trail wrote:
dave_w wrote:
Duffy wrote:
Google “Biden Ukraine”.
He’s done.
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To what you alluded, the Biden entry is also another occasion for looking back at Obama admin activity leading to (and after) the 2016 election. John Solomon brings out a lot of the info that has slowly come to light. Here's another installment:
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https://thehill.com/...ive-russia-collusionThat article is confusing to read. But I have two points.
Quote:
Steele wrote the famous dossier for Fusion that the FBI used to gain a warrant to spy on the Trump campaign.
I think we should be careful with the word "spy". This is a loaded word with pejorative intent. A warrant was granted, indicating the process of judicial oversight was used. This was FBI surveillance. If the FBI engaged in surveillance without due authorization, then I'm fine with more pejorative terms. But I don't like the recent practice of undermining the judicial and law enforcement systems with pejorative terms only when we don't like the outcome, or to protect our favorite celebrity politicians. If people want to through Strzok (sp?) et al, under the bus fine. This is different.
Second, this bit that the Steele dossier was used to gain the warrant was something first claimed by Hannity then repeated ever since even by reputable sources. It is incorrect. The dossier was not used as evidence to gain the warrant. It was Papadopoulos.
See page 6 of Mueller's report. Mueller:
Quote:
July 2016 was also the month WikiLeaks first released emails stolen by the GRU from the DNC. On July 22, 2016, WikiLeaks posted thousands of internal DNC documents revealing information about the Clinton Campaign. Within days, there was public reporting that U.S. intelligence agencies had "high confidence" that the Russian government was.behind the theft of emails and documents from the DNC. And within a week of the release, a foreign government informed the FBI about its May 2016 interaction with Papadopoulos and his statement that the Russian government could assist the Trump Campaign. On July 31, 2016, based on the foreign government reporting, the FBI opened an investigation into potential coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump Campaign.
Agree on the use of the word "spying", It was actually Shaheen's word (Trymp's?) in her question and I think Barr responded to that political word in a political way, instead of changing it to the accepted "surveilled" or whatever from the IC standpoint.
Disagree on the FISA warrant (I think Papadopoulus was a genesis for the investigation, but warrant itself was Page); several that have looked at the warrant have said it relied on the dossier, including Graham and Grassly in their memo. Heck, as some here proclaimed, there's a whole page in it that decribes why the FBI trusts Steele so much. We also have some testimony from others that it was a very important element in attaining the warrants.
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"
The Grassley-Graham memo carries considerable weight, since both Grassley and Graham have seen the actual FISA warrants and were able to base their referral for criminal investigation of Steele on the information found in those warrants. Furthermore, this confirms another important piece of the Republican FISA memo — that there would never have been a FISA warrant for surveillance of Page in the absence of the “dossier” alleging that Donald Trump was both the victim of blackmail and the recipient of assistance at the hands of Russian agents.
The Republican FISA memo points to this fact by stating that then-Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe (who suddenly resigned when the House Intelligence Committee voted to release the memo to the public) had “testified before the Committee in December 2017 that no surveillance warrant would have been sought from the FISC without the Steele dossier information.” So all four warrant applications “relied” so “heavily” on the “dossier” that the FBI obviously did not think the information agents gathered on their own would meet the standard of probable cause without the “information” contained in the “dossier.”
As alluded to above, the Grassley-Graham memo is also lent considerable credibility since it is an official referral for criminal investigation. It would not end well for either of the senators whose signatures appear on that referral if the information contained in that referral were bogus."
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https://www.thenewamerican.com/...ims-of-gop-fisa-memo To the whole Papadopoulus story, there's lots we still don't know, and I continue to wonder what is disinformation and not, so I'm waiting, but:
https://thehill.com/...sia-and-papadopoulos