Watergate Vs. FISA Memo

a reply to: Grambler

Thanks for the reminder.
Very little is mentioned of the unmasking and file-sharing that Obama made possible.... right at the end of his tenure.
Obviously to impede the Trump presidency.

Regarding Carter Page:
Much has been made of the fact that he was being watched under a FISA warrant as early as 2013.

If there was a FISA warrant issued on him back then, what did they find?
Apparently nothing, or they would have extended it to present day... or would have filed charges... which they didn't.
So, fast forward to 2016.
They tried to get another FISA warrant on Page.
It was denied.
Denied, when 98.9 % of all FISA warrant applications are granted.
If anything turned up on the previous warrant... it shouldn't have been a problem getting another.

But they had to try again, and get denied again.

Then enter the fake dossier.

They get the warrant.

For people going around comparing this memo to Watergate is a big joke.

There’s no comparison and they do it because on the other side there is a legitimate possibility that the watergater is Trump.

Indeed, not some flimsy idea about a FISA warrant on an irrelevant advisor.

Think about it. Trump is using the mechanisms of our governmental offices to DEFEND HIM!

...Just as Nixon did.

So even hypothetically if there were evidence for some sinister plot to get Trump during the FISA activity (and there isn’t any evidence) the Trump side would still be more Watergate-like than some democrats on a committee or Obama are.

originally posted by: theantediluvian
These attempted comparisons to Watergate are preposterous and rely on denying fundamental facts. Very few outside of Trump (sometimes, depending on how he's feeling at the time) and his supporters deny that the Russians were interfering in the 2016 Presidential Election.

Unprecedented Russian interference was taking place that favored one candidate.

There is no proof of that.

We know russians have been interfering with the elections for decades.

We know that they put out info against both candidates.

What is unprecedented is that the FBI may have for the first time ever it that we know of used one sides unverified opposition research to spy on the other side.

And as the Nunes memo confirms, a counterintelligence investigation was opened after the US received intel from the Australians about a Trump campaign aide bragging about just that thing AS it was happening. That blows away the earlier narrative that the investigation was a result of the dossier which was frankly absurd on its face but it sure didn't stop people from saying it. (over and over and over again)

If that story is accurate and that is what opened the investigation, it is ludicrous. A drunk periphery guy of trumps team saying a russian told him what thousands of people were speculating, that russia had emails from hillary. Note that this russian that told george this didnt say dnc emails or podesta emails. Nope, just hillary emails, that people had been speculating for months were compromised from her unsecure server.

Who will argue that US law enforcement and the USIC should have stood down and shirked their duties? I hope nobody. So the counterintelligence investigation was legitimate.

Sure they could have looked into the claims about george. That would in no way justify using the dossier to get fisa warrants though.

I also would have expected them to look at the dnc server, whcih they did not, and is a disgrace. There is still no plausible explanation that has been given as to why they didnt.

Every single person, yourself included, should be outraged that the FBI didnt look at the server. I

What happened next? Paul Manafort's name shows up in the "black ledger" in Ukraine. How Trump wasn't being slammed from day one for employing Manafort is beyond me but it only makes sense that a man with a known history of corruption and being a Kremlin political operative would be throwing up red flag after red flag as he was leading a campaign that was getting assistance from the Russians.

And yet the only indictment we have of manafort is from 2013 when he was peddliung influence with the Podesta group.

The same Podesta group that the FBI had dead to rights for not filing as a foriegn lobby group, but instead of charging them, they let them refile and walk free.

As Grambler rightly pointed out, how successful a crime actually is, is irrelevant to whether it was committed. So trying to force people to quantify the effects of Russian interference is not only absurd but irrelevant.

I did say that, Im smart arent i.

Yes, there should have been an investigation. In fact, it should have happened years ago, when Manafort and Mercury LLC and the Podesta group and many other people were peddling influence for russia. Yet for some reason, it was only an issue when it means going after trump, and the fact the Podesta group engaged in this, and hillarys team and the dnc got dirt on trump from the kremlin is apparently not worth looking into.

Question, if the FBI used what they knew was a dnc paid for kremlin sourced dossier to go after trump, should we have an investigation into the fbi as to how they helped russians influence our system?

Oh, and why didnt the fbi look at the server?

And as we no know, Paul Manafort was actually in contact with his old Russian pals and was trying to peddle influence over Trump/his agenda to those people. People who had paid him tens of millions of dollars to function as a Kremlin operative, influencing Western politicians. If the reporting of the "black ledger" hadn't forced his resignation, what damage could Manafort have wrought?

Shame that the FBI shady practices and bias may end up with manaofrt getting off the hook. And why didnt manaforts pals that he peddled influence with, the podestas, get looked into?

So right off the bat, we have a legitimate counterintelligence investigation with legitimate targets. How in the world does this REMOTELY compare to Watergate? It doesn't. Not at all. Not one bit.

Because both involve possible shady actions being taken to spy on oppoenents.

But I agree, this is of a far greater magnitude than sending a couple of guys into a hotel, this is Obamas admin using the intel community to spy.

Enter Carter Page. Carter Page as we all known, and more importantly as the FBI and US intelligence services knew, had found himself entangled with a Russian spy ring in 2013-14. In fact, this involvement resulted in a FISA warrant that nobody screeching "this is just like Watergate" would argue was improperly sought.

How did Carter Page end up being a target of recruitment for the SVR? Because of his business dealings in Russia and his pro-Kremlin bent. Then what happens? As Paul Manafort is running the campaign, trying to peddle influence to the Russians, as Russians are hacking his candidate's opponent's party and phishing the head of her campaign, as Russians are running a major influence campaign, Carter Page takes a trip to Moscow to spew pro-Kremlin rhetoric to Russians. Who does he meet there? Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich. Even many in the right-wing media were stunned at the time by Page's behavior. And as Russian media reported at the time, he was being asked if he was there to meet with high level Russian officials.

Meeting russians is not a crime. If the dossier, which was unverified and based on publicly available knowledge was used for the fisa warrant, it is a scandal bigger than watergate.

a reply to: Willtell

Think about it. Trump is using the mechanisms of our governmental offices to DEFEND HIM! 

Hardly.
There are no charges against him.
There is an investigation of a fake Russian conspiracy dreamed up by the Democrats.
What is going on that is defensive are people defending the Constitution.

a reply to: butcherguy

The dossier has NOT been proven fake

The Steele Dossier on Trump and Russia Is Looking More and More Real

nymag.com...


Also, you’ll get nothing from the flimsy evidence of a rejected FISA warrant.

originally posted by: theantediluvian

Who among us honestly can't see the smoke here? Again, how does this compare to Watergate? It doesn't. Not even a little bit. Not one iota.

Yes there is alot of smoke, which I have shown over and over, biased fbi agents, the hillary case and how it was handled which you have admitted has a lot of smoke and should be looked into again, texts of insurance policies, stonewalling congress, accusations in the meo that if true are frightening, Podesta gorup being allowed to get away with the same thing Manafort was charged with, Flynn being charged with the smae thing mills and abedin were let off from, and much more.

Now we have Christopher Steele and his memos. Christopher Steele as we know was a subcontractor of Fusion GPS. We know that Fusion GPS was originally hired by Paul Singer (a Republican) to do oppo research and when his funding stopped, the oppo research project picked up funding from the DNC and the Clinton Campaign.

Why do people cite the republicaan thing like that some how proves there was no wrong doing. Yes, establishment republicans that are in bed wwith establishment democrats also funded anti trump dirt.

Just like left wingers in the dnc stole the primary from bernie. The establishment on both sides sought to go after the perceived outsider of trump and bernie on both sides.

We know that Steele reached out to a contact in the FBI. Steele had contacts in the FBI because he was a former MI6 officer and then after leaving the MI6, he'd done investigative work for FIFA which involved providing intel to the FBI for a two year period in case that resulted in more than a dozen indictments in a massive corruption scandal.

His reputation is irrelevant. It seems for example the FBi had to fire him after the peddled his dirt for misconduct in discussing things with the media, so I guess his graet reputation wasnt very accurate, was it. Not to mention the amatuerish way the dossier was written, and the easily disprovable things in it, like cohen in prague, that could have been debunked in minutes.

We've also been told that Steele reached out to the FBI on his own accord and that the FBI didn't seem to be doing anything with his concerns for months. It wasn't until September or October that he was finally debriefed in Rome.

Yes convenient that the FBI treid to get a warrant on page and failed, which is almost unprecedented, and then as soon as they got Steeles dossier, they succeeded.

Now if the memo is true (and thats a big if) it shows the FBI people admitting that without this garbage dossier, there would have been no warrant.

I think the government breaks it's own laws frequently. I also think they only get caught when there are large political splits, watergate was such a time as is now.

When the government is unified to screw us the people they can get away with it, when they are not then they are subject to their own laws that's how it works.

Should that shield wrong doers from prosecution? Of course not, I say whenever we get a change to hold their feet to the fire do it because they are busy covering their own asses instead of raping ours.

/rant

a reply to: butcherguy

Firing an FBI director to keep the Russian investigation from taking off and admitting it on TV!

It also has been proven that the Trump white house and Nunes were colluding in the past.

2 White House Officials Helped Give Nunes Intelligence Reports

SOURCE

A sitting president going around threatening to fire the Attorney General and others is very problematic in the middle of an investigation of him

It seems to me Trump is all over this investigation, trying to cover something up

He is the Watergate like figure here

originally posted by: Grambler

originally posted by: LesMisanthrope
Granting that the memo is true, either the FBI was manipulated by a British spy colluding with Russians, or the FBI conspired with a British spy who colluded with Russians in order to manipulate the judge. It’s pretty damning, though I’m not sure if it can be traced up to Obama like Watergate was traced up to Nixon.

No doubt Obama would claim he only read about the fisa warrant in the paper, but lets be real, he knew exactly what was going on. Thats why he spent the last datys of his admin changing rules to allow details of the trump investigation to be shared with as many agencies as possible, and telling allies Trump may be compromised.

Let’s be real. Obama’s E.O. was years in the making, going back to even the Bush administration. I do not agree that the purpose was for hindering Trump.

The new system would permit analysts at other intelligence agencies to obtain direct access to raw information from the N.S.A.’s surveillance to evaluate for themselves. If they pull out phone calls or email to use for their own agency’s work, they would apply the privacy protections masking innocent Americans’ information — a process known as “minimization” — at that stage, Mr. Litt said.

Executive branch officials have been developing the new framework and system for years. President George W. Bush set the change in motion through a little-noticed line in a 2008 executive order, and the Obama administration has been quietly developing a framework for how to carry it out since taking office in 2009.

Obama Administration Set to Expand Sharing of Data That N.S.A. Intercepts

Another thing to consider is that the gang who was essentially unified in running government for the past 24 years was all constructed by HW Bush, it was literally his empire. HW Bush to Bill Clinton to Bush Jr. to Obama, all part of the Bush cartel.

That cartel is now falling apart from lack of leadership, all control systems fail and disintegrate in time. Trump is using that fact to create his own system, he says it's for the people but who knows all politicians claim that because that's how they get their power.

If we really want to defeat the deep state we have to hit them where it hurts, their source of funding. The banks and their ability to naked short the economy. That is the real issue. LBJ created our current form of the CIA in order to maintain dollar hegemony which created business for the MIC. Nixon followed through by closing the gold window. That opened up opportunities for US banks, and European banks both of which control the dollar via the federal reserve system.

But now all their mistakes and fraud have compounded to the point it's becoming unsustainable that is why the petro dollar is failing, BRICs is rising and the geopolitical landscape is changing. It's also what created the opportunity for Trump to rise from no support literally to getting into the WH.

Change is good but you got to make sure the change is good change not Obama change.

a reply to: Willtell

So the White House shared a report indicating that they were illegally being spied upon....

With the Chairman of House Intelligence Committee?

Wow.



Who should they have shared it with?
The FBI?

Should Christopher Steele not have reached out to the FBI with his concerns? Who will argue against that? If he'd come across intel that suggested that there was a child sex slavery ring, should he have sat on it? No. Of course not. And given his bona fides and past relationship with the FBI, it only makes sense that they'd want to hear what he had to say.

Who will argue the FBI should have just ignored Steele? A person known to be credible who had provided credible and valuable intel to the FBI in very recent years.

Again, where are the Watergate comparisons? Non-existent so far.

We've got an unprecedented attack by the Russians on our elections, a legitimate counterintelligence investigation, solid evidence that Russian intelligence services were trying to get ins with the Trump campaign (Papadopoulos), a known Kremlin operative who it turns out was indeed up to no good (Manafort and Gates for that matter, let's not forget his involvement in the campaign, transition and beyond).

These facts are scarcely disputable. And of course we have Carter Page, with his known recent history — also not in dispute — and him throwing up big red flags. Make no mistake, Carter Page was a legitimate person of interest in a legitimate investigation.

Nothing remotely like Watergate.

In September, Carter Page who had been controversial for months since his trip to Moscow, exits the campaign. A month later, on October 21st, the FBI/DOJ apply for a FISA warrant for Page. This wasn't clandestine extralegal surveillance of a campaign, it was a legitimate counterintelligence investigation seeking a legal warrant for surveillance of a credible person of interest who was no longer part of the campaign.

The argument being made now is that the inclusion of intel originating from Steele in the FISA warrant application is a Watergate level scandal. We don't know how it was included. We don't know what else was in the FISA warrant application.

It's laughable on its face.

Nobody is seriously arguing even that the inclusion of that sort of intel is inherently wrong. In fact, if you read the Nunes memo, they're not even necessarily arguing that it shouldn't have been included in some form as long as the FISC judge was appraised of its nature.

That's the crux of the allegation from Nunes. That the vetting of the information used was "in its infancy" and that the FISC judge wasn't properly informed about its origins as part of a paid oppo research project. Furthermore, he insinuates using interpretations of cherry-picked texts from among tens of thousands that Strzok and Page had an anti-Trump bias. That evidence is pretty damn thin.

What is missing from the memo in this regard (because there's a lot of stuff that is missing)? A line connecting the dots of Strzok's supposed bias, Steele and the FISA warrant application. Nothing in there.

Trump supporters and to a larger extent the GOP base have been so gaslit by Trump and a cadre of loyalists, led by a stooge who has spent the last year as the personal defender of Trump, into believing that the mere inclusion of this intel in a SINGLE FISA warrant application for a SINGLE legitimate target — a former low-level staffer described by the campaign as an insignificant "volunteer" nobody — in a legitimate counterintelligence investigation into an actual attack on the American democratic system, is tantamount to a Watergate-type scandal to "hurt Trump" *somehow*.

Good grief.

At what spin do we achieve centrifugal fusion? My head is spinning already and we just got on this particular ride...

a reply to: Realtruth

I'm not seeing the similarities.

Quite different situations, actually.

originally posted by: Realtruth

originally posted by: GeechQuestInfo

Then why hasn’t anybody from the White House, Congress, Intelligence Communities, you name it, called for charges to be brought.

Nobody has even claimed anything illegal, except for random people on the internet.

I'm glad you brought this issue up because there was a referral for investigation by two Senators, since representatives can't charge anyone with a crime, it's up to the DOJ to pursue any charges.

www.nytimes.com...

In a short cover letter dated Thursday but transmitted Friday, the senators wrote, “Based on the information contained therein, we are respectfully referring Mr. Steele to you for investigation of potential violations of 18 U.S.C. § 1001, for statements the Committee has reason to believe Mr. Steele made regarding his distribution of information contained.” That section of the federal criminal code refers to knowingly making false or misleading statements to federal authorities.

Steele is not a public official. You were referencing Watergate and relating it to “the memo”, so it would stand to reason we were talking about public officials facing charges.

originally posted by: LesMisanthrope
Granting that the memo is true, either the FBI was manipulated by a British spy colluding with Russians, or the FBI conspired with a British spy who colluded with Russians in order to manipulate the judge. It’s pretty damning, though I’m not sure if it can be traced up to Obama like Watergate was traced up to Nixon.

Or, and most likely, neither the FBI was manipulated by nor conspired with a British spy to manipulate the judge.

Can anybody say with certainty what all went into obtaining the FISA warrants? Nobody on this site can.

originally posted by: butcherguy
a reply to: Willtell

So the White House shared a report indicating that they were illegally being spied upon....

With the Chairman of House Intelligence Committee?

Wow.

Who should they have shared it with?
The FBI?

Yet you would believe the partisan statements from that committee

I just proved their in collusion therefore that memo is a partisan hack job

You know like a defense attorney defending a guilty client


WOW!

a reply to: Grambler

There is no proof of that.

We know russians have been interfering with the elections for decades.

We know that they put out info against both candidates.

There is ample proof. You just stubbornly refuse to admit it and you've been given just enough red herrings that you can tell yourself "there's no proof."

They haven't been interfering on anything approaching this scale previously. Ironic though that you'll acknowledge decades of interference but then deny it in this one instance.

It's like saying if one person is run over by a tank and another person coughs on the diesel fumes, that both people were equally injured by the tank. Doesn't hold water.

What is unprecedented is that the FBI may have for the first time ever it that we know of used one sides unverified opposition research to spy on the other side.

That sounds good only if you ignore all the context and nuance and evidence to the contrary. It's also factually incorrect. Furthermore, there's no actual evidence of a political conspiracy vis-a-vis the surveillance of Page.

- The FBI didn't seek a warrant for Carter Page to "spy on the other side." They sought a warrant for Carter Page because he was legitimate target in a legitimate counterintelligence investigation into an actual attack on American democracy.

- Carter Page wasn't a part of the campaign when they applied for and received the October warrant.

- Carter Page was a low-level former aide who the campaign jettisoned and wanted nothing to do with. In what universe does it make sense that he would be a worthwhile target for a conspiracy to spy on a campaign?

- There's nothing improper about using that information as long as it wasn't mischaracterized to the FISC judge.

If that story is accurate and that is what opened the investigation, it is ludicrous. A drunk periphery guy of trumps team saying a russian told him what thousands of people were speculating, that russia had emails from hillary. Note that this russian that told george this didnt say dnc emails or podesta emails. Nope, just hillary emails, that people had been speculating for months were compromised from her unsecure server.

Is it not what the memo says? Again, you're ignoring all of the context because you want to argue from a position that the Russian interference is unproven. The DNC was hacked by the Russians. I've detailed TONS of independent threads of evidence for this. It's what the US government clearly believes, even Trump loyalists in Congress don't deny it. Even the Vice President doesn't deny it. Even the Trump-appointed Pompeo doesn't deny it.

Most recently, the Dutch media is claiming that Dutch intelligence agencies SAW it happening and provided intel about it to the US.

Papadopoulos was clearly a SVR target. It's standard tradecraft. They even sent an attractive young woman promising meetings with high ranking Kremlin officials. He's running off at the mouth that he knows that the Russians have hacked emails to help Trump. The Russians in fact hack emails (from more than just the DNC, they also hacked the DCC and phished Podesta) and this foreign policy aide (one of only 5 named foreign policy advisors) is bragging about just that thing before the hacks are known and it's ludicrous to investigate? That's not reasonable.

Sure they could have looked into the claims about george. That would in no way justify using the dossier to get fisa warrants though.

I also would have expected them to look at the dnc server, whcih they did not, and is a disgrace. There is still no plausible explanation that has been given as to why they didnt.

Every single person, yourself included, should be outraged that the FBI didnt look at the server.

Given what was happening, I don't even think they should have waited for the intel about Papadopoulos myself. In my opinion, there should be an investigation into the FBI/USIC response because it seems far from adequate to me.

This is a red herring imo. For one, from what I remember, the FBI obtained full images of the DNC servers which is just as good as getting the hard drives. The idea here is that without the servers, the FBI couldn't know if there was really a hack which is simply not true. If the Dutch media is to believed, they received even better intel on the hack because the hackers were themselves compromised.

Of course, that's not something that the FBI/DOJ/etc could ever just come out and say, is it?

And yet the only indictment we have of manafort is from 2013 when he was peddliung influence with the Podesta group.

The same Podesta group that the FBI had dead to rights for not filing as a foriegn lobby group, but instead of charging them, they let them refile and walk free.

Manafort was doing a lot more than peddling influence through the Podesta Group AND Mercury (why leave them out?) in 2012-13. We also have no idea what else they will be indicted for. There's been signs of superceeding indictments (so more to follow) and if Gates flipped, who knows.

We also know that Mueller received the emails that prove that Manafort was trying to peddle influence as Trump campaign chairman.

Just because people haven't been indicted yet doesn't mean anything. Flynn wasn't indicted for his FARA fillings either. He didn't cut a deal until many many months after that.

So to say that people have walked free is premature.

Question, if the FBI used what they knew was a dnc paid for kremlin sourced dossier to go after trump, should we have an investigation into the fbi as to how they helped russians influence our system?

See, this is the problem with dealing in this things without nuance. The only evidence we actually have is that they used bits about Carter Page for the memo. We don't know how it was used and we don't know who the sources were for those bits. And FTR, here's how the sources for the Page bits were described:

"Source E, an ethnic Russian close associate of Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump"

(not a Kremlin source)

"Russian source close to Rosneft President, PUTIN close associate and US-sanctioned individual, Igor SECHIN"

(could be, might not be)

And it's being investigated by the OIG but let's not pretend that this "influence" (intel used in some part for a single FISA warrant application on a low-level ex-campaign staffer) comes remotely close in scale to the interference of the Russians in the election against Clinton. It's like comparing an ant to a semi-truck.

"Speaking separately, also in July 2016, an official close to Presidential Administration Head, IVANOV, confided in a compatriot "

(could be, might not be)

Shame that the FBI shady practices and bias may end up with manaofrt getting off the hook. And why didnt manaforts pals that he peddled influence with, the podestas, get looked into?

That's the 3rd mention of the Tony Podesta. What put Tony Podesta's lobbying in 2012-13 on the radar in the first place? The Mueller investigation. So I'm not sure why you are saying that it hasn't been or isn't being looked into except that you assume that it demonstrates some bias but you don't seem to be expressing ANY of the same things about Mercury because that has no utility for implying a possible bias.

a reply to: theantediluvian

WHen I hear that Russians interfered in our election, the only thing I can think is that the prior administration was derelict in their duty to harden against this.

And the fault for this lies with the Bush admin. They repealed Smith Mundt so they could have the media lie to us. If they go teaching us how to spot lies and propaganda, it negates all the work put into making us more naive (see Charlotte Iserbyte) over the last 30 years, and the benefits they find by running propaganda on us.

This ALL falls on the Federal Government. That includes Obama, his appointees, the legislators, and the prior administrations.

I get the feeling that looking for russian influence is going to be like someone with a mouthful of cake looking for someone else's missing piece of cake.