign itself or even allegations that Trump himself did anything wrong. This, interestingly enough, is exactly what FBI Director James Comey even told Trump before eventually getting fired.
More is going to play out from this, but from my perspective so far, I don't see a smoking gun in any particular direction. This memo doesn't seem to provide any coherent evidence that this investigation of Page was actually a plot to get at Trump. And neither does any of this suggest that Trump himself was engaged in any wrongdoing.
Read the memo for yourself below, and response from ranking Democratic member of the Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff:
FISAWarrant by Scott Shackford on Scribd
Schiff responds:
Lengthy response from @RepAdamSchiff on The Memo: pic.twitter.com/SS1oJa1Guu
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) February 2, 2018
UPDATE: House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) defended the release of the memo and said it detailed possible violations of the civil liberties of Americans. It's worth noting that Ryan just last month voted to renew and expand the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments to secretly snoop on American citizens.
Speaker Paul Ryan, in a statement, defends the release of the Nunes memo but also calls for the release of the memo prepared by Democrats on the intel committee. pic.twitter.com/V81EYW5vys
— Tamara Keith (@tamarakeithNPR) February 2, 2018
But, hey, he's also calling for the release of the Democrats' own memo.
UPDATE II: The New York Times has been told some of the details of the Democratic countermemo that has not yet been released. According to their report, the surveillance court was informed that there were political motivations behind the Steele Dossier and that McCabe didn't say that the dossier's contents were the only reason for the warrant renewal request:
[A] Democratic memo written to rebut the Republican document says that the F.B.I. was more forthcoming with the surveillance court than the Republicans say. The F.B.I. told the court that the information it received from Mr. Steele was politically motivated, although the agency did not specifically identify the information as financed by Democrats, according to two people familiar with the Democratic memo.
Read their coverage here.
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Sure, get his political opponents to pay someone to lie to get a warrant to spy on an American in a secret, classified court. No limited government issues here.
His political opponents both in the govt and in a political campaign, working together, that is. Suderman launched his prepared ‘nothingburger’ tweet already.
Yeah, this is really bad. Seems their case was nearly entirely knowingly based on rumors started by an opposing party. They didn’t do anything to pull this away from politically motivated stunt.
Something tells me Reason would have cared more if it had been Bush and McCain doing this to an Obama associate.
Yeah, though they are at least posting about it, so it’s not quite as bad as some others.
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Something tells me Reason would have cared more if it had been Bush and McCain doing this to an Obama associate.
Every member of the TreasonNN staff voted for Hillary, so you’re probably right.
What a sick fuck
You are right but truth be told nothing will happen. It will be minutely mentioned tonight by news outlets and forgotten by morning. The forces in government who could do something won’t b/c they are for the most part the #Resist movement. One or to sacrificial lambs may be slaughtered, no one big and no charges will be filed.
And it will be business as usual and on to the mid-term elections.
Democrat Jerrold Nadler, ranking member of the House Committee on the Judiciary, just (2/3/18) released Democrat talking points with this gem:
“First, the Nunes memo appears to concede that the investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to the Russian government was well underway before the government applied for an order to conduct surveillance of Carter Page. … There is no reason to dispute the Nunes memo’s assertion that the FBI was actively investigating the Trump campaign months before they approached the court about Carter Page.”
Do Democrats even realize they just admitted the Obama administration was spying on Trump’s campaign before a FISA warrant was obtained to spy on Page? On what basis was that spying authorized? The Democrats and Obama administration just keeps looking worse and worse, and digging themselves into a deeper hole. People should be prosecuted for this illegal political spying.
Nixon was decent enough to use a small group of burglars that worked for him in comparison to Obama who used what seems like the entire government intelligence community against his political opponents.
Suderman had his nothingburger tweet all cued up, and you had your butthurt comment all cued up.
you get some leeway cuz of the quotation marks, but we gotta cut it the fuck out with that word. I dunno why everyone started saying it every other word last year (or possibly the year before), but it wasn’t actually funny in the first, and, surprisingly enough, not getting any better with age. in my humble opinion.
The conversation of the memo is not about “limited government issues.” Have you thought so this entire time?
Abusive government isn’t limited government.
Anything short of executing the rabble for no reason is limited….to some people.
Like the rest of their friends in the so-called “mainstream” media, as far as the frauds at Reason are concerned, the ends justify any means when it comes to Trump and his associates.
Name something Trump could do that you would criticize.
Let’s see……..
Appointing non-originalists to the SCOTUS
Starting new wars without absolute necessity
Backing Session’s drug war bioner
Caving in on his campaign promises regarding immigration
Furthering Obama’s efforts in federalizing local law enforcement
Continuing excessive federal budgets going forward
Just to name a few things. And. OST of us here DO criticize these things. Just because you are a thrall to team blue doesn’t mean us real Americans don’t engage in original thinking.
Don’t forget incredibly shitty tariff policy straight out of the Saunders camp.
That too.
Anyone who thinks there’s such a thing as an originalist judge is a moron. Just say “judge who I agree with,” and I’ll respect you a little more.
Trump has killed more civilians to date in foreign wars than Obama did in 8 years. Just as he campaigned to do. Surely you knew he campaigned to bomb the shit out of them *and* their families, yes?
Trump is the most pro-cop president in my lifetime and campaigned flagrantly on that premise. Granted, it’s largely because he’s anti-black.
“Trump has killed more civilians to date in foreign wars than Obama did in 8 years.”
One of your many lies.
Remember when Obama ordered the murder of Americans by drone?
Chocolate Jeebus bragged about personally authorizing those drone assassinations. Not sure where on the list Obama stands on getting Americans killed, but he is near the top in direct assassinations, maybe first.
Nothing you said here is correct unless you’re a lot younger than any of us think.
I say that meaning he’s the most pro-cop even with it being an incredibly low bar.
I guess I should ask which sliver of his platform among all the horrible, totalitarian, definitely nonlibertarian bits makes you guys line up to lick his nutsack so much? There must be something so magically pro-freedom that all makes the fascist shit worth it.
Lefties like Tony count on ignorance of history and politics.
The internet is not Tony’s friend.
You go first. Tell us what makes you want Obama to plow your little faggot ass so much, given all HIS fascist shit.
“Granted, it’s largely because he’s anti-black.”
Don’t worry Tony, Trump is not going to prohibit the queers from sucking black cock, you fucking drama queen.
“Trump has killed more civilians to date in foreign wars than Obama did in 8 years.”
That’s an absurd statement.
“Trump is the most pro-cop president in my lifetime”
Trump is a compulsive badge-licker, it’s true, but I thought you were old enough to remember Nixon. Maybe I guessed wrong. Nixon’s love for cops and law and order makes Trump’s pale in comparison. Tricky Dick is personally responsible for the War on Drugs and the War on Crime……
Being pro-police is being pro-black. Maybe you aren’t reading about the slaughter going on in the anti-police, Democratic-run s^&*-hole cities. The victims are almost exclusive African Americans.
Tony, every word of that comment was wrong, other than ‘Trump’, ‘the’, and ‘originalist’. You are incapable of conceiving of an originalist judge as the concept of fixed principles is beyond the limits of your progtarded ‘brain’ (I use the word ‘brain’ loosely in this context).
Trump is also far less racist against blacks than you are, you bigot. Even less so than Barack Obama, who worked for eight years to destroy black lives with his porous border policy and his communism.
Don’t you people have like scores of actual right-wing Republican leg-humping blogs to pollute?
Do you?
Ok Tony, I’m black, what has Trump done that is anti black? Then, what has the state ever done for black people in the US?
Slavery was enforced by the state.
Welfare destroyed our communities.
Drug wars continue to make them uninhabitable.
Minimum wage is anti minority (in it’s effects) although the intentions are awesome.
Thanks Democrats?
If Trump only gets vouchers, allowing millions of black families to escape their shitty public schools, he would literally be the most pro black president ever. Meanwhile, Obama was defending unions over black students when it came to the DC opportunity scholarships. Didn’t vote for Trump, but I’ll take anything compared to what Democrats offer. Serious question and I don’t hate you like these other guys. Here’s your chance, I’m open minded, tell me what is anti black about Trump. If you’re just a troll, then that’s cool too. Trolls are funny.
DG, Exactly.
Black and stupid, Don? In this country, that’s a bad combination.
Arty, you’re a RACIST!
Don, try to think of a Tony as a retarded clown who takes himself seriously.
Don, you may also enjoy a book called The Color of Law that describes the governments initiation of racist housing policies.
When it’s a fight between Tony and DD, no need to defend DD or Tony.
Is it acceptable to throw rotten fruit and vegetables while laughing uproariously? Perhaps fire our six-shooters into the ceiling as well?
Opa!
“us real Americans ”
lolz
Yes, that is clearly meant to exclude proggies like you. But since you laugh at decency, and freedom, but one marxism, I’m sure it makes you want to laugh.
You showed him.
Sarcasm directed at Last of the Shitlords if it wasn’t clear.
Name something Trump could do that you would criticize.
Continuing engagement in foreign conflicts, continuing the drug war, not cutting spending, massive infrastructure proposal, proposed wall that will likely turn into a boondoggle and will likely be ineffective at its intended purpose.
Now you try to do the same for Barry.
I support Democrats mostly because they are the only thing standing between humanity and the most destructive organization in the history of civilization. Purely out of necessity.
No, provide a criticism of Barry. He did many things that you, given your worldview, should dislike. It’s ok to point them out. This is a safe space.
He wore mom jeans and was too hard on drugs.
Note that Tony doesn’t say anything about Obama’s treatment of immigrants, foreign policy, or his treatment of domestic news agencies and journalists. Cool.
Yeah, that stuff too.
He wore mom jeans and was too hard on drugs.
And claimed the authority to kill american citizens without trial (and acted on it), and expanded our involvement in foreign conflicts, and weaponized federal agencies against political opponents, and “investigated” (threatened to prosecute for espionage) journalists that reported info the admin found uncomfortable, and sent pallets of cash to a know state sponsor of islamic terrorism, and ran guns to mexican drug cartels, perpetuated the drug war even tho he admitted to drug use as a minor/young man, etc.
If you think that stuff as bad wait until you get a load of Republicans.
So far Trump and Team Red have cut taxes, deregulated, and refrained from starting any new wars. So, a good start.
So you’re just cool with the fact that Trump is bombing more people than Obama over did? Obama didn’t “start” any wars either. So by your criteria he must be better than Trump. What with the much lower death rate.
Hey dummy, go drink your Drano.
Democrats are the most destructive group in my lifetime in the USA.
I knew you were okay with destroying the USA based on your comments.
I don’t want to blow your mind, but have you ever considered that there’s a reason that you’re not permitted around sharp objects?
Tony, we know what YOU like to blow.
“… the only thing standing between humanity and the most destructive organization in the history of civilization.”
Shit Tony actually believes.
“””most destructive organization in the history of civilization. “””
Disney?
Funny, Obozo and Hillary destroyed Libya.
A lot of people are dead over there as a direct result of that.
That’s pretty destructive.
And the chaos from Libya void led to the arming of Boko Haram. But it’s OK. Michelle sent out a strong tweet, “#BringBackOurGirls”
“”I support Democrats mostly because they are the only thing standing between humanity and the most destructive organization in the history of civilization.””
Do you even do world history, bro?
Yup. It really is that bad.
“”Yup. It really is that bad.””
No it’s not, that’s the funny thing. There are many examples of behavior by men that is way beyond what the republican party has done. Hitler, Mao, Kahn, ect.
Hell, the republican’s haven’t even imprisoned people based solely on their race as FDR did.
Or been the primary donors and membership of a racial hate group that spent a century oppressing and brutalizing millions of people solely based on race.
“Name something Trump could do that you would criticize.”
Sign the very bill into law that allows this to happen in the first place.
You know who else was involved with the “most destructive organization in the history of civilization”?
Bob the Builder?
This is to all the above. You should stop criticizing Obama for that killing of Americans abroad crap. He drone striked the leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), al-Awlaki, a murderous piece of shit. I am not sure how it is even arguable that was not 100% justified, al-Awlaki was essentially at war with the USA and fighting it abroad.
He didn’t even bother to go through the effort of a fake military trial to find the son of a bitch guilty.
And he wasn’t the only American that Obama murder droned.
The dude was the leader of a terrorist organization in Yemen, one that was openly hostile to the United States. I do not know why you guys are dying on this hill.
And his 16-yr old son?? Obama assassinated him as well. Or did you ‘forget’?
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It’s interesting, reading through the comments, trying to pick out which ones are Russian trolls, in some comment factory in Moscow. We don’t know the result of the Russia investigation, but we do know that they employ people to log in and leave comments to stoke controversy. Considering the fact that the story itself essentially reads, “controversy over memo is overblown”, there are comments here that seem government-actor-level directed at a different narrative.
I would guess “Ra’s al Gore” is a Russian troll. Any other nominations?
Schiff sure seems upset about the memo for a guy who apparently didn’t read it.
Also, the Michael Steele puppet has a sad.
As many others as asked, exactly how does releasing this threaten national security, like hysterical Dems were saying yesterday?
It makes the Democrat party look bad, and throws doubt on their go to of the Russians stealing the election.
Because it erodes the peoples confidence in the FBI. And, that’s a threat to all that is good on holly weather it’s true or not. I’m sure this memo isn’t the whole story but it really doesn’t paint a good portrait of them. At best, it looks like they where used by a political machine to ‘SWAT’ a rival campaign. And, at worst, it looks like some in the FBI where active participants to do so. But, really I don’t know what all the doom and gloom was about. There really isn’t anything here we didn’t already know since all the participants seemed to have a direct line to their own personal media outlet. I think the big reveal is going to be the DOJ OIG report due out in the spring. If they put this much effort into opposing the release of this snooze fest, The OIG report should be a slug fest.
“And, at worst, it looks like some in the FBI where active participants to do so.”
It is rather odd that a Federal agency so quick to cast doubts upon the public action of Congress would not see fit to mention to a FISA court the questionable nature of an information source.
Almost as if there is a double standard at play.
It was the fact Steele, a source, was outed publicly in my estimation. Normally this would be horrendous, you never out sources publicly and it would set sources on edge if you have to worry about your confidentiality, but Steele appeared to be a bit of a piece of trash.
Steele was outed the second he started shopping that piece of shit “dossier” around to media outlets. I mean, it’s not like this is the first time that people have heard his name. Otherwise I might agree with you.
Because it said “TOP SECRET/NOFORN” at the top and bottom, before they lined that out and stamped it UNCLASSIFIED. It’s literally giving our enemies top secret information. /hysterical Dem
Wait, if this information was well known, then why was the Steele thing declared necessary for the warrent by the FBI guy. This sounds suspiciously like one of those facts “everyone” knows only after it has been publicized on the nightly news for a week.
Dave Weigel, Tony, please pick up the white courtesy phone.
Dave’s not here, man.
You sure do seem sure about that.
HAL won’t open the door.
Gotta say, if you don’t see a smoking gun here, you should see an optometrist. Or maybe just consult one, since you wouldn’t actually be able to see him, as such…
Please enlighten us.
I don’t see a gun at all.
I’ve been waiting for the release of the memo for a couple weeks. Now that it is out, I suddenly don’t care enough to even read it. Perhaps when we start dragging people to prison (or at least firing them!) I’ll start to care. Lois Lerner is still free, after all. Perhaps the “scandal-free” Obama administration has me saturated with crises that never come to a just conclusion.
I’ve given up on any of these guys ever serving prison time. The people prosecuting then are the same ones who go to dinner parties with them. Having them step down from office at least gets them out from where they can do more damage.
Not jut arresting them, ut s ding SWAT teams after each of them. All with ‘no knock warrants’.
With orders to shoot any dogs on sight? What am I saying, they don’t need no stinking orders to do that.
You gotta start somewhere.
Trump is really the only person right now who has the balls and the political capital to make it happen.
The left knows this or should know this, hence the trepidation of who Trump will have DOJ investigate.
Trump doesn’t get to decide who the DOJ investigates you fucking weasel.
He can make suggestions, Weasel fucker.
He is head of the Executive branch including the Department of Justice.
I am actually fine with presidents suggesting who gets investigated as long as we still have a judiciary that overseas a trial and a jury that is a check to all government participants.
Hey dipshit, apologize to LovCon.
You mean Trump isn’t the chief law enforcement officer of the Federal government?
Are you sure?
Then who is, and where does he derive his authority from?
“Lois Lerner is still free, after all.”
This is exactly what I thought of when all of this memo shit was going down. She was forced to resign from the IRS, but no criminal charges. I expect the same thing to happen here.
And retired at in excess of 100k/yr from what I know.
THAT’s a crime.
Yep. The “swamp” will always protect its own.
The IRS scandal was the same exact Republican house BS. Lerner tried to investigate both party’s sketchy 5OC(3)s. The republicans only disclosed the investigation of conservative ones.
Yep, that’s why all those harddrives had problems at the same time and were conveniently destroyed. Because they didn’t do anything wrong.
I am less concerned that they didn’t get Lois Lerner than I am that they also didn’t do anything to prevent future abuses by another ‘Lois Lerner.’
The democrats are patriots, who provided information about The DrumptkinKing’s treason against our democracy on behalf of the Russians, against our real President, Hillary Clinton.
And now Drumptlepuff is trying to politicize the investigation! Shame on him!
Dial it down, man.
If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.
You “too”.
The Republicans are indeed getting desperate. They’re panicking about Mueller’s investigation and this November’s #BlueWave.
OBL, you are one silly bitch.
And a parody account.
I admire your objectivity.
Please god run this through at least a spell checker before posting it. Then go through and look for all the words that are missing or transposed. Timeliness is no excuse for poor editing.
It’s also worth the memo’s claims in context.
Technically, that could be a sentence that works.
Please provide actual examples rather than hurry to type it in sooner. Timeliness is no excuse for poor citations.
On a more on-topic vein, it appears that there isn’t a smoking gun that the FBI was politicized towards Trump personally they were just sniping everyone standing next to him using highly flawed information. That is essentially what we’re saying, isn’t it?
I read the Volokh article, and I must say I agree with him overall with what we know now but it still doesn’t look good for anyone involved. Democrats are shitting the bed in an effort to make this about Trump, which is actually compromising their investigation which tells you how serious they really are about the whole thing. It’s looking more and more like a fishing expedition gone wrong, and we definitely know it involved the FISA courts which is a problem to me.
I look forward to reading the Democratic response, because I have a feeling it’ll be interesting to see how they justify themselves.
And the purpose of the fishing expedition was to create the “insurance policy” in the event Trump was elected.
I suppose they though they could force a resignation or impeachment if they found some dirt.
But that is not their charter.
Trump should have, and probably still should, fire everyone in the DOJ/FBI that can be fired.
Go out to the states and universities and find a new bunch of legal eagles to come into the place and clean house.
Release it ALL.
This is why we need a new era of McCarthyism. To root out all these traitors and destroy them.
We are already in a new era of McCarthyism – what with all the RUSSIA COLLUSION hyperbole.
Who knew Hillary could see Russia from Chappaqua
that isn’t McCarthyism. They’re just traitors trying to undo a legitimate election. McCarthyism is about tooting out actual communist traitors (progressives0 who are actually attempting to overthrow our constitutional republic.
Nunes is supposed to be recused from this shit.
But let’s trust him over every single intelligence official who’s been asked, each of whom is extremely concerned that congressional intelligence committees are now being used for partisan purposes in an unprecedented way.
But none of this is going to get through any of your fat heads because you are all Hannity junkies who would stick your dick in a hyena’s mouth if you thought it would benefit the Republican party.
Hear hear!
Tony, go get Hannitized.
Tony’s legendary skills with persuasion and rhetoric continue to win him friends and influence.
It must be exhausting being that unpleasant.
It’s possible that his online persona isn’t a match for who he is in meatspace, due to a relatively common difficulty with seeing the authors of anonymous comments as real people and therefore not being completely a dick to them.
Given how pissy he got when a friend invited some other people to a lunch that he thought was going to be one-on-one, though, i doubt it.
I don’t believe you change hearts. I believe you change laws, you change allocation of resources, you change the way systems operate.
One vote at a time!
It worked for Stalin and Mao!
And you do that through pure force and violence?
No, that’s what you advocate (tacitly). I advocate democracy and civilization.
Democratic people’s republic just like in North Korea. Its a democracy run by socialists, just like you like it.
You literally just advocated against democracy. You advocated that you don’t worry about people. You force laws on them.
Could you be honest for one second Tony. When you argue, do you just make up your beliefs at that very moment?
I don’t see where I did that.
It’s something I wonder over your entire commentary, you just read like you make up a stance at any moment. For instance, you directly contradict yourself within two posts by saying “I don’t believe you change hearts. I believe you change laws, you change allocation of resources, you change the way systems operate.” Which explicitly says you don’t care what people think in regards to government.
Then you say “I advocate democracy…” which directly contradicts this idea that you should ignore what people think.
It’s all about making how he feels into government force.
I advocate democracy and civilization.
Nothing about these things removes the gun from the equation.
Nothing about libertarianism does either.
You are, in fact, for those government services that explicitly involve violence.
You have literally advocated for your political enemies to be summarily executed. On this website.
God, you are unlibertarian, which is fine but you’re also just monstrously anti-human. You only view people as a thing to be corralled and controlled and then you hide behind your fascism by calling it “practicality”, as if practical is an objective thing rather than a direct extension of your underlying views which you hide away so that you can pretend you’re just saying the obvious.
My underlying view with respect to how society should operate is “improve human well-being.”
Yours is “Worship the market god, for He is a vengeful god. And lo, by giving a billion dollar tax cut to the Koch brothers, He will be appeased for a time.”
My underlying view with respect to how society should operate is “improve human well-being.”
What does that mean, what are you maximizing? If you truly think that is an obvious statement then you out yourself as a shallow thinker.
Yours is “Worship the market god, for He is a vengeful god. And lo, by giving a billion dollar tax cut to the Koch brothers, He will be appeased for a time.”
Back that up with quotes from me. Because that doesn’t sound like my philosophy to me. And people here can probably vouch for me on that. It sounds like you’re backed in a corner and you’re falling back on generic insults because you’re not familiar enough with me to come up with a specific insult, but you’re also not confident enough in your argumentation to actual dispute my comments.
It’s not totally obvious what improves human well-being, but it’s largely obvious. Civilization is the result of a lot of trial and error. Libertarians simply refuse to accept the results–because rather than being evidence-based people, you are dogmatists.
If the evidence showed that a laissez-faire market improved human well-being more than any other system, then I’d be a libertarian.
“Civilization is the result of a lot of trial and error”.
What, exactly, do you think markets are?
This is my take. You have a bunch of very diverse individuals and organizations trying to offer goods and services in the hopes that others (equally diverse) will buy them. If they succeed, they continue and hopefully prosper. If they fail, they go away and allow someone else to have a shot.
How is that not trial and error? How is that not one of the greatest things ever. You get rich by making me happy.
I think I prefer that to “Do what I say or I hurt you”.
“improve human well-being.”
…at the point of a gun.
“protect my property rights”
… at the point of a stick of cotton candy
?
Protecting property is a legitimate use of force. Stealing property is not a legitimate use of force.
Who are you quoting?
The market is just millions of people making decisions for themselves. By mocking the market, you mock human agency and people’s choices. You want to “improve human well-being” based on your ideas of what that meant, rather than what that means to each person in their own life. In other words, you are a would-be tyrant that would build a temple to humanity out of human skulls.
Life, liberty, health, education, access to opportunity. You know, well-being.
As opposed to: whatever happens in the market is by definition a good outcome. (Except this isn’t a pure market so it’s not, except when it is.)
I genuinely love others, which explains my disposition.
I promise.
Koch Brothers? You’re using some mighty outdated OFA 3×5’s sweetie. Might want to get a current set so you can reflexively belch out whatever the latest agitprop neologism du jour is.
The Kochs just committed 400M to the 2018 midterms. That’s a shitload of cash. Soros spent 25M in 2016 for context.
And not all of that is against Democrats.
So. Fucking. What?
What’s love got to do with it? Got to do with it?
I am incredibly flattered by this.
Is that a direct quote from the Communist Manifesto, or Mao’s Little Red Book?
You’re clever to realize that it is a direct quote, but not from either of those sources.
Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
Man, Tony you must be tired today having to jump around here and put all these fires.
It should be about time you jump into a sockpuppet farther down the comments section.
No, but she’s a big fan.
And you’re no different and worse
Notice, not a single party mentioned in this memo has denied the facts laid out in the memo.
Notice how not a single claim in the Steele report has been debunked.
This is basically “Democrats aren’t allowed to investigate stuff,” which unfathomably is becoming normalized in this administration.
False. Several claims, at least, in that report have been debunked. That is a fact.
How can democrats be allowed to investigate stuff with you saying things like that, BYODB?
And that’s how we know you’re a fascist.
The author of the dossier said he believes that 70%-90% is accurate, which of course means some of it is inaccurate. Some claims have been verified. What’s left has been neither proven nor disproven.
The real question is why you don’t want to get to the bottom of what is very likely a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Tony is still clinging to the hope that there IS a conspiracy between Trump and Russia.
Tony is too partisan and stupid to realize like the rest of the Democrats that this memo is the beginning of the end for their bureaucratic lie to get rid of Trump.
Mueller is a Republican. McCabe was a Republican. Comey was a Republican. Rosenstein is a Trump appointee Republican. Democrats are shut out of power in every branch you stupid piece of shit.
Trump is a self-promoting coaster who inspired our nation’s half-educated, disaffected, no-count, backwaters-inhabiting, bigoted, economically inadequate, superstitious, gullible goobers to self-identify themselves.
This has had the welcome effect of causing their betters to recognize the level of dysfunction and ugliness that afflicts the depleted human residue remaining in the can’t-keep-up communities from which all of the smart and ambitious people have been escaping for generations. Some of those survivors seemed to have forgotten the failure they had left behind in their pursuit of education, opportunity, decency, and modernity.
We don’t really know whether the accusations in the dossier is true or false, but there’s one thing we do know: it’s highly likely that a conpsiracy exists between Russia and the Drumptinkompf.
We know that Trump was in Moscow at that hotel and his bodyguard testified he was approached and asked if Trump wanted hookers. The bodyguard then says “I went to bed so I can’t say for sure what happened but Trump doesn’t consort with whores.” And then we learn Trump fucked a porn star so that statement about Trump not consorting is looking like bs. Somehow Steele found out that Trump was approached and offered prostitutes which is 100% true based on the testimony of the bodyguard.
And then we learn Trump fucked a porn star
Both parties (Trump and Stormy) have denied this repeatedly.
Porn stars aren’t whores, misogynist.
Stormy Daniels de Ives any sexual encounter with Trump. Sorry, but wishing doesn’t make things true.
So you lied and admit to it, thanks.
I’d love to get to the bottom of it all, but you’re assuming facts not in evidence and lying about them so it’s hard to take you very seriously.
Just trying to be 1% as skeptical of the US government as you guys were from 2009-2017.
Stop undermining our institutions, peasant!
Except your not skeptical of the U.S. Government because you’re swallowing the line put forward by the U.S. Government, you abject retard.
Both sides of this debate are part of the government though.
That is the scandal here: one part of the government (the administration) is trying to undermine another (the intelligence services) because the latter is investigating the former. THAT is banana republic shit.
And if you weren’t so blindly partisan, you’d care.
You do realize the intelligence agencies are part of the executive branch, thus part of the administration don’t you?
Tony is just trying to keep his Nanny-State alive.
conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia.
How many months has this gone on with zero evidence of malfeasance?
None? None months.
Since Trump defeated Her Shrillness when he was duly elected to the office of president of the United States, actually. So a long time and a lot of wasted tax dollars.
name them please.
“”Notice how not a single claim in the Steele report has been debunked.””
“”The author of the dossier said he believes that 70%-90% is accurate, which of course means some of it is inaccurate. “”
Both said by the same person.
See, in liberal land they think A, and A not, can be the same thing. Logic 101 fail.
Read the memo and Schiff’s response. The memo deals with specifics-such as how the Yahoo news article was used as corroboration when in fact it was largely based on the same sources as other FISA “evidence”. Schiff just hand waves that. The memo wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but it does make the FBI and DOJ appear to be uncritical of evidence brought before them. That’s not how FISA procedures are supposed to work (no one here will be surprised at that at the least).
It reeks of parallel construction to me.
For those of us not up to date on our legal terms. What does parallel construction mean and why is it bad for an investigation?
It’s when law enforcement creates an alternate evidence chain than the one they actually used because the actual chain was suspect or outright illegal, usually using the NSA/FISA process in ways that it ‘wasn’t supposed to be used for’ (laughable, in my view, since of course they’re going to use it that way).
In this case, it looks like they leaked information to outlets to create confirmation of facts in the dossier, but those leaks were using the information from the dossier. You can’t use information that was itself based upon the dossier as confirmation of the facts within the dossier. That would be absurd, but Republicans are claiming that’s what happened.
Given that we already know this is something that law enforcement does, it doesn’t seem that unlikely to me.
Thanks, that’s very helpful, and you seem to be right about the accusations being leveled.
Seems more like bootstrapping rather than parallel construction.
Circular reporting is the term I’d apply, except for the fact that in circular reporting, none of the parties realize that all they’re doing is copying each other.
That of course has nothing to do with the fact that Schiff isn’t allowed to rely on the classified information, but the memo is…
“but it does make the FBI and DOJ appear to be uncritical of evidence brought before them.”
Assuming that the memo is even truthful, I think that is the fairest reading of the memo thus far. That Steele basically lied to everyone around him in order to get an investigation going. Yes the FBI were victims of the con, but I don’t see how that means that they were corrupt.
You don’t think the FBI should corroborate information that involves trying to sabotage an election or presidential candidate before spying on them and giving the details to the current president who hates that candidate?
Or the FBI is run by a bunch of morons.
Either way, everyone at the top of with a fingerprint on this should be fired and lose pensions. They are lucky they don’t get indicted for corruption.
Of course you don’t.
Damn, it’s not that long an article. You have some poor reading skills.
“The memo says that FBI officials knew that the infamous “Steele dossier” used to get permission by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to snoop on adviser Carter Page had been partly funded through a research firm (Fusion GPS) connected to the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign. They concealed this information from the court.”
The Republicans haven’t seen warrant application from what’s been reported so they really have no basis to claim what evidence was used to justify the reissuance of the warrant on Page.
I have seen plenty of warrant applications and affidavits. The government rarely tells the truth so they can get the warrant.
Phrases in warrant applications like “terminated informant relationship” and “no corroborating evidence” tend to get warrants denied.
This is key. We have no idea what happened because we haven’t seen any of the paperwork. We haven’t seen the Steele dossier in full. (It doesn’t matter that much who paid for it if it contains corroborated evdence. Most witnesses are biased towards one side; their testimony is still valid.)
Buzzfeed released the whole thing in 2016
they might have at least told the court that the source of the “news reports” was the exact same source as that of the dossier.
Knowing that, and failing to communicate it sure seems like a material defect.
The problem with this version is that we don’t have the supporting documents. Nunes says that the Yahoo news article was corroboration but without the FISA application, we cannot confirm anything. The memo will enrage Trump’s base, but it doesn’t prove anything.
Good summary.
“Arugably, what’s been exposed here is an investigation of Page, not surveillance of the Trump campaign itself or even allegations that Trump himself did anything wrong. This, interestingly enough, is exactly what FBI Director James Comey even told Trump before eventually getting fired.”
The above comments ARGUABLY fails to mention the opposite view, that the investigation into Paige could be used to unmask other people in the Trump campaign.
I think also fails to take into consideration the leaks to the news media which were used as evidence for the Dossier when those leaks most likely came from the Dossier to begin with !!
Shackford’s comment seem biased to me to take up all the reason it could be wrong and none that could be right
So where exactly is the National Security issue in the memo’s contents?
Democrats, FBI, and DOJ are crooks. Its threatens their Security here in this Nation.
That it exposes the state organs of justice and security as compromised political partisans.
“I don’t see a smoking gun in any particular direction.
Jesus Shackford. The reason for search or in this case wiretapping needs to be reasonable as in not made up.
*Courts usually find probable cause when there is a reasonable basis for believing that a crime may have been committed (for an arrest) or when evidence of the crime is present in the place to be searched (for a search).
Bruce Ohr worked at the DOJ. Bruce Ohr’s wife worked at Fusion GPS. Fusion GPS was hired by the Hillary to find dirt on Trump. Steele was hired by Fusion GPS. The DOJ and FBI released parts of the Steele dossier to give credibility to it before seeking a FISA warrant on Trump’s campaign.
It would seem that through omissions in the FISA warrant application the judge assumed that Steele was still a good informant working with the FBI and DOJ. The truth was that Steele was cut off by the FBI and DOJ except for still communicating with Ohr.
First, Page was not working on at the time of this warrant application, so this was not a “FISA warrant on Trump’s campaign.” Page left the campaign in September 2016 and the warrant application was dated October 21, 2016
Second, the memo does not say what other information was used in the warrant application. That’s a pretty important omission since they had been getting FISA warrants on Page since 2013 well before the Steele dossier even existed. They obviously had a lot of other dirt on this guy and would be pretty amazing if they didn’t mention any of it in the warrant application. Since the memo doesn’t mention what else the FBI had, I’m going to assume it doesn’t support Nunes’ case.
Third, we know some of the stuff about Page in the dossier is true. Specifically, the dossier claims Page met with Rosneft officials in 2016. Page denied that publicly, but then admitted it under oath in congressional hearings. The memo conspicuously doesn’t address what specific information about Page in the dossier was relied on. If it’s the information about the Rosneft meetings, then that blows up the whole narrative since that information is undeniably accurate.
As to your second point, why does it matter what other information was used?
Deputy Director Andrew McCabe told the Intelligence Committee in December that a surveillance warrant would not have been sought without the Steele dossier. Without the Steele Dossier the FBI does not seek the FISA warrant.
Because they appear to be alleging that the application and/or warrant was illegal, and the legal test is whether the warrant was factually supported without the erroneous information. Unless we know what else there was, there’s no way to test that conclusion.
What erroneous information? Specifics please. We damn well know the Russisn govt offered Trump prostitutes in that hotel but “Trump declined because he doesmy do that kind of stuff” which is laughable considering Trump’s playboy history.
See my third point above. The memo doesn’t tell us what information from the dossier was supposedly erroneous. It doesn’t even assert any the information used for warrant was wrong- it just casts suspicion on it by pointing to Steele’s potential biases. Nunes knows what information from the dossier was relied on, but he doesn’t tell us.
Just to get a bit disgustingly explicit, “that kind of stuff was “golden showers” on a bed supposedly used once by Obama. That IS like of a specialized kink, and which having a “playboy history” doesn’t particularly imply.
The nature of the allegation likely having been chosen because just wanting to have, you know, sex wouldn’t have made him look bad enough. So it had to be disgusting kinky sex.
My favorite tidbit of information from the memo: the wife of the Associated Deputy Attorney General was being paid to dig up dirt on Trump for Fusion GPS just like Steele was, an incredible conflict of interest that he didn’t see fit to share until well down the line and that was never disclosed to the FISA court.
This kind of shit would be hard to believe if it was in a Hollywood move.
That was what caught me most off guard.
Dems are complaining that you are attacking their families by point out the conflict of interest in their wives’ jobs.
Fraudulent investigation is fraudulent. Move along, nothing to see here.
“Deputy Director Andrew McCabe (who announced his resignation earlier in the week) told the Intelligence Committee in December that a surveillance warrant would not have been sought without the Steele dossier.”
That is what I wanted to know the most and now I have my answer.
“The memo says that some additional information included in the warrant application used to corroborate the “Steele dossier” also actually came from Steele himself that Steele leaked to Michael Isikoff at Yahoo News.”
Yahoo News articles can be used as evidence to show probable cause in a FISA application? Are you fucking kidding me?
Yahoo News articles can be used as evidence to show probable cause in a FISA application? Are you fucking kidding me?
That might actually the most shocking revelation to come out of the memo.
Yahoo News articles can be used as evidence to show probable cause in a FISA application? Are you fucking kidding me?
Yeah that is what I thought too. So a judge really relied on a gossipy news article in order to authorize spying?
Nunes did not read the warrant application thus he has no basis to claim to know it’s contents.
My big concern is that people will see this as particular aggression towards Trump. When what’s likely, is that really is how easy it is to show probable cause in any case. We’re probably all being fucked, and this will likely become just about Trump rather than the general powers that be.
David Kris, former head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, had a more plausible explanation: that the application would not have included the Yahoo News article as corroboration and it was “much more likely that they would include an article to show that the investigation had become public, and that the target therefore might take steps to destroy evidence or cover his tracks.”
Imagine an alternate universe where President Hillary Clinton was bogged down by an FBI investigation looking into her ethical lapses. A House Democrat, say, Rep. Adam Schiff, then writes a classified memo detailing alleged abuses and corruption in the FBI’s investigation. Schiff hypes this memo for weeks, giving juicy tidbits about how it is a “bombshell” and “worse than Watergate” and then when it’s finally released, reveals that it really isn’t all that juicy or sizzling, and what’s more, that zero corroborating evidence or documentation was provided with the memo.
If this were to happen, I’m fairly certain that every single person here would call Schiff’s antics a cynical campaign to distract attention away from the FBI’s investigation, and that even if some of the claims in Schiff’s memo may be based in fact, that we shouldn’t accept them at face value without some type of corroboration.
If a Republican group paid for a opposition research, gave the unverified report to the FBI and the FBI used it to get a FISA warrant to spy on Hillary Clinton, the media would rightly lose their minds and I hope people on both sides would too.
Americans were spied on based on opposition research that the FBI said themselves was not credible. That’s banana republic shit.
It gets worse. More corrupt stuff was classified by Obama’s administration before he left and the deep state refuses to show docs to anyone questioning their corrupt agenda.
When did the FBI say the research is not credible?
“Corroboration of the Steele dossier was in its “infancy” at the time of the initial FISA application. After Steele was terminated [for disclosing things to the media], a source validation report conducted by an independent unit within the FBI assessed Steele’s reporting as only minimally corroborated.”
They used it before corroborating it.
“the Steele dossie was …according to his [Comey] June 2017 testimony – “salacious and unverified.”
They knowingly used unverified opposition research to get a FISA warrant. They only found minimal corroboration after the FISA warrant was issued. The FBI director later called it “salacious and unverified.”
That is a bad look and what happened when hatred is the motivating factor in an investigation.
I wonder where Tony went after you answered his question?
I guess this will add to his bad year. He’s sad.
Indeed. It was absolutely equally 100% wrong back when Richard Nixon was pulling this kind of crap on the democrats and the people he hated!
But the phony assholes at Reason worship their Chocolate Messiah and hate Trump so much that nothing is out of bounds. Principals over principles.
Funny thing is a Republican did pay for that research before it was picked up by Dems and Trump appointed Rosenstein!!!
That is funny that the media blasted anyone who wanted to join Trump’s cabinet positions, so he had a tough time finding people willing.
Rosenstein was willing.
That is how lefties work. If you get someone into a position of power, you cannot got after them because…Teams!
Steele was not hired until after Fusion was hired by the DNC.
This. What infuriates me is that Trump’s partisans refuse to apply the same standard to him that they would to a Democrat. If this is nothing, and it might be, then don’t start investigating the next Dem President and apologize for impeaching Clinton. If you think Clinton’s blowjob was The End Of Civilization As We Know It, then allow the investigation to proceed.
Possibly, Clinton’s impeachment was payback for forcing Packwood out of the Senate and attempting to torpedo Thomas’ SCOTUS nomination with Anita Hill. At the very least, it was making the Democrats adhere to the standards they were creating.
Now we need to to the same to Republicans
On behalf of the FBI, Comey signed 3 of the FISA applications, McCabe one.
On behalf of the DOJ, Sally Yates and Rod Rosenstein (and some one named Dana Boetne) signed 1 each of the FISA applications, all as Deputy Attorney Generals (or acting).
Wow!
Now you see why Comey and McCabe are shitting their pants. Rosenstein is being protected by the media.
Yates is up to ears in lefty corruption. She told the DOJ that Trump’s immigration order was unconstitutional which the SCOTUS later disagreed with her. After she was already fired though.
Why are they shitting their pants? Why would the media protect Rosenstein?
Come on Juggler.
The media protects what it wants to protect. Why would the media protect Comey?
Some of the RINOs lead to wrongdoing by Democrats, so the media protects them. Or tries.
Good answer.
Its time release the entire FISA warrant, and all the updates.
UPDATE: House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) defended the release of the memo and said it detailed possible violations of the civil liberties of Americans. It’s worth noting that Ryan just last month voted to renew and expand the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments to secretly snoop on American citizens.
All domestic surveillance of Americans without a warrant is unconstitutional. Ryan is just making sure everyone else knows about and follows the Constitution like he does.
He “follows” the Constitution by violating it? If you are correct (and you’re obviously not) then he voted to renew an unconstitutional law!
If you really loved our Constitution, you’d have learned, back in high school, that it cannot be amended by a simple law, even with your apparent kiss-ass devotion to the Republican party.
If you oppose FISA, you’d want its abuses published.
Yes.
Amazing how the media has come a long way baby since the pentagon papers.
The message I’m getting? Trust your government, the security apparatus knows best, you don’t need to know what’s going on behind the scenes, trust the system.
I don’t mind sources and methods being kept secret when they’re investigating a conspiracy at the highest levels of the government you hate so much. It’s government vs. government, right? So who do you go with? The extant intelligence agencies or the Trump campaign toady on an obvious partisan mission?
I don’t mind sources and methods being kept secret when they’re investigating a conspiracy
Methods and sources so secret even the FBI didn’t know about them! Damn they’re good
Now that you’ve read the memo, what can you possible justify that should have been kept secret for National Security reasons?
Sure, investigations work best when one waits until the end to read it. But compromising an investigation, if you can even call it that, is not remotely the same as compromising National Security.
And it is delicious that this is happening while “The Post” is getting nominated for an Oscar.
“This memo doesn’t seem to provide any coherent evidence that this investigation of Page was actually a plot to get at Trump.”
The Steele dossier was paid for by Clinton and the DNC. You don’t think they wanted to get Trump? Steele himself admitted he was desperate to keep Trump from being elected.
As for the FBI and the DOJ being in on the plot, that isn’t proven. It does however appear that they used dishonest methods with the FISC to advance the Democrat plot. It’s possible that this isn’t an indication that they were in on the plot, but rather their corrupt behavior might just be SOP. It’s one or the other. Either their FISC abuses were standard or they were special. Neither reflects well on them.
The most important thing not answered here is WHY would the FBI do all this?
But of course Nunes can’t answer it because that would take an admission by the FBI that the obvious bias revealed in the emails continued right into this spurious FISA warrant,
and that it was THIS that was the “insurance policy” talked about in the emails.
Unfortunately, nothing in the memo is actually new, it is just “official” confirmation of facts (that perhaps need more context, but then the FBI or Dems could provide that couldn’t they?) that suggest the above purpose was a very good guess.
I really don’t see how anyone can make all these drastic conclusions based on Nunes’s memo or Schiff’s response to it without seeing the warrant application and the intelligence underlying it. Why is anyone taking either of their words as absolute fact without corroboration?
Because tribes.
Yes – however, until the people called out in the Nunes memo deny facts he stated about them, I do not see a reason to not believe them. I also recognize he made it as slanted as possible and it is probably so out of context that we are being misled. I am happy it was released though. We need to shine more light on the FBI and DOJ.
The simple solution would be to have public Congressional hearings where everyone from Yates on down could testify under oath.
Why is anyone taking either of their words as absolute fact without corroboration?
Oh, you.
Wow, the non-Libertarians really came out after the signal flare went up.
Good thing you showed up. The Democrats are in trouble. Better get to defending that corruption.
Yeah, because nothing says libertarian like uncritically accepting everything a politician says without evidence that what they are saying is true. Hillary said she was totally innocent of wrongdoing on the email/server thing, so clearly it must be true, right?
Real libertarians take a Republican politician (and member of the president’s transition team)’s summary as gospel truth, cuck.
Its not my choice for handling what is happening in the World but you have been known to love you some partisan num num.
Your pathetic uncritical acceptance of everything Republicans and their fat mouthpieces in the media say is outdone only by the genuinely sad reality that you don’t even seem to realize you’re doing it.
Aw Tony, its just the start of the corruption going on.
The fact the left was freaking out about it, tells me a lot. It tells me that at least some of it is true and there is much worse stuff that was classified by Obama’s administration to hide it.
Tony, you saying that someone has uncritical acceptance of something is like Stalin being called a misunderstood Libertarian by socialist media. You are full of crap.
That’s not what Tony said. Will you continue spewing bullshit metaphors as he he keeps kicking your ass?
Why is anyone taking either of their words as absolute fact without corroboration?
The memo reveals critical intelligence. Or so I’m told.
I consider it critical information to know that the FBI considers a Yahoo news article to be sufficient and credible evidence suitafor a FISA court.
suitable for
Then you have no idea what Yahoo News is, Thank God you’re not in the FBI. Are you?
I know what it is not.
Credible.
Common thing I am seeing from some commentators:
The Steele dossier has not even been debunked! (a lot of it has…)
How can we trust this partisan hack and his memo! (none of the players mentioned deny any of the stated facts. I admit, I am sure many were taken out of context)
Use our heads people. Stop cheering for teams and analyze what we know.
The lefties are using common lefty tactics to stop their position from being dismantled.
Stop cheering for teams and analyze what we know.
Hey, I’m still waiting for evidence of Russian tampering.
I don’t get the “no one is denying it” argument. Setting aside the fact that it just got released today, the FBI/DOJ and Schiff absolutely have denied several of the claims.
IMO without the warrant application and underlying evidence it’s hot air on all sides. Everyone involved is naturally pushing a narrative that suits their interests. When we can’t look at the evidence to verify the claims, how can any of it be believed with any confidence?
What specific claims has Schiff denied?
And how is he in a position to deny any of what (little) appears in the memo?
Does he know something that the rest of the Committee does not?
It seems to have sailed over your head. Or you have no idea what this is about.
Everyone on the Committee has seen the SOURCE material that the memo was extracted form.
We don’t know for sure but FISA requests are at least 60 pages, times 4 hearings.
From that, Nunes extracted a mere four pages.
He DENIED DOF and FBI to tesrify before the committee.– censorship.
He DENIED release of a Democrat memo but — get this — it would have to be approved by Trump because it, like Nunes’ is classified information, and Trump has ADMITTED obstruction in this matter,
Am I going too fast?
Now,, we don’t know what Nunes denies. because the Republicans have censored him … and censored what the DOJ denies… censored the FBI .. and allowed no testimony from pour security agencies..
Schiff speaks as the Ranking Member of the Committee. That means he, in effect, speak for the committee Democrats. who have been censored.
Remind you of Cuba? North Korea?
.
Cali, you will want to cite those denials because I have not seen any.
There are claims that there is missing information to lighten the stink of corruption. I say release it all.
If there is any sensitive stuff because the Russians will know something they didn’t who cares anymore.
These socialist fuckbags are trying to coup a duly elected president and I am sick of it. Declassify all the related info, indict all the corrupt shitbird bureaucrats, let them get their fair trials, and move on.
“Cali, you will want to cite those denials because I have not seen any.”
That took great courage!
To admit, publicly, that you are totally clueless of the issues here. There are no denials because the Republicans have censored them. So you may have ALSO swallowed the entire scam, in your delight.
The Nunes memo INCLUDES classified information. It can only be released if the President declassifies it, as he has. That means the American people are denied access to any and all denials, including our own intelligence agencies, unless … the President ALSO declassifies any claims and/or evidence that his own party committed fraud … to protect HIM.
A peaceful coup!
Would a President who commits an average of five lies and/or misinformation, every single day for over a year, declassify his own demise?
So while the vast majority of Americans are forbidden to know both sides of the issue, by Republican elites ,… tribal Republicans are dancing (and trolling) with glee.
Until November.
The most important things to take from the memo are:
1) The FBI used information from the Clinton campaign’s opposition research to investigate a presidential candidate.
2) The FBI knew the information it was using came from the Clinton campaign’s opposition research.
The argument that the FBI wasn’t running interference for the Clinton campaign is implausible.
Everyone who broke the law at the FBI should be indicted and prosecuted. There were public instances of obstruction of justice and perjury that I can think of off the top of my head, and the FBI campaigning for a candidate is an obvious violation of the Hatch Act–and that’s just for starters.
Regardless of whatever people say, the fact remains that the FBI tried to throw the election for Hillary Clinton.
If FBI/DOJ had been following Page and Papadopolous and finding concerning evidence, why would they need to pay an “informant” to create an salacious dossier in order to get a FISA warrant? Then they had to hide that they knew it was a product of oppo research, and they had to wait to fire Steele for violating confidentiality until after the warrant was issued. Smells like desperation.
Scott Shackford is no libertarian, as no libertarian would defend FBI surveillance of Carter Page. The libertarian viewpoint is that the FBI should be eliminated, as it has been a politicized police organization since the days of J. Edgar Hoover. Shackford says that Page has “ties” to Russia–so is that a justification to surveil him? In the memo, McCabe stated the dossier was essential in the FISA approval for surveillance; but not only was the dossier funded and created by Democrats, the corroboration for the dossier was based on a Yahoo new report, itself based on a leak from Christopher Steele, the source of the dossier. So either the FBI is very unethical or very stupid–I’m going with the former.
What is truly amazing is the firestorm surrounding its release, as if its release will be catastrophic or treasonous. The elites want to conceal everything from normal citizens, so they engage in this hyperbole to prevent its release. As far as I am concerned, all of our allegedly democratic institutions should be transparent, and the elites can go to hell.
There’s been a lot of slippage around here in terms of the outlook of some of the staff.
I’m not saying this about Shackford, specifically, but I’d say it about ENB, Dalmia, and Soave–they truly believe that the ends justify the means if the ends are about removing Trump from power.
Some people think Trump is anti-libertarian–so they feel like they have to defend anything that might lead to his removal from office be it through making him unpopular with the masses or be it facilitating his impeachment.
TDS is nothing if not principles becoming convoluted in people’s minds in the face of Trump. I’m sure there are plenty here who imagine that removing Trump from power is the most libertarian thing that can happen right now.
I support principled libertarians like Ron Paul, and people who believe that the end justifies the means merely give license to immorality. The lie is that they are only immoral during the time needed to achieve their goal, but history shows that people who use immorality to get to the top, remain immoral once they get there.
Trump is neither libertarian nor anti-libertarian. He is an unprincipled pragmatist, but is much better for us than Hillary Clinton, another unprincipled pragmatist. He exposes the dishonesty and corruption of the establishment in unprecendented ways, and today’s citizens need to understand how people in power really are–they have been naive for too long; so hopefully they will be harder to control in the future.
I wouldn’t support the FBI trying to throw the election against Hillary Clinton either.
It isn’t about the ends or Trump.
It’s about how the FBI has no business trying to throw a presidential election. They’re completely out of control and unaccountable, and that needs to change.
Is it libertarian to passionately orally service government dong as long as it has an (R) after its name? Because that’s all you do. In case you hadn’t noticed what you do. All the time.
Aw Tony, you put your lips on those with a (D) after their names all the time. Then you expect us to do what you do because they have an (R) or (D).
Ken, Trump is the only one with the power to allow this stuff to surface. He knows what happened now that he’s president and it pisses him off.
Trump doing what he is doing is the best thing Libertarians can get until election 2020.
Says the arch-conservative troll, trying to convince real libertarians.
You’re right. It simple math. Nobody calls themselves a Libertarian who isn’t a Republican. If you’re not a Democrat you’re a Republican. Ask anyone, you can only be in one in a two party system.
Well… it’s a good thing I didn’t defend the FBI surveillance of Carter Page then isn’t it?
Next you’ll want us to believe you didn’t vote for Hillary! THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE!
I consider this a defense of the FBI surveillance: “It’s also worth the memo’s claims in context. Carter Page’s ties to Russia were well-known by intelligence officials before he was ever involved with Trump’s campaign. And one of the surveillance requests submitted to the court happened in October, after Page’s contacts with Russian officials had publicly reported and he stepped down from the campaign. And courts have typically ruled that it’s not necessarily disqualifying if the evidence used for a warrant comes from biased sources.”
Page’s ties to Russia are not a justification for FBI surveillance, so why are they worth mentioning? What you didn’t mention was the fact that the FBI failed to inform the FISA court that they were relying on biased sources; so your claim that biased evidence isn’t necessarily disqualifying is dishonest–the FBI obviously was worried that their biased sources may be disqualifying and covered it up.
Why is Russia the bogeyman today? During my university days, Russian was a darling of the left. Today, we have conforming parrots mindlessly repeating the mantra of their PC leaders; but I don’t give a damn about the PC propaganda. In reality, I wouldn’t trust any foreign country–why is China, North Korea, Venezuela, Iran and a host of other countries any more trustworthy than Russia? Clinton had strong ties to China, and received millions of dollars from Chinese “businessmen” before an election and nobody even cared about that.
I believe you. I’m in total agreement.
Please explain exactly how the Russians did that, so everyone else here can finally see this truth.
Spare no detail, because we want this to be irrefutable to all these disgusting, hypocritical faux libertarians and lurking republican hacks. So just let them have it with these specifics, because I don’t want our side to look foolish.
Shut them up forever and in November it will flip every branch of government and see Drumph finally in chains.
Ok… go!
Uranium One certainly is a tie to Russia….
People are murdered by cops in this insane drug war, doors kicked in, pets shot, babies mutilated, grandmothers riddled with bullets….every fucking day and this narcissistic scumbag Trump has the nerve to label this FISA warrant on Carter Fucking Page as some “terrible injustice” while the same scumbag whistle right past the graves of real victim. It’s fucking sickening, maddening, fucking intolerable!!!
Yarp.
And even with this supposedly huge injustice and abuse of the system, these dickbags still voted to expand FISA, and Trump still signed it. But now the right people are in charge*, so this won’t happen again!
*well, after a few more firings
Trump signing that expansion of surveillance and FISA is a huge mistake on his part. Especially after what he knows about what the FBI and DOJ did to spy on him and his campaign.
The thing that pisses me off is that all the TDS and going after Trump for doing Libertarian-ish things is they media has lost all credibility when Trump does something actually bad like allow FISA to continue to exist.
The government was conducting surveillance with respect to Russian agents and stooges.
The Trump goobers were caught in the net because they spent so much time playing footsie with our enemies.
Carry on, clingers.
I’m always disappointed at the trust the GOP places in big government. It burns them every time, and they seem to learn nothing inside DC. For that reason I call those beltway insiders the ‘party of the stupid’ – they led Reagan down the primrose path of amnesty, which toppled his home state of Calfornia and birthed a volume we know as Mexifornia.
Good post Gilmore.
“…courts have typically ruled that it’s not necessarily disqualifying if the evidence used for a warrant comes from biased sources.”… What if the evidence is MANUFACTURED?
[Updated] Yup Democrats are scared shitless that the DOJ and FBI will have their political hacks removed and then be investigated for their crimes.
The Democrats also know that Trump is living proof that most Americans are fed up with this bullshit corruption.
Exactly, nothing is more important than beliefs. It’s why I hate conservatives and Christians so much, when Americans believe things it’s so much more important than any of that bullshit political stuff.
Don’t hate conservatives and Christians.
Just recognize that they are gullible goobers, ostensible adults who believe fairy tales are true, bigoted jerks, half-educated and disaffected losers, and stale-thinking authoritarians, and that they have been on the wrong end of American progress — built on reason, education, tolerance, and science — for the entirety of their shambling lives.
And Arthur V. Dumbfuck STILL can’t think of anything beyond his boilerplate three comments.
Ellis Wyatt and the reverend are all Hihn socks.
Trump is living proof that most Americans — especially those who live in modern, successful communities — underestimated the levels of backwardness, bigotry, disaffectedness, superstition, and ignorance in our depleted backwaters.
I expect the better elements of America’s electorate to demonstrate their newfound recognition of this point in the next few elections.
Carry on, clingers.
Nothing to judge on until the dem & fbi rebuttals are published & added to what’s here, so we can piece together all the facts.
Not a mention that the gop candidates also had a hand in paying for the Steele dox.
Or that it says papadopolous triggered the investigation.
The investigation needs to play out. A lot of investigations start off promising & Peter out. Some, you hit pay dirt.
Also not mentioned is that the suspect FBI agent who said mean things about djt is also the agent who pushed to reopen the Hillary investigation 11 days before the election. Indeed, he is the prime author of the memo comey read.
Awaiting information.
“”Nothing to judge on until the dem & fbi rebuttals are published & added to what’s here, so we can piece together all the facts.””
There are very few ‘facts’ at all in these various memos. most are claims about things in the FISA applications themselves (still classified) and things that were said in House Intelligence Committee meetings (prone to partisan interpretations, sans transcripts)
“”Not a mention that the gop candidates also had a hand in paying for the Steele dox.””
Because its not true. GOP hired Fusion GPS. They stopped using Fusion GPS when Trump won primary. Steele wasn’t hired by Fusion until DNC became its new client. The GOP had nothing to do with Steele.
“If you have any poo, fling it now.”
Bias?
Fabricating evidence, frame ups, entrapment, shakedowns and lying are routine in cases of ordinary citizens. That’s why the agency culture is what set the stage for their thinking they could lie once again, with impunity. Their culture prevents all of them from seeing the harm they do, the damage they do to confidence in government, the effects of their enterprise on cognitive diversity within the population, the damage they do to the Constitution.
The question now is whether we get rid of the FBI entirely. JFK wanted to get control of the Hoover FBI, for a reason. He failed. While abolishment is an ideal solution, more likely the Deep State faction that supports Trump will seek control of the FBI, DOJ, the Federal Courts and the CIA.
All these agencies use force and threats of violence to control the American people and our institutions. Who will get control? What will that faction do with the power?
Bias is an unavoidable part of living, and where public money is concerned sunlight/disclosure fixes most things. I have a bias towards going to work a little early [in case of traffic], or hitting the snooze button one more time. I make a choice each and every day. You make great points, and it seems to me this episode of US history is indicative of a serious ethics problem, partially birthed by congress growing our government too big under LBJ – oversight is now a physical impossibility, and what happened to the DOJ & FBI under Obama is just a symptom of ‘too big to succeed’. If not them, then it would be another agency – government is out of control because you can’t get three years of oversight into a two year house term. We’re on autopilot at best, and may not have any brakes unless we get a series of presidents determined to both demand congress take back some of their powers from the unseen minions of the executive branch, and steer congress while suffering the mudslinging guaranteed to follow – thieves and jackals rarely go away quietly.
The Nunes memo INCLUDES classified information. It can only be released if the President declassifies it, as he has. That means the American people are denied access to any and all denials, including our own intelligence agencies, unless … the President ALSO declassifies any claims and/or evidence that his own party committed fraud … to protect HIM.
A peaceful coup!
Would a President who commits an average of five lies and/or misinformation, every single day for over a year, declassify his own demise?
So while the vast majority of Americans are forbidden to know both sides of the issue, by Republican elites ,… tribal Republicans are dancing (and trolling) with glee.
Until November.
That’s right. Hello? If Trump is only going to declassify evidence that he is innocent, then how innocent is he really?
It’s a total R political scam, you can’t trust any evidence proving innocence from Drumph. Accusations mean something real, and it should be illegal for Trump to just say he’s innocent when several people have accused him of things. That’s not how our justice system works. There are lawyers for a reason, yes?
That’s why Mueller is going to watch him 24/7 like a hawk, even at night, and if Trump even crosses a line, Mueller will fire off all his legal torpedoes, put on some handcuffs and in November Hillary will finally win the seat that is rightfully hers. You’ll see, I am going to sleep easy until then.
I don’t find this memo ground breaking so much as… this stuff was labelled ‘top secret’ prior to declassification? Seems to me the general scope is more like ‘confidential’. Perhaps it got it’s classification on account of protections afforded the FISA court process, and those who find it their bread an butter on a daily basis. I do suspect this memo will be the ‘tip of the iceberg’ in one aspect only: future historians are going to look at the Clinton/Bush/Obama era and find that over-classification of documents was regularly used to prevent both congressional oversight from taking place, and stiff arming FOIA requests to the extent that redactions would leave the date, the office, a salutation and maybe a signature. Basically enough to confirm a document exists, but zero content was made available.
A brief rewind is in order for some who aren’t sure how an ethical cripple came to arrive on the democrat ticket in 2016: Bill swept out all US attorneys from DOJ, Bush left them in place, which provided them seniority after serving under Obama. With DOJ and State in hand, Hillary was poised to push around any and all federal agencies at will had she won. Her people tried, and failed… because pure narrative at war with facts or truth is what makes most Americans sick of politics.
If the Steele dossier was NOT the main, only, or critical argument submitted, as opponents claim, to the FISA court for the wiretapping of Carter Paige, then why include it in the evidence to the court, when the FBI and DOJ knew it wasn’t fully vetted? This was deception by omission, perpetrated by the FBI and DOJ.
Does it ever seem to you that Carter Page is certainly guilty, but ….
I can not understand or agree with the paranoid mentality of those who do not see the wisdom and advantage of having people with a first hand working knowledge of foreign countries business practices and government policies weather they are allies or antagonists of the country you are preparing to lead. I would assume anyone with high ranking foreign government officials that speaks their language on speed dial would be a terrific asset. If there is reason to suspect their character or loyalty don’t share classified material with them. General Flynn is a 33 year decorated veteran U.S. Army soldier and a General officer in charge of U.S .security in the war in Afghanistan that President Obama fired for his aggressive desire to obliterate ISIS; hardly a hanging offence, at least on Flynn’s part. Carter Page is an oil industry consultant with local knowledge of the Russian’s oil industry who instigated and co-operated with U.S. security in the arrest and conviction of 3 Russian spies. Both men have been ostracized as a result of one political parties paranoid delusions. I don’t see the logic of blocking his appointments and complaining about his administration not having a working knowledge of experts available. Only an ignorant paranoid with no ability to reason would automatically turn away any all candidates with a little influence and a working knowledge of countries we expect to deal with. No qualified individual need apply. Go figure
It’s been a flat out stonewalling of Trump’s people, agenda, etc.. they refuse to admit the hag lost. So this is how they play this to their base after such a defeat.
The offers made to the FISA court before the Steele dossier were rejected, as most already know… and without this hand crafted customized narrative, there would have been no warrant and the spying that had taken place already did not have desperately needed political cover. The political hacks running this show needed a mechanism to stumble into things backwards so they could be used/excused – true or false. They hid the provenance of that document with full knowledge going to court for their warrant. This banana republic action is why I will always remember the Obama presidency as… The Occupation.
What’s wrong with throwing a little scare into your political opponents in the run up to an election. The Nazis did it routinely in the run up to Hilter’s successful election.
This whole thread is such stupid bullshit. Everyone is fighting over this like it is the end of the world.
It is times like these that I wonder why I still read the news.
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FISA nor the Patriot Act should even exist in the United States of America. That’s where the battle should be fought.
Lessons to take from all this:
In America police interrogators can lie to you about everything—DNA results, lie detector results, potential accomplice testimony against you, witnesses that don’t exist, etc. You get even one answer wrong relating a long-ago, highly complex event and you will be charged and in prison.
Any secret court is radioactively dangerous. Republicans recently renewed FISA courts knowing that the same were weaponized and used to rumble and roll any American citizen whose privacy rights stood in the way of Hillary’s ambitions.
You fight fire with fire. Nothing stops Trump and Congress from appoint their own special counsels and protecting them to the hilt. Rep. Trey Gowdy, a former prosecutor, is giving up his seat and committee chair because he yearns to go back into direct law enforcement work.
Attention HIHN: the Uranium One deal involved a lot of Russian money flowing into America. The Clinton Foundation flourished mightily. Ex-prez Bill got enormous speaking fees for addressing Russian-linked groups.
Andrew McCabe investigated all this and declared everything was kosher, A-OK!
The point being that once Special Trey is commissioned he can take his special investigation anywhere. Now it is mightily convenient that this high level cabal at the FBI were flexible too and have been playing defense for Democrats here and offense for them over there. Nominally, the members of this cabal claimed to be “Republicans.” Now that is a deep cover disguise!
Rep. Gowdy is cutting and running because he doesn’t want to spend years in the minority in the House.
Or maybe he just has had enough of Trump-style Republican gullibility, backwardness, bigotry, and ignorance.
Either way, abandoning a flaming, sinking ship is difficult to disparage. Except among those who cling to such a vessel as it descends.
Carry on, clingers.
“CARRY ON, CLINGERTH” mewls the soyboy right before Chad stuffs him in the locker.
What an amazing coincidence that an international foreign spy from a nation plagued by Globalist interference with a vote to rescue their own independence would collaborate with corporate MSM Globalists in America to surrender our rights of self determination. Were you born yesterday? This entire saga was born of reports leaking from “wire taping” which is now a euphemism for covert surveillance since it no longer involves putting alligator clips on actual wires. The crimes were committed when the “intel” gathered was leaked for attempted political assassinations. Rice states over and over she was responsible to keep it safe, so we know it happened.
So Glenn Simpson hired foreign spy agent Christopher Steele a Former British Intelligence officer, a spy agent in the M16 who’s expertise is still used by the foreign government’s intelligence agency’s. Why was a foreign government’s agent hired to meddle in our election to investigate foreign government meddling in U.S. elections? This foreign spy agent was hired while the employees of the Obama administration’s Department of Justice, which investigated Clinton’s use of a private email server and violations of the emoluments clause while she was secretary of State, gave Clinton $286,797 while they were supposed to be investigating.
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How rich that suddenly the GOP is concerned about civil rights. And how equally rich that suddenly the Dems are so trusting of the FBI. Hypocrites, all of them.
As despicable and dangerous as Trump is, the thing he has going for him is the lack of intellectual integrity coming from the opposition party and the journalism profession. Sadly, with a two-party system in place, we’re all evaluating which is the least-worst alternative. They both suck. We desperately need a viable third alternative.
One could hope that “moderate” Republicans and “moderate” Democrats would come together and support a Libertarian agenda. Sadly, however, the only thing that unite Republicans and Democrats is their desire to concentrate power at their disposal. Not very good material to build a truly libertarian bulwark.
Meanwhile, get your popcorn and your peanuts, because the rest of the Trump Administration will be dominated by this story.
Things we can count on:
(1) There is an immense volume of information to come. The release of the Nunes memo is like digging up an African ant hill with a bulldozer.
(2) The Trump administration will be firing some more folks at FBI/DOJ
(3) Few people have had their minds changed to date, but as months go by the preponderance of evidence will start to smother some pet talking points in their cribs.
(4) This is really a war for public opinion. The Dems have some enormous advantages in that struggle, but Trump has the executive branch until Jan. 2021 and the legislative branch until Jan. 2019.
(5) A lot of organizations will keep pushing the fierce debate towards some type of centrist understanding. I would guess the ACLU will be one such if it doesn’t split up itself.
The American public will be exposed to much more truth in the very near future than it can handle. In all-out war, both sides tend to go through ammunitions pretty rapidly. They either have to declassify more, leak more, invent more (anonymous sources always helpful in this regard) and perfect all the propaganda arts:
(a) straw man arguments–in classical rhetoric and modern debate points were awarded for intellectual honesty is being able to argue EITHER side of a proposition to the maximum effectiveness of the best available evidence. In politically bitter times, “the enemy’s” best facts and arguments are weakened and distorted, even lied about.
(B) the stonewall defense. Just ignore the other side’s strong talking points while you and all your allies repeat and amplify your own talking points endlessl
(C) misinformation and disinformation campaigns.
(D) distractions. It is always useful to amplify trivial facts that are known to be true and to ignore any elephants that wander into the room until you figure out how to spin them
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So the FISA judge just blew off that the reason for the spying request was “politically motivated”. It doesn’t matter if the people behind it were or were not divulged. If it was politically motivated, it should have been rejected on that fact alone.
As far as Page goes, what if Page was working for the FBI before he was spied on by the same FBI???
This whole thing STINKS to HELL
If the dossier was not the reason for the FISA warrant request, then what was? Was it the Yahoo article? Was it Page. How about completing your article, Scott. Do some journalism. The Yahoo article was a leak from Steel and the dossier was authored by Steele with input from the Clinton camp, so that leaves Page, the guy the FBI was working with for years before he attempted to join the Trump team as the only legitimate reason for the warrant. If Page was a spy requiring a Title I warrant, why isn’t he in jail now? Page is not a very good reason for the warrant … yes?
You referring to the memo about Weiner’s emails?
No proof that “won” the election for Trump.
So, doesn’t absolve the FBI of anything. The FBI had to cover their butts because the NYPD had the emails and if it had come had that they had and that the FBI had ignored that then that would have provided more proof that the FBI investigation into the email “matter” was a sham.
Oh, and of course Comey came out a few days later and said that despite that somehow Hillary’s emails found their way Huma and Anthony that still wasn’t evidence she “intended” to violate the law.
Another pass from the FBI.
Hillary lost because a few people in a few counties woke up to the fact that Hillary would be a disaster and that rolling the dice on Trump was worth it to avoid her.
Thank g_d!
Or, the much more likely, and far less asinine reason is that she pissed off normal democrat voters in Pennsylvania and West Virginia (white working poor), completely ignored Wisconsin, and refused to visit Michigan again late in the cycle (thus alienating two-time Obama voters).
But sure, it was all Russian collusion and Comey press conferences.
I did cite the memo. Hard to cite much else when the FBI and DOJ do not tell us anything. You should chill out. Your judgment is clouded. Hate, fear, anger… they lead to the dark side.
Citation needed.
On this we agree. Secret courts should not exist in a free society. The fact they do exist in our society has obvious implications.
At least we have the libertarians here to hold their feet to the fire.
We know the Russians interfered in the election
We do?
interfered in the election
Define “interfered”.
Tony, JP88 made you look bad up above. Better go check it out.
Pretend they helped Hillary and then see how you feel about what we know.
I see you survived your encounter with the sharp object.
Pretend they helped Hillary and then see how you feel about what we know.
That does not answer my question.
No, what do you mean by “interfered”? Did they stuff ballot boxes, hack voting machines or otherwise alter vote totals? Did the hack people brains to get them to vote a certain way?
For your information, Rand Paul agrees with me. He just came out with this statement: “While I applaud the release of this memo, I also call for Congress to take immediate action to help prevent such behavior in the future. It is imperative it start by listening to Americans who have expressed outrage over its disregard for the Fourth Amendment and reexamining the powers it reauthorized right before we learned of the memo. Continuing to ignore the Constitution will only guarantee that others fall victim to government abusing its domestic surveillance powers.”
Yep. My own uninformed opinion is that the wayback original FISA survelliance was about Jared Kushner laundering money for the Russian mob, and that got hijacked by a Team Red / Team Blue cage match at the FBI. We will finally see at the end of the mess that an ordinary, boring ‘rich guy does dumb thing to make money’ investigation sparked a Constituional crises because two groups of FBI agents had personal and political grudges.
All the more reason to can them!
The statement I quoted was by RAND Paul, not RON Paul: you need to brush up on your reading. But setting that aside, what does the KKK have to do with Ron Paul and libertarianism? The KKK was an organization founded and run by Southern Democrats. Libertarians oppose the identity politics of the left and their multicultural crap.
They let you suck their cocks.
There may be over 200 pages involved. Hard to tell. I assume you mean the average FISA request is about 60 pages. But there were four requests mentioned in the memo, in detail, so there could be over 200 pages of total material, from which only four pages were released. And no challenges can be released, unless the President also declassifies THEM.
It’s a peaceful coup, brilliantly executed, by diabolical traitors.
A lengthy list of moral atrocities, He’s more like a cult leader, with very gullible followers. It’c so cool how he whines and waves his arms while proposing total nonsense to an adoring cult.
My favorite bullshit is “Repeal the income tax and replace it with nothing.” He talks about tariffs and excises, because his cult is totally ignorant. He really says, “Repeal the income tax and tun the entire federal government on … FICA taxes.’ (I)
He only said it once, that we would not HAVE to cut Social Security and Medicare, which is REALLY crazy! FICA taxes are 100% required for current benefits, which are UNDER-funded by .$70-100 TRILLION (estimates vary), but we can use THOSE taxes to also run the entire federal government.
Even crazier, over 20% of the entire personal income tax now subsidizes Medicare — which would have a $300 BILLION shortfall with no income tax!
Yeah, that’s a cult. I doubt he’d ever ask them to drink the Kool-Aid, but they probably would. As would Trump’s cult)
He already told you the exact copy of the KKK and southern racists. Ron’s House seat was in South Texas, and the racism is rampant in his early political career.
Everything Hihn says about states rights — NOT federalism — comes from southern racists. Do YOU believe”rogue judges:” overturned DOMA? Then YOU agree with his Ron’s shameful effort to remove gays from tSCOTUS protection. If so, shame on you.
Do YOU believe states can do whatever they want, with NO limits, like Ron does? If so, shame on you.
Do you eject the 9th Amendment limits on ALL levels of government. Ron does. He’s no libertarian .. not even close. He is THE worst statist in America, in his positions.
Southern racists invented States Rights so they could call SCOTUS “rogue judges” for DOING THEIR JOB, so the racist south could .ignore equal and unalienable rights Ron is the intellectual founder of the alt-right,
Apologies on Rand, but hes’ just as bad .. but even dumber,, as we saw in his Presidential campaign. Now a shameless suckup to Trump.
Oppose the left AND the right. You’re also wrong on multiculturalism having only a progressive component. We’ve been fiscally conservative and socially liberal for nearly 50 years … which is WHY Ron/Rand is NOT libertarian.
The 14th Amendment FUCKS Ron Paul’s states right. As does the 9th.
Mueller… is going to take a deal for transactional immunity in exchange for states evidence at some point. He has direct information about persons involved in perpetrating a fraud to get a FISA court warrant [my estimation], without which his powers would not exist. He’s the man in the middle: he can point to the DOJ insiders above that directed the criminality of FBI hacks below, with or without their full knowledge of the fraud that gave us the “Russian probe”. Can anyone out there name a single Russian person that Mueller has looked at thus far? I can’t. For a counter intelligence investigation, that is beyond weird – it’s a black hole.
Any charge/plea or grand jury smear coming out of his office is going on the ash heap at some point. I expect Trump will avoid any pardons until the end of his term, as he appears to respect due process and our court system.
I have read books by Ron Paul (e.g. “End the Fed”) and agreed with him. I have not read anything by him that would suggests he believes in the views you attribute to him–so how could I be personally influenced by views he never communicated in the books that I’ve read. I don’t know the man personally, and only like the few books I’ve read.
The rest will come out, that is the plan.. That is why the memo was released in the first place. There is already house members supporting releasing all the evidence right now. Give it up, you will soon enough.
Only in your senile fucked up mind can a “nothingburger” memo be worse than actual secret courts.
Seek help.
Well if the released transcripts are any indication, at least 60% is Schiff trying increasingly desperate procedural motions.
So maybe want to modulate your expected amount of hidden Trump kryptonite.
I know right? It’s not even like Uranium One was even ever a real company.
It was totally made up by these Republicans. Try it and google, none of these people even exist.
How stupid do they think we are. This is a false flag on a false flag pole in a false field. Try playing soccer there you republican shills.
That’s right. It’s really about what Steele didn’t say, that’s what the real conspiracy should be, why didn’t he give Comey the real story about Trump. It’s so much worse than what he did report to GPS. If only Steele was honest, we’d know exactly what Trump did.
I was waiting for the real details about them drinking each other piss in Russia before I voted for Hillary, then of course Comey screwed that up and told me to vote for Trump, which is exactly what these libertarians wanted. Then surprise surprise, Trump wins and nobody wanted it, and that kind of a big clue it was probably Russians.
I’m so outraged by all this, I’m seriously considering not voting on anyone for president in November ever again.
That’s right. These libertards will do anything to love Trump. Trump says he is innocent, then declassifies something from some guy saying that he found evidence the FBI fibbed a little?
Give me a break, that’s not even a crime. It’s the cops’ job to catch criminals, it’s called entrapment, to quote the commercial, it’s what they do. That’s not a crime to lie to catch people we believe might be spies, and for Russia! Just watch some spy movies, they break laws all the time. You can’t get the intelligence saying what you need without some illegal methods right?
I saw the directions about using style tag codes to put talking points text in bold. I couldn’t find the guide for sites, I don’t know which Reason uses, so I’m just going to try a few things.
Bold text
(bold) bold text (/bold)
(strong) bold text (/strong)
bold text
bold text
Ok it is ‘strong’ in the triangle brackets that does it.
Says ’em’ is for italics on the brackets. Does color work? I’ll try that.
text
Oops. Will private next time.
No libertarian wanted anyone to vote for Trump.
Dumbfuck Hihnsano needs his early evening nappy.
A couple of shitty campaign stops by Hillary, apparently. Your theory has no va,Iditarod, and is pure conjecture.
You’re replying to your own post. Your name should be Hihnsock.
Hihn-Wyatt=zero