LOL!: IG found Steele to be credible

maxparrish said:

Nonsense. There isn't any doubt of the legitimacy of a scandal in Benghazi, Strozk or Fast and Furious. Hillary and Holder were both responsible on their own watch and negligent in their supervision. In particular Ms. Clinton's tenure was criminally incompetent, and both attempted coverups and rationalizations for their actions and/or inactions.

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Nonsense. Pure nonsense. And I think you know it. One can only assume, then, that you are a Trump supporter, because NONE of the above is accurate according to ANY of the investigations.
--There were EIGHT Benghazi investions....ALL conducted by Republicans. NOT ONE found evidence of a cover up or conspiracy. NOT ONE.
--Fast and Furious was ordered by Republicans, and conducted by REPUBLICAN appointees....and it produced NOTHING...ZERO evidence of illegality or corruption by Obama. You really should read the final investigative results before commenting further on that FAKE scandal. Don't read a Hannity op/ed about it. Read the report.
--The OIG investigation of the Strzok (not "Strozk", btw) found ZERO evidence of corruption. It only concluded that his behavior was unprofessional and, as a result, cast negative light on the entire department in the eyes of much of the public.

And Strozk and four others were blasted by the IG:

https://www.justice.gov/file/1071991/download

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You should READ it, before commenting further. They were "blasted" for unprofessional conduct, and in the SAME light, their work was VALIDATED and found to be without ANY evidence of bias.

FROM THE FBI'S OIG REPORT:

"However, we did not find documentary or
testimonial evidence that improper considerations,
including political bias, directly affected the specific
investigative decisions we reviewed in Chapter Five, or
that the justifications offered for these decisions were
pretextual.
Nonetheless, these messages cast a cloud over the
FBI’s handling of the Midyear investigation and the
investigation’s credibility. But our review did not find
evidence to connect the political views expressed in
these messages to the specific investigative decisions
that we reviewed; rather, consistent with the analytic
approach described above, we found that these specific
decisions were the result of discretionary judgments
made during the course of an investigation by the
Midyear agents and prosecutors and that these
judgment calls were not unreasonable. The broader
impact of these text and instant messages, including on
such matters...(was to)... the public perception of the FBI"

Of course these were authentic scandals, far more serious that the "amounted to nothing" Russian findings regarding Trump (et. al.) by Mueller.

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Sorry, but this is just an absurd comment. You appear to be one of the bat-crap crazy conspiracy theorists that I've been talking about of late. But EVERY single investigation of the above FAKE scandals....concluded that THERE WERE NO SCANDALS, CONSPIRACIES OR COVERUPS. It reflects your standing as a blind Trump supporter. But it's delusional. The FACTS are CLEARLY in conflict with your opinions, which I believe you probably understand (deep down) based on that absence of any actual FACTUAL support for your FakeNews point of view.

Athanasius68 said:

1. In other words, Mueller said there was no conspiracy. It's basic American jurisprudence. But we already knew There was no conspiracy from his prosecutions and indictments-- his Stone indictment for example stated the campaign wanted Stone to find out what Wikileaks had, which is a strange position for a conspirator to be in.

2. The rest of the emolument claims will be laughed out as well.

3. There is perhaps 1 obstruction claim which is credible-- and that one is probably weak as well.
Barr has already said Mueller could have recommended indictments--the OLC ruling would have been no barrier.

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The "no collusion" argument hasn't aged well, has it?

Emoluments claims could be "laughed out", but in the latest case, it wasn't based on its merits. It was based on standing.

Mueller's citing that DOJ guidelines prevent him from indicting a sitting president, with regard to obstruction, and adding that Trump could be impeached or tried after retiring from office is not what one would hope to find in the conclusion of an investigation into his activities.

How do you argue that its all okay because Trump has evaded conviction? Is that really the standard you want to set for a world leader? Putin lives for this kind of stuff.

Athanasius68 said:

Its not Steele credibility that relevant. It's the credibility of his anonymous Russian sources.

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(1/2) That's an improvement to recognize the credibility of Steele himself, rather that slandering him as some corrupt liar.)1/2

But you have to understand the Steele research better, than to think he put an ad in the paper and said 'paying for any claims about trump' and just reported the responses.

You need to have some understanding of how intelligence works, working with imperfect sources, and how it starts with 'raw intelligence', and is analyzed, the sources vetted, researched and cross-checked, sorting out the false from the true.

If you have a corrupt intent, it's easy to find false intelligence. A good example of when this DID happen is when the Bush administration wanted to find ANY evidence to support its corrupt desire for war on Iraq. Two examples, actually.

In the first, there is 'curveball', the code name for an Iraqi exile who was applying for asylum in Germany. He told the Germans a lot of stories about Iraqi WMD, which they shared with the US, and which the Bush administration accepted hook, line, and sinker, presenting them as confirmed, well-researched, strongly source intelligence findings, the core of the case for war.

However, unknown to the American public, 'Curveball' was a low-level Iraqi, with alcohol abuse problems, desperate to get accepted into Germany in a process where only one in 25 applicants were approved, and so he was hugely motivated to find something to give them they wanted to get one of those 1 in 25 slots - a huge motivation to lie, which he did.

The Germans properly viewed him as a highly unreliable source, and said that to the Americans. The US never even talked to Curveball, didn't even know his name, yet his statements were presented to the American people as confirmed by our intelligence agencies and justification for war, a completely dishonest representation. As I recall, Curveball came to admit all this.

What the intelligence process WOULD have done for that when not controlled by a corrupt administration - as Dick Cheney constantly went to the CIA to arm twist it to say what he wanted - is to have vetted the information and found it not credible, but that's not what the administration wanted.

(2/2) The second example is when there was a report of a document showing Iraqi interest in purchasing yellowcake for uranium enrichment from Niger. The CIA which received that report was 'honest' in its approach, and researched the raw intelligence of the report of the document.

It discussed it at a meeting; one of the agents in the meeting, Valerie Plame, volunteered that her husband, an experienced diplomat and ambassador for both Republican and Democratic presidents, had played a key role in the government in Niger and had strong contacts to get to the truth, and offered they could have him investigate for them.

They agreed, and asked him to do a public service of investigating the document's credibility in Niger, and paid his travel expenses. Being a patriot, Wilson accepted and went to Niger. The document was immediately and obviously a forgery. He talked to the Nigerian government, and they had very strong controls over the yellowcake, and he confirmed there had been no such approach by Iraq.

He filed his report, and felt the matter was closed. The next he heard of it was watching Bush's State of the Union address, where he claimed there were highly credible reports of Saddam trying to buy Yellowcake from Niger.

He recognized that his report had been ignored by someone, who had seized upon the raw intelligence of the document, and used it for a false claim to support the war.

With all his contacts, he immediately reached out to them to say a mistake had been made and needed to be corrected. Because the administration was wanting to lie, it was no mistake, and his objections were ignored.

Finally, with nothing else left to deal with the American people being told what he knew was a lie by the president, he wrote an editorial for the New York Times telling the story of the research he'd done.

As a result, Dick Cheney leaked Wilson's wife's name, as being a covert CIA agent, to be published, ruining her CIA career, endangering all her sources, harming the CIA's ability to operate, in order to punish Wilson and make an example of him to anyone else who might tell the truth about administration lies.

(Cheney's chief of staff, who leaked the name, was convicted of a related crime; trump pardoned him, something even Bush wouldn't do, which led to a break in Bush's relationship with Cheney).

Those are examples of when intelligence is abused. The Steele research is not such an example. He did a good job of providing raw intelligence for further research, noting the credibility of sources, indicating he felt much of it would turn out to be inaccurate. It was a starting point, which is what raw intelligence is.

So, yes, the Steele Dossier should not be treated as confirmed information; it wasn't, Steele didn't present it as such, and US intelligence didn't treat it as such. It was a supporting document, which had some more promising leads for further investigation.

The lie is Republicans claiming that Steele simply took false statements by Russian sources with a corrupt intent to find lies (as Bush had), and US intelligence accepted these lies and used them as the basis for an unjustified investigation into trump because THEY were corrupt and anti-trump, also.

The actual facts are somewhat complicated to understand the truth. It's easy for partisan interests who want to try to attack the truth to make up a simple story, and yell 'partisan liars' and smear people like Steele, claiming they're 'corrupt', just as they yell 'fake news' at news organizations who tell the truth about them to attack them.

Craig234 said:

Barr likely isn't headed to the Supreme Court. They want Federalist Society minions.

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He's already been AG. Not a move up. He campaigned for the job, unsolicited. Head-over-heels. He's either trying to get out of a spot, or thinking brown-nosing Trump as being his "Cohen" will get him even further. Just my take. I've no taped conversations.

bluesmoke said:

He's already been AG. Not a move up. He campaigned for the job, unsolicited. Head-over-heels. He's either trying to get out of a spot, or thinking brown-nosing Trump as being his "Cohen" will get him even further. Just my take. I've no taped conversations.

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I have no information on Barr's motivations for his corruption, but what is clear to speculate is simply his having an ideology of extreme executive power where lying and abuse of power are justified (as he was a key figure in the hugely unethical pardoning of the Iran-Contra criminals long ago), and perhaps a desire to be AG again.

MovingPictures said:

I wonder if we should put all the FISA truthers here on suicide watch.

Trump dossier author Steele gets 16-hour DOJ grilling - POLITICO

Sorry, FISA truthers. The IG is not going to accuse the FBI of a political conspiracy, so get used to the idea, and prepare your stomach for another serving of crow.

I speculated two months ago that Barr's appointment of Durham to conduct an additional review was rooted in him knowing the IG was going nowhere with the deep state theories, and my prediction is looking good.

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You don't even know what was asked so put it back in your pants.

tres borrachos said:

Trump Fan Nation must be tinkling in their panties. Again.

Bad year for them.

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No worries most wear depends anyway...

ultmd said:

Nonsense. Pure nonsense. And I think you know it. One can only assume, then, that you are a Trump supporter, because NONE of the above is accurate according to ANY of the investigations.

--There were EIGHT Benghazi investions....ALL conducted by Republicans. NOT ONE found evidence of a cover up or conspiracy. NOT ONE.

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Oh please, so you're now dragging the old conspiracy-collusion strawman out to center stage for another beating I see. Are you aware that Mach claimed that the scandals were republican contrived? Are you aware that whether or not a "conspiracy" was claimed by anyone, that the definition of a scandal does not require proof a criminal conspiracy? Or are just another liberal mountebank, covering up that outrageously immoral or unethical behavior or wrongful events are called scandals?

While your getting out your dictionary, the facts speak for themselves:

- Four high level government officials were left to die in the hands of terrorists in Benghazi because grotesque and self-serving incompetence on the part of the CIA, the DOD, and the State Department. The failure of leadership was so obvious that the oval office and Hillary invented or echo'd a cover story on the nature and source of the attack.

- Hillary Clinton fed a false story the attacks spawned from protests over an anti-Islamic video, while in private acknowledging that it was actually a terrorist operation. Obama fed the same story, as did Rice, who had to cover for the State department because Ben Rhodes couldn't get ahold of Hillary to ask her to appear on Sunday press shows. Rather Hillary and cronies bunkered up. In fact Clinton the fake cover story fester for two weeks without further comment.

- Hillary Clinton failed to take decisive or principled action that could have save lives and prevented the debacle, the last time on August 12 when all the facts were laid out to her. She failed to act appropriately.

- Departments, agencies and partys, including those in the Oval office and Clinton and her helpers fought a two year battle of obstruction, non-compliance with requests, and slow-walking. The report chronicles, step by step, these actions to prevent the full truth and caused a needless or tortious delay in getting answers. In fact, as the report points out, because the administration still withholds requested material, some questions will remain unanswered.

Unfortunately, the administration’s efforts to impede the investigation succeeded, at least in part. The White House in particular left large holes in the investigation by denying the Committee access to documents and witnesses—often hiding behind vague notions of ‘‘important and longstanding institutional interests of the Executive Branch.’’4 And so the Committee ended its work without having spoken to anyone in the White House Situation Room that night. Nor did we receive all email communication between White House staffers concerning the attack—all off limits to Congress according to White House lawyers. Compounding the problem, the White House refused to identify any of the documents it had withheld. If the administration had a sincere interest in cooperating with the Committee’s investigation, as it stated repeatedly, we saw no real evidence of it.

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None the less:

While we may never know for certain exactly why the State Department left Benghazi open in the face of such dangerous conditions, the most plausible answer is troubling. Secretary Clinton pushed for the U.S. to intervene in Libya, which at the time represented one of her signature achievements. To leave Benghazi (as did other missions) would have been viewed as her failure and prompted unwelcome scrutiny of her choices.

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So yes, there is evidence of a coverup, just as described in a full section of the report on the Administrations unwillingness to provide relevant material. And there is evidence of a "collusion", if that means a coordinated effort to mislead the American public with a phony story on how and why the diplomatic mission was attacked. And yes, a mission mortared for hours killing for diplomatic officers without any attempt at rescue because of incompetence, callousness, or fear of political consequences is, by any definition, scandalous.

Moving on to Strzok

ultmd said:

Nonsense. Pure nonsense. And I think you know it. One can only assume, then, that you are a Trump supporter, because NONE of the above is accurate according to ANY of the investigations.

--The OIG investigation of the Strzok (not "Strozk", btw) found ZERO evidence of corruption. It only concluded that his behavior was unprofessional and, as a result, cast negative light on the entire department in the eyes of much of the public.

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Once again, your strawman is irrelevant. Quite aside from differing opinion of the meaning of corruption, there isn't any doubt the Strzok engaged in scandalous behavior - ergo the scandal was neither contrived nor fake.

First, the IG report states: "we did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that improper considerations, including political bias, directly affected the specific investigative decisions we reviewed in Chapter Five, or that the justifications offered for these decisions were pretextual.

Rather "... specific decisions were the result of discretionary judgments made during the course of an investigation by the Midyear agents and prosecutors and that these judgment calls were not unreasonable."

In other words, the IG does neatly avoids the indirect evidence (as opposed to direct), as he thought he must because his own benchmark for determining bias action was rather generous to Strzok, i.e.; if a judgement call was not unreasonable then he could not call it biased. Which, by the way, means that as long as somewhat has plausible cover story for their action, the OIG simply accepted it as true. So far, a rather weak exoneration, don't you think? But then it gets worse...

Second, the report provides direct evidence of their extreme bias and indirect evidence that it may have affected conduct. For example, the IG notes that he was unpersuaded by the numerous FBI excuses as to why they ignored the newly discovered 350,000 mails for nearly the whole month of October and points out that Strzok could well have been motivated to ignore them for Clinton's sake, and so he could then move on the Trump Russian investigation. Moreover, a detailed reading of Strzok and Page (et. al.) is to immerse oneself into a pit of venom towards Trump, references to "stopping him" and "insurance polices" as well as Strzok's later messages of seeming guilt over not having successfully stopped Trump through undisclosed means.

Third, the IG sums it up the odiousness of the scandal:

The conduct of the five FBI employees described in sections A, B, and C of this Chapter has brought discredit to themselves, sowed doubt about the FBI’s handling of the Midyear investigation, and impacted the reputation of the FBI. ... Nonetheless, the conduct by these employees cast a cloud over the FBI Midyear investigation and sowed doubt the FBI’s work on, and its handling of, the Midyear investigation. Moreover, the damage caused by their actions extends far beyond the scope of the Midyear investigation and goes to the heart of the FBI’s reputation for neutral factfinding and political independence.

We were deeply troubled by text messages sent by Strzok and Page that potentially indicated or created the appearance that investigative decisions were impacted by bias or improper considerations. Most of the text messages raising such questions pertained to the Russia investigation, which was not a part of this review. Nonetheless, when one senior FBI official, Strzok, who was helping to lead the Russia investigation at the time, conveys in a text message to another senior FBI official, Page, that “we’ll stop” candidate Trump from being elected—after other extensive text messages between the two disparaging candidate Trump—it is not only indicative of a biased state of mind but, even more seriously, implies a willingness to take official action to impact the presidential candidate’s electoral prospects. This is antithetical to the core values of the FBI and the Department of Justice. Moreover, as we describe in Chapter Nine, in assessing Strzok’s decision to prioritize the Russia investigation over following up on the Midyear-related investigative lead discovered on the Weiner laptop in October 2016, these text messages led us to conclude that we did not have confidence that Strzok’s decision was free from bias.

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The scandal was neither fake nor contrived, nor is your repeated denial worthy of your intelligence.

j brown's body said:

The "no collusion" argument hasn't aged well, has it?

Emoluments claims could be "laughed out", but in the latest case, it wasn't based on its merits. It was based on standing.

Mueller's citing that DOJ guidelines prevent him from indicting a sitting president, with regard to obstruction, and adding that Trump could be impeached or tried after retiring from office is not what one would hope to find in the conclusion of an investigation into his activities.

How do you argue that its all okay because Trump has evaded conviction? Is that really the standard you want to set for a world leader? Putin lives for this kind of stuff.

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You would be surprised at how much of the Trump base looks up to Putin.

The FBI action that has done the most to destroy its reputation in modern history is its utterly inadequate 'investigation' of the Christine Ford allegations against Brett Kavanaugh. Some would put James Comey's announcement about the Anthony Weiner e-mails and Hillary just before the election as their choice.

JustHanging said:

You would be surprised at how much of the Trump base looks up to Putin.

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'Now, there's a guy who KNOWS how to put his country first, to not put up with BS from judges and journalists or elections or minorities. Wish WE had a strong leader like that instead of an Obama.' Something like that?

MovingPictures said:

I wonder if we should put all the FISA truthers here on suicide watch.

Trump dossier author Steele gets 16-hour DOJ grilling - POLITICO

Sorry, FISA truthers. The IG is not going to accuse the FBI of a political conspiracy, so get used to the idea, and prepare your stomach for another serving of crow.

I speculated two months ago that Barr's appointment of Durham to conduct an additional review was rooted in him knowing the IG was going nowhere with the deep state theories, and my prediction is looking good.

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That is not what the story is at all. NOTHING of it said the Steele Dossier was valid nor whether it was properly presented to the federal court. Rather, just that they believed Steele gave truthful answers. Steele has frequently said that the dossier is only gossip he heard and there is no reason to believe any of it. It's just things he heard somewhere from someone as gossip.

Athanasius68 said:

Part of the Russian plot.
No conspiracy. Mueller has spoken.

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He has, and he didn't say that...

joko104 said:

That is noot what the story is at all. NOTHING of it said the Steele Dossier was valid nor whether it was properly presented to the federal court. Rather, just that they believed Steele gave truthful answers. Steele has frequently said that the dossier is only gossip he heard and there is no reason to believe any of it. It's just things he heard somewhere from someone as gossip.

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:lamo: lmao:lamo

You do make me laugh...

joko104 said:

Steele has frequently said that the dossier is only gossip he heard and there is no reason to believe any of it. It's just things he heard somewhere from someone as gossip.

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"Steele has frequently said he made it all up" would be more believable.

Steele: "All this is salacious gossip"

FBI: "He's absolutely credible".

joko104 said:

That is not what the story is at all. NOTHING of it said the Steele Dossier was valid nor whether it was properly presented to the federal court. Rather, just that they believed Steele gave truthful answers. Steele has frequently said that the dossier is only gossip he heard and there is no reason to believe any of it. It's just things he heard somewhere from someone as gossip.

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You know, I don't want to be a super cynic, but government work has taught me otherwise. Part of me thinks steele didn't hear "gossip" at all. Sounds like he just didn't feel like working that day, so just decided to make it all up himself from his 5star hotel, and if anyone calls him out on it, he can just say "oh, uh uh....gossip, on the street somewhere. don't remember who. sounded legit tho....gotta play minecraft now."

DarkWizard12 said:

You know, I don't want to be a super cynic, but government work has taught me otherwise. Part of me thinks steele didn't hear "gossip" at all. Sounds like he just didn't feel like working that day, so just decided to make it all up himself from his 5star hotel, and if anyone calls him out on it, he can just say "oh, uh uh....gossip, on the street somewhere. don't remember who. sounded legit tho....gotta play minecraft now."

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Steele had a private investigation company

Orbis | Services

and a reputation to protect and use for keeping contacts with different agencies around the world. No sane person would risk any of the above by manufacturing information the way you suggest.


By the way, did you happen to be involved in the Iraqi WMD case?

pamak said:

Steele had a private investigation company

Orbis | Services

and a reputation to protect and use for keeping contacts with different agencies around the world. No sane person would risk any of the above by manufacturing information the way you suggest.

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Again, it sounds like **** to be paid a salary, have all these resources, and only to come up with "gossip".

If there was nothing substantial about it, he shouldn't have turned it in.

By the way, did you happen to be involved in the Iraqi WMD case?

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in what way?

DarkWizard12 said:

Again, it sounds like **** to be paid a salary, have all these resources, and only to come up with "gossip".

If there was nothing substantial about it, he shouldn't have turned it in.


in what way?

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He did not only come back with gossip. Some of the information in the dossier proved to be accurate

He turned things because he evaluated that it was too big of a risk to ignore the cues he had, and it would have been certainly a catastrophe for him if some of this information proved to be accurate about ANY member of the Trump administration. In such scenario, Steele would look like he sat on the information he had, and his reputation and collaboration wit the FBI would have been ruined for ever. Recall by the way that Steele had collaborated in previous case (FIFA scandal).

In the way you described with your suspicions about Steele's work habits...Like making s** up one day just because you did not feel like to work...

pamak said:

He did not only come back with gossip. Some of the information in the dossier proved to be accurate

He turned things because he evaluated that it was too big of a risk to ignore the cues he had, and it would have been certainly a catastrophe for him if some of this information proved to be accurate about ANY member of the Trump administration. In such scenario, Steele would look like he sat on the information he had, and his reputation and collaboration wit the FBI would have been ruined for ever. Recall by the way that Steele had collaborated in previous case (FIFA scandal).

In the way you described with your suspicions about Steele's work habits...Like making s** up one day just because you did not feel like to work...

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Didn't think you were such a staunch defender of steele, or do you just get your information from Daily Kos?

Or maybe you work for him.

I don't deal with hacks bro. You can suck steele's dick by yourself, I'm not having any part of it.

Have a good day!

DarkWizard12 said:

Didn't think you were such a staunch defender of steele, or do you just get your information from Daily Kos?

Or maybe you work for him.

I don't deal with hacks bro. You can suck steele's dick by yourself, I'm not having any part of it.

Have a good day!

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It is not about defending Steele. It is about defending common sense.

Also, this thread is about the fact that Steele was found to be credible.

I love it when people who cannot defend their claims have a melt down when they are challenged. And you were supposedly a "professional" in the government :roll:.

pamak said:

It is not about defending Steele. It is about defending common sense.

Also, this thread is about the fact that Steele was found to be credible.

I love it when people who cannot defend their claims have a melt down when they are challenged. And you were supposedly a "professional" in the government :roll:.

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My claim? What claim? I merely shared a personal feeling, and I made no secret that it was nothing BUT a personal feeling. If it's wrong, so what? I don't care. I shared it because I thought it would be funny if it ended up being the truth. Lol, you never challenged any claims of mine, as I never made one. :lamo