Democratic rebuttal to GOP House Intelligence memo released

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Democratic rebuttal to GOP House Intelligence memo released
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/d...se-intelligence-memo-released/article/2649966
(Memo can be found at bottom of article - with many redactions)

The Democratic rebuttal memo to the Republican House Intelligence Committee memo on alleged government surveillance abuses was released Saturday afternoon.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., acknowledged its release at his appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference, at about 4 p.m.

"It's just posted," he told American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp, quipping that the committee website was probably already crashing due to high traffic.

Democrats say their memo was written as a rebuttal to provide greater context to a Republican memo that was released earlier this month, which outlines abuses by the FBI and the Justice Department against the Trump campaign.

Although the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee voted to make the Democrat’s memo public earlier this month, President Trump refused to declassify it, citing "significant concerns for the national security and law enforcement interests."

As a result, ranking member Adam Schiff, D-Calif., had been working with Justice Department officials to determine what must be redacted and what can remain in the memo ahead of its release.
 
5 KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THE DEMOCRATIC REBUTTAL MEMO

https://www.wired.com/story/democratic-memo-rebuttal-carter-page-trump/

THREE WEEKS AGO, House Republicans publicly released a much-hyped memo written by representative Devin Nunes of California. It alleged, through a series of allusions, tangential facts, and seeming misdirections, that law enforcement officials had abused their power in obtaining a surveillance warrant against former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page. Now, in a 10-page memo of their own, House Democrats are attempting to set the record straight.

The Democratic memo, though redacted in part, fills out the partial picture Nunes had painted. And while it's worth reading in full—especially for any fans of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court's inner workings—a few portions stand out as particularly illuminating. It doesn't tell us much, if anything, about the investigation into potential ties between Russia and the Trump campaign. But it says everything you need to know about the Nunes memo's sophistry. Here are the key points.

The Carter Page Timeline Comes Into Focus
While redactions hide some specifics, the Democratic memo makes clear that the FBI had interest in Carter Page long before he joined Donald Trump's presidential campaign. Russian agents attempted to recruit Page at some point prior to 2013. And then, per the new memo: "In 2013, prosecutors indicted three other Russian spies, two of whom targeted page for recruitment."

The FBI also apparently interviewed Page about his contacts with Russian intelligence agents "multiple times," including in March 2016, the month Page joined the Trump campaign. In fact, the FISA application includes information about Page's activity prior to joining the Trump campaign at all. All of that previous interest and activity helps dispel the notion that the focus on Page amounted to a "witch hunt" targeting Trump; it was surveillance into an individual with business ties to Russia whom the country had also spent years trying to recruit.


Steele's Dossier Wasn't a Determining Factor
Republicans claimed in the Nunes memo that the FBI sought to surveil Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page in large part because of information from former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele. “The ‘dossier’," according to the Nunes memo, "formed an essential part of the Carter Page FISA application. Steele was a longtime FBI source.”

The Schiff memo controverts this interpretation. “Christopher Steele’s raw intelligence reporting did not inform the FBI’s decision to initiate its counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016,” Democrats write. “In fact, the FBI’s closely-held investigation team only received Steele’s reporting in mid-September.” The memo also emphasizes that the Steele dossier was extensively vetted and largely contained information that the FBI had either already obtained during its investigation or that it later corroborated. And contrary to the Nunes memo's claims, the Schiff memo notes that the FBI never actually paid Steele for the dossier.

The Court Knew Who Paid For Steele's Research
The Nunes memo claimed that law enforcement officials presenting to the FISA court did not provide context that Steele’s research and the dossier he produced were funded by the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign. “Neither the initial application in October 2016, nor any of the renewals, disclose or reference the role of the DNC, Clinton campaign, or any party/campaign in funding Steele’s efforts, even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior DOJ and FBI officials,” the memo said. This would have meant that key US law enforcement officials illegally misrepresented facts and crucial context to the court.

'This memo repudiates a key allegation that was made in the Nunes memo: that the FBI and DOJ were untruthful to the FISC.'

FORMER FISA LAWYER CARRIE CORDERO

The Schiff memo contradicts these assertions, though: "Far from ‘omitting’ material facts about Steele, as the Majority claims, DOJ repeatedly informed the Court about Steele’s background, credibility, and potential bias." In fact, the FISA warrant application even explicitly stated that Steele “was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit” the Trump campaign. DOJ also let the FISA court know why it trusted Steele nonetheless—and informed them when the FBI dropped Steele as a source, for talking to the media.


Though the Nunes memo's original assertion had always been in doubt, because of the pure impropriety and partisan manipulation it would have represented, analysts were relieved to see the Democratic rebuttal.

“This memo repudiates a key allegation that was made in the Nunes memo: that the FBI and DOJ were untruthful to the FISC,” says Carrie Cordero, an adjunct professor at Georgetown Law School who has worked directly on FISA process issues. “That allegation went to the heart of the integrity of the FISA process, and as a former FISA practitioner, I'm glad to see it debunked.”

Neither Memo Exonerates Trump
When Republicans released the Nunes memo, President Donald Trump argued that it exposed problematic political bias within the FBI and the larger intelligence community. And Republicans asserted that the FBI used the Page warrant as a backdoor into spying on the Trump campaign.

This prejudice, Trump concluded, taints the larger ongoing Russia investigation and invalidates accusations of misconduct. “This memo totally vindicates ‘Trump’ in probe. But the Russian Witch Hunt goes on and on. Their was no Collusion,” Trump tweeted after the Nunes memo was released.

It says everything you need to know about the Nunes memo's sophistry.

Democrats contradict all of the Nunes memo’s crucial assertions that would indicate partisan bias within the FBI, though. And the memo challenges the idea that the Trump campaign was subject to an indiscriminate dragnet. Page was, after all, on the FBI's radar prior to his Trump campaign dealings. And the surveillance itself took place after he left the campaign. If anything, at least as far as the FISA process goes, both memos show just how little Trump has to do with any of it.


“FISA was not used to spy on Trump or his campaign,” Schiff writes. “As the Trump campaign and Page have acknowledged, Page ended his formal affiliation with the campaign months before DOJ applied for a warrant. DOJ’s warrant request was based on compelling evidence and probable cause.”

Still, Trump railed against the Democratic memo on Twitter Saturday evening, claiming that it "confirms all of the terrible things that were done. SO ILLEGAL!" Trump also complained that the "FBI did not disclose who the clients were - the Clinton Campaign and the DNC. Wow!" This manages to miss a few points at once. The core complaint of the Nunes memo wasn't specificity, but partisan funding, which the FISA warrant application did in fact disclose. It's also curious to see Trump suddenly arguing that US individuals and institutions should be named in the FISA process, given the extent to which he has decried the "unmasking" process through which that happens. Finally, at least as of press time, Trump tweeted "Russians had no compromising information on Donald Trump," apparently citing a Fox News headline, though it's unclear how anyone could conclude that from either the Nunes or Democratic memo.

Peter Strzok and Lisa Page Were a Red Herring
In the weeks prior to the Nunes memo’s release, FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were under intense media and political scrutiny for a text message exchange, dating as far back as January 2016, that included disparaging remarks about Donald Trump. In an apparent attempt to capitalize on the fervor, the Nunes memo invokes Strzok and Page in its final section:

“The Page FISA application also mentions information regarding fellow Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos, but there is no evidence of any cooperation or conspiracy between Page and Papadopoulos. The Papadopoulos information triggered the opening of an FBI counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016 by FBI agent Pete Strzok. Strzok was reassigned by the Special Counsel’s Office to FBI Human Resources for improper text messages with his mistress, FBI Attorney Lisa Page (no known relation to Carter Page), where they both demonstrated a clear bias against Trump and in favor of Clinton, whom Strzok had also investigated.”

Setting aside issues of propriety around the text messages, the Democratic memo makes clear that in fact, Strzok and Page did not serve as affiants in the Page warrant applications. The mention turns out to be gratuitous. Citing “no evidence of cooperation or conspiracy between Page and Papadopoulos” as some sort of malfeasance is also a sleight of hand; the FISA application made no attempt to draw that connection, but rather used the Papadopoulos case to provide broader context about Russia’s attempts at interfering in the election. As a possibly helpful reminder: Last fall, Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI about his contact with Russians who had offered “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.

Leggo My Memo

 
So, as discussed, the dem memo absolutely confirms that the FBI authorized payment to Steele for research on Trump but did not actually issue the check because steele's activitities and the dossier thing blew up and started going public. Nice defense there to any charges that the FBI colluded or intended to collude with Steele and to use Justice Department funds to support Hillary Campaign opposition research. NOT.


And the memo assures us that the dossier was not the basis for getting the fisa warrant, except McCabe testified to congress that "without the dossier there would have been no fisa warrant." Might need to tidy that up a bit.
 
TreeFrogTrader said:
So, as discussed, the dem memo absolutely confirms that the FBI authorized payment to Steele for research on Trump but did not actually issue the check because steele's activitities and the dossier thing blew up and started going public. Nice defense there to any charges that the FBI colluded or intended to collude with Steele and to use Justice Department funds to support Hillary Campaign opposition research. NOT.


And the memo assures us that the dossier was not the basis for getting the fisa warrant, except McCabe testified to congress that "without the dossier there would have been no fisa warrant." Might need to tidy that up a bit.
More...


The democrat memo will successfully shift the topic away from the economy for a few days which is its intended design.

The dems certainly have a lot of eggs in the Mueller basket and he better come up with more than phony Facebook and Twitter accounts.
 
The dem memo seems to be an exercise in sentence parsing. The central facts remain unrebutted, namely that the FBI, having once been denied a warrant by the FISA court, came back waving the Steele dossier as support. They implicitly endorsed the accuracy of it and failed to reveal that it was bought and paid for oppo research, produced by notorious dirtbags, Fusion GPS. I'm pretty sure they never revealed the coordination between the DOJ and Fusion, evidenced by the fact that Fusion hired the disgraced DOJ lawyer's wife. Of course it might have been a bit awkward for the FBI to object to this lawyer's slimy deal, since they didn't have a problem with their own Deputy Director's wife pocketing 3/4 million from a Clinton fixer.
 
It's interesting that we have had this long running witch hunt into russsian influence in the election, with basically nothing to show for it, but the one obvious source of influence, the Steele dossier, seems to be of zero interest to Mueller.

The dirt in the Steele dossier apparently came from two sources. One, longtime Clinton political hitman Sid Blumenthal, and two, supposed Russian spies. The fact that the dirt was supposed to come from russian intell figures was actually used to bolster its credibility.

So the Russians were able to feed the FBI disinformation via Steele, which was then used to spy on the Trump campaign and fuel a leakfest against Trump. If Mueller were actually interested in pursuing Russian influence, it seems obvious his primary focus should be investigating the people involved in this op. Instead, he is persecuting peripheral Trump figures like Manafort in a desperate effort to get someone to rat out Trump.

How much longer should Trump allow this farce to go on?
 
At this point, let it run it's course. I don't want to miss seeing the left's heads explode when Mueller has to say there is nothing there.
 
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