Release The Memo

[Mr. Deez]

Announcing that Hillary should be prosecuted for gross negligence. Let Lynch squirm her way out of doing just that in front of the American people. The consequence of this could be nothing or possibly be fired by Obama.

You're right about what the right thing would have been. But you're wrong about what the consequences would have been. Knowing what he knew at the time, if he had done what we both agree was the right thing to do, it would have cost him his career. He would have paid a massive personal and financial price, and for what? He would have been slandered and hated by virtually everybody here knows, and HRC still would have walked.

Look, I believe in moral standards. Right is right, and wrong is wrong. My point is that when actually facing the consequences Comey was facing, most people would have done what he did.

 

[Garmel]

You're right about what the right thing would have been. But you're wrong about what the consequences would have been. Knowing what he knew at the time, if he had done what we both agree was the right thing to do, it would have cost him his career. He would have paid a massive personal and financial price, and for what? He would have been slandered and hated by virtually everybody here knows, and HRC still would have walked.

Look, I believe in moral standards. Right is right, and wrong is wrong. My point is that when actually facing the consequences Comey was facing, most people would have done what he did.

Doing the right thing is sometimes hard. However, his career would not be completely over. The hard right would fall in love with him and he would get a cushy job at Fox News making more money then he would have at the FBI. That's not including the book deal he would also get. Also, history would have judged him much kinder then what it will now. That job isn't worth your honor.

 

[Mr. Deez]

Doing the right thing is sometimes hard. However, his career would not be completely over. The hard right would fall in love with him and he would get a cushy job at Fox News making more money then he would have at the FBI. That's not including the book deal he would also get. Also, history would have judged him much kinder then what it will now. That job isn't worth your honor.

I'm not saying the guy would be on food stamps, but here's what would have happened to him. Yes, the hard right would have liked him, and Fox News may have given him a job. However, if you're a DC guy, isolating yourself to the hard right means that you lose 90 percent of your friends, contacts, and connections, because it's a community dominated by the left. (Trump got 4 percent if the vote in DC.) That doesn't mean you have to be a liberal to get by on DC, but if you become the left's arch enemy, it's gonna hurt a lot. (See Kenneth Starr.)

So what does all that mean for Comey? It means that he would never have worked in government service again, which clearly mattered to him more than money because he most certainly took a colossal pay cut to go to the FBI. No federal judicial appointment, which was another ambition of his. On the money side, it also means that he would never have worked in a government-oriented job in the private sector again, because he'd lose his most important connections in DC. No gigs with Lockheed Martin or other defense contractors. No lobby gig. Over the course of his life, it would probably have cost him 8 figures. Should he have done it anyway? Yes, but do I think most people would have done the right thing? No. Do I think most people who say they would have done the right thing would have? No.

 

[Joe Fan]

That's a bold strategy, Cotton ....

 

[Seattle Husker]

SH, you know as well as anybody with your security clearance background that ANY classified material whether it is CONFIDENTIAL or TOP SECRET would never be passed around on any unsecured network regardless of the intent of the sender.

Now that I know your military background in classified material handling, let me ask you this question. Would you have ever thought to send any classified material on the normal email networks, i.e. NIPRnet?

Also, the US Code for handling classified material does not use the word intent anywhere in its language. It doesn't matter what the intentions are of the sender, it only matters what material was compromised.

No one should get a pass when it comes to our nation's secrets, if enough evidence can prove gross negligence of the sender.

MH- I agree with most of what you said. As as Private, i would have been charged and sent to Leavenworth withou a second thought. As you are also aware, the law is applied differently to those in power. My point is that the result of HRC's malfeasance was close to typical. It's not right but expected. David Patraeus handed years of notes to his biographer and received a misdemeanor and $100k fine. Had an enlisted person shared comparable information and be recorded admitting on tape they shouldn't be sharing it as they handed them the notes, they'd spend 10 yrs minimum in Leavenworth.

 

[Monahorns]

Even mild mannered Andrew McCarthy at NRO is taking the gloves off. His analysis is the one I have been following before I form an opinion because it is the most detailed account I can find. At this point, voters should not trust the government regardless of who's in office. There is enough corruption evident to provide suspicion for all of it.

http://www.nationalreview.com/artic...m-memo-affirms-nunes-memo-fisa-steele-dossier

 

[Garmel]

Even mild mannered Andrew McCarthy at NRO is taking the gloves off. His analysis is the one I have been following before I form an opinion because it is the most detailed account I can find. At this point, voters should not trust the government regardless of who's in office. There is enough corruption evident to provide suspicion for all of it.

http://www.nationalreview.com/artic...m-memo-affirms-nunes-memo-fisa-steele-dossier

I'm just hoping the IG is not another swamp monster.

 

[Seattle Husker]

I'm just hoping the IG is not another swamp monster.

I suspect there are articles being crafted already casting the IG as a swamp monster in the event that he doesn't give them the narrative they seek.

Conversely, there are those on the left that will attack the IG if his information does support the conservative narrative.

 

[iatrogenic]

That is why we corroborate sources and verify claimed facts. Then we point out the falsehoods and excuses made by wrong doers and their supporters that claim everything is just political. We gain actual factual evidence verifying illegality.

 

[OUBubba]

That is why we corroborate sources and verify claimed facts. Then we point out the falsehoods and excuses made by wrong doers and their supporters that claim everything is just political. We gain actual factual evidence verifying illegality.

That sounds like Trump's version of "due process". #releasetheothermemo.

 

[iatrogenic]

Yes it does. It also sounds like an important aspect of due process.

 

[Joe Fan]

Seems pretty clear Nunes has set his sights on John Brennan, James Clapper next (and possibly Susan Rice and Leon Panetta). Brennan and Clapper in particular have perjured themselves multiple times now. But people like this never seem to be subject to the same laws as everyone else. Maybe it will be different this time?

For example --

In his May 2017 testimony before the intelligence panel, Brennan emphatically denied the dossier factored into the intelligence community’s publicly released conclusion last year that Russia meddled in the 2016 election "to help Trump’s chances of victory.”

Brennan also swore that he did not know who commissioned the anti-Trump research document (excerpt here), even though senior national security and counterintelligence officials at the Justice Department and FBI knew the previous year that the dossier was funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign.​

https://www.realclearinvestigations...or_john_brennan_investigated_for_perjury.html

 

[Clean]

Going after UT's own John Brennan. According to Wikipedia;

Brennan currently serves as a Distinguished Non-Resident Scholar at The University of Texas at Austin, where he also acts as a Senior Advisor to the University's Intelligence Studies Project.

 

[Phil Elliott]

Maybe it will be different this time?

I doubt it, but there are a lot of things that have not being going like they usually go since DT got elected.

 

[OUBubba]

Going after UT's own John Brennan. According to Wikipedia;

Brennan currently serves as a Distinguished Non-Resident Scholar at The University of Texas at Austin, where he also acts as a Senior Advisor to the University's Intelligence Studies Project.

Is he part of the keep Austin weird movement? Damn liberals!

 

[mchammer]

Is he part of the keep Austin weird movement? Damn liberals!

Well , he was a former communist.

 

[Clean]

Well , he was a former communist.

Who became head of the CIA. Scary, huh? Eisenhower must have rolled over in his grave.

 

[ProdigalHorn]

This is a different memo, but it seems to fit the context here:

http://thehill.com/opinion/white-ho...ithhold-intel-from-trump#.WoRP7kYv5cE.twitter

"
Rice sent herself the email 15 minutes after President Trump formally took office on Jan. 20, 2017. In it, Rice purports to summarize a high-level meeting she attended about two weeks earlier on Jan. 5, 2017. Also in attendance, she says, were President Obama, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, FBI Director James Comey and Vice President Joe Biden. The meeting, writes Rice, was held after a briefing by intelligence community leadership on “Russia hacking during the 2016 Presidential election.” According to news reports, the meeting also addressed the anti-Trump “dossier” political opposition research paid for by the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party. We now know the FBI used the dossier, in part, to justify wiretapping a former Trump adviser.

In her email, Rice states that President Obama prefaced the meeting by stressing that he wasn’t “asking about, initiating or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective” and that every aspect should be handled “by the book.” So what was the meeting about?"

“From a national security perspective, however, President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia,” writes Rice.

The next part of the email is classified. Yet, taken by itself, Rice appears to be saying that Obama suggested the outgoing administration withhold information from the lawfully elected incoming administration — for national security reasons. Could that mean they were devising rationales to keep Trump officials from learning about the controversial surveillance practices they had used against Trump associates?

"
Last fall, it was discovered that Rice was one Obama official involved in the controversial practice of “unmasking” names of political figures whose communications were captured “incidentally” during government surveillance. Rice has insisted she had legitimate reasons for doing so.

Government surveillance of U.S. citizens is strictly regulated because it’s such an invasive privacy intrusion. Even when their communications are “incidentally” captured as part of a legal wiretap on a legitimate national security target, the U.S. citizens’ names are supposed to be hidden or “masked” from others inside the intelligence agencies. “Unmaskings” are supposed to be rare and legally justified through a carefully vetted processes. The surveillance and unmasking of political figures or journalists was normally considered especially sensitive by intelligence analysts and something usually avoided so they wouldn’t appear to be improperly spying on Americans for political reasons.

But during the 2016 campaign, it became routine for the Obama administration to unmask U.S. citizens’ names. Unmasking requests were made almost daily under the name of the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power. They included the names of Trump associates who had been surveilled by U.S. intelligence. However, Power reportedly told Congress someone else used her name on many of those unmasking requests. The mystery of who hasn’t been solved. Power and Rice have firmly denied being responsible for leaks to the press about the content of surveillance material collected and used against Trump associates."

So basically, Rice decides she needs a paper trail of the Obama meeting. Presumably, she wants it on record that she had directions from Obama to potentially withhold information - either to absolve herself of responsibility, or to emphasize the serious threat with which the Obama admin viewed Trump's team.

So was she laying the groundwork for when all the spying allegations would come up?

 

[ProdigalHorn]

Nailed it.

http://thefederalist.com/2018/02/15...ion-story-helped-create/#.WoW0hoFmzjE.twitter

Essentially, echo chamber created by talking points from dossier being reported on in the media before it was released, including concerns about policies Trump allegedly was considering - which actually were right in line with what the Obama administration had been practicing for the past eight years. Critiques of Trump's alleged attempt to soften the GOP platform on Russia - an attempt which never actually happened, but was reported on, nonetheless.

"The reason the media will not report on the scandal now unfolding before the country, how the Obama administration and Clinton campaign used the resources of the federal government to spy on the party out of power, is not because the press is partisan. No, it is because the press has played an active role in the Trump-Russia collusion story since its inception. It helped birth it.

To report how the dossier was made and marketed, and how it was used to violate the privacy rights of an American citizen—Page—would require admitting complicity in manufacturing Russiagate. Against conventional Washington wisdom, the cover-up in this case is not worse than the crime: Both weigh equally in a scandal signaling that the institution where American citizens are supposed to discuss and debate the choices about how we live with each other has been turned against a large part of the public to delegitimize their political choices.

I’ve argued over the last year that the phony collusion narrative is a symptom of the structural problems with the press. The rise of the Internet, then social media, and gross corporate mismanagement damaged traditional media institutions. As newspapers and magazines around the country went bankrupt when ownership couldn’t figure out how to make money off the new digital advertising model, an entire generation of journalistic experience, expertise, and ethics was lost. It was replaced, as one Obama White House official famously explained, by 27-year-olds who “literally know nothing.

But the first vehicles of the Russiagate campaign were not bloggers or recent J-school grads lacking wisdom or guidance to wave off a piece of patent nonsense. They were journalists at the top of their profession—editors-in-chief, columnists, specialists in precisely the subjects that the dossier alleges to treat: foreign policy and national security. They didn’t get fooled. They volunteered their reputations to perpetrate a hoax on the American public.

That’s why, after a year of thousands of furious allegations, all of which concerning Trump are unsubstantiated, the press will not report the real scandal, in which it plays a leading role. When the reckoning comes, Russiagate is likely to be seen not as a symptom of the collapse of the American press, but as one of the causes for it."

 

[Seattle Husker]

To report how the dossier was made and marketed, and how it was used to violate the privacy rights of an American citizen—Page—would require admitting complicity in manufacturing Russiagate.

The narrative that the dossier was the sole evidence used to justify an investigation of Carter Page disregards statements by Gowdy, Nunes, Schiff and other known facts (i.e. Page was first investigated by the FBI in 2013). This is the definition of cognitive dissonance.

 

[ProdigalHorn]

The narrative that the dossier was the sole evidence used to justify an investigation of Carter Page disregards statements by Gowdy, Nunes, Schiff and other known facts (i.e. Page was first investigated by the FBI in 2013).

*sigh* ...

Nowhere in the article does it say that. Nowhere have I said that. I don't think ANYONE except you has said that.

However, based on what we're starting to learn, it's becoming clear that the statement by all the people you mention except Schiff (who apparently is to be believed because he's just trying to defend the truth, whereas Nunes is a partisan hack who should be discounted) are accurate that the investigators didn't have sufficient cause to get the warrant WITHOUT the dossier - which again, was supported and corroborated by media accounts based on writers talking to Steele and reporting based on the dossier's contents.

 

[ProdigalHorn]

And btw, kudos to - of all papers - the NY Times for making a point that will be ignored and marginalized by pretty much everyone else.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/...e-but-their-political-power-is-overblown.html

"
This conclusion may sound jarring at a time when people are concerned about the effects of the false news articles that flooded Facebook and other online outlets during the 2016 election. Observers speculated that these so-called fake news articles swung the election to Donald J. Trump. Similar suggestions of large persuasion effects, supposedly pushing Mr. Trump to victory, have been made about online advertising from the firm Cambridge Analytica and content promoted by Russian bots.

Much more remains to be learned about the effects of these types of online activities, but people should not assume they had huge effects. Previous studies have found, for instance, that the effects of even television advertising (arguably a higher-impact medium) are very small. According to one credible estimate, the net effect of exposure to an additional ad shifts the partisan vote of approximately two people out of 10,000.

In fact, a recent meta-analysis of numerous different forms of campaign persuasion, including in-person canvassing and mail, finds that their average effect in general elections is zero."

"The proportion of news people saw that is bogus. The total number of shares or likes that fake news and bots attract can sound enormous until you consider how much information circulates online. Twitter, for instance, reported that Russian bots tweeted 2.1 million times before the election — certainly a worrisome number. But these represented only 1 percent of all election-related tweets and 0.5 percent of views of election-related tweets.

Similarly, my study with Mr. Guess and Mr. Reifler found that the mean number of articles on fake news websites visited by Trump supporters was 13.1, but only 40 percent of his supporters visited such websites, and they represented only about 6 percent of the pages they visited on sites focusing on news topics.

None of these findings indicate that fake news and bots aren’t worrisome signs for American democracy. They can mislead and polarize citizens, undermine trust in the media, and distort the content of public debate. But those who want to combat online misinformation should take steps based on evidence and data, not hype or speculation."

 

[Crockett]

And btw, kudos to - of all papers - the NY Times for making a point that will be ignored and marginalized by pretty much everyone else.

The NYT may be partisan, but its people are smart, professional and appeal to our cerebral cortex in a world of media mostly aiming straight for our adrenal glands.

 

[ProdigalHorn]

And since the chirping crickets are demanding it, a good take on the Susan Rice self-addressed email which assured herself that Obama wanted everything done "by the book" - because I guess the meeting she attended two weeks ago was in danger of slipping from her mind on her last day of work before she had to leave the White House and her government email address which would be used to document all those meetings going on during the transition period.

http://www.nationalreview.com/artic...s-plan-dont-tell-trump-hes-being-investigated

"Significantly, by the time of this January 6 meeting with Trump, the 90-day surveillance period under the FISA warrant would have had just a bit over two weeks left to run — it was set to expire just as Trump was to take office. (Reporting suggests that there may also have been a FISA warrant on Paul Manafort around this time.) The Obama administration was therefore confronting a deadline if the FISA warrant was to be renewed while Obama was still in power. The officials in the meeting would need to figure out how the investigation could continue despite the fact that its central focus, Trump, was about to be sworn in as president. Obama had incredibly claimed that he never intervened in cases under investigation by the Justice Department and FBI. He was emphatic in an April 2016 interview with Fox’s Chris Wallace: “I do not talk to the attorney general about pending investigations. I do not talk to FBI directors about pending investigations. We have a strict line and always have maintained it.” Ever the cheeky Obama, he made this claim while in the same breath arguing against indicting Hillary Clinton. Obviously, if Obama was having a “follow-on conversation” with Yates and Comey, what it was following on was the briefing he’d just received about an investigation implicating the Trump campaign in Russian espionage. (As Comey’s March 20 House testimony would later elucidate, Russia’s interference in the election was always seen by law-enforcement officials as inseparable from suspected Trump-campaign collusion in that interference.) There would be no reason to have such a follow-on conversation unless Obama wanted an update on what his law-enforcement officials were doing.

Consequently, Rice’s “by the book” bunkum is transparent: Obama officials claimed to adhere to a book that forbade consultations between political leaders and investigators. But here they were consulting. So Rice tried to cover the tracks in her email: She revises history such that the consultation morphs into a mere friendly reminder that Obama wanted everything done by the book. He was certainly “not asking about, initiating or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective,” no siree. We might counter that people who have lived “by the book” for eight years would not have to remind each other to go “by the book.” It would go without saying. "
...

"To tell Trump he was not under investigation was misleading. Just like Susan Rice’s email was misleading. The strategy forged by top Obama political and law-enforcement officials was to pursue an investigation of President Trump without sharing the full details of the investigation. They made a plan: Give Trump just a sliver of what the probe is about, tell him he is not under investigation, and keep investigating him under the guise of investigating Page, Manafort, and the Steele dossier. It is getting close to two years with no apparent evidence of an actionable Trump–Russia conspiracy. Nevertheless, it is still necessary to ask: Is President Trump under investigation for collusion with the Kremlin? If not, shouldn’t he and the country be told that? And since counterintelligence investigations are conducted to inform the president — the constitutional officer responsible for national security against foreign threats — it is worth asking: What was the difference between what the FBI told the FISA court about the Trump–Russia investigation and what they told the president of the United States about it? "

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/artic...s-plan-dont-tell-trump-hes-being-investigated

 

[Seattle Husker]

Nowhere in the article does it say that. Nowhere have I said that. I don't think ANYONE except you has said that.

Why are those facts left out? Because it would weaken the argument in that article. It's the omission that leaves a reader with only part of the story.

For example, if the reader of the article knew that there Carter Page was first questioned by the FBI in 2013 when an investigation. If the reader were told that Page was told by the FBI of attempts to recruit him by Soviet intelligence. If the reader was told that Page was under active investigation when the FBI was given received the dossier then that puts the dossier in different context, doesn't it? Wouldn't a rational person say "if he's been under suspicion and more information comes in that is additive to the original info it should be considered"?

Why do you suspect that is never mentioned in these conservative articles? If you can point to the Dossier as uber-important and the driving factor in investigation then you can invalidate the entire investigation. Except, we now know that the dossier was corroborating evidence for other sources, not the central premise.

the investigators didn't have sufficient cause to get the warrant WITHOUT the dossier

Cutting through the sarcasm I'll address this salient point. Wray or McCabe (can't remember) stated that he's not sure the FISA warrant would have been sought if not for the dossier. Note he didn't say "granted" because we all know the FISA court appears to be a rubber stamp. That's the crux of the matter and a valid debate point.

 

[VYFan]

And btw, kudos to - of all papers - the NY Times for making a point that will be ignored and marginalized by pretty much everyone else.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/...e-but-their-political-power-is-overblown.html

"
This conclusion may sound jarring at a time when people are concerned about the effects of the false news articles that flooded Facebook and other online outlets during the 2016 election. Observers speculated that these so-called fake news articles swung the election to Donald J. Trump. Similar suggestions of large persuasion effects, supposedly pushing Mr. Trump to victory, have been made about online advertising from the firm Cambridge Analytica and content promoted by Russian bots.

Much more remains to be learned about the effects of these types of online activities, but people should not assume they had huge effects. Previous studies have found, for instance, that the effects of even television advertising (arguably a higher-impact medium) are very small. According to one credible estimate, the net effect of exposure to an additional ad shifts the partisan vote of approximately two people out of 10,000.

In fact, a recent meta-analysis of numerous different forms of campaign persuasion, including in-person canvassing and mail, finds that their average effect in general elections is zero."

"The proportion of news people saw that is bogus. The total number of shares or likes that fake news and bots attract can sound enormous until you consider how much information circulates online. Twitter, for instance, reported that Russian bots tweeted 2.1 million times before the election — certainly a worrisome number. But these represented only 1 percent of all election-related tweets and 0.5 percent of views of election-related tweets.

Similarly, my study with Mr. Guess and Mr. Reifler found that the mean number of articles on fake news websites visited by Trump supporters was 13.1, but only 40 percent of his supporters visited such websites, and they represented only about 6 percent of the pages they visited on sites focusing on news topics.

None of these findings indicate that fake news and bots aren’t worrisome signs for American democracy. They can mislead and polarize citizens, undermine trust in the media, and distort the content of public debate. But those who want to combat online misinformation should take steps based on evidence and data, not hype or speculation."

Took me a while to find my post from 5 months before the election, but...

 

[iatrogenic]

The NYT may be partisan, but its people are smart, professional and appeal to our cerebral cortex in a world of media mostly aiming straight for our adrenal glands.

And sometimes they just pull stuff out of their partisan asses.

 

[ProdigalHorn]

Why do you suspect that is never mentioned in these conservative articles? If you can point to the Dossier as uber-important and the driving factor in investigation then you can invalidate the entire investigation. Except, we now know that the dossier was corroborating evidence for other sources, not the central premise.

Because if those facts weren't enough to get the FISA warrant, then it follows that those connections weren't sufficient to consider the Trump campaign likely to have behaved illegally.

Note he didn't say "granted" because we all know the FISA court appears to be a rubber stamp. That's the crux of the matter and a valid debate point.

There are a lot of prosecutors I'm sure who are out there saying "you know, we've got plenty of evidence to convict, but I'm not sure if we want to actually move forward with the case yet." If the team doesn't even think they can ASK for the warrant, do you really think they thought they'd get it?

 

[ProdigalHorn]

For example, if the reader of the article knew that there Carter Page was first questioned by the FBI in 2013 when an investigation. If the reader were told that Page was told by the FBI of attempts to recruit him by Soviet intelligence. If the reader was told that Page was under active investigation when the FBI was given received the dossier then that puts the dossier in different context, doesn't it? Wouldn't a rational person say "if he's been under suspicion and more information comes in that is additive to the original info it should be considered"?

Kinda begs the question of why he was under suspicion to begin with. As mentioned, it's pretty clear that upon investigation, a lot of his claims turned out to be hot air. And a lot of the claims about him (i.e. he met with officials) turned out to be "he was at a speaking engagement, and said hi to them at some point during the evening."

The administration wanted to tie Trump to Russia, and Page was a guy who had ties to Russia in some form or fashion, ergo they wanted to surveil him. From what I can tell, that and his own claims were all that really made him relevant, and once his claims fell through they didn't have anything to go on. Until the dossier, that is.

 

[Seattle Husker]

The administration wanted to tie Trump to Russia

Starting out with a hypothesis then seeking only information to support it is confirmation bias, right?

I'll wait for Meuller's results.