Liberal Media ignores Biden Scandal

[Mike M (the other one)]

(09-06-2023, 06:38 AM)hollodero Wrote: Not that I would want to swear on the integrity of every FBI official. But again as far as I know, that was not the actual chain of events. The FISA warrant that was based on parts of the information in the Steele dossier concerned a guy named Carter Page who was somewhat connected to the Trump campaign on its periphery. It was to prolong an existing surveillance back from 2014, when Page stood out as being extremely Kremlin-friendly and called himself an informal advisor. Russian agents tried to recruit him (and allegedly backed down because he was an "idiot") - all of which, well, will get you on a counterintelligence radar usually. The later extensions were found to be invalid, that appears like a mistake or misdeed from the responsible FBI agents. No denying that.
Trump, however, was part of FISA orders [as fas as I know...] for communications from a Trump tower server with Russian banks. Which had nothing to do with Page or Steele's dossier. As for Manafort, he was targeted by FISA orders too, but that particular investigation started way back in the year 2014. And was about his lobbying for Yanukovich, which again had nothing to do with Steele. He might have been tapped while working for Trump (I found contradicting reports on that, so I'm not sure), and there was a renewal of a FISA warrant in that period of time, but again as far as I know not on the grounds of allegations in the Steele dossier.



On that one I am more certain that this is not the case. The dossier was given to buzzfeed by an associate of McCain. Steele himself called the publication "most irresponsible", claimed it endangered lives and livelihoods, very much including his own. In fact, he and his family went into hiding instead of doing an Avennati-esque media victory tour, and understandably so, for fear of Russian retaliation alone.
He did share his findings, that's for sure, with the FBI, with counterintelligence officials, and then some. McCain also was within the circle of people that were made aware of the dossier. But informing the media, I'm inclined to believe that was never part of Steele's idea.



The dossier was published way after the election.



Well... I don't know if it would put them on the hook legally. Morally, I can see the point. And they did indeed misreport the expenses as legal advice instead of opposition research and got fined over 100.000 dollars for that. So yeah there's some dirt.



But Papadopoulos was part of the Trump campaign. The investigation started when he told some Australians about him knowing about Hillary mails in Russia's possession. So the investigation was somewhat tied to the Trump campaign from the start.
It sure did expand from there, and the Steele dossier certainly was on the FBI's radar, not least due to Steele's insistence. Which, on its face, is not all that surprising to me. When there's a counterintelligence investigation over Russian interference and Russian ties to the Trump campaign, it seems logical that a dossier of raw intelligence concerning the same issue gets looked at.



Oh yeah, you're right. Just to be clear, I did not intend to defend this corrupt guy anyway, but that was not on my radar.

We could go back and forth arguing on this i think, but I'm not trying to say this is what started it all. I'm saying it was used as an Ends to a Means when it shouldn't have been even considered and makes the FBI look incompetent (as though they need help).