Possible US intel agency abuse

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marmel

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Topic # 228737 19-Jan-2018 19:10

https://www.google.co.nz/amp/www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/01/18/gop-lawmakers-demand-alarming-memo-on-fisa-abuses-be-made-public.amp.html

Quite a bit of info emerging about this memo, some of it from those that have already been privvy to the contents.

If this turns out to be as bad as they are saying will it cement in another four years for Trump?

I can guarantee if it does appear that US intel agencies have broken the law and have spied on Trump or some of his camp there will be a deafening silence from the liberal left who will take the “end justifies the means” type of approach. The irony that the left should be horrified and fighting against any state abuse of power will also be lost i suspect.

It will be interesting to see what comes of this next week.

wsnz

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Reply # 1952077 5-Feb-2018 16:42

The memo amounts to an opinion piece written by a Republican, with little factual information, and whose release is contested even by the Republican appointed FBI Director who cites the release as "extraordinarily reckless" given the lack of details.

Nothing has been presented yet to justify the rather dangerous "deep state" narrative being delivered by some Republicans.

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Reply # 1952132 5-Feb-2018 18:34

The full memo is linked at the bottom of this page:

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/02/02/politics/fbi-nunes-memo-full/index.html

The central allegation is that the Steele dossier which was funded by Republican sources initially and then Democratic party sources, was key in obtaining warrants for surveillance of Trump people.

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marmel

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Reply # 1952134 5-Feb-2018 18:40

I think one of the key issues is that the allegations are that the respective judges who signed the FISA warrants were never told that the dossier was funded by the democrats.

I watched an interview with one of the dems on the committee and he stated that the judge was advised that the dossier was produced by someone with political opposition to Trump however when he was asked about the claims the judges we’re not told that it was funded by the democrats he was only say that claim wasn’t accurate, just side stepped the question and provided no other explanation.

Imagine what would be happening now if the republicans had paid for a dossier of dirt on Hillary which was then used as a basis to obtain FISA warrants, liberals would be screaming in the streets and burning things as they like to do.

freitasm

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Reply # 1952135 5-Feb-2018 18:49

marmel: I think one of the key issues is that the allegations are that the respective judges who signed the FISA warrants were never told that the dossier was funded by the democrats.

From what I've read months ago the dossier was started by Republicans back in October 2015. After they dropped it the Democrats continued using it for research.

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freitasm

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Reply # 1952137 5-Feb-2018 18:52

marmel: Imagine what would be happening now if the republicans had paid for a dossier of dirt on Hillary which was then used as a basis to obtain FISA warrants, liberals would be screaming in the streets and burning things as they like to do.

Yes, imagine if Trump Jr, plus campaign higher ups met with a Russian lawyer to propose exchange of dropping some restrictions against Russia in exchange for information on Clinton?

Oh, it happened?

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Reply # 1952138 5-Feb-2018 18:52

freitasm:
marmel: I think one of the key issues is that the allegations are that the respective judges who signed the FISA warrants were never told that the dossier was funded by the democrats.

From what I've read months ago the dossier was started by Republicans back in October 2015. After they dropped it the Democrats continued using it for research.

Steele, the author of the dossier only came on board after the democrats started funding it.

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Reply # 1952139 5-Feb-2018 18:55

My point is that this memo is nothing - written by a Republican senator that decided to run a rogue investigation himself, sidestepped everyone including his own party and committee to run to Trump and tell him what was being investigated, sent aides to London to try and talk to Steele... Not what a respectable person would do. Giving this "memo" credibility is really stretching the truth.

Oh, and linking to Fox News doesn't prove anything. We all know they have a conservative agenda that includes lying and spreading hoaxes.

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Reply # 1952140 5-Feb-2018 18:57

freitasm:
marmel: Imagine what would be happening now if the republicans had paid for a dossier of dirt on Hillary which was then used as a basis to obtain FISA warrants, liberals would be screaming in the streets and burning things as they like to do.

Yes, imagine if Trump Jr, plus campaign higher ups met with a Russian lawyer to propose exchange of dropping some restrictions against Russia in exchange for information on Clinton?

Oh, it happened?

This thread is about the FBI/DOJ being possibly used for political purposes by the democrats or being politically biased themselves, nothing to do with the ongoing investigation. Just to clarify I am not a Trump supporter and do not think he is fit to be president, however I do not think Hillary was fit to be president either given the issues swirling around her.

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Reply # 1952141 5-Feb-2018 18:58

marmel:
freitasm:

marmel: Imagine what would be happening now if the republicans had paid for a dossier of dirt on Hillary which was then used as a basis to obtain FISA warrants, liberals would be screaming in the streets and burning things as they like to do.

Yes, imagine if Trump Jr, plus campaign higher ups met with a Russian lawyer to propose exchange of dropping some restrictions against Russia in exchange for information on Clinton?

Oh, it happened?

This thread is about the FBI/DOJ being possibly used for political purposes by the democrats or being politically biased themselves, nothing to do with the ongoing investigation. Just to clarify I am not a Trump supporter and do not think he is fit to be president, however I do not think Hillary was fit to be president either given the issues swirling around her.

Exactly. The memo doesn't prove it. See my previous reply.

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Reply # 1952142 5-Feb-2018 18:58

freitasm:
My point is that this memo is nothing - written by a Republican senator that decided to run a rogue investigation himself, sidestepped everyone including his own party and committee to run to Trump and tell him what was being investigated, sent aides to London to try and talk to Steele... Not what a respectable person would do. Giving this "memo" credibility is really stretching the truth.

Oh, and linking to Fox News doesn't prove anything. We all know they have a conservative agenda that includes lying and spreading hoaxes.

Fox v CNN, both as bad as each other. I read both sites and it often comes across that they are reporting on completely different things.

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Reply # 1952283 6-Feb-2018 09:29

An interesting read: Devin Nunes Releases Memo That Doesn't Show The Surveillance Abuses He Hypocritically 'Cares' About

It also points out something about the paperwork needed to request a FISA warrant. To secure a renewal, the FBI would have to show it had obtained evidence of value with the previous warrant. If it can't, it's unlikely the renewal request would be approved by FBI directors and/or US attorneys general. The multiple renewals suggest the FBI had actually obtained enough evidence of Carter Page's illicit dealings with the Russians to sustain an ongoing investigation.

Beyond that, there's the fact that Devin Nunes -- despite spending days threatening to release this "damning" memo -- never bothered to view the original documents underlying his assertions of FBI bias. In an interview with Fox News after the memo's release, Nunes admitted he had not read the FBI's warrant applications. So, the assertions are being made with very limited info. Nunes apparently heard the Steele dossier was involved and that was all he needed to compile a list of reasons to fire current Trump nemesis Robert Mueller... disguised as a complaint about improper surveillance.

It's this complaint about abuse of surveillance powers that really chafes. Nunes throttled attemptsat Section 702 reform last month and now wants to express his concerns that the FBI and FISA court may not be protecting Americans quite as well as they should. Marcy Wheeler has a long, righteously angry piece at Huffington Post detailing the rank hypocrisy of Nunes' self-serving memo.

Because Nunes and others ― up to and including House Speaker Paul Ryan ― claimed to be motivated by a concern about civil liberties, it was generally assumed the privacy community would join the clamor. But those of us who’ve been through several surveillance fights with these posers know the reality is far more complex. Ultimately, two principles are at issue: the rule of law and privacy. In both instances, Nunes and Ryan are on the wrong side of the issue.

[...]

A mere three weeks ago, Nunes and Ryan were happy to have Americans surveilled with no evidence whatsoever of wrongdoing. Back then, Ryan backed suspicionless, warrantless searches of Americans as a necessary trade off. “This [bill] strikes the balance that we must have between honoring and protecting privacy rights of U.S. citizens, honoring civil liberties, and making sure that we have the tools we need in this day and age of 21st century terrorism to keep our people safe.”

Today, however, when a former Trump campaign adviser is at issue, Nunes and Ryan have discovered the due process they personally refused for so many Americans.

This isn't Devin Nunes' first ride on the surveillance hypocrisy merry-go-round. Just like Dianne Feinstein on the other side of the political aisle, Nunes doesn't give two shits about domestic surveillance unless it's being used against him and his. Somehow, Nunes believes libertarians and anti-surveillance progressives will join him in his excoriation of the FBI and its alleged abuse of domestic surveillance powers. But he's not going to win any converts. The hill Nunes has chosen to die on with this memo is this: the law should protect the powerful from questionable snooping. It has nothing to say about the marginalized groups targeted most frequently by security agencies and law enforcement.

Every single privacy activist I know cares about privacy in significant part to ensure the rule of law and to prevent the arbitrary exercise of justice to focus just on select groups like Muslims or Chinese-Americans, rather than those who pose the greatest risk to society, like people allegedly doing Russia’s secret bidding. Yet the actions of Ryan and Nunes reverse that, using a sham concern for civil liberties as a way to prevent themselves, their associates, and the president from being subject to the rule of law like the rest of us would be.

There should be no rush to lionize the FBI and the officials Trump has discarded because of perceived lack of loyalty. The FBI is no better than it was before Trump took office. It's no champion of civil liberties and it is in the wrong position to pretend to speak truth to power simply by continuing to exist. Abuse of surveillance powers is a very real thing and the FBI remains one of the worst offenders. The memo is Nunes photoshopping a bunch of smoke over a small, ordinary flame and claiming it's photographic evidence of the FBI's antipathy towards Trump. If abuse occurred under Nunes' watch, then it should be called out. But laying bare the details of an ongoing investigation just to score political points is a terrible abuse of Nunes' oversight powers.

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Reply # 1952583 6-Feb-2018 19:48

And more, from the Washington Post "Devin Nunes tried to discredit the FBI. Instead, he proved it’s onto something"

[So] the FISA application would probably have outlined the bureau’s efforts going all the way back to 2013, when Page was approached by the FBI, which warned him, based on recordings of Russian intelligence officers, that he was being targeted for recruitment as a Russian spy. (That same year, Page also reportedly wrote in a letter to an academic publisher that he was an “informal advisor to the staff of the Kremlin.”) In counterintelligence investigations, this kind of interview would have been intended to “neutralize” the Russians: The idea is that anyone who was being unwittingly developed as a spy, as Page appeared to be, would be dismayed to realize what was happening and would immediately cease further contact with their intelligence contacts.

That means that three years before the FISA surveillance on him began, Page was on notice regarding exactly whom and what he was dealing with when it came to the Russians. For the FBI to get a warrant to listen to his communications later, the bureau would have had evidence that Page remained in contact with individuals he knew were affiliated with Russian intelligence. And the FBI would have had to demonstrate to the FISA court that Page was engaging in behavior that appeared to be facilitating Russia’s intelligence activities. (Those could include things such as frequent and potentially secret meetings with Russian intelligence officers; utilizing tradecraft like communicating in code; or accepting payments from known intelligence sources.) This time period, of course, covered his participation in the Trump campaign: Trump identified Page as an adviser in March 2016 in an interview with The Washington Post, although he had left the campaign in September 2016 following news reports of his connections in Russia. (This means the FBI did not intercept his communications until a month after he stopped working for Trump.) The three years after the bureau first warned Page would have been plenty of time for Russian intelligence to develop him as an intelligence asset and to capitalize on his assessed vulnerabilities, which included his desire to make money and move up professionally.

Nunes’s memo also discloses that the government obtained three renewals of the FISA warrant, which occurred every 90 days after the initial authorization. In order for a judge to allow the surveillance to continue, the government has to demonstrate that the intercepted communications are, in fact, providing foreign intelligence. In Page’s case, the order would have been initially authorized based on the premise that monitoring his communications was necessary to understand what, exactly, Russian intelligence was doing and how Page played a role in those activities. If, 90 days later, the government had not obtained any new information about Page’s contacts and activities and the surveillance had ceased, that would show that Page probably was not working as a spy and that the evidence that had seemed to point in that direction was wrong. Instead, the continued renewals underscore that the government was able to persuade the court that Page continued his contacts and activities.

If Nunes was trying to cast doubt on the basis and motives for the FBI’s interest in Page and in his campaign, he failed miserably. Far from demonstrating that the FBI was out to get Trump, the memo suggests that the Trump campaign could have had an active Russian spy working as a foreign policy adviser. Nunes suggests that the FISA applications were flawed because they included some information supplied by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, who was hired by an opposition-research firm funded by the Clinton campaign. But as a matter of law, that shouldn’t have made a difference to the court, especially if the affidavit had plenty of other supporting evidence of Page’s activities. Notably, the memo doesn’t even attempt to argue that Page did not, in fact, have ties to Russia.

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