I tend to stay away from what I perceive as partisan bickering and that’s why I haven’t written anything about the “Nunes memo”. My friends at Outside the Beltway have certainly been posting incessantly about it. At this point I honestly don’t know what to believe. The folks at Talking Points Memo emphasize these points:
- It tip-toes around how much the Page warrant relied on Steele dossier
- It undercuts the GOP narrative that the dossier prompted Russia probe
- Most of Trump’s top FBI and DOJ targets just so happen to crop up in it
- Strzok and Page are not the anti-Trump partisans they’ve been made out to be
- Some omissions of context are obvious
which obviously are damning condemnations from their point of view. Harper, one of the paleocons at Pat Lang’s place and not a Trump supporter says this:
It is one thing for people in government service to have political views and biases, it is another thing for those biases to infect the workings of our law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Likewise for the House Select Committee on Intelligence, which had been one of the last bastions of non-partisan work on Capitol Hill (the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence appears to have preserved some semblance of bipartisan collaboration). That above-politics commitment has been trashed and it may never be restored. And it began with Adam Schiff, who seems to have spent half his time on CNN and MSNBC since the Trump election.
While the entire Mueller probe may have been the result of the fruit of a poison tree (the salacious Steele allegations, which even the FBI admitted were never corroborated), I doubt that the Mueller probe will be shut down before completion. Mueller moved quickly to dismiss Strzok and Page once the amorous emails were turned over to him in July 2017 and somewhat insulated himself from their bile.
If there was credible evidence of Russian attempts to interfere in the 2016 elections—outside of the toxic claims in the Steele dossier—that is a fair subject for counterintelligence investigation. But it is becoming more and more clear that the inclusion of President Trump in the Mueller probe derived almost 100 percent from the Steele product. FBI Director James Comey read the documents and was reportedly so horrified that he threw himself fully into the scheme—along with Obama partisans John Brennan and James Clapper—to stop Donald Trump from taking office.
That, IMHO, is criminal. Comey, Brennan and Clapper are legitimate targets for Federal investigation. Only by getting to the bottom of the abuse of the awesome powers of the Federal law enforcement and intelligence services can we hope to ever restore credibility and non-partisanship, two hallmarks of a genuine republic.
while Michael Goodwin, in his column at the New York Post, sees the memo as confirmation of many of the harshest claims of Trump’s supporters:
Because of the memo and previous revelations, we know that swamp creatures are embedded in the top of the FBI and the Department of Justice. Some used their power to try to tip a presidential campaign based on their personal politics.
They conducted a sham investigation of the Democratic candidate and misled federal judges to spy on at least one associate of her Republican challenger.
To block exposure of their misdeeds, these officials falsely claimed that national security would be damaged. Add that despicable lie — issued in the name of the FBI itself — to their shameful records.
Thanks to the battle over the memo, we also know with 100 percent certainty that the mainstream media is part of the swamp. The efforts by The New York Times and The Washington Post, among others, to keep the memo from ever seeing sunshine were appalling.
Here’s my truth, as the kids are saying these days:
- The Steele dossier had no place in an application for a FISA warrant and the FBI knew it.
- The FBI’s conduct with respect to the Clinton campaign, the Trump campaign, and the events related to them went well beyond zealous enforcement of the law.
- The Russians wanted to discredit our political process. They’ve largely been successful.
- Russian interference probably didn’t result in a single fraudulent vote or the falsification of the results. It didn’t change the outcome of the election.
- Republicans have seriously overhyped the memo.
- The partisan sniping that has ensued has obscured the serious issues that are being revealed.
I remain content for the Mueller investigation to work its way through.
However, I’m open to being convinced otherwise on any of those points so I’m relying on my readers to tell me what I should believe. Please provide evidence and avoid ad hominem arguments, particularly but not limited to those directed against me. These include insults, impugning my motives, etc.
It’s just a red herring. Our country has people on death row because of prison informants–why on earth was the Steele dossier unfit for use in obtaining a FISA warrant? If people want to talk about bad actions and unreliable or possibly unreliable information, we should open the doors of our prisons first.
But no one is suggesting that police might be lying through their teeth on witness stands in cases against drug dealers. So it’s all just right-wingers clinging to the delusion that there’s something amiss with this. There isn’t. The memo was supposed to prove something. Idiots suggested it was worse than Watergate. It really wasn’t. These idiots should no longer be listened to.
Its provenance and lack of corroboration poisons the entire application. One of the commentators on the subject said it was not merely unconfirmed, it was discredited. I don’t know if that’s true but it is impossible to determine its weight in obtaining the warrant.
If we stopped listening to idiots, it would be the end of politics as we know it. Not to mention journalism.
There’s a big difference between unconfirmed and discredited. And there’s many different ways for things to be unconfirmed. By all mainstream accounts, Steele was a serious person who had experience in Russia. The Republican position is that because he ended up working for the Clinton campaign, he didn’t even go to Russia and merely sat in a hotel room and made things up. I find that unlikely. I suspect that he tried to find credible rumors and stories, and that’s it.
And saying the application is poisoned is purely subjective. We don’t know anything about what else was presented, or what they even said about the dossier. The memo apparently lied about the FBI not mentioning its partisan background, which makes me doubt the other claims about FBI testimony.
By idiots I mean the people and channels that are happy to say one day that there’s a secret society in the FBI attempting a coup against Trump, and then the next that it was a misunderstanding.
I think there is so much we simply don’t know. The memo is obviously not a complete record and it’s extremely difficult to judge the accuracy or completeness of its claims.
For your first bullet point, it’s not clear how much the Steele Dossier had to do with the FISA court application and approval. And it may be the case the FBI had information that corroborated one or more elements in the dossier and if so, that would justify its inclusion. But we just don’t know and it highlights some longstanding and troubling aspects of the FISA warrant process.
I’m not sure about bullet point #2. I think a case could be made either way. On the one hand, I think the FBI should be able to go after the most powerful and connected people when it’s warranted, but that’s difficult in the context of our current political environment and even more difficult during a Presidential campaign.
My feeling on this is that the GoP and Democrats should begin nominating people for high office that are unlikely to be subjects of FBI criminal investigations.
I agree with point #3 & 4. Also #5 but I would add the Democrats seriously overhyped the memo as well, especially its purported impact on national security (not to mention the irony).
Definitely, agree with your last point.
I’m also content to let the investigation continue.
I don’t see how you can know what to believe. All we have is opinions from Nunes, hardly unbiased. We will soon have opinions from some Democrat, hardly unbiased. It would help to know what McCabe actually said, and what was in the FISA application. My prediction is that neither of these last two are ever released, so that this can remain a topic to promote fund raising and undercut the other side’s narratives.
Again, I would note that Benghazi is the model here. You don’t really have to present substantiated facts. You just make claims, then garner the support of your base.
Steve
“Our country has people on death row because of prison informants–why on earth was the Steele dossier unfit for use in obtaining a FISA warrant?”
PD will probably chime in, but there is a big difference between an informant who testifies about something he or she had first-hand knowledge of in an actual criminal trial and a dossier of fourth-party information collected a third party foreign national used for to obtain a warrant in a secret FISA court.
But other than that they are exactly the same thing.
Forgot. For a more balanced piece, you might cite that from TTG at Lang’s site.
Steve
The balance I was trying to strike was among the Democratic party line, something you can always depend on TPM to provide, non-Trump conservatives (like Harper or Pat himself), and Trump supporters. In this instance balance derives from relying on different sources with contrasting views.
I’m holding my fire, as much is still to come and/or be verified.
I couldn’t resist,though, calling out Doug, who totally lost his shit and was making wild claims. Just wild claims.
So far the Dem counters are based on unverified claims from unknown sources or “I can’t tell you.†We do know that the fact that Clinton/DNC was not identified as the source. It was nuanced. No one disputes that. That’s irresponsible in the context of things. We also know reliance on the Isikoff story was as sloppy as it gets. Firable offense. And Papadopoulos? Really?
The IG report is where the action is. I’d wait for that.
PD will probably chime in, but there is a big difference between an informant who testifies about something he or she had first-hand knowledge of in an actual criminal trial and a dossier of fourth-party information collected a third party foreign national used for to obtain a warrant in a secret FISA court.
But other than that they are exactly the same thing.
They are exactly the same thing. From the logic of people doubting the dossier because of its political origins, at least. It’s not like most informants are testifying from the goodness of their hearts, are they? No, they’re getting something in return. From the standpoint of the GOP, that’s enough to disqualify them from testifying.
I’m holding my fire, as much is still to come and/or be verified.
Wasn’t Huma supposed to be in cuffs right now, testifying about how Killary had Seth Rich murdered? Lol…
“I couldn’t resist,though, calling out Doug, who totally lost his shit and was making wild claims. Just wild claims.”
Same is true of the Nunes claims. We don’t really know what McCabe said or what was in the FISA application, you just happen believe Nunes.
Steve
Was or was not Carter Page a legitimate target for the government to surveil? By his own account and various reports, between 2013-2015 he was tied to Russian spies who were arrested and deported. As Joe Walsh (a pro-Trump voice but a remarkably honest and consistent one) has observed, you can’t work with hostile foreign governments and their representatives and expect not to be a target of investigation.
At this point I don’t know. I’m not sure anybody knows. We don’t surveil Americans based on suspicion. It requires probable cause. Did the application that was submitted make an adequate case? At this point I doubt that it did.
Maybe what we should question is the competence of the (former) FBI leadership.
They let the FBI agent leading the Clinton (Strok) investigation conduct an affair using government property; then assign him to lead the Trump investigation?
Let the deputy director McCabe be involved in both investigations when his wife had accepted big donations from one candidates closest friends (McAuffe).
Take no action when a senior official (Bruce Ohr) wife gets hired by the same firm that produced the dossier? It’s a coincidence that of all the Russia experts in the US, Fusion GPS thought Nellie Ohr was the best qualified.
A mild amount of intelligence could have averted all the (self inflicted) bad press.
You go, Modulo.
Try to read, Steve. I believe nothing right now. But Doug went full on lies, lies, Lies.
“Russian interference probably didn’t result in a single fraudulent vote or the falsification of the results. It didn’t change the outcome of the election.â€
We actually have no evidence of this — investigations on the integrity of our election infrastructure have been pretty much shut down.
But, we do know that the Russians have been interfering with elections across the western democracies, from our elections to Brexit and Catalan votes, by using social media to stir up distrust, radicalize and attempt to depress the vote. The investigations of this are rudimentary at best, however, and have been sidetracked by the shiny object that is the potential for Trump campaign collusion.
That’s an example of the logical fallacy known as “burden of proof”. It’s up to the person arguing that Russians did change the outcome of the election to prove it. Lack of evidence to the contrary is sufficient evidence that what I said it true.
“The Steele dossier had no place in an application for a FISA warrant and the FBI knew it.â€
The Steele dossier hasn’t been discredited. There may be corroborating evidence that is classified, in which case it’s inclusion would be entirely appropriate.
It’s also worth noting that this was for an extension of a FISA warrant, meaning that there was already a finding of probable cause. Again, we don’t know what the previous warrants had, or what information they led to investigators learning.
An appeal to facts not in evidence? Really?
It’s up to the the person arguing that Russians did change the outcome of the election to prove it. Lack of evidence to the contrary is sufficient evidence that what I said it true.
We do know that the Obamacare administration was concerned about this possibility, and wanted to issue warnings and guidelines to the state election boards, but the Republicans (McConnell, etc) did not want to. The Obama administration bowed to their wishes, fearing it would politicize the election infrastructure and damped faith in our electoral process.
That seems like there should have been investigations after the fact, at least, doesn’t it?
I’m all for investigations, said so at the time, and continue to be in favor of them.
An appeal to facts not in evidence? Really?
The claim that it should not have been included is the appeal to facts not in evidence. Without the context that the Nunes memo leaves out, it is impossible to know whether it was or was not appropriate.
I do take the not-discredited Steele dossier as more likely to be true than the statements of this administration which have been repeatedly discredited, by the way.
There are only so many meetings with Russian officials, agents and actors that you can plausibly forget to include on disclosure forms, for instance.
Nah, it’s an appeal to ordinary standards of law. If you’ve got solid, verified evidence untainted by questionable provenance, you use it and leave out the other stuff. If you don’t have such evidence, the entire application is problematic.
Again, you are assuming that the relevant portions of the dossier are not verified through classified means.
Remembering what you know, as opposed to what you have inferred, is hard. But,you were an engineer, right?
And you believe something compiled by a generally respected former British intelligence officer, and presented as raw materials is of unverified provenance.
I would say that it isn’t enough to convict anyone, by any means, but it is certainly reason to open an investigation.
(The engineer in me is disappointed that warrants based on “probable cause†are not required to turn up what they are looking for at least 51% of the time)
Arg. Switched devices and forgot which email has the wallaby icon….
Perhaps the difference in our views is that I don’t think that either the Trump administration or the FBI (or, indeed, law enforcement in general) is entitled to any particular deference. I’m concerned about process. I’d rather see an FBI that upheld the strictest standards of law than one that zealously pursued those they just knew were guilty of something.
But of course, the FBI crew is beyond reproach. Just ask the Dems……
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-02-04/michael-isikoff-says-he-was-stunned-see-his-story-cited-page-fisa-warrant
Says Nunes. Again, until we see the application for the warrant we don’t know what was really said.
Steve
I take from this that the FISA court is more of a rubber-stamp than I had previously thought. The Steele dossier is a hearsay document (perhaps layers of hearsay) that domestic law enforcement would be required to provide context for its reliability. (“This is an informant we’ve used in the past and proven to be accurate . . .” or “This is a person who would have been in the room where these matters unfolded, so he would have first hand knowledge.” “We were able to corroborate these details in the story through these methods, so we believe the rest of the story is accurate.”)
The impression here is that the lawyers provided positive context, but not the entire context. The pre-release outrage appears to be about the risk of lost trust between the judges and the lawyers as a result of public disclosure.
But the origin of FISA is the need to protect the political process from Nixon spying on his enemies under the rubric of national security. AFAIK, there is no legal recourse to ascertain the legality of spying under it, short of a motion to suppress, which usually doesn’t happen in intelligence-gathering.
“The Steele dossier hasn’t been discredited. There may be corroborating evidence that is classified, in which case it’s inclusion would be entirely appropriate.”
Are you aware of any classified corroborating evidence?
Maybe there is some classified evidence, but maybe there isn’t. Or maybe the classified evidence is exculpatory. We don’t know either way and any statements about proof or disproof are speculation.
Secondly, few seem to consider that the Russians likely followed one of their usual M.O.’s which is to plant a variety of information to conceal which information is true and which is false. Take a look at the MH-17 propaganda over the last several years for the most relevant example.
So we need to add to the list of the possible and consider that parts of the Steele dossier were planted by Russian intelligence. Do we have proof? No, but it’s definitely a possibility and because of that potential, the information in the dossier needs to be thoroughly vetted before anyone can start making statements of fact.
So those who believe so fervently in the veracity of the Steele dossier, as well as the threat of Russian interference, haven’t considered that the dossier itself may be part of the interference.
Finally, the Russians don’t need to manipulate votes – they have much more effective levers for manipulation…levers that can influence us to damage our own institutions and the legitimacy of our political process.
Ding dong the Patriot witch is dead…..
Anyway. Your summary bullet points seem fine. I would add, however, that more than just Republicans have overhyped the memo. The Dems and wide swaths of media types have claimed that publishing it would expose people to certain death, tarnish beyond repair an angelic institution and perhaps end life as we know it. Or, later, it’s a nothingburger. The criticism was so fluid and opportunistic, not to mention disingenuous, that only the willfully disbelieving wouldn’t ask why.
I should also note that I think people have missed a point. Per Dave, all discovery should get out. But the Dem strategy is clearly to pre-try the case in the media. Simply waiting enables spin and planted stories to become “fact.†Releasing was a counter to this. If one has followed the story, the first real event will be the IG report.
I also note, and it is just an opinion, that Dave’s first two dot points hardly do full justice to the deed. The Steele memos origins and content should have disqualified it. And Isikoff is distancing himself from his own piece as a corroborating piece of evidence. Of the four pillars of the warrant, those two are very thin gruel. The Papadopoulos drunk angle is for silly people. That leaves Mr Page. I’ll just leave people to investigate that whole thing on their own and use their judgment. Let’s just say this isn’t making the FBI look sparkling. Despite obvious exculpatory pieces like:
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/02/02/opinion/leaving-the-fbi.html?
Me Cambell is joining CNN. Imagine that.