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House Intelligence Committee releases Dem rebuttal to GOP FISA memo

Jack Hays said:
None of that matters to me or bears on my point. For all I know the Steele dossier is 100% accurate and will force Trump from office. I don't care. My point is simply this: the FBI presented the Yahoo News article as unconnected to Steele and thereby (almost certainly) saw it as corroboration. We now know that cannot have been the case because Steele himself was a primary source for Yahoo News. That is false confirmation.
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And if the FBI passed this off to the FISA court as supporting documentation, then God knows what all else did they pass off to the FISA court the same way?
 
GDViking said:
Far different courts American citizens have rights that disappear when they collude with foreigners thanks to the patriot act.
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I don't think so, the presumption of innocence and due process apply even in FISA court, in fact I've posted excerpts of the applicable regulations in the Nunes memo thread. FISA regulations pertaining to evidence in the application for a surveillance warrant highlight the importance of preserving the 4th Amendment (of privacy against unreasonable searches and seizures).
 
JasperL said:
How were they negligent. They told the court the information was sought to "discredit" Trump's campaign. What else should they have done but didn't? [/qote]

The apparently FBI neglected to tell the FISA court that the Steele dossier was political oppo research paid for by the Cilton campaign. me think that if that was the case, and it was as important to the FBI getting the FISA warrant on the 2nd, or 3rd try (how often was it now?), as confirmed by Gowdy and McCabe testimony, yeah, I'd say that it was rather negligent of the FBI not to tell the FISA court about all that.

Well, if not that then you have to assume Schiff made up a bunch of stuff, it was redacted from the Democratic memo for national security purposes, and the GOP didn't call him on his fabrications.
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No, I'm not so sure about "Schiff made up a bunch of stuff". I'm far more left with the impression that Schiff conveniently excluded to address anything and everything that didn't support his position, trying to get at Trump and trying to get Obama, Hillary, and all the rest off.
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eohrnberger said:
And if the FBI passed this off to the FISA court as supporting documentation, then God knows what all else did they pass off to the FISA court the same way?
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Certainly a question that's in bounds, but not my issue.
 
Jack Hays said:
Certainly a question that's in bounds, but not my issue.
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Agreed. However, I believe it logically follows the point that you were making, if I'm not mistaken.
 
eohrnberger said:
Agreed. However, I believe it logically follows the point that you were making, if I'm not mistaken.
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If one error is noted then more cannot be ruled out, certainly. Nor, however, can more necessarily be inferred, either.
 
Plus Ultra said:
It's in the Nunes memo, I posted it in the pertinent thread.
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I have read the Nunes memo. It contains no quotes from McCabe saying what has been claimed.

But feel free to prove me wrong and produce them in your next post.
 
haymarket said:
It would be nice if you could can the smartass personal insults for a post or two.

What am I making up when I state it is a fact that the top Trump campaign officials accepted a meeting at Trump Tower with Russians for the expressed purpose of obtaining dirt on Clinton which would be a violation of the law and that constitutes collusion?

What am I making up?
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You are making up your own conclusions. Meeting with the Russians in Trump Tower is not proof of collusion. if it were, Mueller would have long ago indicted any Trump campaign official involved in those meetings and charged them with collusion. Hoping to get dirt is nothing more then opposition research. Not a sole in the Trump campaign has been charged with collusion.
 
ObamacareFail said:
You are making up your own conclusions. Meeting with the Russians in Trump Tower is not proof of collusion. if it were, Mueller would have long ago indicted any Trump campaign official involved in those meetings and charged them with collusion. Hoping to get dirt is nothing more then opposition research. Not a sole in the Trump campaign has been charged with collusion.
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The top Trump campaign officials met with Russians in Trump Tower for the expressed purpose of getting dirt on Clinton which is against federal law to accept such a donation.

And that is collusion pure and simple. Opposition research is worth a whole lot of money in todays world. People pay big money for it and its a very valuable commodity.

And patience - the charges against the other Trump campaign officials - and perhaps Trump himself - for illegal campaign activities with the Russians - will come. Just be patient and you will be rewarded.
 
Mach said:
That's false too, you have it wrong.
#1 This is from Nunes, not McCabe. Republicans refuse to release McCabes direct statements, and instead have used Nunes to tell you his cherry-picked version.
#2 Nunes didn't even write what you wrote, you wrote something completely different
He wrote:


He did not say it would not have been granted. He said NOTHING about FISA/FISC approval as claim.
Nunes claims McCabe claims no warrant would have been sought.

But since that's Nunes saying it, it's obviously not accepted as true or verified or credible.

Worse, even if 100% true and they are just stupid about releasing that...it's irrelevant to the process being done correctly.

Gowdy already said this: "the public will "never know" if the surveillance against Page was justified"
and "So there's going to be a Russia probe, even without a dossier,"

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trey-g...uld-not-have-been-authorized-without-dossier/
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The actual memo says that McCabe told congressional investigators that the FISA warrant would not have been granted without the dossier. Your CBS fake news article does not disprove that.
 
GDViking said:
Really? Because if I was on the jury I would vote guilty by just the evidence in the public domain, and my bet is Mueller has a ****load that has not been disclosed.
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Hopefully you will never be allowed on a grand jury. There is no proof of collusion in the public domain, and if Mueller had any evidence of collusion, he would have long ago handed down indictments or in the least, leaked them to the press. My bet is that Mueller has nothing more then process crimes on a few trump associates that he hopes he can use to flip them against trump.
 
Jack Hays said:
If one error is noted then more cannot be ruled out, certainly. Nor, however, can more necessarily be inferred, either.
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Right you are. Logical to a T.

However, given the nature of this particular issue, I'd want reassurances that it was in fact a single case, and that preventative measures were put into place and complied with, to prevent a recurrence.

And, yes, I do think that preventative measures from a future recurrence are necessary.
 
JasperL said:
Likely to "discredit the Trump campaign" is awfully damn clear for a judge worried about bias.
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Here's the quote from the footnote:
"The FBI speculates that the identified U. S. Person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit Candidate 1's campaign​

It wasn't speculation on the FBI's part, they knew it to be true. It wasn't likely that's what they were doing, the FBI knew that was exactly what they were doing. The information in that dossier wasn't possibly being used to discredit the opposition campaign, the FBI knew that was the dossier's sole purpose.

Are you claiming there is no discernible difference between a speculative statement and a factual one?
Are you claiming there is no discernible difference between a statement that is likely true, and a statement that is absolutely true?
Are you claiming there is no discernible difference between possible intent, and factual intent?

There is no question that the FBI deceived the FISA court to gain approval to spy on Carter Page. They did this by omitting key facts in order to falsely portray their understanding of the political nature of the Steele dossier.

What amazes me is that you and so many others simply refuse to acknowledge this and instead choose to turn a blind eye in the name of partisan politics.

My interest is in stopping federal law enforcement from abusing their power to infringe on the constitutional rights of American citizens. That's my only agenda here. I don't want this to negatively effect the Russian collusion investigation because I think the American people deserve to know if their president teamed up with one of America's greatest enemies in order to gain power. What the FBI did scares the hell out of me and this kind of BS needs to be stopped... Something I thought everyone would support.


.
 
haymarket said:
The top Trump campaign officials met with Russians in Trump Tower for the expressed purpose of getting dirt on Clinton which is against federal law to accept such a donation.

And that is collusion pure and simple. Opposition research is worth a whole lot of money in todays world. People pay big money for it and its a very valuable commodity.

And patience - the charges against the other Trump campaign officials - and perhaps Trump himself - for illegal campaign activities with the Russians - will come. Just be patient and you will be rewarded.
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The Clinton campaign paid Fusion to get dirt on Trump from the Russian government.
Same thing.
 
haymarket said:
I have read the Nunes memo. It contains no quotes from McCabe saying what has been claimed.

But feel free to prove me wrong and produce them in your next post.
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McCabe's testimony was given in a closed door session because the questions dealt with sensitive information that could effect national security.

We know McCabe said that because if he hadn't, that would have been the highlight of the democratic memo and this entire discussion wouldn't be taking place. But that isn't the case as the democratic memo failed to even address McCabe's testimony.

.
 
JasperL said:
The court was told the likely purpose of Steele's work was to gather information intended to, quoting from the application, "discredit [Trump's] campaign." Can you explain why the actual entity ultimately cutting the check would matter to the court? Let's say it's a deep pocketed (c)(4) group. Do Steele's potential biases change at all? Should the court assume that if paid for by HILLARY!! rather than some org with secret funding from $billionaires that it matters to what they're looking at? Why would it?
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And, as Jazzshaw asked, why then would you hide the sources from a FISA judge? There is not any doubt that the circuitous wording, as the Demo memo footnotes, was intentionally opaque on the source, methods, and credibility. Read the full paragraph of disingenuous minimizing avoidance: in sum, "Source 1" was approached by a US person, hired by a law firm, to do research on candidate 1. US person (allegedly) never advised source 1 on reason. FBI merely "speculates" that the US person was looking for discrediting information on candidate 1.

That is next to nothing on background. What they should have said was: "the DNC and Clinton campaign's attorney hired the attorney's law firm to contract with Fusion/GPS to hire Steele to dig up dirt. The unvetted third hand "dirt" is about all we got.".

Yes it matters, it matters that the FBI decided FOR THE JUDGE that the JUDGE didn't need to know the unvarnished truth. The FBI didn't "speculate", it knew damn well the source and purpose of the "dossier" of Russian ginned rumors and it intentionally withheld said sources and circumstances.
 
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maxparrish said:
And, as Jazzshaw asked, why then would you hide the sources from a FISA judge? There is not any doubt that the circuitous wording, as the Demo memo footnotes, was intentionally opaque on the source, methods, and credibility. Read the full paragraph of disingenuous minimizing avoidance: in sum, "Source 1" was approached by a US person, hired by a law firm, to do research on candidate 1. US person (allegedly) never advised source 1 on reason. FBI merely "speculates" that the US person was looking for discrediting information on candidate 1.

That is next to nothing on background. What they should have said was: "the DNC and Clinton campaign's attorney hired the attorney's law firm to contract with Fusion/GPS to hire Steele to dig up dirt. The unvetted third hand "dirt" is about all we got.".

Yes it matters, it matters that the FBI decided FOR THE JUDGE that the JUDGE didn't need to know the unvarnished truth. The FBI didn't "speculate", it knew damn well the source and purpose of the "dossier" of Russian ginned rumors and it intentionally withheld said sources and circumstances.
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So did Hillary, yet she just kept that all to herself until it was about to break on the internet, then she booked herself onto one of the late-night shows that always kiss her rear end and sort of put it out there like, "Yeah, so what? I knew all about it and paid for it. Big deal, right?". Of course, it was a total puff interview with the nodding shill and zero follow up questions.
Sort of like that Loretta Lynch interview after her tarmac meeting with her old boss, Bill.
 
ObamacareFail said:
The actual memo says that McCabe told congressional investigators that the FISA warrant would not have been granted without the dossier. Your CBS fake news article does not disprove that.
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You appear to have been just caught lying again?

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/02/politics/fbi-nunes-memo-full/index.html

Quoted for any liars out there:

****ING NUNES said:
Furthermore, Deputy Director McCabe testified before the Committee in December 2017 that no surveillance warrant would have been sought from the FISC without the Steele dossier information.
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maxparrish said:
Thank you for your contribution. It is so rare to read unsupported and hostile characterizations, with explicatives, by partisans. But really, should you also have something of substance to contribute, please don't be shy.
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Again, you post a conservative blogger and tell us to read that link because it's all great?
Are you saying you haven't read all my posts about Nunes and so you're also talking out of your ass when it comes to not having a clue what actual contributions to content are?

Keep up the ****ty work, your side can always use more ****.

I actually bought your B.S. lines about how the link was really a good, thoughtful critique...only to find out it was a partisan hack job from some no-name? Yeah, ticks me off.
 
Jack Hays said:
None of that matters to me or bears on my point. For all I know the Steele dossier is 100% accurate and will force Trump from office. I don't care. My point is simply this: the FBI presented the Yahoo News article as unconnected to Steele and thereby (almost certainly) saw it as corroboration. We now know that cannot have been the case because Steele himself was a primary source for Yahoo News. That is false confirmation.
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Cite the presentation from the FBI to back your claim. I mean not from Nunes, from the original source.
 
Jack Hays said:
Thank you for illustrating my point so fully.
It is not disputed that in their FISA warrant application the FBI claimed the Yahoo News article was independent of Steele. We now know that was untrue.
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We don't "know" that at all, or why the FBI might have made that claim. The only evidence of that is a claim by Nunes, who we know is a liar and a partisan hack, who also did not claim the Yahoo article corroborated anything in the Steele dossier. You've inferred it but Nunes did not claim it. So you're going with incompetent, crap writing. I'm leaning toward deliberately misleading to the point of a lie, which is consistent with much of the rest of the Nunes memo.

There is no reason for the FBI to have included in their FISA warrant application their faulty assessment that Steele was not connected to the Yahoo News story unless it was cited as corroboration for his dossier.
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All I know is Schiff addressed this point head on and asserted the Yahoo article was NOT included to corroborate Steele. You know no different, you just choose to believe Nunes instead of Schiff.

No faith in either Nunes or Schiff is required to make those points.

And finally, nothing in Schiff's response alters the foregoing in any way.
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Except for the part where he explicitly says Nunes lied about why the Yahoo article was referenced. Other than that direct assertion, you're right. :roll:
 
Mach said:
Cite the presentation from the FBI to back your claim. I mean not from Nunes, from the original source.
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Nunes asserted that the FBI in their warrant application assessed the Yahoo News article as unconnected to Steele. No one has contradicted that claim, not even Schiff in his rebuttal. Both Yahoo News and Steele have affirmed he was a primary source for the Yahoo News article.
 
JasperL said:
We don't "know" that at all, or why the FBI might have made that claim. The only evidence of that is a claim by Nunes, who we know is a liar and a partisan hack, who also did not claim the Yahoo article corroborated anything in the Steele dossier. You've inferred it but Nunes did not claim it. So you're going with incompetent, crap writing. I'm leaning toward deliberately misleading to the point of a lie, which is consistent with much of the rest of the Nunes memo.



All I know is Schiff addressed this point head on and asserted the Yahoo article was NOT included to corroborate Steele. You know no different, you just choose to believe Nunes instead of Schiff.



Except for the part where he explicitly says Nunes lied about why the Yahoo article was referenced. Other than that direct assertion, you're right. :roll:
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Schiff completely avoids the question whether the FBI application included an assessment that the Yahoo News article was unconnected to Steele, as asserted by Nunes. That ducks the central question and amounts to a concession by omission.
 
Athanasius68 said:
Yes. He worked with the FBI in the past.
He wasnt working for them when he compiled the dossier.
You are assuming he gave his sources. He also said that he could verify none of it.
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OK, you have no evidence Steele withheld his sources. Got it.

I didn't claim he was working for the FBI when he compiled the dossier, but he was working WITH them, feeding them his reports, while compiling it.

And it wasn't his job to 'verify' the claims his sources made in the report. That's what FBI and perhaps CIA and NSA and others do. They can access travel records, phone records, intercepts of Russians under surveillance, etc.
 
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