You can read the memo here

It's mortifying. For Nunes and Republicans.

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"Are you sure we're going fast enough?" - Emil Zatopek

how many times have you used that line....must be getting to you, dimwit

Brings this scene to mind

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLS-npemQYQ

What gets to me is that every time you post you sound like a child. Try and have an adult conversation, one in which you don't sound like an uneducated juvenile.

It certainly does not look good for Team Donkey and the FBI. Ridiculous abuses of process. Inexcusable political bias.

Team Donkey used to be good at cheating. What happened?

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

I was pretty passionate about Trump not being President too. So I didn't vote for him......

You'll have to explain that interpretation with reference to the memo. Happy to respond point by point.

Tough to see from the outset though how you'd lump together Comey, McCabe, Yates, Boente and Rosenstein as "Team Donkey"

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"Are you sure we're going fast enough?" - Emil Zatopek

Obviously we are moving way beyond voting

Or At least some of us in a position to move way beyond it are.

Do you believe the memo to be true? I want to know the sources of where that came from?

You weren't responding to me but, to be clear, I do believe the memo is true, just cherry-picked and disingenuous. None of us will ever be in a complete position to assess that but some of the ways in which the Nunes memo MAY have been selective are laid out pretty clearly in SChiff's statement (and, yes, he's also a partisan hack with his own motivations but he's not the one who has to justify torching the IC in defence of El Cheeto). My emphasis:

“Chairman Nunes’ decision, supported by House Speaker Ryan and Republican Members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, to publicly release misleading allegations against the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation is a shameful effort to discredit these institutions, undermine the Special Counsel’s ongoing investigation, and undercut congressional probes. Furthermore, their refusal to allow release of a comprehensive response memorandum prepared by Committee Democrats is a transparent effort to suppress the full truth.
“As the DOJ emphasized to Chairman Nunes, the decision to employ an obscure and never before used House rule to release classified information without DOJ and FBI vetting was ‘extraordinarily reckless.’ The selective release and politicization of classified information sets a terrible precedent and will do long-term damage to the Intelligence Community and our law enforcement agencies. If potential intelligence sources know that their identities might be compromised when political winds arise, those sources of vital information will simply dry up, at great cost to our national security.
“The Republican document mischaracterizes highly sensitive classified information that few Members of Congress have seen, and which Chairman Nunes himself chose not to review. It fails to provide vital context and information contained in DOJ’s FISA application and renewals, and ignores why and how the FBI initiated, and the Special Counsel has continued, its counterintelligence investigation into Russia’s election interference and links to the Trump campaign. The sole purpose of the Republican document is to circle the wagons around the White House and insulate the President. Tellingly, when asked whether the Republican staff who wrote the memo had coordinated its drafting with the White House, the Chairman refused to answer.
“The premise of the Nunes memo is that the FBI and DOJ corruptly sought a FISA warrant on a former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, Carter Page, and deliberately misled the court as part of a systematic abuse of the FISA process. As the Minority memo makes clear, none of this is true. The FBI had good reason to be concerned about Carter Page and would have been derelict in its responsibility to protect the country had it not sought a FISA warrant.
“In order to understand the context in which the FBI sought a FISA warrant for Carter Page, it is necessary to understand how the investigation began, what other information the FBI had about Russia’s efforts to interfere with our election, and what the FBI knew about Carter Page prior to making application to the court – including Carter Page’s previous interactions with Russian intelligence operatives. This is set out in the Democratic response which the GOP so far refuses to make public.
“The authors of the GOP memo would like the country to believe that the investigation began with Christopher Steele and the dossier, and if they can just discredit Mr. Steele, they can make the whole investigation go away regardless of the Russians’ interference in our election or the role of the Trump campaign in that interference. This ignores the inconvenient fact that the investigation did not begin with, or arise from Christopher Steele or the dossier, and that the investigation would persist on the basis of wholly independent evidence had Christopher Steele never entered the picture.
“The DOJ appropriately provided the court with a comprehensive explanation of Russia’s election interference, including evidence that Russian agents courted another Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, George Papadopoulos. As we know from Papadopoulos’ guilty plea, Russian agents disclosed to Papadopoulos their possession of stolen Clinton emails and interest in a relationship with the campaign. In claiming that there is ‘no evidence of any cooperation or conspiracy between Page and Papadopoulos,’ the Majority deliberately misstates the reason why DOJ specifically explained Russia’s role in courting Papadopoulos and the context in which to evaluate Russian approaches to Page.
“The Majority suggests that the FBI failed to alert the court as to Mr. Steele’s potential political motivations or the political motivations of those who hired him, but this is not accurate. The GOP memo also claims that a Yahoo News article was used to corroborate Steele, but this is not at all why the article was referenced. These are but a few of the serious mischaracterizations of the FISA application. There are many more set out in the Democratic response, which we will again be seeking a vote to release publicly on Monday, February 5th. Unlike Committee Republicans, however, we will ask the relevant agencies to propose any necessary redactions to protect any sources and methods not already disclosed by Chairman Nunes’ document.
“It is telling that Chairman Nunes put out this memo without bothering to read the underlying materials, and that he ordered changes to the document without informing his own committee members. It is a terrible lapse in leadership that Speaker Ryan failed to intervene and prevent the abuse of classified materials in this way. It is tragic, if all too predictable, that this President would allow the release of the memo despite FBI and DOJ’s expressions of ‘grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the [Republicans’] memo’s accuracy’. But most destructive of all may be the announcement by Chairman Nunes that he has placed the FBI and DOJ under investigation, impugning and impairing the work of the dedicated professionals trying to keep our country safe.

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"Are you sure we're going fast enough?" - Emil Zatopek

A little, yes.

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"Are you sure we're going fast enough?" - Emil Zatopek

Looks like Nunes has some explaining to do.

I haven't been this disappointed since Geraldo Rivera opened the tomb.

I don't think history will be kind to Nunes or the GOP on this.

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That scenario is pretty much what I had created with the timeline of info out there. Of course I think most would think along those lines given the salient data points, so it might just be someone else's posit. I'd almost like for this to be true, and for a light cleaning to be done at FBI, just so I can have some confidence in the institution after such a clusterfuck of a Hillary investigation.

Three and a half pages and they still manage to screw up matters of public record:

n/

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"Are you sure we're going fast enough?" - Emil Zatopek

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

Really? Exposing the FBI and its director, who was appointed by Obama and who failed in office with regard to the Hillary email server, as extremely politically biased and opposed to Trump winning the Oval Office is not a bad look? Add to that the funding by Team Donkey.

Then there is this:

That's where the dossier — containing information compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele on behalf of Democrats — comes in. The memo says neither the initial application for the warrant in October 2016 or any of the renewals reference the roles of the Democratic National Committee or Hillary Clinton's campaign in funding of Steele's efforts — even though the political origins of the dossier were apparently known to officials at DOJ and FBI.

And this:

"The initial FISA application notes Steele was working for a named U.S. person, but does not name Fusion GPS and principal Glenn Simpson, who was paid by a U.S. law firm (Perkins Coie) representing the DNC (even though it was known by DOJ at the time that political actors were involved with the Steele dossier.) The application does not mention Steele was ultimately working on behalf of — and paid by — the DNC and the Clinton campaign, or that the FBI had separately authorized payment to Steele for the same information," the memo claims.


And this:

The memo also claims that, before and after Steele was terminated as a source, he kept in touch with the DOJ through then-Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr. Ohr, who worked closely with Yates then Rosenstein, eventually spoke with the FBI about his communications with Steele. In September 2016, Steele apparently told Ohr he was "'desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president,'" according to the memo. The memo also notes Ohr's wife worked for Fusion GPS to help with the opposition research against Trump, something the memo claims was not disclosed.

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

What are you quoting here - this isn't the text of the memo?

EDIT:

Wait, I figured it out. You've copy and pasted from a CBS article - why? Does work not let you click through to scribd etc.? Which begs the question...have you read the memo?

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"Are you sure we're going fast enough?" - Emil Zatopek

I thought I included the link, did I not?

I did read the memo. The article is accurate.

You seem to be deflecting.

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

So slow today I'll even respond to CBS.

Really? Exposing the FBI and its director, who was appointed by Obama and who failed in office with regard to the Hillary email server, as extremely politically biased and opposed to Trump winning the Oval Office is not a bad look? Add to that the funding by Team Donkey.

Not really, no. The FBI and DOJ are comprised of grown adults with political opinions, typically conservative. Some will hate Hilary, some will hate Donald, no reasonable person could expect anything else. The only "bad look" would be if the memo demonstrated that any bias there may or may not have been influenced the process, which it spectacularly failed to do.

Then there is this:

That's where the dossier — containing information compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele on behalf of Democrats — comes in. The memo says neither the initial application for the warrant in October 2016 or any of the renewals reference the roles of the Democratic National Committee or Hillary Clinton's campaign in funding of Steele's efforts — even though the political origins of the dossier were apparently known to officials at DOJ and FBI.

Why would they? Renewals are only granted if a previously granted FISA was productive. We could imagine a world where on application for renewal the FISA judge said: "nothing's been produced in the last 90 days and as I recall the application was based only on info. from some dossier. So your renewal's turned down and I want to know if there's anything you want to confess about the origin of that dossier?" But that, of course, is not the world we seem to be living in. In the world we're in, the initial application, including information "in" (but notable not necessarily "from"), the memo was approved. Page has admitted he was an active target of recruitment by the SVR in 2013. I've no idea what the FBI had on him by 2016 but I don't understand anyone who'd bet against the FBI's initial case against him being sound. Every renewal since then would have been on the basis that the previous extension was productive.

You may work for my mortal enemy but if you tell the cops I'm cooking meth in my garage and you're right, your employment isn't a great defense for me.

And this:

"The initial FISA application notes Steele was working for a named U.S. person, but does not name Fusion GPS and principal Glenn Simpson, who was paid by a U.S. law firm (Perkins Coie) representing the DNC (even though it was known by DOJ at the time that political actors were involved with the Steele dossier.) The application does not mention Steele was ultimately working on behalf of — and paid by — the DNC and the Clinton campaign, or that the FBI had separately authorized payment to Steele for the same information," the memo claims.

See above.

And this:

The memo also claims that, before and after Steele was terminated as a source, he kept in touch with the DOJ through then-Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr. Ohr, who worked closely with Yates then Rosenstein, eventually spoke with the FBI about his communications with Steele. In September 2016, Steele apparently told Ohr he was "'desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president,'" according to the memo. The memo also notes Ohr's wife worked for Fusion GPS to help with the opposition research against Trump, something the memo claims was not disclosed.

Steele thought Trump had been compromised by Russia. I appreciate his desperation.

The memo DOES acknowledge that the Trump / Russia investigation started with Papodopoulos, to which HA HA HA HA.

IT's bias is made crystal clear by the way in which it characterizes easily verifiable matters of public record (See the discussion of Comey's "salatious" comments).


This is a huge own-goal.

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"Are you sure we're going fast enough?" - Emil Zatopek

Not as far as I can see - the only link goes to an article from October. We're already going to try and discuss Nunes' selection (and apparent mischaracterization) of materials he didn't read. There's really no need to go one step further and discuss CBS' selection and interpretation of Nunes' selection (and apparent mischaracterization) of materials he didn't read.

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"Are you sure we're going fast enough?" - Emil Zatopek