Did Trump try to fire Mueller?

[Goalpost]

Memo is now making it's way out.

[Belsnickel]

(02-02-2018, 11:56 AM)BmorePat87 Wrote: With the leaders of the FBI and DOJ calling for the memo to not be released, Trump has taken to twitter to attack them, saying they are politicizing investigations in favor of Democrats.

His own appointees...

"These Republican officials are helping Democrats and not me!" I don't know, maybe this should tell him something about his positions and the law.

[GMDino]

https://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/national/read-the-gop-memo/2746/

Thar she blows!

[Belsnickel]

So, after reading the memo, I'm left with lots of questions that could be answered by source materials. Was the FISA application they speak of the first, or subsequent ones? This is about 4 total applications, so I'd like to know which one(s) supposedly omitted the information they are claiming. Also, it is my understanding that these applications tend to run into hundreds of pages, so what was the other information contained? There would have to be more behind the request than just the dossier, or any judge worth their salt would have denied it. So for them to have probable cause 4 times says they had other things in hand.

Looking at this critically, the memo is much ado about nothing. Written by partisan staffers telling only a part of the story. Context is necessary to understand this, and there is no context.

I do find it funny, though, that this is claiming that these officials used this process for politics when three out of the four officials are Republicans. But whatever.

[GMDino]

I was just going to post this in the Comics and memes but....

[GMDino]

Here’s potentially the most important paragraph in the memo. It appears to confirm the NYT’s scoop — which was that the counterintelligence investigation began BEFORE the FISA applications against Page. Papadopoulos was already under investigation. Wow: pic.twitter.com/VadOFVYAUH

— David French (@DavidAFrench) February 2, 2018

So if the memo confirms that and the FBI “deep state” knew about Papadopoulos for so long why, if the “deep state” was hell bent on keeping Donald Trump out of office, did the Papadopoulos News never get leaked? Didn’t FBI have Papadopoulos news for months before election? https://t.co/AuJ1gepfoq

— John Dickerson (@jdickerson) February 2, 2018

In reflecting more on this, I think Nunes may have just blown up the core Trump defense to the “Russia investigation” — that it was all fruit of the poisonous Steel tree. Not true. It was already underway. https://t.co/gUvGgSUyY1

— David French (@DavidAFrench) February 2, 2018

[GMDino]

The top Leadership and Investigators of the FBI and the Justice Department have politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats and against Republicans - something which would have been unthinkable just a short time ago. Rank & File are great people!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2018

When you're attacking FBI agents because you're under criminal investigation, you're losing https://t.co/SIoAxatCjp

— Sarah Sanders (@SarahHuckabee) November 3, 2016

[Belsnickel]

My takeaway: Unless you know the entirety of the FISA application you really don’t know much. If it was based entirely on the dossier obviously that’s very concerning. Also, highly doubtful that is the case.

— Josh Holmes (@HolmesJosh) February 2, 2018

This is my position.

[BmorePat87]

Basically it's suggesting that the dossier was the only reason why the FISA was approved, which seems disingenuous. A judge wouldn't approve it for that one source and a yahoo news article. The three renewals would have required new sources.

The interesting thing is point 5 references the fact that the Papadapolous' connection with Page was a part of this and that he was on the FBI's radar for well over a year before his role was revealed. It confirms the knowledge of his actions early on and seems to dismiss any attempts to suggest a deep state Anti Trump conspiracy was trying to leak information, because that would have been huge in the Summer of 2016. All of this is covered in GMDino's post above.

[StLucieBengal]

https://www.dailywire.com/news/26693/5-things-you-need-know-about-bombshell-house-ben-shapiro

Can’t believe this hasn’t been a thread yet.

Certainly looks like he dems and obama admin worked together to spy on trump. Using the Steele dossier, funded by the dnc and Hillary, as the principle reason to get a FISA warrant on Carter Page doesn’t look good for the dems at all nor the FBI and Obama DOJ.

Certainly nothing in here to stop Mueller but man his could go to a place where is does.

Quote:5 Things You Need To Know About The Bombshell House Intelligence Memo

Ben ShapiroFebruary 2, 2018

NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images
The memo is out, and it’s damning.

But it’s not the end of the Mueller investigation. In fact, the memo provides evidence that if President Trump were to fire Mueller, he’d be doing so on the false pretense that the entire investigation was predicated on a Hillary/DOJ/FBI/Obama nexus of coordination. The memo itself disproves that notion. With that said, the Democrats’ attempts to stifle the memo on national security grounds appear to have been totally and completely specious and ridiculous to boot.

So, here’s what you need to know about the memo, if its allegations are true.

1. The FBI and DOJ lied to the FISA Court about the grounds for a warrant on Trump foreign policy advisor Carter Page. According to the memo, the Fusion GPS dossier, compiled by Christopher Steele and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, was the central basis for the FISA warrant against Page. But that dossier was obviously biased — and that information was never turned over to the FISA court. The memo states, “The application does not mention Steele was ultimately working on behalf of — and paid by — the DNC and Clinton campaign, or that the FBI had separately authorized payment to Steele for the same information.” Furthermore, the FBI did not independently verify the claims of the Steele dossier in any serious way before seeking the FISA warrant. Those involved in the application include current deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, which is likely why President Trump refused to rule out firing him today.

2. The media helped garner the warrant. The Carter Page FISA application apparently cited a Yahoo News article that was based on leaks from Steele to the news outlet. But that was not independent corroborating evidence of the Steele dossier — it was a repetition of the information Steele was disseminating. Steele was later suspended and terminated from the FBI for “an unauthorized disclosure to the media of his relationship with the FBI.”

3. Steele didn’t like Trump, but this information wasn’t included in the FISA application either. According to the memo, Steele told associate deputy attorney general Bruce Ohr that he was “desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president.” Ohr didn’t report that in the FISA application, nor was information that Ohr’s wife worked for Fusion GPS on compiling opposition research on Trump revealed to the FISA Court.

4. Most importantly, the Carter Page application was NOT the launching point of the Trump-Russia collusion investigation. This is the most important point. If the Page FISA warrant had been the centerpiece and launching point of the investigation, Trump might have grounds to shut the whole thing down — Trump could claim, rightly, that the FBI, DOJ, and Hillary campaign worked together to trump up these charges, and then weaponized our intelligence and law enforcement community against him. But the memo itself states that “The Page FISA application also mentions information regarding fellow Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos. …The Papadopoulos information triggered the opening of an FBI counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016 by FBI agent Pete Strzok.” The memo points out that Strzok was also anti-Trump, but provides no evidence that the Papadopoulos investigation was biased — and that would be hard to prove, since Papadopoulos has now pled guilty to lying to the FBI. So the notion of the Mueller investigation as a sort of “fruit of the poisonous tree” springing from Page is undercut by the memo.

5. This memo doesn’t endanger national security. It’s nearly impossible to see how this memo endangers national security. Democrats can’t express a clear reason. The FBI can’t. The DOJ can’t. Which makes it look as though they were all covering their asses in an attempt to avoid culpability for an attempted political hit on Trump.

So, here’s where we are: the FBI and DOJ clearly cut corners in an effort to push forward the Trump-Russia investigation. They worked with Fusion GPS materials to do so, and didn’t tell the FISA court. And then they apparently fibbed to the American people about the supposed risks to the intelligence community if the public found out about their original lies by omission. But the Page warrant isn’t the entirety of the investigation, and attempts to take down the entire investigation based on this memo will be a wild oversell.

[StLucieBengal]

https://www.dailywire.com/news/26699/6-serious-outstanding-questions-house-intelligence-ben-shapiro

6 serious questions

Quote:6 SERIOUS Outstanding Questions On The House Intelligence Memo

Ben ShapiroFebruary 2, 2018

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images
On Friday, Rep. Devin Nunes’ (R-CA) four-page memo detailing alleged abuses by the FBI and DOJ in pursuit of a FISA warrant on Trump foreign policy advisor Carter Page was released to the public. A full breakdown of the memo is available by clicking here.

But new questions are now arising about the accuracy of that memo. Here are some of those questions:

1. Does the memo mischaracterize former FBI director James Comey’s comments on the so-called Steele Dossier? Patterico at Red State has a piece detailing the memo’s misstatement of fact on Comey’s testimony. According to the memo, Comey called the dossier “salacious and unverified.” But as Patterico points out, Comey didn’t say that. In fact, when asked if the criminal allegations detailed in the Steele dossier had been confirmed by the FBI, Comey explicitly stated he couldn’t answer the question for classification reasons. He said that certain portions of the dossier were “salacious and unverified.”

2. Does the memo tell the truth about deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe’s testimony? According to the memo, McCabe testified that the Steele dossier was the centerpiece of the FISA warrant on Page — that “no surveillance warrant would have been sought” from the FISA court without it. But Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) disputes this account of McCabe’s testimony, and says that McCabe testified that the “genesis of the investigation” didn’t start with the dossier at all. The transcript of the testimony is available. Let’s see it.

3. Does the memo assume facts not in evidence? The memo alleges that the three re-authorizations of the FISA warrant on Page were based on the dossier. But we don’t know if the re-authorizations were also based on additional material. Furthermore, the memo claims that “senior DOJ and FBI officials” knew about the “political origins" of the Steele dossier, but we don’t know which officials knew what.

4. Does the memo tell the truth about the FBI’s failure to disclose information on Steele’s biases to the FISA court? Schiff has explicitly denied that the FBI didn’t tell the FISA court about Steele’s purported bias against Trump — he states, “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.”

5. What did Bruce Ohr have to do with the FISA warrant? The memo points out that Department of Justice lawyer Bruce Ohr’s wife worked on the Fusion GPS opposition research project on Trump. But the memo isn’t clear that Ohr actually worked on the Carter Page FISA warrant. That’s a disconnect that needs to be bridged.

6. Was the Trump campaign actually targeted? This is a serious question. The memo itself acknowledges that the Trump-Russia collusion investigation began with George Papadopoulos, who has now pled guilty to lying to the FBI. The warrant on Page came only months after he had left the Trump campaign. So was this a concerted attempt to take down Trump, or a legitimate investigation into particular figures allegedly working with the Russian government?

Some of these questions can be answered by actual documents — for example, releasing the underlying FISA application, or the transcript of McCabe’s testimony. Other questions can be answered through testimony under oath. In the coming weeks, there should be serious calls for both.

[*bfine32*]

Most likely hasn't been a thread yet because you're the only member that reads Daily Wire.

[CKwi88]

I'm kind of disappointed that the Dems even put up that much of a fight. To anyone with a shred of objectivity this memo is a big nothingburger and Nunes and Trump look all the worse for it. Between Trump's own DOJ and FBI nominees being against it, paired with the backlash from GOP congressmen, Dems should just laugh at this sideshow being put on.

[BmorePat87]

Memo discussion has been on going in this thread for days

http://thebengalsboard.com/Thread-Did-Trump-try-to-fire-Mueller

[StLucieBengal]

(02-02-2018, 07:59 PM)bfine32 Wrote: Most likely hasn't been a thread yet because you're the only member that reads Daily Wire.

Well then thankfully I post the links from the site.

And given the post count off my threads s lot of People here read dailywire. Lol

[Belsnickel]

(02-02-2018, 08:30 PM)CKwi88 Wrote: I'm kind of disappointed that the Dems even put up that much of a fight. To anyone with a shred of objectivity this memo is a big nothingburger and Nunes and Trump look all the worse for it. Between Trump's own DOJ and FBI nominees being against it, paired with the backlash from GOP congressmen, Dems should just laugh at this sideshow being put on.

I'm pretty disappointed about this, as well. Honestly, what I think happened was that neither the Republicans or Democrats in Congress thought this thing would see the light of day. In a normal presidency, I don't think it would have. The GOP talked it up, the Dems overplayed the idea that it was damaging to the intel community, overall it is just a bunch of disappointment. All the hype for and against for no good reason.

[StLucieBengal]

(02-02-2018, 08:30 PM)CKwi88 Wrote: I'm kind of disappointed that the Dems even put up that much of a fight. To anyone with a shred of objectivity this memo is a big nothingburger and Nunes and Trump look all the worse for it. Between Trump's own DOJ and FBI nominees being against it, paired with the backlash from GOP congressmen, Dems should just laugh at this sideshow being put on.

They don’t put up that much of a fight unless there is something to all this.... please release the whole lot. I want to see it all.

[NATI BENGALS]

My question is, how many members of congress are traitors either knowingly or unknowingly doing Putin's work like Mccain says?

Nunes for sure.

We know Russia has a big ally in the white house. No new sanctions for hacking our election. And now some of the moles in congress are sticking their heads out. With the leadership we have now it isnt time yet, but one day when some more Republicans with a backbone start standing up, we can start whacking them.

[GMDino]

(02-02-2018, 08:50 PM)BmorePat87 Wrote: Memo discussion has been on going in this thread for days

http://thebengalsboard.com/Thread-Did-Trump-try-to-fire-Mueller

Yes, but not from a white nationalist perspective.  Lets let that stay in its own thread.  

[GMDino]

https://www.redstate.com/patterico/2018/02/02/significant-inaccuracy-thememo-calls-credibility-question/

Quote:A Significant Inaccuracy In #TheMemo Calls Its Credibility Into Question


Amid all the excitement over the Devin Nunes #TheMemo, it is important to remember that it is a partisan summary of FISA warrant applications that we the People have not been allowed to see. And in determining whether you trust Nunes’s summary, it might be relevant that it inaccurately summarizes something that is public record: James Comey’s testimony in 2017 regarding whether the allegations in the memo had been verified. Here is the claim in Nunes’s memo:

Got that? Nunes claims that James Comey testified in June 2017 that “the Steele dossier” was “salacious and unverified.” The claim is not that a particular portion of the dossier is salacious and unverified. The claim is that Comey testified that the dossier(“it”) is salacious and unverified. That’s what Nunes says in the memo excerpt above.

And it’s not true. That’s not James Comey’s testimony.

I already examined this issue exhaustively in a post from January 2, rebutting a similar allegation made by Andrew C. McCarthy. Refer to that post for more detail, which I will summarize here. As I noted, Comey was specifically asked whether the FBI had confirmed any criminal allegations in the dossier, and he refused to answer the question in an open setting. Here is one example from the transcript:

Quote:BURR: In the public domain is this question of the “Steele dossier,” a document that has been around out in for over a year. I’m not sure when the FBI first took possession of it, but the media had it before you had it and we had it. At the time of your departure from the FBI, was the FBI able to confirm any criminal allegations contained in the Steele document?

COMEY: Mr. Chairman, I don’t think that’s a question I can answer in an open setting because it goes into the details of the investigation.

Had Comey specifically said in closed session that nothing in the dossier had been verified, you’d be reading about it in this environment of politicized intelligence. But you’re not reading that, are you? Why do you suppose that is?

Later in his testimony, Comey referred to certain material as “salacious and unverified” — but he later implied that there were parts of the dossier that were verified and parts that were not. Here is the testimony where Comey used the term “salacious and unverified”:

Quote:SEN. SUSAN COLLINS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Comey, let me begin by thanking you for your voluntary compliance with our request to appear before this committee and assist us in this very important investigation. I want first to ask you about your conversations with the president, three conversations in which you told him that he was not under investigation. The first was during your January 6th meeting, according to your testimony, in which it appears that you actually volunteered that assurance. Is that correct?

COMEY: That’s correct.

COLLINS: Did you limit that statement to counterintelligence invest — investigations, or were you talking about any FBI investigation?

COMEY: I didn’t use the term counterintelligence. I was briefing him about salacious and unverified material. It was in a context of that that he had a strong and defensive reaction about that not being true. My reading of it was it was important for me to assure him we were not person investigating him.

Note well: Comey doesn’t say the entire dossier is “salacious and unverified.” He says he briefed the President about “salacious and unverified material.” Later, under questioning from Tom Cotton, Comey once again said Trump denied the “unverified and salacious parts”:

Quote:COMEY: The president called me I believe shortly before he was inaugurated as a follow-up to our conversation, private conversation on January the 6th. He just wanted to reiterate his rejection of that allegation and talk about—- he’d thought about it more. And why he thought it wasn’t true. The verified — unverified and salacious parts.

Again, the phrase “unverified and salacious parts” is clearly a reference to the peeing on the bed allegation, and perhaps a related mention of prostitutes. But “unverified and salacious parts” is language that pointedly does not rule out the concept that there were verified and non-salacious parts as well. Indeed, the pee-on-the-bed story was hardly the only allegation in the Steele dossier. When you put this together with the fact that Comey flat-out refused to answer (at least in an open setting) whether any parts of the dossier had been verified, it’s clear that the testimony is not what #TheMemo claims it is.

I have no idea what Andrew C. McCarthy thinks about #TheMemo today; his opinions on this whole topic have been something of a moving target. But there was a time when he said something I agree with, and here it is:

Quote:The FBI plainly did not dismiss the dossier out of hand. If it used some of the dossier’s information in a FISA-court surveillance application, that would only be problematic if agents failed to verify that particular information before seeking the warrant. That would be highly irregular. For now, we don’t know what happened.

Indeed. The real issue, which Nunes’s memo does not shed any real light on (and indeed almost purposefully obscures) is a) what specific parts of the dossier were used in the FISA application, and b) were those parts verified. As to those questions, we’re no closer to a real answer today than we were yesterday — except that if Nunes could give us chapter and verse, his presentation would be more convincing. And yet, he doesn’t.

Remember: Nunes is someone who already showed himself to be of questionable credibility when it came to defending Trump’s claim that Obama wiretapped him. Now he’s misrepresenting public testimony that anyone can read. Yet we’re supposed to believe his summary of a still-classified FISA warrant based on these broad-brush smears?

Nope. No sale. I said before that it’s a terrible hashtag, but #ReleaseTheDocumentation — specifically the FISA application. If you don’t do that, I have no interest.