Eventually, the truth always comes out

[Dill]

(07-21-2023, 10:53 AM)SunsetBengal Wrote: The same ones who allowed endless investigations over a phony Steele Dossier, when they knew it was crap, but allowed FISA warrants anyway. 

I think the FBI was not totally forthcoming in discussing the dossier with Congress; and they have paid a price for that by allowing the GOP to divert attention from serious issues of national and election security. 

In 2020, the Senate Judiciary Committee (led by Democrat Dick Durbin) confirmed that the FBI knew Steele's sources were "word of mouth" and "hearsay," with enormous chain of custody problems, and that earlier FBI testimony had framed some of Steele's conclusions as part of the raw data of the dossier--but failed to adequately apprise the Congress of that. I understand why people who don't understand much about how raw data is evaluated, and treat the dossier a final product which solely guided the FBI in its investigation, might now want to call the investigations themselves a "hoax"--with a great deal of help from Hannity and Fox--"We now know the FISA warrants were based on the 'discredited' dossier" etc. 

Though Trump himself was never under investigation for collusion (he did later come under investigation for obstruction), I still hear the claim that a "fake" dossier was used to go after HIM (not attributing that to you, Sunset).

But according to the FBI and the documentary records they have supplied Congress, The initial FISA warrant was triggered by the behavior of people in Trump's campaign--beginning with an alert by an Australian ambassador--all before evaluation of the dossier was underway. Only at a later point was some info from the dossier used in the Carter Page warrants--along with other sources which cannot be revealed. 

The dossier's alleged election interference by Russians, and multiple contacts between Trump campaign officials and Russian spies/operatives, were confirmed in later FBI investigations based on other evidence. E.g. the dossier's claim that Russians appeared to have stolen Hillary emails was confirmed, as was the FSB's decision to support Trump over Hilary. That's all corroboration from other sources, and found in the dossier BEFORE the FBI knew it and corroborated it with other "reliable" sources. They also discovered that Michael Cohen could not have been in Prague, and did not think Trump's golden showers in Moscow credible, though they could neither confirm nor disconfirm. Like Hunter Biden's laptop, it smacked of FSB disinformation.

Those "endless investigations" also uncovered rather a deal of actual wrong doing, ending in at least 8 convictions of Americans for crimes actually committed--convictions NOT based on the dossier. And jail time until Trump brought out the Pardon pad, negating legal convictions--and the point of investigating threats to national security. Almost forgot--about 26 foreign nationals were also convicted, including 13 Russian agents. Howz that bad? 

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/why-team-trump-wrong-about-carter-page-dossier-secret-warrant-n893666
https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/07/politics/dossier-two-years-later/index.html

Safe to say the sources were very questionable, and that's common in raw intel data. But it's still hard to dismiss that fact that essential parts of this "hearsay" were later corroborated.