BREAKING: Democratic rebuttal to GOP House Intelligence memo released

washingtonexaminer.com ^ | Daniel Chaitin

[RoosterRedux]

The Democratic rebuttal memo to the Republican House Intelligence Committee memo on alleged government surveillance abuses was released Saturday afternoon.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., acknowledged its release at his appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference, at about 4 p.m.

"It's just posted," he told American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp, quipping that the committee website was probably already crashing due to high traffic.

Democrats say their memo was written as a rebuttal to provide greater context to a Republican memo that was released earlier this month, which outlines abuses by the FBI and the Justice Department against the Trump campaign.

Although the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee voted to make the Democrat’s memo public earlier this month, President Trump refused to declassify it, citing "significant concerns for the national security and law enforcement interests."

[NormsRevenge]

NothingBurgers for everybody.. with a splash of Broward Coward sauce for good measure.

[greeneyes]

No need to read it. I did read to the point where the mentioned Carter Page - trying to paint him as a Russian Agent. Too bad, we already know that Page was used in a sting operation by the FBI to take down a Russian spy.

Page was an FBI plant to try and frame DJT. Period.

[rx]

In Erik Prince's testimony before Congress' HPSCI in November of 2016 he claimed to have been illegally surveilled and unmasked and the information from that surveillance and unmasking was illegally leaked to the Washington Post, where a personally damaging article was written. It would appear such surveillance was undertaken because he appeared at Trump Tower during campaign season, even though he was in no way affiliated with the campaign.

The SIGINT was verified by active duty IC personnel as spying on and unmasking him without a FISC warrant.

We can carp about what the FBI's use of the Steele dossier did to damage Trump, but another untold part of the story is how far and wide the net of associations was cast (six degrees of Carter Page), how many times inappropriate unmaskings were done and to how many undeserving or not-clearance-qualified recipients of such data there were.

[Empireoftheatom48]

You mean Judith Miller. She should still be in jail.

[octex]

Ping to self for later reading of #28...

[Innovative]

The memo is here:

http://docs.house.gov/meetings/ig/ig00/20180205/106838/hmtg-115-ig00-20180205-sd002.pdf

[bitt]

.” But the story of the Schiff memo is that the Russia investigative team wasn’t made aware until September.”

What about the attempt during the summer of 2016 when they attempted to get a FISA and were shot down??

[MHGinTN]

That is the ‘man behind the curtain’ we chattel are not supposed to see. Democrats like being lied to, so Schiff-less lies to them constantly. It is the Democrap Way.

[MHGinTN]

Also of note, Brennan exposed items found in the dossier to Harry Reid, who then demanded an investigation ... prior to September. Reid spittled things only found in the memo. Brennan should be one of the ‘retainees’ for military tribunals and firing squad.

[LOVETRUMP]

As suspected, Dema are guilty as hell. Trump needs to get out there and blast this all week!

[ding_dong_daddy_from_dumas]

The Obama administration abused 702 processes too, but that is not what the Nunes/Schiff memos are about.

I believe they got a Title 1 warrant for Carter Page. I was disappointed that Nunes didn't fight harder when the 702 renewal came up, but maybe in some closed session he saw that it would be futile, and anyway they probably would (and probably did) spy on Trump without a warrant.

[Jacquerie]

No doubt it is a complex situation.

[dp0622]

Unfortunately, it is not just a country with two major parties who disagree on some things.

We are their enemy and they are ours.

I never HATED those who thought differently and were liberal.

Now they sicken me to the point where i can’t tolerate them at parties or anywhere else.

[Cboldt]

-- I believe they got a Title 1 warrant for Carter Page. --

Yep, 5o USC 1800, et seq, and in my opinion, the 1804/1805 warrant was sought to obtain 1809(b) insurance policy, immunity from criminal prosecution for warrantless snooping. In other words, snooping didn't start with the warrant, and the point of the warrant wasn't to "authorize snooping." The FBI and other agencies snoop when they feel like it, for any purpose, and the law is a toothless hag.

Sundance did a very good job of laying out speculation on the relationship between the blanket warrantless surveillance described in 702 surveillance, 5o USC 1881, et seq, and the specific court orders directed against Carter Page - the subject of the dueling HPSCI memos. Read Tying All The Loose Threads Together - DOJ, FBI, DoS, White House: "Operation Latitude".

"Unmasking" of the names or ID or US persons can happen in the context of both searching the foreign communications database that is obtained without a warrant (702), and the communications obtained under a Title I court order. Both protocols include "minimization" procedures, which is essentially "masking" procedures.

What Admiral Rogers found unjustified unmasking (violation of agreed minimization) in the 702 database. Whatever minimization tightening followed from his detection would not transfer to a Title I search program.

The country has been down this road before. Somehow the fact of wholesale government snooping on the public becomes a point of discussion. Some outrage is ginned up to comfort the public, hearings are held (for example, the 1973 Church Committee), laws are passed that are promised to "fix this so it never happens again," and the ultimate effect of the law is to legalize an expansion of the wholesale snooping on the public. The FISA law didn't rein in snooping, it expanded it, and even created a "star chamber secret court" to make it appear the snooping had third party oversight to protect privacy interests. We have no more privacy against our government than the North Koreans have against theirs. Same, same. We just waste more money on a facade that calls itself "privacy protection."

[hal ogen]

He isn't hallucinating...he is doing what he usually does...Lying.

[hal ogen]

If it wasn’t released the lunatic LIBs would accuse President Trump of collusion, deception, cover-up or something. It is best to see the light of day because it is the typical BS by the LIB lunatics. Their perfidy is endless.

[semimojo]

What about the attempt during the summer of 2016 when they attempted to get a FISA and were shot down??

The memo claims that the first FISA application was in October 2016.

[AndyJackson]

Thanks. One of the things that I am curious about is the lack of any real public discussion of the civil liabilities and criminal sanctions for failure to establish and follow required minimization procedures. The widespread leaking of surveillance information is indisputable demonstrating that minimization procedures were not in place and not followed (e.g. allowing contractors broad access to data the would require being read into a special access program for that issue if you were a federal employee).

I would hope - perhaps to no end - that involved folks will be totally bankrupted and perhaps go to jail (this is wishful thinking) for these actions.

[AndyJackson]

I want to second your endorsement of Tying All The Loose Threads Together - DOJ, FBI, DoS, White House: "Operation Latitude". For those who think that a lot of this is getting to be rather conspiratorial, it pretty clearly ties up the conspiracy with lots of "go deep" links to provide further documentation.

On of the Go Deep Links is to “Mike” is Out – Michael P Kortan Quits FBI

This contains an interesting piece of information citing Strzok's tweet:

As pointed out, the referenced gang of coconspirators against the Constitution included:

• “Jim”, aka James Baker (FBI Chief Legal Counsel) was removed in January.
• “Mike” aka Michael Kortan (FBI Asst. Director Public Affairs) quits today.
• “Dave” aka David Laufman (DOJ – National Security Division, Deputy Asst. Attorney General in charge of counterintelligence) quit yesterday.
• “Trisha” aka Trish Beth Anderson (Office of Legal Counsel, FBI)

  Given all of the speculation about Priestap [head of counterintellignece] having been turned and singing, I have advanced the alternative theory. Head of CI at the FBI is an awfully sensitive position to leave someone who is has engaged in conspiracy against the government, and it is my alternative theory that Pirestap was never part of the conspiracy in the first place. How can that be? Well CI ops are all compartmented and there is no law that the head of CI has to be read into any particular operation - for instance one initiated by the head of the agency (Comey at that time).

[gloryblaze]

Wow. that is really well done, thoroughly up to speed. I hope Peter King and Gowdy can get out there and spread the word.