They were biased against Carter Page who wasn't even in Trump's campaign at the time?
You guys are a joke. It's all about the story, screw facts.
Memo looks like a nothing burger... Read it here
- Thread starter Cuddles
- Start date
They were biased against Carter Page who wasn't even in Trump's campaign at the time?
You guys are a joke. It's all about the story, screw facts.
And so what if that's one of your talking points?
Well there's talking points and now there are gas-lighting points.
Some trolls get paid by the number of points repeated.
They couldn't find anyone in Trump's campaign to go after with trumped-up charges, so they found someone loosely associated at the end of the table, or on the fringes somewhere. Yes, that's how biased they were.
With you guys, its all about the talking points.
Thank God they're too god damn stupid to smear even when they're writing the story
This groundhog day I watched the movie "Groundhog Day" with my girlfriend who never saw it before. Nice to see someone really enjoy a film.
"How long is Bill Murray stuck in Groundhog Day?
Ramis once said Phil was trapped in Groundhog Day for 10 years, even though the original plan was to have him trapped for 10,000 years. According to the website Wolf Gnards, which ran the numbers, Phil was actually trapped for eight years, eight months and 16 days."
exGOPer, it might just take the full 10,000 years to get anything new into the boy's heads
“The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonored, and unsung.”
― Walter Scott, quoted in the movie.
"How long is Bill Murray stuck in Groundhog Day?
Ramis once said Phil was trapped in Groundhog Day for 10 years, even though the original plan was to have him trapped for 10,000 years. According to the website Wolf Gnards, which ran the numbers, Phil was actually trapped for eight years, eight months and 16 days."
exGOPer, it might just take the full 10,000 years to get anything new into the boy's heads
“The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonored, and unsung.”
― Walter Scott, quoted in the movie.
Nunes memo: Key extracts and what they mean
Anthony ZurcherNorth America reporter@awzurcheron Twitter
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES
After days - weeks - of breathless anticipation, the secret memo is a secret no more. Was it a bomb or a dud?
Written by House Intelligence Committee chair Devin Nunes and his staff, the memo was being billed by some conservatives as revealing misdeeds "worse than Watergate" and offences "a hundred times bigger" than what prompted the American Revolution.
Meanwhile Democrats in Congress, and members of Donald Trump's Justice Department, were fighting to keep the memo, warning that it was contained "material omissions" and threatened revealing important intelligence-gathering methods.
That's a lot to pack into a four-page document.
So what's the scoop? Here's a look at four key passages from the memo, and what they mean.
ADVERTISEMENT
The words "essential part" do the heavy lifting in this paragraph. This sets up the central point of the memo that the application to begin surveillance of Carter Page was dependent upon information contained in the Steele dossier - the collection of raw intelligence information, much of which has not been substantiated and some of which is quite salacious - compiled by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele.
The memo notes that Steele's efforts were funded in part by the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, although it neglects to mention that the Fusion GPS opposition research effort directed toward Mr Trump was originally bankrolled by a prominent conservative donor and activist.
The memo asserts that the FBI did not present evidence of this possible bias to the Fisa judge tasked with reviewing the surveillance warrant - and that this is evidence of, at best, neglect or, at worst, an anti-Trump agenda.
As further evidence of Steele's bias, the memo recounts how Steele, during contacts with a senior Justice Department official, expressed negative views about Mr Trump.
Bruce Ohr, the official in question, made a record of Steele's opinions - somewhat undercutting the accusation of rampant bias within the department, given that a truly compromised individual wouldn't jot that sort of thing down. That notwithstanding, the memo says this information also should have been - but wasn't - included in the Fisa application.
For a bit of context, the Fisa warrant review system was established by Congress in 1978 and, as of 2013, had reviewed more than 35,000 surveillance requests. Of that number, the judges on the court had rejected only 12 applications.
The question, then, is whether knowing a bit more about Christopher Steele's motivations or opinions would have been enough to put this application in the very small pile of discarded requests. Or would the evidence Steele presented, or other information that the Nunes memo may have omitted, have stood on its own and justified the surveillance?
The portion of this paragraph questioning James Comey's decision to inform Mr Trump about the dossier was probably well-received by the president, but it seems irrelevant to the point. It does, however, somewhat mischaracterise how the then-FBI director described the Steele dossier.
Yes, Mr Comey used the words "salacious and unverified" - but that was only in relation to portions of the dossier. He declined to comment on the veracity of certain "criminal allegations" in other parts of the dossier - at least in open testimony.
With this in mind, the final line of this paragraph is of particular note. The memo asserts that Andrew McCabe, the then-deputy director of the FBI, testified that there would have been no surveillance request without the dossier.
If this is in fact an accurate characterisation of Mr McCabe's testimony, then it would go a long way toward substantiating the memo's contention that the dossier and the surveillance request are inextricably linked. But without Mr McCabe's actual testimony, this becomes a very big "if".
The last paragraph of the Nunes memo contains a somewhat jaw-dropping "oh, by the way" aside.
The memo makes a considerable effort to draw a line from the Steele dossier to the Page surveillance request to questions about the legitimacy of the Russia investigation as a whole. The memo then notes it was information about George Papadopoulos, another Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, that prompted the launch of the FBI counterintelligence investigation in July 2016 - months before the Page surveillance request was granted.
The memo doesn't address any of this, instead opting to recount how that investigation was initiated by Peter Strzok, a senior FBI agent who has since become mired in a scandal surrounding an affair with a co-worker in which they made derogatory remarks about Mr Trump via text message on government mobile phones.
Media captionGeorge Papadopoulos: The Trump adviser who lied to the FBI
The document concludes with the oft-cited line about an "insurance" policy for the possibility of Mr Trump's election, although it provides no context for this vague reference in an isolated text.
The memo's focus on Page is interesting. The unpaid Trump campaign adviser had been on the FBI's radar since 2013, because of his ties to a Russian bank executive who was later convicted of spying on the US.
Page had resigned as a Trump foreign policy adviser in September 2016 - a month before the Fisa warrant was approved.
The Trump team has characterised Page as a bit player in the campaign, which raises questions about whether an order to monitor Page should be viewed as a direct assault by the FBI on the heart of the Trump campaign, undermining the entire Russia investigation, or a particularly colourful sideshow to a much larger and justifiable endeavour.
Anthony ZurcherNorth America reporter@awzurcheron Twitter
- 5 hours ago
After days - weeks - of breathless anticipation, the secret memo is a secret no more. Was it a bomb or a dud?
Written by House Intelligence Committee chair Devin Nunes and his staff, the memo was being billed by some conservatives as revealing misdeeds "worse than Watergate" and offences "a hundred times bigger" than what prompted the American Revolution.
Meanwhile Democrats in Congress, and members of Donald Trump's Justice Department, were fighting to keep the memo, warning that it was contained "material omissions" and threatened revealing important intelligence-gathering methods.
That's a lot to pack into a four-page document.
So what's the scoop? Here's a look at four key passages from the memo, and what they mean.
ADVERTISEMENT
The words "essential part" do the heavy lifting in this paragraph. This sets up the central point of the memo that the application to begin surveillance of Carter Page was dependent upon information contained in the Steele dossier - the collection of raw intelligence information, much of which has not been substantiated and some of which is quite salacious - compiled by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele.
The memo notes that Steele's efforts were funded in part by the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, although it neglects to mention that the Fusion GPS opposition research effort directed toward Mr Trump was originally bankrolled by a prominent conservative donor and activist.
The memo asserts that the FBI did not present evidence of this possible bias to the Fisa judge tasked with reviewing the surveillance warrant - and that this is evidence of, at best, neglect or, at worst, an anti-Trump agenda.
As further evidence of Steele's bias, the memo recounts how Steele, during contacts with a senior Justice Department official, expressed negative views about Mr Trump.
Bruce Ohr, the official in question, made a record of Steele's opinions - somewhat undercutting the accusation of rampant bias within the department, given that a truly compromised individual wouldn't jot that sort of thing down. That notwithstanding, the memo says this information also should have been - but wasn't - included in the Fisa application.
For a bit of context, the Fisa warrant review system was established by Congress in 1978 and, as of 2013, had reviewed more than 35,000 surveillance requests. Of that number, the judges on the court had rejected only 12 applications.
The question, then, is whether knowing a bit more about Christopher Steele's motivations or opinions would have been enough to put this application in the very small pile of discarded requests. Or would the evidence Steele presented, or other information that the Nunes memo may have omitted, have stood on its own and justified the surveillance?
The portion of this paragraph questioning James Comey's decision to inform Mr Trump about the dossier was probably well-received by the president, but it seems irrelevant to the point. It does, however, somewhat mischaracterise how the then-FBI director described the Steele dossier.
Yes, Mr Comey used the words "salacious and unverified" - but that was only in relation to portions of the dossier. He declined to comment on the veracity of certain "criminal allegations" in other parts of the dossier - at least in open testimony.
With this in mind, the final line of this paragraph is of particular note. The memo asserts that Andrew McCabe, the then-deputy director of the FBI, testified that there would have been no surveillance request without the dossier.
If this is in fact an accurate characterisation of Mr McCabe's testimony, then it would go a long way toward substantiating the memo's contention that the dossier and the surveillance request are inextricably linked. But without Mr McCabe's actual testimony, this becomes a very big "if".
The last paragraph of the Nunes memo contains a somewhat jaw-dropping "oh, by the way" aside.
The memo makes a considerable effort to draw a line from the Steele dossier to the Page surveillance request to questions about the legitimacy of the Russia investigation as a whole. The memo then notes it was information about George Papadopoulos, another Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, that prompted the launch of the FBI counterintelligence investigation in July 2016 - months before the Page surveillance request was granted.
- Read the memo in full on the House website
- The things that don't add up about Carter Page
- The biggest news was Papadopoulous
The memo doesn't address any of this, instead opting to recount how that investigation was initiated by Peter Strzok, a senior FBI agent who has since become mired in a scandal surrounding an affair with a co-worker in which they made derogatory remarks about Mr Trump via text message on government mobile phones.
Media captionGeorge Papadopoulos: The Trump adviser who lied to the FBI
The document concludes with the oft-cited line about an "insurance" policy for the possibility of Mr Trump's election, although it provides no context for this vague reference in an isolated text.
The memo's focus on Page is interesting. The unpaid Trump campaign adviser had been on the FBI's radar since 2013, because of his ties to a Russian bank executive who was later convicted of spying on the US.
Page had resigned as a Trump foreign policy adviser in September 2016 - a month before the Fisa warrant was approved.
The Trump team has characterised Page as a bit player in the campaign, which raises questions about whether an order to monitor Page should be viewed as a direct assault by the FBI on the heart of the Trump campaign, undermining the entire Russia investigation, or a particularly colourful sideshow to a much larger and justifiable endeavour.
Did you even read the memo? It mentions PAPADOPLOUS as the trigger for the investigation who was part of the campaign - Carter Page was not part of the campaign in October 2016 when the FISA warrant was issued.
So I ask again, who was the FBI biased against? Do you whine about bias everytime Republicans investigate Clintons? But that's fair right?
Also, do you think the FBI was biased against Clinton for using Breitbart's book on them as a trigger for an investigation?
Your talking points collapsed today, the memo is so lame that even Breitbart removed it from their top stories.
Is this a new tactic of yours? Make a false statement, and then scold people like an old schoolmarm trying to force the false statement down the throats of low information drive-by readers?
While you play a confidence game, i'm quite sure the noose is closing in around the cabal you are protecting.
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So if collusion, conspiracy and corruption in high levels of gov. bureaucracy are nothing to partisan hacks, then yes, this is a nothing-burger.
For those hungry for more substance than the crumbs from the tables of trolls, here's a something-burger from Rep. Gaetz who summarizes the salient points of the memo most succinctly:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/02/02/rep_matt_gaetz_react…
"REP. MATT GAETZ: Here's what we know now as a consequence of this memo: The Democratic National Committee gave money to the Perkins Law Firm, the Perkins Law Firm then paid the company Fusion GPS. Fusion GPS then hired Nellie Ohr, the wife of Bruce Ohr, who is a senior official at the Justice Dept, and they hired Christopher Steele, who went and wrote this fake dossier. Then Bruce Ohr, the spouse of Nellie Ohr, who has a background in anti-narcotics and the anti-drug agenda at the Dept. of Justice, he all of a sudden starts meeting with Glenn Simpson and Christopher Steele, and he valets this fake dossier, paid for by the DNC, into the Dept. of Justice.
The Dept. of Justice and the FBI then use the fake dossier as a basis for a FISA warrant to spy on American citizens. And the reason you know that is because of Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director of the FBI, the same Andrew McCabe whose wife got $700,000 from the closest allies of the Clinton family. Andrew McCabe testifies that there never would have been a FISA warrant, but for the dossier.
The dossier is the cause of the FISA warrant, that is from Andrew McCabe, no friend of Donald Trump.
Then the FISA warrant is in process, it is being sought. To validate the fake dossier, the Dept. of Justice and FBI use an article written by Mr. Isikoff of Yahoo News to be the validating information for the dossier. What's the problem with that? Christopher Steele is the very person who planted the article at Yahoo News. So you've got a fake dossier, paid for by the Democratic Party, served into the process by the spouse of someone hired, functionally, by the Democratic Party, and then validated by a news article planted by the very author of the dossier. It is outrageous, but it gets worse from there.
The FBI the learns that Mr. Steele has been leaking information to the media. so despite the fact that the FBI has authorized payments to Mr. Steele, they then don't render payment to Christopher Steele. now, do they go on and alert the court that that has happened? Absolutely not. The FISA warrant has to be reauthorized every 90 days, and it is reauthorized multiple times with the signatures on it of the senior officials of the Dept. of Justice all based on a lie. All based on completely false information that has to be validated by the authors of the originally false information.
That's what is so outrageous about this. Not only the original lies and the original application for the FISA warrant, but the reauthorizations and the proof that this entire narrative is built on a rotten foundation.
So in the coming days and weeks, we're going to be seeking to excersize our oversight authority, and Democrats will continue to do what they've always done, attack Chairman Devin Nunes, attack me, attack those of us who are trying to get information in front of the American people about the basis of these claims.
We're going to keep telling the truth, because this is rotten, and this can never happen again in the U.S.A.
You'll be hearing from me soon, thanks for tuning in."
Or watch him make the same statement on YouTube:
For those hungry for more substance than the crumbs from the tables of trolls, here's a something-burger from Rep. Gaetz who summarizes the salient points of the memo most succinctly:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/02/02/rep_matt_gaetz_react…
"REP. MATT GAETZ: Here's what we know now as a consequence of this memo: The Democratic National Committee gave money to the Perkins Law Firm, the Perkins Law Firm then paid the company Fusion GPS. Fusion GPS then hired Nellie Ohr, the wife of Bruce Ohr, who is a senior official at the Justice Dept, and they hired Christopher Steele, who went and wrote this fake dossier. Then Bruce Ohr, the spouse of Nellie Ohr, who has a background in anti-narcotics and the anti-drug agenda at the Dept. of Justice, he all of a sudden starts meeting with Glenn Simpson and Christopher Steele, and he valets this fake dossier, paid for by the DNC, into the Dept. of Justice.
The Dept. of Justice and the FBI then use the fake dossier as a basis for a FISA warrant to spy on American citizens. And the reason you know that is because of Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director of the FBI, the same Andrew McCabe whose wife got $700,000 from the closest allies of the Clinton family. Andrew McCabe testifies that there never would have been a FISA warrant, but for the dossier.
The dossier is the cause of the FISA warrant, that is from Andrew McCabe, no friend of Donald Trump.
Then the FISA warrant is in process, it is being sought. To validate the fake dossier, the Dept. of Justice and FBI use an article written by Mr. Isikoff of Yahoo News to be the validating information for the dossier. What's the problem with that? Christopher Steele is the very person who planted the article at Yahoo News. So you've got a fake dossier, paid for by the Democratic Party, served into the process by the spouse of someone hired, functionally, by the Democratic Party, and then validated by a news article planted by the very author of the dossier. It is outrageous, but it gets worse from there.
The FBI the learns that Mr. Steele has been leaking information to the media. so despite the fact that the FBI has authorized payments to Mr. Steele, they then don't render payment to Christopher Steele. now, do they go on and alert the court that that has happened? Absolutely not. The FISA warrant has to be reauthorized every 90 days, and it is reauthorized multiple times with the signatures on it of the senior officials of the Dept. of Justice all based on a lie. All based on completely false information that has to be validated by the authors of the originally false information.
That's what is so outrageous about this. Not only the original lies and the original application for the FISA warrant, but the reauthorizations and the proof that this entire narrative is built on a rotten foundation.
So in the coming days and weeks, we're going to be seeking to excersize our oversight authority, and Democrats will continue to do what they've always done, attack Chairman Devin Nunes, attack me, attack those of us who are trying to get information in front of the American people about the basis of these claims.
We're going to keep telling the truth, because this is rotten, and this can never happen again in the U.S.A.
You'll be hearing from me soon, thanks for tuning in."
Or watch him make the same statement on YouTube:
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I would not get too excited about anything Mat Gaetz says. He is Roger Stone's bitch and just lies/exaggerates. The worst of the "swamp".
And right wing cons think normal people should accept these freaks as fair comment sources?
This is how democracy gets eroded, with normalising Roger Stone and Gaetz his conservative "alternative lifestyle" acolyte.
7 alleged DUIs but no serious consequences because of his powerful politician father.
He is about as corrupt as it is conceivable to be, nothing he writes should be paid any attention, it will be lies made up by the pervert Stone.
Yes, this is the special advisor to the POTUS.
Roger Stone's home.
And look at the grinning chops on this ignoramus prick:
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