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House Intelligence Committee releases Dem rebuttal to GOP FISA memo

eohrnberger

eohrnberger

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The House Intelligence Committee on Saturday released a long-awaited Democratic rebuttal to a GOP memo that outlined alleged government surveillance abuses during the 2016 presidential campaign.​
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The rebuttal claims that officials at the FBI and Justice Department “did not abuse the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) process, omit material information, or subvert this vital tool to spy on the Trump campaign.”
The Democratic memo was voted out of committee earlier this month but was ordered to be redrafted after the White House demanded that sensitive information be stripped out before the document be made public. The Justice Department and FBI claimed the initial draft would reveal information about sources and methods, ongoing investigations, and other sensitive information.
Democrats used the memo to undermine claims in the GOP memo released this month that the FBI and DOJ relied on a Democrat-funded anti-Trump dossier to ask the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for a warrant to monitor Trump adviser Carter Page.
House Intelligence Committee releases Dem rebuttal to GOP FISA memo | Fox News
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Full text available via link.
 
When those at the top of the food chain can not agree on facts ( I am being extremely generous in assuming that neither side is lying) then you know that America is deeply ill.
 
The Democrat rebuttal establishes that the FBI began surveiling Carter Page prior to obtaining the Steele Dossier.
 
Deuce said:
Yes, and?
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Rogue Valley said:
Democratic memo alleges FBI started spying on Carter Page prior to getting dossier
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The Nunes allegation was that the Steele dossier was critical to obtaining the FISA warrant, not that it was the reason the investigation was begun.

Democratic memo defending FBI surveillance of ex-Trump campaign aide is released
In their now-public retort, Democrats charge that the GOP unfairly attempted to malign the FBI and Justice Department for including information from the author of a dossier alleging President Trump had ties to Russian officials in an application to surveil Carter Page, one of Trump’s former campaign advisers.


 
Well, here's the problem. I've only read a few pages, and already someone is lying. I don't know which party is telling the truth. The co-owner of Fusion stated in his testimony that Steele went to the FBI in July with his information. He and Steele were wondering what was going on with it, and finally heard back from the FBI in September.

This rebuttal memo is saying that the FBI was not contacted until September. Which is it?

Testimony:

testimony.JPG


Memo:
dem memo.JPG
 
That was disappointing. It's a he said/he said. Without seeing the actual application, I for one, will not believe either side. And since that's never going to happen, it's a big nothing.

Other than the discrepancy I posted before, the other thing I see is that they are very insistent that the dossier 'played no role'..........then if it played no role, why did the DOJ 'repeatedly inform the Court about Steele's background, credibility and potential bias' and the DOJ informed the Court who Steele was hired by politically motivated US persons and that his research appeared intended for use in discrediting the Trump campaign.

Thy protest too much. If it played 'no role' then there is no need for all this explanation.
 
holbritter said:
That was disappointing. It's a he said/he said. Without seeing the actual application, I for one, will not believe either side. And since that's never going to happen, it's a big nothing.

Other than the discrepancy I posted before, the other thing I see is that they are very insistent that the dossier 'played no role'..........then if it played no role, why did the DOJ 'repeatedly inform the Court about Steele's background, credibility and potential bias' and the DOJ informed the Court who Steele was hired by politically motivated US persons and that his research appeared intended for use in discrediting the Trump campaign.

Thy protest too much. If it played 'no role' then there is no need for all this explanation.
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They have avoided entirely the problem of false confirmation in FBI using a Yahoo News article based largely on Steele to confirm the Steele dossier. It would seem they are conceding that point.
 
holbritter said:
That was disappointing. It's a he said/he said. Without seeing the actual application, I for one, will not believe either side. And since that's never going to happen, it's a big nothing.

Other than the discrepancy I posted before, the other thing I see is that they are very insistent that the dossier 'played no role'..........then if it played no role, why did the DOJ 'repeatedly inform the Court about Steele's background, credibility and potential bias' and the DOJ informed the Court who Steele was hired by politically motivated US persons and that his research appeared intended for use in discrediting the Trump campaign.

Thy protest too much. If it played 'no role' then there is no need for all this explanation.
Click to expand...

"it's a big nothing"

What makes you draw that conclusion, if I may ask?

We also have in testimony that Steele had animus against the presidential candidate.
We know that this dossier contained unverified information.
We know that a political opponent's campaign paid for this dossier as part of opposition research.
We have in testimony that the Steele dossier was instrumental in obtaining a FISA warrant, and then extending it a number of times.
We know that a FISA warrant brings FBI and US intelligence services surveillance assets and resources on to the subject identified in the FISA warrant.
We also know that this particular FISA warrant was against a political opponent's presidential campaign.

All this substantially based on a politically motivated, politically paid for information from suspect sources containing suspect information and conclusions.

Now that precedence has been set, and if it goes unchallenged, it has the potential to become normalized, a common occurrence with each presidential campaign.

The sitting president will be enabled to leverage political opposition hit job research into baring FBI and US intelligence services surveillance assets and resources to dig up dirt on the political opposition.

All this doesn't strike me as "a big nothing".

It strikes me as the US devolving into a banana republic each time there's a sitting president of one party, with a presidential candidate from the other party.
 
Jack Hays said:
The Nunes allegation was that the Steele dossier was critical to obtaining the FISA warrant, not that it was the reason the investigation was begun.
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Yes, and the FBI had corroborated the Page-Rosneft meetings through other sources, which established Steele as being reliable.

Thus, all this fear mongering of the Steele document as having no basis for being used, is actually proven as false.
 
MovingPictures said:
Yes, and the FBI had corroborated the Page-Rosneft meetings through other sources, which established Steele as being reliable.

Thus, all this fear mongering of the Steele document as having no basis for being used, is actually proven as false.
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Apparently the FBI did not believe the other sources were adequate, otherwise why cite Yahoo News? Whether the Steele dossier was or was not accurate is a question whose answer requires more information than I have. What is indisputable is that the FBI seems to have claimed corroboration to the FISA court on the basis of false confirmation.
 
Jack Hays said:
Apparently the FBI did not believe the other sources were adequate, otherwise why cite Yahoo News? Whether the Steele dossier was or was not accurate is a question whose answer requires more information than I have. What is indisputable is that the FBI seems to have claimed corroboration to the FISA court on the basis of false confirmation.
Click to expand...
Page had been under surveillance by the FBI prior to Steele ever coming along, so this is not some innocent doe-eyed angel we're talking about. We're talking about a guy that was unwittingly passing information to Russian operatives engaging in espionage.

Page made statements in public that he never met any Rosneft executives, as alleged in the Steele dossier. It appears that the corroboration was the FBI's own surveillance of Page knowing about these secret meetings Page had with Kremlin operatives. Page of course, did come clean about these meetings before Congress, in a stunning recant of his previous statements.

How and why Yahoo would be used as source is something I can't comment on without seeing the warrant, but suffice to say you can't use a news outlet alone as evidence of anything -- there must be other sources to meet the criteria for a warrant.
 
eohrnberger said:
"it's a big nothing"

What makes you draw that conclusion, if I may ask?

We also have in testimony that Steele had animus against the presidential candidate.
We know that this dossier contained unverified information.
We know that a political opponent's campaign paid for this dossier as part of opposition research.
We have in testimony that the Steele dossier was instrumental in obtaining a FISA warrant, and then extending it a number of times.
We know that a FISA warrant brings FBI and US intelligence services surveillance assets and resources on to the subject identified in the FISA warrant.
We also know that this particular FISA warrant was against a political opponent's presidential campaign.

All this substantially based on a politically motivated, politically paid for information from suspect sources containing suspect information and conclusions.

Now that precedence has been set, and if it goes unchallenged, it has the potential to become normalized, a common occurrence with each presidential campaign.

The sitting president will be enabled to leverage political opposition hit job research into baring FBI and US intelligence services surveillance assets and resources to dig up dirt on the political opposition.

All this doesn't strike me as "a big nothing".

It strikes me as the US devolving into a banana republic each time there's a sitting president of one party, with a presidential candidate from the other party.
Click to expand...



Well good this should be a great precedent. Any candidate that is colluding and coordinating with a foreign government should be investigated.

Hell the way this is playing out trump and company should have been behind bars many years ago.

Now that we know that a criminal foreign agent can win an election with foreign inference we should be much more diligent in vetting our candidates.
 
Here's a few key things I noticed about the democratic memo:

1. The republican memo claimed that Andrew McCabe testified that without the dossier, the FBI would have never sought a warrant. That claim has been disputed publicly by democrats, but is not disputed or even addressed in the democratic memo.

2. The democratic memo claims that the dossier was corroborated by multiple, independent sources, all of which are redacted. That claim directly contradicts the sworn testimony given under oath in mid 2017 to the Senate Intelligence Committee by then FBI director James Comey, who said that he felt the need to brief president elect Trump in January 2017 about the dossier, even though the dossier was in his words quote "salacious and unverified".

3. The republican memo claimed that the FISA court was not informed about the dossier being opposition research funded by the DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign. The democratic memo does not dispute that assertion, but instead attempts to justify why that information was withheld from the judge, citing that it was to protect sources. That doesn't fly with me because the reason that the FBI protects information sources, is when revealing such would compromise national security or put people's lives in danger (such as exposing the name of a covert operative or an ongoing covert intelligence operation). I can't see how revealing who funded the dossier, or the fact that it was opposition research, could be seen as information that had to be protected.

4. The democratic memo does not address what Steele said about not wanting Trump to be president.


So the main claims made by republican, the ones that are the most damaging, are not directly refuted by the democrats in their memo. This leads me to wonder what the democrats hoped to accomplish by putting out their memo in the first place?

.
 
I suggest y'all ignore this "dueling memos" thing. It means nothing.

Instead, look for stuff that likely comes from Horowitz. That's the important stuff. And Horowitz isn't giving it to Congress because he knows Schi(tt)ff is a leaker.
 
Grim17 said:
Here's a few key things I noticed about the democratic memo:

1. The republican memo claimed that Andrew McCabe testified that without the dossier, the FBI would have never sought a warrant. That claim has been disputed publicly by democrats, but is not disputed or even addressed in the democratic memo.

2. The democratic memo claims that the dossier was corroborated by multiple, independent sources, all of which are redacted. That claim directly contradicts the sworn testimony given under oath in mid 2017 to the Senate Intelligence Committee by then FBI director James Comey, who said that he felt the need to brief president elect Trump in January 2017 about the dossier, even though the dossier was in his words quote "salacious and unverified".

3. The republican memo claimed that the FISA court was not informed about the dossier being opposition research funded by the DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign. The democratic memo does not dispute that assertion, but instead attempts to justify why that information was withheld from the judge, citing that it was to protect sources. That doesn't fly with me because the reason that the FBI protects information sources, is when revealing such would compromise national security or put people's lives in danger (such as exposing the name of a covert operative or an ongoing covert intelligence operation). I can't see how revealing who funded the dossier, or the fact that it was opposition research, could be seen as information that had to be protected.

4. The democratic memo does not address what Steele said about not wanting Trump to be president.


So the main claims made by republican, the ones that are the most damaging, are not directly refuted by the democrats in their memo. This leads me to wonder what the democrats hoped to accomplish by putting out their memo in the first place?

.
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They want to distract and deflect.

Their useful idiot have been salivating for this nothingburger and now they are chowing down.
 
Mycroft said:
I suggest y'all ignore this "dueling memos" thing. It means nothing.

Instead, look for stuff that likely comes from Horowitz. That's the important stuff. And Horowitz isn't giving it to Congress because he knows Schi(tt)ff is a leaker.
Click to expand...

That rat bastard leaks like a sieve.
 
MovingPictures said:
Page had been under surveillance by the FBI prior to Steele ever coming along, so this is not some innocent doe-eyed angel we're talking about. We're talking about a guy that was unwittingly passing information to Russian operatives engaging in espionage.

Page made statements in public that he never met any Rosneft executives, as alleged in the Steele dossier. It appears that the corroboration was the FBI's own surveillance of Page knowing about these secret meetings Page had with Kremlin operatives. Page of course, did come clean about these meetings before Congress, in a stunning recant of his previous statements.

How and why Yahoo would be used as source is something I can't comment on without seeing the warrant, but suffice to say you can't use a news outlet alone as evidence of anything -- there must be other sources to meet the criteria for a warrant.
Click to expand...

None of your points get to the central issue. The FBI cited Yahoo to corroborate Steele even though Steele was Yahoo's primary source.
 
Jack Hays said:
Apparently the FBI did not believe the other sources were adequate, otherwise why cite Yahoo News? Whether the Steele dossier was or was not accurate is a question whose answer requires more information than I have. What is indisputable is that the FBI seems to have claimed corroboration to the FISA court on the basis of false confirmation.
Click to expand...

You must be some sort of professional contortionist to be able to twist and bend enough to reach that conclusion...
 
eohrnberger said:
"it's a big nothing"

What makes you draw that conclusion, if I may ask?

We also have in testimony that Steele had animus against the presidential candidate.
We know that this dossier contained unverified information.
We know that a political opponent's campaign paid for this dossier as part of opposition research.
We have in testimony that the Steele dossier was instrumental in obtaining a FISA warrant, and then extending it a number of times.
We know that a FISA warrant brings FBI and US intelligence services surveillance assets and resources on to the subject identified in the FISA warrant.
We also know that this particular FISA warrant was against a political opponent's presidential campaign.

All this substantially based on a politically motivated, politically paid for information from suspect sources containing suspect information and conclusions.

Now that precedence has been set, and if it goes unchallenged, it has the potential to become normalized, a common occurrence with each presidential campaign.

The sitting president will be enabled to leverage political opposition hit job research into baring FBI and US intelligence services surveillance assets and resources to dig up dirt on the political opposition.

All this doesn't strike me as "a big nothing".

It strikes me as the US devolving into a banana republic each time there's a sitting president of one party, with a presidential candidate from the other party.
Click to expand...

Yes, but we already knew that.
 
GDViking said:
Well good this should be a great precedent. Any candidate that is colluding and coordinating with a foreign government should be investigated.

Hell the way this is playing out trump and company should have been behind bars many years ago.

Now that we know that a criminal foreign agent can win an election with foreign inference we should be much more diligent in vetting our candidates.
Click to expand...

:roll:

All of those issued talking points have been debunked time and again in these forums, I refer you to those threads.

To date, the indictments filed have not proven any Russian / Trump collusion, not a single one. Rosenstein's press statement specifically called out that no American unknowingly colluded with the Russians to effect the outcome of the 2016 presidential election and charged 13 Russians and 3 Russian companies, granted, that particular indictment, but the statement itself being pretty broad reaching.

The Russian influence campaign during the 2016 campaign has proven to be ineffective and amateurish, not understanding the audience well enough, apparently, but that could rapidly change, so a word of caution is due here.

The left has been flogging this meme on for a 1 year or more now, and yet no proof has been proffered.

The more the investigations continue the more we find out how corrupt the Democrats and bureaucrats are / have been.

I'll admit that I'm befuddled why you'd accept national LEO and Intel assets vended against the political opposition. You do realize that there aren't always going to be Democrat presidents sitting in the White House. Don't you?
 
GDViking said:
You must be some sort of professional contortionist to be able to twist and bend enough to reach that conclusion...
Click to expand...

It's actually straightforward and obvious. The FBI FISA warrant application cited a Yahoo News article to corroborate the Steele dossier. Steele himself was the primary source of the Yhoo News article. That is false confirmation; Steele cannot corroborate Steele.
 
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