What if we used it to screen people running for public office instead? Heck, let’s give them the same test people have to take to become US citizens.
No, I don’t think that’s right.
I mean, I’m on the side of the good guys here, but this is exactly what my conservative friends go nuts about. It does not say “exactly where the dossier came from.” And I understand why they think “a political party” is pretty different than “the DNC” or “the party that is literally opposing them in the election.”
Now you might reasonably say the judge should have been able to read between the lines. But at the least, the judge has to read between the lines. The details of the ultimate backers of the report and Steel are not clearly laid out (so far as we know to this point).
For love of god, I want Trump gone so badly. But pretending that this isn’t oily (at least based on the information that is out there) is disingenuous. I personally think that it was still a warranted surveillance, but the process does smell.
The initial FISA warrants against Carter Page pre-date the dossier. Nothing smells.
This. Page boasted he was a Russian agent back in 2013 ffs.
This.
https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/959958153814298630
https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/959959604233990145
(The letter part is new news, the FBI-warned-Page-in-2013 part has been known for a while now.)
But the dossier did not come from a political party.
It came from a former mi6 spy, who was already used in the past as a source for the FBI. Because he was totally credible.
And most of the dossier was corroborated.
And then they re-upped the FISA warrant multiple times, meaning they were actively getting info on Russia.
Because there basis for the FISA warrant was obviously correct.
They didn’t identify the specific party by name, because that is against the normal privacy practices, the same way he was identified as “Male-1”. It was as clearly understood as could be expected without naming names.
I actually think that the FBI might have identified the source of the information as much as they were allowed to. I (of course) don’t know all the rules for obtaining FISA warrants, but it’s easy to imagine that you’re not supposed to include identifying information for your sources beyond that which is relevant for making the determination.
deep burns
I have never seen anything suggesting that the warrant discussed in the Nunes memo pre-dates Steele. Where is the evidence for that? I’d like to see it.
Carter Page boasting he was a Russian agent in 2013 does not mean the warrant pre-dates Steele, if that’s what you’re saying.
EDIT: I just went back and reread articles in The Atlantic and the Washington Post, neither of which are exactly conservative echo chambers. Neither suggests anything remotely that the warrant was obtained prior to the dossier/Steele. You would think that major news sources would report this if it were the case. What am I missing?
brilliant!
Sorry, there was older information that is leading us long-time followers of the story to talk this way.
Here’s a Washington Post article from April 11th, 2017:
The FBI obtained a secret court order last summer to monitor the communications of an adviser to presidential candidate Donald Trump, part of an investigation into possible links between Russia and the campaign, law enforcement and other U.S. officials said.
The Nunes memo, however, mentions October 16 2016 and implies this was the first and only initial application for a FISA warrant (the application was then renewed three times.)
So one of two things happened here:
- The Post got the dates wrong in the initial April 11th story wrong (no doubt mixing up when the process of putting the very lengthy and complex application for a warrant together started with when the secret warrant was actually filed.)
or
- There were separate and different filings for FISA warrants, one in the summer and one on October 16, with the October one not being a renewal but rather issued under different reasons.
Since 1) is the simplest explanation I would normally go with it … but Nunes has gone so far out his way to obfuscate important information that I can’t say 2) is ruled out.
The bigger point is that Carter Page had already drawn the attention of the FBI for non-dossier related reasons for several years before the dossier existed. (And the even bigger point is that all this hoopla about who funded the dossier is irrelevant and intended to distract. The real question is whether the claims in the dossier are true or not - an issue on which the Nunes memo is conspicuously silent.)
Also, lest we forget, the dossier isn’t actually false. Given the nature of the report and sourcing, steel predicted that around 80% of it would be correct, and so far a bunch had been corroborated.
The idea that it’s just made up by political enemies is false.
… Yep, to amend my earlier statement: the real issue isn’t who funded the dossier, or even whether it turns out to be mostly-true or mostly-false.
It’s whether the dossier was credible enough to issue a warrant on.
Warrants are issued on information that turns out to be false on investigation all the time. The whole reason you issue a warrant is to find out whether something’s true or not, after all.
And in this case, it obviously was true, because they reissued the warrant multiple times.
Yeah, the thing is all of these things are done in secret, so it requires some sleuthing to figure stuff out. It’s important to note that sleuthing is never 100%, and I’d say Nunes’ memo is actually a prime example of how it can go awry; he put things together which he had no first-party knowledge of to carefully craft a message to fit his outlook.
This is also a similar problem when people say “Where’s the evidence of collusion or obstruction?” The answer is it’s in the hand of investigators, who aren’t going to go spraying it around to news outlets or online forums while their efforts are ongoing. So this leads to a question of faith; do we believe our institutions are generally doing the right thing behind closed doors? If someone doesn’t have that basic faith, there’s nothing anyone here will be able to say to convince them.
That’s the damage conspiracy theories and “memos” inflict.
It isn’t to my conservative friend, who believes it is an abuse of power, like targeting enemies with state resources a la Watergate.
Again, I genuinely don’t believe that is the case. It also is the case that I can’t stand Trump. But at the same time, not liking someone doesn’t mean that I can ignore or make up evidence to suit my interests in the argument. He’s not stupid. I also want to get to a better understanding myself of the situation, without falling into either of the “fake news” side of the Trump equation, or the “It doesn’t matter what we do to get him, he’s evil, and we need to remove him,” side of the liberal equation.
I’m not going to simply ignore the fact that a FISA warrant, for which there is a special level of secrecy and inability of the subject to defend himself (because of the nature of the particular warrant process), may have been issued without relevant facts being given. That type of warrant is not supposed to be subject to withheld facts and information, because the government is supposed to provide any information that would help in the defense of the warrant subject (since he is not there to defend himself). I can certainly understand how it is frightening to people to believe that surveillance could be ordered based on evidence that is politically motivated.
I think, overall, that Trump is (again) in the wrong here. I also strongly suggest that the bulk of the dossier is true. But I’d prefer not to simply brush things under the rug that are disturbing. And just being honest, if this type of thing happened to a liberal candidate, liberals would be screaming bloody murder. You don’t get to say, “I know the guy is evil, so whatever we do to get him is fine.”
I like freedom from oppression, the whole rules behind search and seizure, etc. You guys understand what, “Oh, well, maybe we were wrong about that, but the dossier is true!” sounds like, right? We’re not supposed to do that here, just like we’re not supposed to skip procedures when breaking into homes because “we know there are drugs there.”
That’s the rub; the only “facts” we’re privy to are what Nunes put in the memo. Various people involved (and Nunes wasn’t) have stated it’s wrong in its assertions. We’ll never have the underlying facts behind a FISA warrant for an ongoing investigation. Is it possible the FISA courts goofed? Sure. However, there’s nothing saying that was any more the case now than it’s been in any other warrant issued aside from Nunes.
So if we start questioning such a process when a partisan hack attacks it, that’s just going to become the norm. If you don’t think FISA should exist, okay, but that’s a tough argument to make.
Yes, I agree with this. I already assreamed my conservative friend for the clear cherrypicking that Trump/Nunes engaged in here. I told him that if they’re going to release this part of it, I want to see the dossier too. He didn’t take too kindly to that, even though he couldn’t really explain why it shouldn’t be released, if Trump is so innocent. Something about how it’s all false anyway, so he shouldn’t have to release something slanderous, which is ridiculous (I would be much more sympathetic to that if he was not a public figure). Release it, and show it for being ridiculous if it is so ridiculous.
Friend would have been better served making some type of national security argument or something. I mean, we do not know what is in the dossier, perhaps there is something that could be damaging to national interests that outweighs the public interest in seeing it. Who knows.
No material, legally relevant fact was withheld. The judge was aware the information came from political opposition research, because that information was in the warrant application. The specific detail that it came from the DNC was not, but judges aren’t idiots and know what opposition research is. (The names of sources of information are routinely omitted from warrant applications and in any case singling out the Dems would have been inaccurate: as noted and linked above, the initial Fusion GPS anti-Trump research was done for a conservative website.) The Nunes memo intentionally omits this fact because it’s a political hackjob, not a legal argument, so it doesn’t care whether any of its claims would stand up in court.
Add to this the fact that Page and Manafort were targets of FBI interest for their Russia connections long before the dossier (or before the campaign.)
Add to this the fact that we had good evidence that Nunes was both dumb as a rock and following White House orders to whitewash Trump and throw baseless accusations at the Dems - evidence that dates from March 2017, long before this memo.
Put it all together and your friend is right to be concerned that this is the subversion of our government and the truth for political ends. But all the evidence we have points to Trump and Nunes being the ones doing the subverting. If your friend looks at this and still sees a shadowy conspiracy of Hillary (who still managed to lose the election) and the Republican-run FBI (who actively interfered in the election in a way that damaged Clinton) then they’re probably beyond being swayed by evidence.
Not sure why you think the dossier isn’t already out there. Here it is. Buzzfeed published it this time last year.