It is basically what we thought, but seeing it laid out is still shocking… and scary.
The FISA process is set up to allow our government to secretly spy on American citizens if they are suspected of foreign espionage. The process is set up so that the government agency must get a FISA court’s permission based on probable cause and renew that permission every 90 days. It is supposed to protect the 4th Amendment rights of Americans.
In this case, the FBI presented the Steele Dossier as probable cause to spy on American citizens working on a political campaign. The FBI did so without disclosing to the court that the dossier was paid for by an opposing political campaign or that Steele had repeatedly voiced his passionate opposition to Trump.
Is that how easy it is for our government to spy on us? The FBI can just use a trumped up report from a political campaign to spy on Americans? That’s scary.
After the abuses we saw with the John Doe and now the FBI, it is past time for citizens to yank back the chain on our rogue government agencies.
SO…. The FBI investigated what they thought may be credible evidence that they got (not knowing who it came from). And this is bad? Has ANYTHING in the Steele documents been disproved? Did the memo say that anything of the facts were wrong? And you all realize that the documents were originally commissioned by a Republican and then abandoned and THEN paid for by the Dems… right?
I don’t like that FISA warrants are that easy to grant for anyone. But it is possible that some of what was in the documents… ACTUALLY PANNED OUT as leads.
There is plenty that we probably don’t know yet. Maybe everything is fake, maybe none of it is fake? The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
I mean, we haven’t seen a pee tape, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. hahah. But nothing would make me happier than watching some conservatives perform amazing feats of yoga telling us that we shouldn’t kink-shame a person. haha.
So fascist tactics are good if they shame conservatives.,.
Has ANYTHING in the Steele documents been disproved?
Not proven, nor verified. Thus using it to obtain a spy-warrant is at the least, unethical. Or it could be fraud on the court.
Did the memo say that anything of the facts were wrong?
They were not “facts.” They were allegations. BIG difference. We know that the author of the report was ‘desperate’ to stop Trump. He says that he has a contact who has contacts ‘close to the Kremlin.’ Oh. Sure! That’s the ticket!!
Dad29, I said that some or none of the document could be true.
But again, the FBI got info that they didn’t know where it came from. Odds are, if nothing panned out they would have dropped it. But now Mueller and Comey both have kept the investigation going. Does Trump fire people until one stops it? What IF there is something behind it? Are you completely discounting that?
Trump probably would have never been elected had the FBI kept their mouth shut about investigating Clinton or said they WERE investigating Trump too.
The court did know the source of the dossier.
This was Trump’s best chance to derail the investigation. It fell flat on its face.
Jonnyv is making sense. If there was an anti-Trump bias at the FBI they could have easily stated that Trump was under investigation and Clinton would have likely one.
What is scary and shocking is how easily people jump in line to defend obvious liars and conmen to save face for their party.
No, the court did NOT “know the source” of the dossier–which was a rabid Trump opponent, as he himself admitted. Further, Comey stated that the dossier was ‘salacious’ and ‘un-verified.’ That was while he, Rosenstein, McCabe, (and others) were using it as an excuse for spying on Trump and all his associates in the campaign.
Further: you (and other dimwitted partisans) are ASSUMING that this was Trump’s attack on the Mueller investigation. Wrong. It has little, or nothing, to do with that investigation, although Mueller’s request to delay sentencing of Mike Flynn DOES have to do with the dossier.
JonV: what IS ‘behind’ the dossier? Which allegations ARE fact-based?
You do know, don’t you, that Hillary gave Putin an immense fortune with her approval of the Uranium-One deal, right? Trump didn’t do that, Hillary did. Why the Hell would Putin prefer Trump?
By the way, there is no law against a foreign power using propaganda to influence a US election. There IS a law barring US politicians from accepting foreign money for campaigns. That’s why Hillary invented “The Clinton Foundation.” Foreigners could throw hundreds of millions into that cesspool instead of into her campaign.
Are you really as dense as you appear to be here, Jonny??
“No, the court did NOT “know the source” of the dossier“
It is being reported that the court did know.
Do you think the court would grant a warrant solely on the basis of a “salacious” document? I agree it would be scary and shocking if they did. I doubt that’s the case.
This is an attack from Trump’s allies on the FBI and the DOJ. The sane parts of the GOP are saying so. This was spearheaded by a member of Trump’s transition team who has been referred to by his own party as a partisan hack.
Of note: JonnyV and 3rd Way support weaponizing government against political enemies.
Not knowing every detail, I can still find this explanation plausible.
I remember speaking to a former Village Clerk about why no one could break the lock on the Village Board and her advise was “watch the absentee ballots.” She was fired for talking to me.
I remember while I was on the County Board catching the County Attorney monitoring my emails and even what websites I visited while in the County Supervisor’s office. The County Board Chair fought me firing her.
The list could go on but the point is a simple one. Those in power, at any level, will do most anything to stay in power and they will defend their enablers. Any intrusion by an outsider, in this case, Donald Trump, is viewed as a threat and must be eliminated.
BAMN – BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY
Flynn’s sentencing is delayed…302s may have been fabricated.
JonnyV and 3rd Way are now fascists.
Rudolph Contreras was the FISA judge who issued the warrant to spy on Carter Page based on a BS Yahoo article and the fake dossier.
Guess who appointed Contreras to the FISA Court?
Obama.
Read this:
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/02/03/carter-page-nunes-memo-216934
So the ends justified the means.
Not surprising coming from a contributor from a defunct racist blog.
And Carter Page resigned from the campaign on 9/26/16, before the FISA warrant was issued.
This isn’t going to end well for your side.
No. But Comey stated that ‘without this document the FISA order would NOT have been granted.’ That is, the ‘salacious and unverified’ document.
Know WHAT? That the document was written by X? So what?
The Court did NOT know that X was paid by the Clinton campaign. That’s what counts.
Anent Politico: Carter Page is a Russki-jocksniffer who wants to make a bunch of money. He was associated with the Trump campaign for what–60 days?–and that means the Russians COLLUDED with Trump to vanquish Clinton.
Politico and its (D) pals must have been sucking tailpipe emissions to come up with that one.
Are you able to define “collusion” in the legal sense? Because if you are, you know that the story is pure gaseous emissions.
The leading Lefty civil libertarian has NOTHING good to say about FISA Court, by the way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=194&v=s8rVdEqyuuY
Greenwald is right, by the way: when the FBI/CIA/NSA began spying on Trump, the (D) line of foofoodust was ‘It’s HARRRRRRD to get FISA approvals.” That is exactly the opposite of what they had to say when GWBush wanted FISA warrants; at that time, they said ‘It’s EEEEEAAAASY to get FISA….yadayada.’
As usual, the only (D) standard is the Double Standard.
The court did know the source of the dossier.
That is an outright lie and an utterly stupid comment.
FISA requires documented, verified source data. What somebody told somebody else who told someone else who wrote it down is not a source. IOW, Steele is not the source and those who told him stories are not the source.
The so-called “sources” of the Steele’s fantasy novel were buried beneath third and fourth party hearsay and have never been identified. Steele himself does not know the sources of his collection of hearsay. The FBI/DOJ do not know the actual sources. In fact, no one knows if there are actual sources. And therefore, the court could not have known the sources.
What I am hearing is it is OK to use gossip – being the Steele dossier – to authorize a FISA warrant. That does indeed represent a Constitutional crisis.
And General Flynn’s lawyers are filing to have his charges dropped.
Oh, hahaha. Now I am reading on a completely partisan website called RedState… One of those conservative ones. Nunes admits that the court DID know that the partisan origins of the documents. They were disclosed. I can’t wait to hear you guys tell me now that they needed to be MORE disclosed. Or they had to be in Comic Sans 16 point font so they could understand it better.
https://www.redstate.com/patterico/2018/02/05/well-well-well-nunes-admits-the-partisan-origins-of-the-dossier-had-been-disclosed-after-all/
My guess is that I am not going to hear Jay Weber or Mark Belling correct themselves on the radio today informing their listeners. They would rather let them stew in their misinformed hate.
Why do you hate the Fourth Amendment, Jonny?
RedState is a vitriolic NeverTrump site. I read them regularly until about 90 days ago, then they went off the rails. Now they’re closer to Pelosi than anything else.
In fact, the actual text (you should look it up, hey!) shows that the FBI did NOT reveal the actual source—which was the Clinton campaign, Sid Blumenthal, and some other mouth-breathing lowlife (D) stooge. They were deliberately vague about it, only stating that it was “political.”
Well, the Declaration of Independence was “political,” too.
Try again, Jon
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/justice-dept-told-court-of-sources-political-bias-in-request-to-wiretap-ex-trump-campaign-aide-officials-say/2018/02/02/caecfa86-0852-11e8-8777-2a059f168dd2_story.html?utm_term=.ec2f4012f0c3
Can’t trust the Post either. I mean, if it doesn’t come directly from Fox News, it is clearly a lie. #FakeNews?
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/04/us/politics/carter-page-trump-russia.html
That’s the Post. Did you read that, nordski? Do you understand it? Or do I have to help you with “did not” “Democratic National Committee” and “Hillary Clinton…campaign”?
Asking it to be honest with facts is like asking Pat to not throw out the K-word on this blog.
As to the NYSlimes item……they state that the Russkis ‘tried to recruit’ Page. What I did NOT see in the item was that the Russki controllers thought Page was “an idiot.” And–by the way–they did not succeed at “recruiting” him.
I guess they had to lower their standards for spies, eh?
Standards or not, how does that have anything to do with TRUMP “colluding” with Putin to win an election? Page was a very short-timer on the Trump campaign, and apparently had no input whatsoever to the overall strategy.
Try again.
And Page left the campaign before the FISA warrant was issued.
From the WaPo:
Three years before Page became an adviser to the Trump campaign, he came to the attention of FBI counterintelligence agents, who learned that Russian spy suspects had sought to use Page as a source for information.
And then Preet Bharara and John Carlin managed to forget by October 2016, Carter Page had just helped them bust a spy ring.
Preet’s dirty.
Seems Obama has some explaining to do as well.
>Page and Strzok, who were engaged in an extra-marital affair, exchanged the text on September 2, 2016. The text reads, “potus wants to know everything we’re doing.” This is written within the context of disgraced former-FBI Director James Comey wanting to prepare talking points to give to Obama.