Posted on 02/05/2018 3:32:40 PM PST by markomalley
The House Intelligence Committee memo about 2016 surveillance abuses, released Friday, lays out grave evidence that the FBI wasn’t fully forthcoming with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court as it sought an order to wiretap former Trump adviser Carter Page. It’s possible the FBI’s lack of candor was even worse than the memo describes.
Democrats are disputing the memo on lots of grounds, but they’ve said little about the FBI’s failure to inform the court that the bureau had itself decided one of its main sources, dossier author Christopher Steele, was unreliable. Mr. Steele in October 2016 gave Mother Jones an unauthorized interview about the dossier. As a former British intelligence officer, Mr. Steele would have known that sources are not supposed to blab to the press. The interview appeared but a few days before the election, was at the direction of his paymaster, the opposition-research firm Fusion GPS, and was clearly designed to help the ultimate client: the Hillary Clinton campaign.
Stuck with a source now brazenly using the FBI for political purposes, the bureau suspended and then terminated Mr. Steele. Only nine days before the Mother Jones interview, the bureau had filed its application for the Page wiretap order, which rested on the Steele dossier. Yet the FBI did not immediately go back to tell the court it no longer trusted Mr. Steele...
(snip)
The Grassley referral needs be fully declassified, just as the House memo was. The FBI needs to answer straightforward questions about Mr. Steele’s claims, and he needs to provide his version.
The FBI got fooled by a source, or it knew its source was lying, or it didn’t bother to check, or it was too incompetent to see the obvious. Take your pick. None of the possibilities look good, especially if you’re a FISA judge.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
No
Can you snooker people who know that you’re using a marked deck but who say nothing because they value their plausible deniability?
No, they were co-conspirators. Furthermore steel had no sources, he accepted the cash and made up a damning “report”.
One thing that becomes obvious in all this is that the average person is not as liberal as the liberals think they are.
Is this Grassley tossing the FBI a lifeline?
“You blame this Steele guy for lying to you all, and blame comey and mccabe for being suckered by him, then you all come out clean”?
Something like that? Wow, where’d all my trust in the government go?
Comey snookered the FBI....
So the FIBbers claim they cut loose of steele after they found out he was feeding crap (salacious and unverified; per Comey in fall of 17 testimony). However they applied to FISC 3 more times using the same crap.
What I want to know is when did the FIBbers and DOJ stop allowing Fusion GPS
And Steele to access and run querry searches on our surveillance systems?
If either party is a dupe I’d say it’s more likely the FBI snookered Steele. They hired him. He was given an assignment he didn’t come up with the plan.
When?
You mean “IF” they’ve stopped them.
What we’re witnessing is a trail of detritus that was not expected to ever see the light of day, first because their Borg queen was going to be elected, then afterwards because they believed themselves capable of causing Trump to be removed from office. Steele went to Mother Jones at the direction of Fusion GPS, which was not acting in a vacuum, it was retained by the Clinton campaign to do exactly what they did. This was an intentional strategy to control the narrative to Hillary Clinton’s favor. The dossier was used repeatedly in FISA court, well after it became widely known that it was salacious and unverified. Of course, those involved in procuring and creating “the thing,” the dossier, knew all along that it was salacious and unverified, but that knowledge getting out into the world should have led to backing away from it. They didn’t. Correct me if I’m wrong but some are still clinging to the supposed veracity of the dossier.
No, the FBI knew that the dossier was a fraud, but didn’t care. They wanted to help Clinton, hurt Trump and they weren’t about to let the facts stand in their way.
Or he’s calling their bluff.
“None of the possibilities look good, especially if you’re a FISA judge.”
Unless the FISA judge is also a “resistance fighter”.
Snookering happened at the SCOTUS..”
Strassel
Freeman
Henniger
The best of the lot at the WSJ. Some of the best anywhere.
“None of the possibilities look good, especially if you’re a FISA judge.”
Who cares? The FISA court is secret and unless DEMOCRATS are willing to join Republicans, the judges there simply CANNOT be disciplined. Assuming what I’ve read is true, the judges are all Democrats...so their inclination, of course, is to supporting the spying, regardless of whether there’s anything to support it...and, again, they face NO PENALTY for teaming with Obama and Hillary to allow the spying.
This FISA Court has to go - or at least, the very least, it must NEVER be permitted to spy on candidates during a campaign or transition.
Wilfully snookered, imho.
Lock the bastards who conspired in this gross violation of civility up. Surely, some charges can be brought.
a fiction writer
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