376 thoughts on “The Wholly Fallacious FISA/Carter Page Application That Was Based on the Steele Dossier”

1. By way of background, I want to mention that this post has been in the works for about 2 weeks and was 100% done in terms of substance 2 weeks ago. Between Lucia's and my busy schedule as well as the lousy WordPress editor, it took about 2 weeks to take care of minor things and get this up. I had hoped to get it up before the Mueller report was released.

   ……
   I just read the Mueller report as it applies to Carter Page and there is nothing in it that contradicts the substance of my post here. There is zero evidence that Page met with Igor Sechin or Diveykin, which was the factual predicate for the Application and the multiple renewals. The lack of evidence is really damning with respect to Sally Yates and Comey who signed off on it. Ultimately, it is also damning with respect to Obama.

   JD

2. Trump is a criminal, and all climate change skeptics seem to love him. Not odd at all.

3. Thanks JD. I thought this was a pretty interesting write up. I don't think I follow how the claim that the Steele dossier is 100% wrong is supported – are you saying that the fact that Page was never charged (well, and that the dossier's claims about Cohen's travel to Prague were false) demonstrate this?

4. 1) You can't claim things are not in the FISA when so much is redacted.

   2) Those are not the only details about Carter Page in the dossier.

   3) Buzzfeed redacted some details on Cohen it knew to be false- his wife is Russian, her father is a VIP in Russia.

   4) I'm not aware of any detail in Steele Dossier being true that was not publicly known at the time he wrote it.

   5) Asha Rangappa is a former FBI Agent who now appears on TV to attack Trump, and her spin is that verification in FISA means an agent checks all claims in warrant application about witness statements, and compares this to the file they have on the witness statements, and verifies that they are a match. Well, OK then.

   6) Note : “The target of THIS application is Carter W. Page, a U.S. person, and an agent of a foreign power, …”
   FBI also got FISA against Manafort, Flynn, and Papadopoulos.

   7) Back to 2) note the warrant application date, Oct 21, and look at the memos dated just before that. I think this is two-way communication, and Steele was writing the memos to meet the needs of the FBI in getting the warrant approved. There is a memo 'confirming' Page's meeting from another source. And crucially,

   8) Report of Michael Cohen traveling to Prague to pay hackers. Jake Tapper reported a different Michael Cohen traveled to Prague. I think this was a botched attempt to put verifiable information in the dossier. The FBI realized there was another Michael Cohen, and ignored this information suggesting the whole thing is fabricated.

   9) Page is a US citizen. To get a FISA, it's not enough to describe him as a foreign agent. The definition of foreign agent for a US citizen includes that the person is committing a crime(or about to do so). The FISA is redacted so we don't know what they claimed. I don't see anything in Mueller Report describing crimes by Page or even investigation of these. Also, nothing on Flynn, Papadopoulos, or Manafort that would apply. Take another look at the memos in 7). Steele provides the FBI with a description of Page committing a crime, the brokerage on sale of Rosneft in exchange for dropping sanctions. This theory makes even more sense if FISA is not on Flynn as reported but instead Michael Cohen as he is listed everywhere in those memos.

5. JD,
   You have obviously spent a lot of time on this. I dismissed the whole collusion meme a long time ago, so I haven't even bothered to look into the details of "collusion" in the Mueller report. Yes, there was grotesque subversion of the FISA process, but, unfortunately, I very much doubt those responsible will ever be held to account. I also think it likely that other people associated with Trump were subjected to FISA spying…. and that will never be revealed (AKA the culprits will get away with it).
   .
   I spent a few hours on the second half of Mueller's report, where (real quick summary) Mueller said.. in over 40 pages:
   .
   "No, Constitutional issues, and long term rules at DOJ, mean we can't possibly charge the bastard with obstruction, but we sure wish we could, because he is guilty as hell, and we really hope the House impeaches him ASAP!"
   .
   The second half of the report was absolutely one sided garbage, and 100% motivated by animus toward Trump. It was not by any measure 'fair', nor even reasonable in its analysis. It does not attempt to strike a rational balance, nor to examine what actually happened, and how that motivated Trump's behavior.
   .
   I try to put myself in Trump's position…. He knows there was no collusion, and certainly no conspiracy with Russians to subvert the election process or steal emails. Yet he is being tormented endlessly by out-of-control FBI and Justice Department, and facing a torrent of leaks from the DOJ and FBI that all say he is a "Manchurian candidate", "a Russian intelligence asset", and "Putin's lapdog".
   .
   Of *COURSE* he is going to be upset, and look for ways to end the nonsense. Of *COURSE* he wants to fire all the miserable worms who are responsible for the absurd 'investigation'. His anger and frustration, facing a mountain of rubbish accusations, is completely understandable…. and something Mueller simply ignored. Mueller has raised the term "process crime" to a whole new level: you are innocent, and when claim your innocence and act to protect yourself from unfair attacks, that makes you guilty of obstruction of justice.
   .
   Mueller should be ashamed of himself for assembling a team 100% dedicated to 'getting' Trump. Mueller has soiled his name, and soiled the DOJ (although Obama appointees had already done a pretty good job of that). IMO, history will not be kind to Mueller. If the sources of leaking of information damaging to Trump from his anti-Trump team can be identified, he may well face legal risk as well. Nothing would be more just.

6. I can confirm, this was mostly written a while ago. The WordPress editor… it used to be easy to deal with. Sigh…

7. By the way, I also have not had time to read the Mueller report. I probably won't until at least next Wednesday! I'm seeing people comment on things on Twitter, but that's obviously not a way to read it!

8. Mike N: "1) You can't claim things are not in the FISA when so much is redacted.

   2) Those are not the only details about Carter Page in the dossier."

   …..
   You raise an important issue.

   …..
   The most important allegation of the Fisa Application was: "the FBI believes that the Russian Government's efforts are being
   coordinated with Page and perhaps [note qualification demonstrating admitted weakness of evidence for people other thatn Page] other individuals associated with Candidate #l's [Trump's] campaign" [p. 9 Fisa]

   ……

   …..
   The Mueller Report now makes clear that this allegation was completely wrong. In fact, only about 8 pages of his Report deal with Page, and none if it shows or hints of collusion on Page's part.

   …..
   The advantage of hindsight and having Carter Page's testimony, in a practical manner, refutes the idea that the redacted portions of the FISA application could support it. Page in his many hours of testimony before Congress unequivocally disputed the notion that he colluded with anyone. He testified 4 times in front of the FBI without a lawyer Between the spying on him and the spying on others, if he had lied in any way, the would have been prosecuted for lying. If there was some evidence linking him to collusion in a minor way, it would have come out. It hasn't. This proves in a practical sense that the underpinnings of the Application, in every significant sense were false.

   ……
   Putting all of the evidence and circumstantial evidence together, it is clear to me that in the sense of containing any significant evidence that Page had colluded with Russia (including evidence that could have been wrong but innocently mis-interpreted), the Application is 100% wrong. Among the significant circumstantial facts showing the "wrongness" of the Application are that: 1. Steele was "desperate to defeat Trump" and hadn't been to Russia since 2009 and neither of these facts was disclosed; 2. The fact that the Application was shepherded through the FBI in an unorthodox manner by people who virulently opposed Trump; 3. No charges of lying were filed against Page even though he unequivocally denied all of the charges of collusion, and 4. Page testified 5 times without a lawyer present and nobody could lay a finger on him — if there was weak evidence of collusion, it would have come out but didn't.

   …..
   To the extent that you might want to give a little bit of credence to my experience as a trial lawyer with witnesses, I wrote this post before the Mueller report came out and nothing in the report contradicts what I wrote. There are many tell-tale signs of honesty by Page and on the opposite end, dishonest slickness in the manner in which the Fisa Application was written and procured.

   JD

9. Mark Bofill: " I don't think I follow how the claim that the Steele dossier is 100% wrong is supported – are you saying that the fact that Page was never charged"

   …..
   Page was never charged with anything. The Fisa Application was used as an excuse to spy on him. In spying on him (and almost surely his associates), the FBI came up with zero. Looking back at it, it is clear that the FBI and DOJ had to have had known they had zero, particularly after spying on him for 20 or 30 days after the Application was filed because he never even met with Sechin or Diveykin, much less colluded with them — which was the predicate for the collusion claim.

   JD

10. Thanks JD.

11. JD,
    “The Fisa Application was used as an excuse to spy on him. In spying on him (and almost surely his associates), the FBI came up with zero.”
    .
    As I understand it, the key is that FISA law allows collection of data, past and present, on communications ‘twice removed’ from the official target. So by targeting Page, everyone Page communicated with, and everyone THEY communicated with were subject to FICA spying. IOW, pretty much the whole Trump campaign. Which was the whole point of the Page FICA warrant. People who hatched this abomination should spend many years in prison. I am guessing they won’t.

12. SteveF: "As I understand it, the key is that FISA law allows collection of data, past and present, on communications ‘twice removed’ from the official target. So by targeting Page, everyone Page communicated with, and everyone THEY communicated with were subject to FICA spying."

    ….

    I am assuming it works in the manner you described it. However, I have no personal knowledge of that. If you have links, I would appreciate it.

    Personally, at the very least, I believe there is probable cause to indict Sally Yates and Comey for illegally spying based on the initial Fisa Application. However, that could be a subtle matter because we don't know for sure how much the higher ups actually knew. Some of Rosenstein's testimony to Congress is relevant to this.

    JD

13. THUD. Mueller report lands with the media trying oh so hard to be excited about something but can barely find the energy to post the articles that were pre-written weeks ago. This thing will have a half life of about 24 hours. The Barr summary looks pretty accurate.
    .
    Time to go find another shiny object to play with. I said a long time ago that they better find something given the hysterical coverage, and they found next to nothing. An absolute humiliation of the media, even worse than the WMD fiasco. If they want to hang their hat on the (non) obstruction of the (non) crime then nobody will be surprised, and nobody will listen anyway. They may have very well handed Trump the 2020 election, as a repeat of the 2016 anti-Trump campaign will be met with a gigantic yawn and eye rolls.

14. Tom
    There is plenty of time between now and the election. Lots of stuff can happen. Trump can be annoying, but OTOH, so are some democrats. I'm not predicting whose going to win.

15. Are you possibly suggesting that Trump can be his own worst enemy? Conspiracy theory! An emboldened Trump might get real ugly. I think we are about to see the very definition of a sore winner.

16. Tom,
    Yes. Trump can be his own worst enemy. We'll see.

17. One of my pet peeves with the way that Carter Page has been inaccurately described is that "he worked for the Trump campaign…as a foreign policy advisory…" Mueller Report p. 95

    ….
    This is a very misleading description of the contributions of an unpaid volunteer who worked on an informal committee. The fact that Mueller writes it up that way is strong evidence of the biased approach he takes.

    JD

18. JD, report does not mention Steele except in obstruction section.
    I wonder if Page was already being spied on, and based on meeting with someone from Rosneft, they made up Sechin meeting.

19. JD,

    My impression is that Mueller is strongly biased, but not without principles. So there were limits to how far he would let his biases take him. The result is worse than if done by a person guided entirely by legal principles, but not as bad as if done by a person devoid of principles, like Nadler. Is that reasonably accurate?

20. MikeN. — In the good amount of time that I spent on this, I saw no indication that Page was being spied on before the FISA Application was made. In fact, there would be no reason to make the application if he was already being spied on. I have been wondering why he was targeted and am thinking that his many (innocent) Russian contacts were viewed by someone in the FBI as a useful starting point to start with a wide net of emails and other communications that could be gathered at the beginning of the spy operation.

    JD

21. MikeM: Your view is reasonable. However, I have a different take. In light of the Arthur Anderson debacle, his predilection for piling on process crimes, the bungled Anthrax case, and his support for the false idea that Iraq had weapons of mass destuction, I believe he is a self-righteous ideologue with a streak of adherence sometimes to the rule of law.

    … .
    That he undoubtedly overruled his Democratic staff in not filing obstruction charges is a positive factor in evaluating the body of his his work.

    JD

22. This is really amazing.
    .
    Media then: Trump colluded with Russia.
    Mueller: Trump did NOT collude with Russia.
    Media now: Trump colluded with Russia.
    .
    Media then: Trump obstructed justice.
    Mueller: A case can not be made that Trump obstructed justice.
    Media now: Trump obstructed justice.
    .
    The mainstream media have no shame.

23. Past experience on this site makes me doubt the value of lengthy exchanges on it, but I would like to make a comment to address a bit of the absurdity of this post. The bias of the post is obvious from its first sentence:

    The FISA/Carter Page Application based on the Steele Dossier was correctly characterized by Carter Page, as “complete garbage.”

    And only builds as the post goes on, repeatedly portraying the Steele Dossier as the only evidence used to justify the FISA warrants. Combined with the incessant flood if pointless rhetoric, the result is this post's message is effectively, "The Steele Dossier was a fraud and it was used to commit fraud by people whowere determined to take down Trump!" This message is dependent upon a host of deceptions.

    First and foremost, while it may technically be true the application "was based on the Steele Dossier," in the sense the Steele Dossier was used in the application, the implication of this post is, repeatedly, that the Steele dossier was the only basis for the application. There is no factual basis for this claim. Significant portions of the the FISA application were readcted, including pages of text in sections given to justify the application. It is outright dishonest to ignore the possibility that redacted text included other sources.

    Second, and building upon the first point, this post completely ignores well-known evidence which could have been used to support a FISA application. For instance, the post fails to note Carter Page was the subject of previous "spying" in 2013 in the same manner, after Page bragged about being an adviser to the Kremlin and Russian angents were caught discussing their attempts to recruit him as a foreign agent.

    Then there's the issue of who did Page meet with? This post makes a big deal about how Page's supposed meetings with two people never happened, but it fails to discuss the fact Page went to Russia to give a pro-Russia speech condemning US sanctions in 2016. When asked about this trip, Page said he didn't talk to anyone from the Kremlin. This was a lie, as Page later acknowledged when testifying under oath he had in fact met with a a Deputy Prime Minister from Russia.

    To avoid banging that drum too much, let's move onto a third and final point. This post's entire narrative is centered on the idea a FISA warrant was sought to take down Trump. In creating this narrative, numerous relevant points are not mentioned. For instance, nowhere in this post does it mention the very basic fact that the FBI only sought a FISA warrant in October, 2016, two months after Page had left the Trump administration. Paragraphs like this one:

    The circumstances concerning the source of the Dossier (Democrat paid opposition research), the shopping of the Dossier by someone “desperate to stop Trump” (See Ohr Transcript p. 30)and the irregular back channels through which it passed, the very biased people who worked with the Dossier (such as McCabe, Lisa Page and Strzok) along with the complete failure of the factual allegations all point to the conclusion that the Application shouldn’t have been filed and that the great probability is that it was filed to improperly spy on the Trump campaign.

    Would sound incredibly strange if the post had gone on to say, "Which Carter Page was no longer a part of." This is not the only flaw in the narrative of this all being a biased witch hunt, as there are other problems like all four judegs who approved the FISA applications being Republican appointees, but it is perhaps the most striking.

    To make a long story short, this post is a one-sided hit piece that makes no attempt to be fair or impartial, being intentionally misleading at best. Perhaps that's what people want. If so, whatever. I just felt it should be called out for what it is.

24. For some reason the HTML formatting of my previous comment seems to have been stripped from the comment. I have no idea why that happened. I apologize for it being more difficult to read because of that, but I don't know how I could fix it. (The edit feature for comments that was available on this site before doesn't show up for me now.)

25. Wow. Who was that crazy bearded hermit who just ran through here shouting, he looked familiar…
    🙂
    Thanks Brandon.

26. Brandon Shollenberger (Comment #174469): "Second, and building upon the first point, this post completely ignores well-known evidence which could have been used to support a FISA application. For instance, the post fails to note Carter Page was the subject of previous "spying" in 2013 in the same manner, after Page bragged about being an adviser to the Kremlin and Russian angents were caught discussing their attempts to recruit him as a foreign agent."

    The Steele report *was* the only evidence used to get the FISA warrant. It is irrelevant that Page had previously been approached by Russian agents. That is because Page responded to the contact by reporting the Russian agents to the authorities. If memory serves, he then helped the authorities get the goods on the Russians.

27. JD, my evidence that Carter Page was being spied on beforehand is only that the Mueller Report has actual meetings that are similar to what was stated in dossier. As far as I know those meetings were not public knowledge, so it would be a remarkably good guess by Steele.

    You say no need to get a FISA if they were already spying on him. I think perhaps you have it backwards. They weren't applying for the FISA to spy on Trump, but to create a reason for why they had been spying on Trump. Perhaps they got some extra ability they didn't have before, but I think some amount of spying was already happening. They sent people undercover at the campaign.
    Check out this document(title is not proven by content):
    https://www.scribd.com/document/349542716/Top-Secret-FISA-Court-Order-President-Obama-Spying-on-Political-Enemies

28. Brandon, the two-hop rule would have made the date of Page's leaving irrelevant. Unless there were limits placed in the redacted portion of the FISA order, the warrant would have allowed them to retroactively look at e-mails and whatever else they had, as well as surveillance of the campaign.
    It is doubtful they placed such a limitation because in the Steele Dossier which was used in the FISA, with FBI stating they find Steele's work to be reliable, this would mean the target was not Page, but Trump. In the dossier, the conspiracy is between Trump and Russia, and Manafort and Cohen are his primary underlings, and Page is an intermediary for Manafort.

    Page already being spied on was to stop a Russian attempt to recruit him. He was interviewed by FBI, and he then worked with them to go after the Russians, and met with the FBI as late as March 2016. Page's work for America against Russia is not evidence that Page is working for Russia against America. It would be dishonest if the FBI included this information in such a manner.

29. Brandon,
    "Past experience on this site makes me doubt the value of lengthy exchanges on it.''
    .
    Yes, starting with a general insult to readers is always the very best way to go.
    .
    "For instance, nowhere in this post does it mention the very basic fact that the FBI only sought a FISA warrant in October, 2016, two months after Page had left the Trump administration."
    .
    At the time there was only a Trump campaign, not an administration. But the fact he was no longer officially involved is utterly irrelevant; he could still have been in routine communication with people working for the campaign. Further, the FISA law allows recovery of communications from the past… eg the period when Carter Page was working with the Trump campaign.

30. This is a good summary of the spying conspiracy theory:

    https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/01/05/operation-condor-how-nsa-director-mike-rogers-saved-the-u-s-from-a-massive-constitutional-crisis/

31. MikeM, I remember it as Page was approached by FBI when they became aware Russians were recruiting him/finding him to be too idiotic to be recruited.

32. Brandon's post reminds me, the first sentence of the Mueller Report says, 'This report is submitted to AG pursuant to… which says the special counsel shall provide AG a confidential report.'

33. Brandon, it would help if you wouldn't have so many wrong statements in your post.

    > very basic fact that the FBI only sought a FISA warrant in October, 2016,

    As far as I know, this is not a very basic fact, and it is not established anywhere in the record. We know that THIS FISA was sought in October, but not if any were denied. It is known that 3 FISAs were denied in 2016, on any topic, and a British newspaper reported that one was denied in the summer.

34. MikeN (Comment #174474): "Page's work for America against Russia is not evidence that Page is working for Russia against America. It would be dishonest if the FBI included this information in such a manner."

    Well said!

35. Mike N: "Page was approached by FBI when they became aware Russians were recruiting him/finding him to be too idiotic to be recruited."

    This is another of my pet peeves. The Lefty media tries to paint Page as a dummy and cites this quote. The fuller quote is: "“He went to Moscow and forgot to check his inbox, but he wants to meet when he gets back,” Podobnyy told Sporyshev on April 8, 2013. “I think he is an idiot and forgot who I am.” See https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/04/04/russian-spy-met-trump-adviser-carter-page-and-thought-he-was-an-idiot/

    …..
    The most reasonable interpretation of this is that Soviet spy's feelings of importance were hurt and that he called Page an idiot because Page didn't remember him. There is no implication or evidence here that Page was a doofus and that the spy had any real reason to call him an idiot.

    …..

    Page testified before a Congressional Committee for about 6 hours without a lawyer, and, having read his testimony, I can confidently state that he isn't an idiot. Unfortunately, this is a classic example of the Left taking something out of context to paint a dishonest picture.

    JD

36. BSholl: "Second, and building upon the first point, this post completely ignores well-known evidence which could have been used to support a FISA application. For instance, the post fails to note Carter Page was the subject of previous "spying" in 2013 in the same manner, after Page bragged about being an adviser to the Kremlin and Russian angents were caught discussing their attempts to recruit him as a foreign agent."

    Since you are a classic troll who attempts to magnify nothing tangential points into big issues and often go way beyond your competence, (For instance, stupidly claiming in the past that circumstantial evidence couldn't be used to definitively prove anything and ignorantly going on and on) I am not going to reply in detail to you. However, your wrong statement above is useful to demonstrate that Page is and was completely innocent. From a CNN article:
    …..
    "In the 2015 case involving Page, the FBI said that his interactions with the individuals under investigation did not progress to the point where the bureau felt he had successfully been recruited as a spy or intelligence source.
    The three defendants in the case were charged with participating in a conspiracy to act as a foreign agent in the US without informing the Attorney General….
    . …
    Page, who has consistently said that he did not know the Russians were spies, maintained in statements to CNN that he only "shared basic immaterial information and publicly available research documents," providing "nothing more than a few samples from the far more detailed lectures" he was preparing for his students." https://www.cnn.com/2017/04/15/politics/russia-spy-recruitment-tactics-fbi-carter-page/index.html I have never seen any credible claim that Page was a spy and never seen any credible specific rebuttal to Page's specific statements about the innocent materials that were provided to the Russians.

    ….
    ….
    Bsholl: "This post's entire narrative is centered on the idea a FISA warrant was sought to take down Trump. In creating this narrative, numerous relevant points are not mentioned. For instance, nowhere in this post does it mention the very basic fact that the FBI only sought a FISA warrant in October, 2016, two months after Page had left the Trump administration. Paragraphs like this one"

    This is really stupid. Page was an unpaid volunteer on an informal committee. After getting wind of Steele's [false] allegations, he stepped down from his Mickey Mouse volunteer position to avoid problems in Sept 2016. He was never in the Trump inner circle. The unauthorized spying aspect of the FISA warrant was to use Page's minor contacts with others connected to Trump as a springboard to email chains of people more important in the Trump circle.

    …..
    …..
    For the benefit of others, here is the link to you making a fool of yourself with respect to circumstantial evidence beginning with Comment #152486 and going on and on http://rankexploits.com/musings/2016/presidential-debate-2-please-god-let-it-be-over/

    JD

37. In the 1840's tens of thousands of people joined the Millerites and made preparations for Christ's return on October 22, 1844; as predicted by William Miller. After the Great Disappointment, most left the movement, but some hung on. You'd think they'd have faded away (well, I'd think that). But today there are over 20 million Seventh Day Adventists.

    The above is, I think, on topic.

38. I think the responses here have proved my initial remark about the pointlessness of any lengthy exchange. For instance, SteveF says it's irrelevant that this post leaves out an important detail because some other claim (which nobody has even attempted to prove) would still let the point stand even if this detail had been disclosed. Even if his position were true, the fact there may be a rebuttal to a point does not mean the issue does not mean it is reasonable to fail to disclose the issue. Similarly, JD Ohio's response consists of many things like:

    Since you are a classic troll who attempts to magnify nothing tangential points into big issues and often go way beyond your competence, (For instance, stupidly claiming in the past that circumstantial evidence couldn't be used to definitively prove anything and ignorantly going on and on)

    For the benefit of others, here is the link to you making a fool of yourself with respect to circumstantial evidence beginning with Comment #152486 and going on and on http://rankexploits.com/musing…..t-be-over/

    I think it's clear when the author of a post responds almost solely to insult a person, primarily over things that have nothing to do with the current thread, conversation is pointless. I'd also say it shows the site's moderation policy is bad and does much to discredit the site. It's even more true when those insults are so utterly absurd. The reality is the exchange JD Ohio refers to began when he made the patently absurd claim:

    There are a number of interesting aspects to a defamation case. First, the public figure defense with respect to the NYTs is not that high of a bar because he can definitely prove malice. (He has been called a sociopath and misogynist by various columnists.)

    That "actual malice," a legal term of art, could be proven by showing someone exhibited "malice" toward a person. That is nonsense as any examination of libel law would show (something JD Ohio had shown he knew in the past, for which I offered a quotation as proof). When I pointed out the absurdity of this claim, In a following comment, I wrote a single sentence about "circumstantial evidence" and then, when challenged by JD Ohio over what I wrote, I wrote two sentences and quoted a definition about the topic of "circumstantial evidence" then never said another word about the issue.

    According to JD Ohio, it is "ignorantly going on and on" to respond when he insults you by providing two sentences and a reference. I have to say, I think this site would be more interesting if people here could at least be mildly competent with their insults.

39. Well, it looks like HTML formatting still isn't working in my comments. I don't know what's up with that. It's definitely unpleasant.

    Oh well. I'm pretty sure nobody wants me here so maybe I don't need to deal with that.

40. Another false statement:
    "Steele dossier was the only basis for the application. There is no factual basis for this claim. Significant portions of the the FISA application were readcted, including pages of text in sections given to justify the application. It is outright dishonest to ignore the possibility that redacted text included other sources."

    There is no factual basis for the claim that JD is outright dishonest.

    He gave an explanation above for why he thinks redacted portions hide nothing beyond Steele Dossier.
    In addition, Andrew McCabe testified that without the dossier, the FBI would not have tried to get this FISA warrant.

41. Brandon Shollenberger (Comment #174484): "I think the responses here have proved my initial remark about the pointlessness of any lengthy exchange."

    Typical leftist. When people disagree, insult them.

42. Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham produced their own classified memo last year, and it states:
    "The application appears to contain no additional information corroborating the dossier allegations against Mr. Page."

    Andy McCarthy was able to conclude the redactions have no corroboration of dossier based on his knowledge of how the FBI does warrants.
    https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/07/carter-page-fisa-applications-fbi-steele-dossier/

43. MikeN Thanks for the link to the National Review article. In itself, it is very good. More important to me is that it links to a summary pertaining to McCabe's testimony. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/byron-york-frustrated-lawmakers-pressed-fbis-mccabe-for-answers-on-trump-dossier-they-got-nothing

    …..
    "In a seven-hour interview with the House Intelligence Committee Wednesday, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe repeatedly declined to answer whether the bureau has been able to verify the substantive allegations in the dossier, or even to identify a substantive allegation that has been corroborated, according to sources familiar with the questioning. ….
    Lawmakers reminded McCabe that Page's presence in Moscow was long established and then asked again: Was there anything more in the dossier that McCabe now knows to be true [other than trip to Moscow]? McCabe, according to sources, said he did not know how to answer the question." Classic Hillary Clinton type deception/deflection

    …..
    This is all consistent with the known bias of Steele, which would have given fair investigator's pause. Of course, it didn't and we know that Steele was 100% wrong about Page. An error which minimally competent intelligence agencies, if acting in good faith, should have been able to identify.

    JD

44. Brandon,
    “Even if his position were true, the fact there may be a rebuttal to a point does not mean the issue does not mean it is reasonable to fail to disclose the issue.”
    .
    My position *is* true, and it is so obviously true to anyone who has any knowledge (even superficial) of FISA law, that it makes your criticism of JD Ohio not stating when the FISA warrant on Page was issued both silly and irrelevant. The FISA warrant allowed the FBI to pretty much spy on the whole of the Trump campaign via the ‘two hop’ rule…. which I suspect was the whole point of getting the warrant. Let’s see, Page had communicated with Manaford, and Manaford had regular communication with every important person in the Trump campaign… including Trump himself. Bingo!
    .
    “ I'm pretty sure nobody wants me here so maybe I don't need to deal with that.”
    .
    My guess is that’s probably right. You raise irrelevant points on tangential issues, argue about those irrelevancies without limit, and are then shocked (shocked!) when people find you a PITA.

45. Are there any known examples out there where western intelligence has had notable success in predicting the future, analyzing the present, or obtaining secret information via human intelligence? I read Phillip Knightley's "The Second Oldest Profession" some years back, and aside from signals intelligence it documents a long history of failure and ineffectiveness.
    .
    I think it's possible that the assumption intelligence agencies are minimally competent when acting in good faith may be flawed.

46. Brandon,
    .
    Heck yeah I don't want you here, doesn't sound like *you* want to read or post here either. I mean you've said: there's no value to be had commenting here, the post is absurd, the post is biased, the post is full of pointless rhetoric… So fine. So what are you doing here?
    I'd return courtesy if you'd shown any, since you didn't:
    Piss off. That'd be a win for you, a win for us.

47. Dale S (Comment #174491): "Are there any known examples out there where western intelligence has had notable success in predicting the future, analyzing the present, or obtaining secret information via human intelligence?"

    The problem with that question is that almost everything they do is secret. The mistakes often end up public, the successes hidden. The terrorists they miss make headlines, the ones they catch, not so much. Some of their biggest flubs, such as Iraqi WMD's, are probably on their political masters.

    I am not saying they do a great job. I am only saying that we don't know. Given the general lack of competence from the ruling class, my guess is that the intelligence community is no better than minimally competent.

48. Brandon S,
    It's fair to say that JDOhio's post shows his bias, but accusing him of a "host of deceptions" for what he didn't say shows your own bias. The short summary of the post is focused *entirely* on the Steele dossier's allegations, as are the details considered. The objection that the FISA's redaction means the dossier was *not* the sole support was already made, politely, by MikeN, and answered by JDOhio, politely, in #174454. JDOhio's argument as I understand it is that the redacted portion's importance is undermined by the curious case of the dog that did not bark in the night — if there was something in there that contradicted Page's testimony, Mueller would have charged Page — he's not shy about process crimes. If JDOhio is guilty of "deception" for failing to mention things you think should be mentioned, are you equally guilty of deception if you fail to mention things someone else think you should mention?
    .
    For example, when you mention (as a possible reason to spy on Paige) the spies caught for trying to recruit them, you fail to mention that he was not turned and he was contacted by counter-intelligence. When you mention that "he had in fact met with a a Deputy Prime Minister from Russia", you failed to give the details of that "meeting" from his sworn testimony — they were both speakers at the commencement and he said hello to him after the speech. According to Page "It was a very brief interaction. It was some nice pleasantries."
    .
    I'm no lawyer, but I wouldn't think either of those would *remotely* rise to the level of justifying spying on an American citizen. Nor would I think either would need to be redacted when Judicial Watch finally got hold of that FISA application.

49. Brandon,
    I'm happy with anyone posting substantive arguments and discussing in good faith. Unfortunately, when a visitor's (in this case you) *first* comment is to state outright that he thinks conversation with others here is valueless, that communicates the idea that the visitor (i.e. you) does not intend to argue in good faith. He has pretty much announced he does not intend to listen to the counter arguments others make and has pre-rejected them.

    I will refrain from saying whether that was your intention nor to diagnose whether that is what you are doing based on your responses to others.

    Sorry the html is not working. It's stopped working a while back. I don't know why and haven't had time to fix it. I'm between students and am packed until 6 pm this afternoon. I will then go out dancing, and may be busy tomorrow (Easter Sunday.) Jim is doing most the cooking…. but I will likely be given tasks.

    I won't be able to moderate people who are responding to your comments — which were a bit insulting in your first sentence and later. I also will not be commenting on your notions about Carter Page, the Mueller report. This is mostly because (a) I am busy and (b) unlike some other people, I have NOT paid detailed attention to it. Neither of these things have anything to do with not wanting you here.

    But I still need to point out that it is natural for people are *react* to the framing YOU put around your argument which currently less than courteous. Your observation some of them don't want you here is probably true, but that's mostly because your behavior is making you someone people would rather not interact with.

50. Dale S: Re:Bias

    I can see how you believe I am biased– For instance, the reference to the "spectacularly stupid" Atlantic writer. (His commentary was way, way off, but I could have used more reserved language). On my end, the reason I use such language is to provoke a response by Democrats who believe I am an uninformed partisan and that they can spear me. I don't think they can, but would like them to try.

    … .
    Realizing that some of my language is inflammatory, the more important question is the main point I was making that, being generous to the FBI and DOJ, some could believe there MIGHT have been a tiny bit of justification for the original application which was signed off on by higher ups potentially not familiar with the underlying dodgy basis of the allegations against Page, do you believe there is ANY basis at all for the renewals? I believe there is none.

    I would make tha analogy to the Duke lacrosse rape case. There was some justification initially (more than in the Carter Page case) for giving some credence to the accuser. However, when more evidence was presented and the students were able to give their side, it was 100% clear that the charges were false.

    JD

51. Correction, FBI did not have FISAs against Papadopoulos, Manafort, and Flynn, but had opened counterintelligence investigation against them. The source is from guessing at the redactions on page 11 of Nunes memo.

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D4jU5R2W4AEyNWN.jpg

    I think attorney Michael Cohen is a better fit, but I don't think he had been charged at that time.

52. New York Times is reporting that the dossier might be Russian disinformation. I don't think they thought through that this contradicts 'Russia was trying to help Trump.'

    The article says FBI interviewed some of Steele's sources, and tried to verify the dossier line by line.
    How could they go to FISC and say they find Steele's work reliable after knowing Michael Cohen didn't go to Prague?

53. JD, the renewal applications get longer each time, so they presumably tried to add something to get what they wanted. On the other hand, they went to a new judge each time, perhaps to avoid such questions, or perhaps this is just standard rotation of judges.

    They also dropped Steele as a source officially, while maintaining contact unofficially via Bruce Ohr.
    I wonder if the renewals extra info is primary media articles sourced to the same investigators.

54. Mike N: NYTs. Steele Dossier and disinformation.

    I read that article and have a number of problems with it https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/19/us/politics/steele-dossier-mueller-report.html. The main one being, that with much evidence of Steele and FBI bias the NYTs article doesn't even consider that Steele's dossier could have been fraudulent. The NYTs based its reporting on statements by FBI agents that they interviewed one of Steele's sources, and although they found that the source may have added his own interpretations to the information conveyed, he wasn't lying. It is definitely reasonable to report that. However, it is not reasonable to assume that what the FBI agents said is gospel truth; there are many indications of fraud by both Steele and the FBI here that should also be considered.

    JD

55. JD:

    Good job. Very interesting.

    I am looking forward to the IG's report on this issue as well as Barr's review of this issue.

    Should be highly entertaining!

    I respect Brandon's work on climate science issues. However, I am disappointed in how he engaged on this post.

56. Mike N: "the renewal applications get longer each time, so they presumably tried to add something to get what they wanted."

    The best way to look at this is through the lens of a trial lawyer. All lawyers know that if you only tell one side of the story, you can mislead/lie to anyone. Thus, the famous statement of a NY Justice in discussing grand juries that he "could indict a ham sandwich" if he wished.

    This is what is happening here. The FISA application functionally lies when it states: "Page is a former foreign policy advisor to a Candidate for U.S. President." A truthful statement would be that Page was an unpaid, volunteer on an informal committee who could submit his suggestions to Trump officials but who had no significant role in the Trump campaign. Yes, very minimally, he was a "foreign policy advisor" in the most technical sense, but practically he had no influence. If his role had been described realistically, do you think the FISA Application would have either been submitted or approved?

    …..
    A practice employed by a criminal lawyer I know is very similar to what I believe occurred with the Fisa Application. This lawyer said that when he represented criminal defendants, he didn't even want them to tell him whether they were innocent or guilty. (If they told him, they were guilty, he would knowingly be presenting lies to the court when the Ds testified in court about fanciful stories they concocted about why they were innocent)

    …..
    My take here is that the FBI knew, or very strongly suspected, that the allegations against Page were false. Instead of using the Application to legitimately find out whether Page was acting as an agent of a foreign government, it was improperly used to spy on Trump. If the FBI was legitimately concerned about Page acting as a foreign agent, they would have interviewed him directly after he went public in late September 2016, calling the allegations against him complete garbage. Instead, they used the tactic of the criminal defense attorney of hear no evil speak no evil, as an aid in supporting their fishing expedition against Trump, and didn't interview Page until March of 2017.

    Then using the half-truth technique, they added meaningless tangential facts to their renewal Applications to give them a patina of legitimacy, knowing that the Court had no practical means of ascertaining whether the tangential facts (known to the FBI but not the Court) had any practical meaning. We can be pretty confident that this is what happened because we do know that Page was a nobody who didn't even meet the people he supposedly colluded with. If the FBI cared about the truth, he could have quite easily found that out. Instead, it ran away from the truth, planning on extending the application as long as it could.

    JD

57. lucia, I wasn't going to comment again, but when a blog proprietor says something like:

    "I'm happy with anyone posting substantive arguments and discussing in good faith. Unfortunately, when a visitor's (in this case you) *first* comment is to state outright that he thinks conversation with others here is valueless, that communicates the idea that the visitor (i.e. you) does not intend to argue in good faith. He has pretty much announced he does not intend to listen to the counter arguments others make and has pre-rejected them."

    When I did not do the things listed, it seems worth pointing out. For instance, I did not say I think conversation with others here is valueless. What I said differs from your portrayal in two keys ways. First, rather than say I think conversations are valueless, I said I doubt their value .That is, I feel uncertain about their value. That is not the same as thinking they are valueless.

    Second, I did not express any feelings about conversations in general. I specifically said I doubt the value of lengthy exchanges. My thought was there could be value in short exchanges. If I didn't think that was the case, I wouldn't have posted at all.

    I also did not communicate the idea I wouldn't argue in good faith, but I don't think anyone cares to see me go through sentence after sentence of you mischaracterizing my behavior. I certainly don't have any interest in doing so. You are free to blame my behavior for the reactions I get if you want, but I'd think it'd be better if you'd refrain from blaming behavior I did not exhibit.

    Or not. JD Ohio's constant insults of people don't seem to trigger any complaints. I think the contrast to the reactions my comments get serves a much more valuable purpose than this post's content ever could.

58. > If his role had been described realistically, do you think the FISA Application would have either been submitted or approved?

    I think 'former foreign policy adviser' is valid. Trump campaign reported him as such, when they were facing media scrutiny over their lack of experience. Carter Page helped write the Mayflower speech.

    Your description is closer to what the Trump campaign was saying after they fired Page after the media declared him as colluding with Russia(source was Steele).

59. >JD Ohio's constant insults of people

    After reviewing JD'ss posts, I don't see constant insults of people, unless you are including statements like

    Mueller is a self-righteous ideologue, Comey is going to hell,
    "Through deflection, stupidity and dishonesty, people opposed to Trump ", "spectacularly stupid analysis from David Graham "
    " Steele Dossier, … 100% wrong."

60. > I wouldn't argue in good faith,

    I know you have done that with me, deliberately making an error(x/y /y=x) as an experiment, or so you claimed after your mistakes were highlighted.

    RickA, if not for the work of others, Brandon's lack of technical ability he showed in other areas would have had me questioning the entire argument against the hockey stick.

61. MikeN: "I think 'former foreign policy adviser' is valid….Carter Page helped write the Mayflower speech."

    ….
    I have read all of Page's testimony before Congress and have it in a searchable form. See no reference to him contributing to Mayflower speech, which I imagine Dems would have brought up. No mention in Internet Search of Page helping write it. Please supply link. Here is what Page stated before Congress beginning on p. 11 of transcript (apologize for weird formatting that occurs when transcript is copied — can't fix it):

    " MR. PAGE: And so I volunteered t h e n . I had an initial m e e t i n g in early January

    2016, and ~ but, again, I w a s officially a v o l u n t e e r with an unpaid informal c o m m i t t e e

    until - until t h a t a n n o u n c e m e n t w a s m a d e .

    MR. ROONEY: And t h e n w h e n t h a t c h a n g e d , w h a t w a s your title t h e n ?

    MR. PAGE: Just an informal m e m b e r of t h a t c o m m i t t e e .

    MR. ROONEY: What committee?

    MR. PAGE: The initial foreign policy c o m m i t t e e , which I think t h e n - c a n d i d a t e

    Trump m e n t i o n e d was a work in progress and we're adding m o r e people, et cetera.

    MR. ROONEY: W e r e you paid?

    MR. PAGE: I w a s never paid any m o n e y . And I n e v e r c o n t r i b u t e d any m o n e y to

    t h e T r u m p c a m p a i g n or a n y o n e affiliated with it.

    MR. ROONEY: How o f t e n did this c o m m i t t e e m e e t ?

    MR. PAGE: Infrequently. T h e r e w a s only o n e official m e e t i n g with

    t h e n - c a n d i d a t e T r u m p , and I believe t h e d a t e of t h a t is March 31, 2016, if I'm not mistaken.

    MR. ROONEY: W e r e you at t h a t m e e t i n g ?

    MR. PAGE: I w a s not. I had a previously s c h e d u l e d m e e t i n g with s o m e of t h e t o p

    U.S. military c o m m a n d e r s m a n y t h o u s a n d s of miles a w a y f r o m W a s h i n g t o n . So I w a s

    unable to attend.

    MR. ROONEY: Did you ever m e e t Mr. T r u m p ?

    MR. PAGE: I have never m e t him in my life. I've b e e n in a lot of m e e t i n g s with

    him, and I've l e a r n e d a lot f r o m him, but n e v e r actually m e t him f a c e - t o - f a c e .

    MR. ROONEY: Who was your supervisor?

    MR. PAGE: You know, again, it w a s an informal g r o u p . And I d o n ' t believe

    supervisor is a —
    MR. ROONEY: Well, w h o called t h e m e e t i n g s ? Like if I'm on an advisory board, I

    m e a n , s o m e b o d y ' s s e n d i n g o u t t h e email.

    MR. PAGE:
    Well, initially, we — really, t h e – w h e n we s t a r t e d doing m e e t i n g s w a s

    a f t e r t h a t M a y f l o w e r s p e e c h in April, late April 2016. And J.D. Gordon w a s b r o u g h t in,

    and he w a s sort of t h e de f a c t o organizers f o r our group, a l t h o u g h not – t h e r e w a s no

    official c o m m a n d s t r u c t u r e , because , again, it w a s an informal quasi think tank, if you will.

    MR. ROONEY: W h a t w a s y o u r relationship with t h e Russian G o v e r n m e n t ?

    MR. PAGE: I have no direct relationship with t h e Russian G o v e r n m e n t . Just like

    several m e m b e r s of this c o m m i t t e e might interact with certain b u s i n e s s p e o p l e , I may have
    talked with certain Russian G o v e r n m e n t officials briefly, you know, over t h e years.

    MR. ROONEY: Did you talk to t h o s e Russian G o v e r n m e n t officials over t h e years

    on behalf of t h e T r u m p campaign in your role

    MR. PAGE: Never, never. And I m a d e t h a t perfectly clear in t h e o n e trip t h a t I

    t o o k prior to t h e — o n e trip Itook in the entire time of t h e candidacy of Mr. T r u m p . And

    in t h a t o n e trip of July 2 0 1 6 , 1 m a d e it perfectly clear t h a t I'm not representing him or t h e campaign.
    ……
    Gowdy [p13] W h o asked you to serve in

    t h a t capacity o n t h e T r u m p f o r President c a m p a i g n ?

    MR. PAGE: No o n e asked m e . As I m e n t i o n e d earlier, I w a s - I t o u c h e d b a s e

    with Ed Cox, w h o is t h e c h a i r m a n of t h e New York Republican Party, and he i n t r o d u c e d me

    to a f e w p e o p l e …..

    [Page p. 16 Transcript] I w a s a low-level junior guy in this informal

    group, and s o m e of t h e more senior people had.
    …..

    JD

62. Brandon Shollenberger (Comment #174469): "Past experience on this site makes me doubt the value of lengthy exchanges on it, but I would like to make a comment to address a bit of the absurdity of this post."

    That reeks of bad faith in that it implies that you want your say, but then everyone else can shut up.
    .
    Brandon Shollenberger (Comment #174503): "rather than say I think conversations are valueless, I said I doubt their value "

    You are quibbling. Opening with what you said clearly implies that you think they are pointless. You said that yourself.
    Brandon Shollenberger (Comment #174484): "I think the responses here have proved my initial remark about the pointlessness of any lengthy exchange."
    .
    Brandon Shollenberger (Comment #174503): "I also did not communicate the idea I wouldn't argue in good faith"

    You may not have intended to communicate that, but you did communicate that.
    .
    Brandon Shollenberger (Comment #174503): "JD Ohio's constant insults of people"

    That false and baseless slander pretty much proves that you are a troll who is arguing in bad faith.

63. Brandon
    You wrote this:
    *******
    Past experience on this site makes me doubt the value of lengthy exchanges on it, but I would like to make a comment to address a bit of the absurdity of this post. The bias of the post is obvious from its first sentence:
    ********
    That communicates that you think conversation is valueless. You may think it communicates something else, but if so, you are mistaken.

    I'm not going to get in a pissing contest over your idea of what it communicates vs. my idea. I am pretty dang sure all readers think it communicates that you think communication with us is valueless. No the inclusion of "lengthy" doesn't affect what it comminicates. No, the choice of the verb "doubt" doesn't either.

    I've got a student now. Ciao for now.

64. Brandon,
    It doesn’t matter how many people tell you, because you won’t listen, but you are purest PITA I have ecountered in the last decade: disconnected from reality and utterly relentless. Do youself a favor and get professional help.

65. Brandon,
    “I wasn't going to comment again, ”
    .
    Great idea…. let it go. Really. Here is some simple guidance:

    1) Don’t initiate participation in a conversation by insulting everyone.
    .
    2) Don’t participate with endless, meaningless arguments about nothing that matters. Stick to the substance. Nobody CARES about most of the inanities you write about.
    .
    3) Most of all, don’t nitpick…. it just pisses people off. And they are right to be pissed off.
    .
    Will you listen? Hell no! That is what makes you a PITA.

66. JD, I got it from Seth Abramson, who has written two books on Trump collusion. He has pinned a 450 tweet explanation.
    https://twitter.com/SethAbramson

    I think he oversold Page's involvement, but Mueller Report page 106(pdf) says Page provided feedback to the outline of the speech.

67. MikeN: Re: Feedback to OUTLINE of speech

    For now, subject to later correction, I will stand by my description of the minimal role that Page had in the campaign and that describing him as a campaign advisor without further adding how minimal his invovement was, is significantly misleading.. Page in front of a Congressional Committee described his involvement as being minimal, without contradiction from any of the questioners. It is quite possible that he gave minimal input by email and it was ignored.

    JD

68. MikeN: Re: Carter Page leaving campaign in your previous comment.. He wasn't fired; he left on his own so as to avoid causing Trump campaign any problems.

    JD

69. I agree he had a minimal role, but when Trump campaign(possibly Trump himself) announces Page as a foreign policy adviser, Mueller is justified in doing the same.

70. More evidence of DOJ & FBI duplicity. At time of post, I hadn't got this completely straight in my mind. Now, I have a good idea of what happened–The FBI used Steele to self-authenticate his Dossier through a Yahoo news article that used Steele as a source.

    …..
    After meeting with Christopher Steele beginning in July of 2016, Michael Isikoff published an article in Yahoo News on Sept. 23, 2016 claiming incorrectly that Carter Page had meet with Sechin & Diveykin while in Moscow in July of 2016. The initial Fisa Application devotes about 2 pages to describing the Yahoo article (not mentioning Yahoo by name) and uses the Yahoo article to bolster the credibility of the Steele Dossier. (p.22-24). Isikoff, the writer of the article said he was "shocked" and that article as used in Fisa Application was "self-referential." https://dailycaller.com/2018/02/02/isikoff-stunned-carter-page/

    ….
    The Fisa Application was filed on Oct. 21, 2016 almost a month after the Yahoo article was published. Undoubtedly, some people at the FBI tried to cover their tracks and establish deniability about knowledge of the source of the Yahoo article. However, with Steele meeting with the NO. 4 Justice Dept. Official Ohr, in July of 2016, it is very, very hard to believe that people in the FBI and the DOJ didn't know that Steele was behind the Sept. 23 article.
    ………
    Undercutting what are sure to be intelligence agency denials, is the fact that the second FISA, in January 2017 (after Steele had been fired in Nov. 2016 for leaking) repeats reliance on the Yahoo article. (See p. 107 of Fisa Application)

    ……
    Assuming that the strong circumstantial evidence pointing to a lie in the Fisa Application is true, it is very damning and evidence of high level corruption at the FBI and DOJ.

    JD

71. Considering that Carter Page was so low level he was likely not in email loop with Trump, it seems implausible that the sole reason to spy on Page was to spy on Trump. Also, there was little effort to dangle Hillary dirt to Page, which was the MO followed to Popadopoulos, Trump Jr., Roger Stone and several others. Now, in retrospect, doesn't it make much more sense that the use of the dossier in the FISA warrant was more to credential the dossier?
    .
    Think about it. Little effort was expended on Page and no return gained except to legitimize the dossier treating it as actionable intelligence. The pretext for Buzz Feed to publish was based on the legitimacy of the dossier based on it being part of a presidential briefing. We know the briefing was a setup for the leak, likely by Clapper. This is the same MO: treat the dossier as real to make it to be taken as real.

72. JD, Grassley referred Steele for lying to the FBI, because in the FISA, FBI says Steele told them he only discussed with Simpson and the FBI, not the media. Then Steele told a court in UK that he met with many media, and of course Isikoff has said Steele was the source fr his article.
    However, Grassley I think. He doesn't think Steele lied. He thinks the FBI lied and is lying about Steele's statements.
    Note how they don't outright use the article as reinforcing Steele, but instead introduce it as a means of discussing something else. They gave themselves deniability of using Steele as a source to backup Steele.

73. Ron Graf,

    Two things suggest the Page FISA warrant was more important than you think:
    1) The warrant was twice renewed, and remained in force well into Trump’s term in office.
    2) The two-hop rule means the warrant’s coverage could easily reach Trump if Page ever communicated directly with Manaford. If so, renewing the FISA warrant makes much more sense….. the FBI wanted to investigate Trump.
    .
    Were I questioning Mueller, I would directly ask if his investigation used information from the FISA spying, and specifically if that included captured communinations by Trump.

74. Ron Graf (Comment #174518): "Considering that Carter Page was so low level he was likely not in email loop with Trump, it seems implausible that the sole reason to spy on Page was to spy on Trump."

    As Steve points out, the two-hop rule means that the Page warrant could be used to spy on Trump. I see no other plausible reason for that warrant. Here is how it works: https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/256333/fisas-license-to-hop
    "What this means in practice is that, under a single warrant, anyone Page had a text or phone call with in the Trump campaign during the brief months of his association with it in 2016, was fair game, as a direct connection, all the way through the end of the last warrant-extension period on Page in October 2017. The second-hop connections of those initial contacts—meaning everyone that those people had contact with—are also fair game. In other words, it’s likely that almost everyone on the Trump campaign staff was included in the universe of first- and second-order contacts of Carter Page. The entirety of their correspondence is therefore also covered by the initial warrant, regardless of whether or not they ever met or corresponded with Carter Page, or whether that correspondence referred to him in any way, directly or indirectly."

75. MikeN, absolutely. Mueller needs to be asked hundreds of pertinent questions about the surveillance.
    .
    SteveF, if we find that the FBI and IC spied on the entire Trump team with the Page FISA warrant then I would agree. However, it would make more sense that they would be spying on the Trump team using the Manafort FISA warrant. The FBI already had a evidence of Manafort's Russian ties from a previous FISA on him in 2014. The DoJ, Steele (and likely FBI) were already talking with Deripaska in Jan 2016, according to Bruce Ohr's notes. Page says he never talked to Manafort. So Page is only in the mix due to the dossier. Page is only in the dossier because the FBI had a file jacket on him from 2013 and whoever had the dossier had this information as well as that a Micheal Cohen (not Trump's Cohen) visited Prague.
    .
    My bet is that Deripaska was only interested in getting campaign information to give to somebody else. Mueller thinks its Putin but Deripaska has been lobbying important DC politicians for a decade trying to lift the US sanctions on him personally. Deripaska was using DC lawyer and influence agent Adam Waldman, who also claimed Chris Steele and Julian Assange as clients, (the later pro bono). Waldman was working with Steele and Ohr specifically on some yet to be revealed project with Deripaska in Jan 2016. Devin Nunez recently claimed he has evidence that the FBI's Trump surveillance project started in Dec 2015.

76. Ron
    *****
    that Carter Page was so low level he was likely not in email loop with Trump, it seems implausible that the sole reason to spy on Page was to spy on Trump.
    *******
    If the rule for spying permitted them to spy on Trump because of Page (and my impression is it did), then it's not implausible the reason– and even sole reason — to get permission to spy on Page was to be able to spy on Trump. Trump is the "big fish".

    By itself, it doesn't prove that was the reason, but it's not implausible. (To prove or even just support the claim it was the reason needs additional facts. But that's the sort of thing that is often the case in judging motives.)

    The fact that the case that Page was spy looks practically non-existent and it even looks like the FBI likely knew so at the time makes it seem unlikely the purpose was actually to get more evidence on *Page*. If nailing *Page* wasn't the real motive, one has to wonder what was.

77. MikeM: Thanks for the link to the 2-hop rule. I had expected that it worked in a broad manner.

    ….
    Am busy this morning, so I will be quick here. However, P. 108 of the second Fisa warrant states:
    …..
    "The FBI does not believe that Source #1 directly provided this information to the identified news organization that published the September 23rd News Article." This almost has to be a lie and perjury by someone — Several months after the FBI has been given license to rummage through the files of all of Page's contacts and contacts of his contacts and after Steele had been fired, it claims it doesn't know the source of the 9/23 article. The weasel word "direct", is also significant.

    JD

78. Ron Garaf,
    " if we find that the FBI and IC spied on the entire Trump team with the Page FISA warrant then I would agree. It would make more sense that they would be spying on the Trump team with the Manafort FISA warrant."
    .
    Do you have any evidence there was an active FISA warrant on Manafort during 2016 or 2017? If so, that is the first time I have heard of it.
    .
    With regard to finding out if the Page FISA warrant was used to monitor pretty much the entire Trump campaign and the first months of his administration: I expect Mueller will be asked about the FISA collection and the two-hop rule when he testifies before Congress, and he will refuse to answer either way. The only person who can make that disclosure happen is Trump, by declassifying the FISA warrant and all materials collected under the warrant. Of course, people at the FBI could already have erased/destroyed most of what was collected under the Page FISA warrant, so what was collected, and on whom may never be disclosed.
    .
    Here is the the funniest part: from Wikipedia:
    "On March 4, 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump wrote a series of posts on his Twitter account that accused former President Barack Obama of wiretapping his phones at his Trump Tower office late in the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump called for a congressional investigation into the matter…"
    .
    In light of the Page FISA warrant, Trump may have been substantially correct, since the FISA warrant application and its renewal applications were all approved by Obama appointees at DOJ and the FBI, even after Trump assumed office in January 2017 (at DOJ, it was Sally Yeats, then Ron Rosenstein). So Trump may have been continuously monitored at Trump Tower, and everywhere else, starting from the first effective date of the warrant through July of 2017, when the third warrant expired. I really do not think most of the public understands how insidious and potentially corrupting the FISA law is. IMO, it is a really bad law that needs to be substantially modified or simply revoked.

79. JD Ohio,
    "This almost has to be a lie and perjury by someone.."
    .
    Of course, and there are many other instances of out-right lies under oath, starting with Brennan and Clapper, but including at least several others at DOJ and the FBI. Comey willfully disclosed classified information to pressure the DOJ to assign a special prosecutor. Will any of these people be prosecuted for their obvious crimes? I very much doubt it.
    .
    I am sure these people all believe their crimes were justified to 'protect the country from Trump'. That doesn't mean they should not be sitting in prison.

80. SteveF (Comment #174525): "Do you have any evidence there was an active FISA warrant on Manafort during 2016 or 2017? If so, that is the first time I have heard of it."

    Me too. With a quick web search I found reports of such a warrant, but I did not find any official confirmation of a warrant later than 2014. The source of the reports seems to be CNN, so there is cause for doubt.

81. "Past experience on this site makes me doubt the value of lengthy exchanges on it"
    .
    This is a childish comment only worthy of a petulant 13 year old. Feel free to show this to those you "value lengthy exchanges" with and see if they consider it appropriate.

82. Tom & All,

    Like everyone, I am tempted to comment further on Brandon's behavior and I would be tempted to add to what Tom said. But actually, thinking about it, I am glad that the arrival of a student stopped from saying any more.

    Brandon has not returned since my Comment #174509 . I think it is best to refrain for everyone (and that includes me) from further discussion of his behavior. Doing so will permit us to focus on commenting on the substance of JD's post.

83. Regardless of whether there was either justifiable suspicion to open an investigation or whether it was primarily politically driven,the only thing that matters is two years and millions of dollars were spent on this and it ended up with a failure to find the holy grail that would both end the Trump presidency and placate the egos of those who still can't believe they lost to Trump. To say those most emotionally invested in this outcome (I'm looking at you CNN, WP, NYT) are taking it badly is an understatement.
    .
    I haven't looked at the origins of this with any detail because it just doesn't matter anymore, but my guess is that when this thing started everyone was still very over confident they would beat Trump so a grand conspiracy to take him down would not be worth the risk to anyone with a political career ahead of them. The bulk of the left was giddy to see Trump in the same way the right loves just about everything that comes out of AOC's mouth. Trump continues to be the gift that keeps on giving for the left.
    .
    What drives the anger to this day is that so many are still butt hurt that the voters didn't respect their asserted ideology as they are so sure they are both moral and righteous beyond doubt.
    .
    My wish is that people can just start looking forward instead of backward at this point. This investigation made everyone look bad and Mueller came out looking the least bad. He was the only person in this entire country who could run a leak proof operation even when the stakes were huuuuge.

84. SteveF: "Do you have any evidence there was an active FISA warrant on Manafort during 2016 or 2017?"
    .
    I will have to look back at the sources but the reporting was that two FISA warrants had been issued against Manafort, one in 2014 and one later. Since the later had never been specified, and since Manafort holds just as prominent place in the dossier as Page does, being Page's supposed spymaster, I made the jump that they did not need Page's FISA. But I suppose they could have figured to use Page's FISA as a back door to the entire campaign, after all there was no "good cop" to stop a "three-hop" if they need one.
    .
    My underlying point was that if, as it appears to me is the case, that there was an actively Clinton-Obama anti-Trump information operation (aka dirty tricks,) then the object was not just to spy on the Trump campaign but to smear it. In fact, the dossier went overboard on the smear, so much so, that it was too odious for even hardcore liberal journalists to touch, save Corn and Isiskoff, which prevented it from being an effective October surprise.
    .
    Getting a pretext to spy on the Trump campaign was a much easier task than bringing the dossier to life as a credible intelligence document. So I am just saying that using it to get the Carter Page FISA was just as important for the giving the dossier arms and legs by treating it as important and actionable.
    .
    Just imagine if they did not get the wrong Michael Cohen and it truly was Trump's Cohen in Prague, vacationing or some random reason, the whole document would have been validated.
    .
    We are still not out of the woods. SteveF, you suggest they should reform the laws surrounding the FISA process when the people who are doing the reforming today would be the same ones who did the abuse. We have to be able to stem corruption for at least one election cycle. The last time the congress attempted to reign in the IC was after Watergate with the Frank Church committee.

85. More dishonesty from FBI & DOJ. From page 75 of second Fisa Application filed in January 2017 and signed by Comey and Yates"

    "Based upon the foregoing information, it is the Government's belief that the authorities requested herein targeting Page are CRITICAL (All caps by JD) investigative means for obtaining the foreign intelligence information identified herein."

    …..
    Interesting that Comey and Yates weren't explicitly required to sign under penalty of perjury. Devin Nunes has sought a criminal referral for conspiracy to file a false Fisa Application, which would seem to be applicable to the above statement. There is a "penalty of perjury" certification by a supervisory FBI agent (name not released) on p. 67 of the Application.

    …..
    Also, Steve McIntyre in a twitter comment asked why the FBI didn't disclose the problems with one of Steele's sources that arose out of an interview with that source. The second application was filed in January 2017 and the interview was in January 2017, so exact dates would be helpful. However, in the third April 2017 Fisa Application the inaccurate statements about the credibility of Steele are again repeated. More and more deception and and dishonesty by FBI and DOJ.

    JD

86. Here is what a former FBI agent stated about the FISA process and the difficulty of getting FISAs approved. Looks laughable now.

    …..
    What does this look like in practice? Well, say, hypothetically, that a group of U.S. persons seem to have not infrequent contact with diplomats known to be Russian spies, whom the FBI are already monitoring. (Pro-tip: While it’s possible that such contacts could be accidental – I mean, hypothetically, the Trump inner circle could be a riot to hang out with socially – spies, particularly Russian ones, are pretty good at what they do and don’t spend time with people unless there’s a good reason.) The FBI might determine that, if the U.S. persons have access to classified information or could otherwise be “developed” for intelligence purposes by a foreign spy service, a significant enough threat exists to open an investigation – this would require at least one layer of approval within the FBI, and possibly more if the investigation concerns high-profile individuals.

    The case still wouldn’t be FISA bound. FISA warrant investigations can’t be opened “solely on the basis of First Amendment activities,” so mere fraternization, even with sketchy people, wouldn’t be enough. The FBI would have to gather evidence to support a the claim that the U.S. target was knowingly working on behalf of a foreign entity. This could include information gathered from other methods like human sources, physical surveillance, bank transactions or even documents found in the target’s trash. This takes some time, and, when enough evidence had been accumulated, would be outlined in an affidavit and application stating the grounds for the FISA warrant. The completed FISA application would go up for approval through the FBI chain of command, including a Supervisor, the Chief Division Counsel (the highest lawyer within that FBI field office), and finally, the Special Agent in Charge of the field office, before making its way to FBI Headquarters to get approval by (at least) the Unit-level Supervisor there. If you’re exhausted already, hang on: There’s more.

    The FISA application then travels to the Justice Department where attorneys from the National Security Division comb through the application to verify all the assertions made in it. Known as “Woods procedures” after Michael J. Woods, the FBI Special Agent attorney who developed this layer of approval, DOJ verifies the accuracy of every fact stated in the application. If anything looks unsubstantiated, the application is sent back to the FBI to provide additional evidentiary support – this game of bureaucratic chutes and ladders continues until DOJ is satisfied that the facts in the FISA application can both be corroborated and meet the legal standards for the court. After getting sign-off from a senior DOJ official (finally!), a lawyer from DOJ takes the FISA application before the FISC, comprised of eleven federal district judges who sit on the court on a rotating basis. The FISC reviews the application in secret, and decides whether to approve the warrant. https://www.justsecurity.org/38422/aint-easy-fisa-warrant-fbi-agent/

    JD

87. My expectations are that if the Clinton team knew there might be Russian pee tapes available they would be more than happy to pay for them and forward them to the media through an intermediary, or even the ET tape that did get distributed. My expectation is that if the Trump campaign knew about DNC dirt through hacked emails they would be more than happy to have them sent over to Wikileaks and distributed. Nobody is going to close their ears to this stuff, it is run of the mill dirty politics practiced at every level of government.
    .
    Real information is fair game (ET tape, DNC emails), false information is not. To the media's credit they initially refused to publish anything about the Steele dossier because it couldn't be verified. To the media's discredit they couldn't live up to that standard indefinitely. Using the arms of the government to do the dirty work is over the line of course, but real Russian interference needs to be investigated, and that was found. Law enforcement and political campaigns should only interact when a pretty high bar is crossed.
    .
    Trump was likely to have lots of skeletons in his closet, but he humorously reduced the impact of these discoveries by being a clownish buffoon in the wide open.

88. I apologize for posting significantly repetitive material, but I believe this is important. Andrew McCarthy, former prosecutor, about how bad the Carter Page FISA was:

    "When the FBI averred that it had verified for accuracy the application that posited these allegations, it was, at best, being hyper-technical, and thus misleading. What the bureau meant was that its application correctly stated the allegations as Steele had related them. But that is not what “verification” means. The issue is not whether Steele’s allegations were accurately described; it is whether they were accurate, period. Were the allegations thoroughly vetted and confirmed by proof independent of Steele before being presented to the FISA court — which is what common sense and the FBI’s own manual mean by “verified”?

    No, they were not.

    ……
    Should I have assumed I could be wrong about that? Sure, even great institutions go rogue now and again. But even with that in mind, I would still have told the conspiracy theorists they were crazy — because in the unlikely event the FBI ever went off the reservation, the Justice Department would not permit the submission to the FISA court of uncorroborated allegations; and even if that fail-safe broke down, a court would not approve such a warrant.

    It turns out, however, that the crazies were right and I was wrong. The FBI (and, I’m even more sad to say, my Justice Department) brought the FISA court the Steele-dossier allegations, relying on Steele’s credibility without verifying his information.

    It turns out, however, that the crazies were right and I was wrong.

    I am embarrassed by this not just because I assured people it could not have happened, and not just because it is so beneath the bureau — especially in a politically fraught case in which the brass green-lighted the investigation of a presidential campaign. I am embarrassed because what happened here flouts rudimentary investigative standards. Any trained FBI agent would know that even the best FBI agent in the country could not get a warrant based on his own stellar reputation. A fortiori, you would never seek a warrant based solely on the reputation of Christopher Steele — a non-American former intelligence agent who had political and financial incentives to undermine Donald Trump. "
    https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/07/carter-page-fisa-applications-fbi-steele-dossier/

    JD

89. >whoever had the dossier had this information as well as that a Micheal Cohen (not Trump's Cohen) visited Prague.

    No, they thought they knew Trump's Michael Cohen went to Prague. That was the purpose of including him in the late memos, to provide something the FBI could 'verify'. They then don''t have to just say, 'We find Steele reliable.' They can add in they were able to verify that Michael Cohen went to Prague as described in the dossier, just as they wrote Page went to Moscow.

90. MikeN: "(not Trump's Cohen) visited Prague…They then don''t have to just say, 'We find Steele reliable.' They can add in they were able to verify that Michael Cohen went to Prague as described in the dossier…"
    .
    Yes, that was my point apparently poorly delivered: The dossier sources (likely Fusion's Nellie Ohr with access to IC database via B. Ohr,) the left hand, came dangerously close to creating a document that would pan out as validated when it arrived to investigators in the DoJ (right hand).

91. MikeN (Comment #174515)
    April 20th, 2019 at 11:16 pm
    I agree he had a minimal role, but when Trump campaign(possibly Trump himself) announces Page as a foreign policy adviser, Mueller is justified in doing the same.
    .
    Just because the defendant exaggerated someone's title when it was mildly irrelevant, perhaps even just personal courtesy, does not logically allow a prosecutor's use of the same exaggeration for dishonest purposes, especially regarding a criminal-counterintelligence matter in which the law requires the investigator to be both prosecutor and defense attorney.

92. RGraf (538)

    I agree with your comment. Prosecutors are obligated to do justice by society in general and are not supposed to focus on prosecuting sketchy cases. (They don't represent the defense however). I think this is particularly important with respect to secret FISA proceedings which are non-adversarial and in which the FISA court has to rely on the ethics of those submitting the application to make intelligent and just decisions.

    JD

93. Off topic but maybe of interest: The bombing in Sri Lanka appears to have been the work of “religious extremists”.
    .
    Surprisingly enough, CNN India, the only place CNN would ever do so, has just announced that the extremists were not your random, garden variety extremists, with no specific religious affiliation, but rather muslim extremists, and the most deadly attacks were carried out by suicide bombers, who were targeting christians…. on Easter Sunday. It’s a religion of peace, just like that genius Barack always said. I figure someone must have arranged for a new supply of virgins in heaven.

94. Anglo-Saxon supremacists seem to have difficulty facing up to the fact that they elected a man leading an administration that is corrupt from its minions to its chief law enforcement officer. So, rather than facing up to that, they would rather … look, FBI spying, regardless of the fact that there is the role of the judiciary in approving surveillance based on probable cause and making the investigators rather than the dubious behavior of those people under investigation to be the main issue. Thankfully, the American people voted in an opposition that is likely to provide a semblance of oversight without which this report may not have seen the light of day. Let's see if they perform their duty in carrying this forward.

95. RB,

    There are no "Anglo-Saxon supremacists" at this site. There were probably some who voted for Trump, but fewer than the number of Obama voters who voted for Trump.
    .
    Most of the corruption in the Trump administration is from people who were in government before Trump arrived.
    .
    What the Obama administration did in its final months is much worse than anything the Nixon administration did.
    .
    There was no "dubious behavior of those people under investigation" of the sort that would have merited an investigation. The role of the judiciary in approving surveillance was bypassed by the investigators submitting fraudulent "evidence" to the court.

96. RB,
    >>Anglo-Saxon supremacists seem to have difficulty facing up to the fact that they elected a man leading an administration that is corrupt from its minions to its chief law enforcement officer.
    .
    I'm going to ignore the supremacist bit, because that's just dumb in my view, and go with what seems to be your point, which is not dumb.
    Trump corrupt? Sure, highly probable. What does it mean for a politician to be corrupt anyway? Let's look at wikipedia:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_corruption
    Illegitimate private gain seems to be the thing. I don't know what evidence we could find that Trump is corrupt in this sense, but I'm certainly game to have a look. Not many people become billionaires except (I'd imagine) who have a keen eye for their own private gain.
    .
    I have no issue with the notion that Trump is corrupt. I'm essentially willing to assume he is without specific evidence. Does Trump appear to be advancing interests I care about in this country? That's the more pertinent question for me. I think there are certainly those among his detractors for whom that's actually the pertinent question as well, although they hide it behind a lot of moralizing and BS.
    .
    Like [any] liberals really didn't think Hillary was corrupt. Like anybody *cared* whether or not she was corrupt. Puhleeze.

97. RB,
    Wow…. your delusions appear to have no limits. Trump is dishonest, obnoxious, and clearly has a tendency to act before thinking. A bit like Hillary is blatantly dishonest and corrupt (selling political infulence for cash since Bill’s days in Arkansas). But to suggest William Barr is corrupt is just bat-shit crazy.
    .
    I don’t think Trump is a good person, nor do I think those people in the DOJ anf FBI who were working to drive Trump from office are good people. The difference is that Trump was elected, the DOJ and FBI officials were not.

98. RB: " regardless of the fact that there is the role of the judiciary in approving surveillance based on probable cause and making the investigators rather than the dubious behavior of those people under investigation to be the main issue." You seem to be stating that FISA court review gives credence to the warrant issued with respect to Page. Here is what white supremacist Jerrold Nadler had to say about the FISA court:
    …….
    "The fact that a secret court unaccountable to public knowledge of what it's doing … may join you in misusing or abusing the statutes is of no comfort whatsoever",https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Court

    ….
    Another white supremacist, Elizabeth Gotein, had this to say: "a co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program of the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, has criticized the court as being too compromised to be an impartial tribunal that oversees the work of the NSA and other U.S. intelligence activities.[26]" See wiki.

    Also, from Wiki: "Over the entire 33-year period, the FISA court granted 33,942 warrants, with only 12 denials – a rejection rate of 0.03 percent of the total requests.[4] This does not include the number of warrants that were modified by the FISA court"

    Finally, you referred to the "dubious behavior of those people under investigation." Carter Page was the person under investigation. Please tell me about any of his dubious behavior that would merit an investigation of him based on the claim that he was an agent of a foreign power.

    JD

99. RB,
    My DNA is pretty much Irish, Scots and Basque. None of these groups are Anglo-Saxon and two are famous for not being big fans of Anglo-Saxons! For the record, I dislike Trump, think he is an abnoxious pig and did not vote for him. That I did not vote for him and don't like him is not a secret.

    I'm glad the report has been released and we now know that notwithstanding the obvious venal and boorish behavior of our sitting president, it turns out he did not conspire with Russians.

    I also think that if the FBI acted improperly, that's a serious problem. That needs to be discussed even if you think it ought not to because you have a intense dislike of Trump. Even if possibly especially if) our sitting President is a criminal, it is very important to be sure that those in the executive branch *do not* have carte blanche to do whatever they want, however they want. Any division in executive branch running uncontrolled would be very dangerous– be that the IRS or the FBI. I don't want the FBI acting improperly under Obama or under Trump.

100. I for one am glad RB stopped by to make sure the comments here are not ALL from racists. He was monitoring and clearly saw the problem. Now at least there is balance and diversity. Thank You, RB.
     .
     Also, I have a real question for RB. Now that we know from McCabe and others that the bulk of the FISC application against Page was a fraudulently presented phony document, are you more secure in the fact that none of the FISC judges have made any sound to protect the reputation of the FISC from the notorious four-times abuse? Or, would you have more comfort if there were citations handed out to signers of the application and renewals?

101. I find the criticism of Barr a bit desperate. The guy released an arguably very accurate summary of the report within days of receiving it, and he only took a few weeks to release the entire redacted report, and he is going to show the entire report to the limit of the law to congress. He is under no legal obligation to do any public release. This is rhetorically pounding the table at this point.
     .
     We can compare this to the public release of the 400+ page report on the Clinton email investigation … not. Holder wasn't exactly a knight in shining armor. The funniest part I find is the references to Trump's "hand picked" AG, as if there were some other kind of AG appointment.

102. The threshold to open an investigation should be pretty low, and clearly they don't have to prove their case before they start investigating it. There are multiple things here which keep getting mixed up, namely whether the FISA application was a pretext to investigate Trump or whether it was to investigate Russian election interference. The possibility exists that the goals of the anti-Trump industrial complex are entirely different than the goals of law enforcement at that time.
     .
     The anti-Trumpers clearly wanted to use this investigation of "Russian interference" as a pretext to get rid of Trump, one needs only examine the coverage of the report and the frequency of the word Trump. This does not mean that law enforcement was doing so, even if they were misrepresenting the dossier. The Russian activity needed to be investigated. I find this interference to be rather insubstantial and mostly incompetent. The "danger to democracy" crowd doesn't seem to care much about this subject lately, exposing their agenda.
     .
     Was this Russian investigation going to stop even if the dossier was fairly represented and the FISA application denied? I doubt it. How do you investigate clumsy Russian attempts at electoral influence and not open Pandora's Box of political agendas of the establishment? Does the existence of the latter mean we don't do the former?
     .
     How much the anti-Trump fervor corrupted the investigation is worth looking at, but I doubt there will be much there, there. The public has tuned out this whole mess at this point.

103. Tom Scharf,
     Too many rhetorical questions left unanswered.

104. Tom Scharf: "The threshold to open an investigation should be pretty low…"
     I disagree. I have disliked the expansions of the Patriot Act to police powers since its inception. There should be a very high bar for any secret investigation which slices so deeply into civil liberties. Democracy dies in darkness, doncha know.

105. Tom Scharf (Comment #174550): "The threshold to open an investigation should be pretty low, and clearly they don't have to prove their case before they start investigating it."

     But it should not be too low. They need sufficient credible evidence to establish probable cause. That was clearly not the case with the Page/Trump FISA warrant.

     The bar should be set even higher when it comes to investigating political campaigns. It is extremely dangerous to democracy when law enforcement starts to meddle in politics. That goes double when the party in power is potentially investigating the opposition.
     .
     Tom Scharf: "There are multiple things here which keep getting mixed up, namely whether the FISA application was a pretext to investigate Trump or whether it was to investigate Russian election interference."

     Of course the FISA application was aimed at Trump, not the Russians. The Russian meddling goes back to 2014 (so says Mueller) but the Obama administration ignored it until they saw a chance to tie Trump to it. There was no credible evidence tying the Trump campaign to Russia; that combined with the fact that the investigation focused on the Trump campaign tells us the objective of the investigation.
     .
     Tom Scharf: "The possibility exists that the goals of the anti-Trump industrial complex are entirely different than the goals of law enforcement at that time."

     Only in the abstract. The evidence clearly says otherwise, even without the Strzok/Page emails.

106. Off-topic:
     We'll be reading lots of stuff about Earth Day, but I nominate this for the over-the-top prize: https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/21/world/sutter-earth-day-climate-scn/index.html

     "We've known the truth about climate change — that people are burning fossil fuels and warming the atmosphere, with potentially catastrophic consequences — for decades now. James Hansen testified about the dangers of global warming when he was an NASA scientist in 1988. The New York Times headline: "Global Warming Has Begun, Expert Tells Senate."
     Since then, the eco-woke among us have created more than enough deadlines to try to force change. In 1990, as George Marshall wrote in his book "Don't Even Think About It," the magazine Ecologist published a book called "5,000 Days to Save the Planet." About 5,000 days later, the Institute for Public Policy Research declared that there were "Ten Years to Save the Planet." In 2008, he wrote, the New Economics Foundation said it was "100 Months to Save the World."
     As a journalist who's been covering climate for years, I've been part of that deadline trend. In the leadup to the Paris climate talks in 2015, I wrote that there were "100 days to save the world."
     The deadlines aren't the problem. It's our failure to heed them."

107. HaroldW (Comment #174552)
     April 22nd, 2019 at 5:10 am

     I agree with Harold here and am puzzled as to why more people have not found the lessons of the Mueller investigation and the government spying involved to be revealing about government power and the likely abuse of that power, the lack of transparency in the process and the political biases that can affect the processes.

     I am not a fan of Trumps and like most politicians I have no sympathies at all for him or what happens to him. On a personal level I am revolted by his tweets. That however is someone who is more likely to allow the government to go after and without a lot of protests from the media or the public. If the shoe were on the other foot I doubt that the Republicans would not return the favor although they appear to be more restrained by the MSM which tends to protect the other party rather exclusively.

     I think these discussions here that appear to have to guess at how these processes work and what motivates the process are a telling indication that the system/process is not working and certainly not the way I would want it to work.

108. Tom,

     **The threshold to open an investigation should be pretty low, and clearly they don't have to prove their case before they start investigating it.**
     Sure. But the threshold for allowing the FBI to spy on an American should NOT be very low.

     **namely whether the FISA application was a pretext to investigate Trump or whether it was to investigate Russian election interference.**
     I don't think people are getting this "mixed up". The main thing is that it was a pretext. For what is secondary.

     **This does not mean that law enforcement was doing so, even if they were misrepresenting the dossier. The Russian activity needed to be investigated.**
     That Russian activity needing to be investigated would not justify misrepresenting the dossier. It also wouldn't justify mispresenting anything about Carter Page. They could spy on *Russians* without involving Carter Page.

     **The "danger to democracy" crowd doesn't seem to care much about this subject lately, exposing their agenda.**
     I'm not sure whow the danger to democracy crowd is meant to be. But I do think allowing FBI to spy on American citizens by filing deceptive FISA statements is a danger to democracy and should not be allowed. If it happened, US Citizens have a right to know that and stop it.

     **Was this Russian investigation going to stop even if the dossier was fairly represented and the FISA application denied? I doubt it. **
     No. Which is precisely why the FISA application should have been denied. The issue isn't the "Russian investigation" which could prefectly well have continued. The issue is the spying on American's which would not have continued. The FBI could have done their job without unncessarily treading on the rights of US citizens.

     ** How do you investigate clumsy Russian attempts at electoral influence and not open Pandora's Box of political agendas of the establishment? **
     This is not only rhetorical but I don't even know what it is supposed to mean.

     **Does the existence of the latter mean we don't do the former?**
     Is the latter the Pandora's box? I think I've already addressed the former: The FBI had *plenty* of tools to investigate clumsy Russian attempts without wire tapping Carter Page.

109. Kenneth,
     "If the shoe were on the other foot I doubt that the Republicans would not return the favor although they appear to be more restrained by the MSM which tends to protect the other party rather exclusively."
     .
     Of course. It is mostly about whether the elected official wants to advance public policies that one supports or opposes. Trump wants to advance policies the MSM opposes, and they will use every possible means to try to keep that from happening. They oppose his policies because they believe those policies are wrong. They will do everything possible, including advancing rubbish stories that are unfair and one-sided, to keep him from being re-elected. Hysterical opposition to Kavanaugh was about the rulings on important public policies he might make, and had absolutely nothing to do with uncorroborated claims of teen-age groping at a long-ago party only one person in the world can remember. The extreme opposition to Trump is likewise based on policy disagreements, not Trump's obnoxious behavior or his "personal fitness for office". Carrying on about his behavior is only an excuse to block implementation of his preferred policies…. policies which more-or-less half the country supports.
     .
     And I don't mean to suggest it is only 'progressive' democrats (AKA socialists) who do this… Republicans do the same about the personal failings of 'progressive' politicians, which are likewise unending. The difference is only that progressives have a much louder megaphone. I find Hillary Clinton obnoxious, arrogant, dishonest, money grubbing, and profoundly corrupt… but I think her preferred policies are *far* more damaging and disqualifying than any of her personal failings, no matter how numerous. I would oppose her even if she were a secular saint… and she is light-years away from that… because I believe the policies she wants for the country, and indeed for the world, are profoundly damaging to humanity's future, and yes, clearly evil.
     .
     For the MSM, the only good Republican politician is a dead Republican politician…. attacked endlessly as racists, Nazis, etc while alive, politicians like McCain, George H W Bush, and Ronald Reagan are treated fairly by the MSM only after they die. They oppose conservative policies, always frame their 'reporting' around that opposition, and are not honest enough to be up front about it; they are as despicable as the politicians.

110. SteveF
     **[MSM] will do everything possible, including advancing rubbish stories that are unfair and one-sided, to keep him from being re-elected. **
     Which, of course, is supposed to be a violation of journalistic ethics. One might say, perhaps, they did it unknowingly. But news media are supposed to operate in ways that prevents them from reporting rubbish agenda advancing stories. And even if they only doing unknowingly, the fact of doing it will make people distrust media reports. To the extent the media do report "important" news that turns out to be fake in some regard gives Trumps "Fake News" tweets legs.

     Bias sometimes doesn't amount to "fake", but it gets noticed too.

     **Republicans do the same about the personal failings of 'progressive' politicians, **

     Absolutely. And one can even see first ladies attacked because people don't like the politics of their spouse. Lots of people made unflattering remarks about Michelle Obama because (a) she shared her husband's politics and (b) was very visibly promoting them on television (Oprah and so on.) She wasn't Hillary, but she was quite visible and had an obvious agenda. (It's fine for first ladies to have agendas, but they will be criticized by those who disagree– just as their husbands are.)

     Melania gets some flak, but less. That's mostly because she is not a publicity hound. (Ironically, one might have expected a model to be more visible. But then… models aren't actresses. 🙂 )

111. Lucia,
     “Ironically, one might have expected a model to be more visible.”
     .
     Yes, one might, but she is the wife of the *utterly evil one* and so gets mostly bad coverage, if any, no matter what she does. I think she recognized the situation pretty quickly, so stays away from the limelight.
     .
     The weird thing is that she is (even pushing 50!) absolutely drop-dead gorgeous, yet is rarely if ever on the cover of a tabloid, while not-so-gorgeous Michele Obama was on the cover of most every tabloid, and plenty of other magazines, every other week (or at least it seemed like that to me). I suspect the press’s political inclinations may have something to do with that.

112. The threshold to open the investigation should "theoretically" be about the same for tapping some drug dealers phone. They probably had enough to open an investigation, and they certainly had plausible deniability that this wasn't targeting Trump specifically. It's like trying to prove Trump with obstruction, knowing something and proving it are different things. One can certainly wonder why this thing kept going on and on when nothing was ever found.
     .
     I can believe that this particular FISA application might have been better off rejected, but I don't really believe it was going to change things much if it was. One can make a fruit of a poison tree argument, but it looks like small potatoes at this point. The FBI had many self inflicted wounds here and their reputation has suffered, so assuming that this application was clearly out of bounds what is the suggested remedy? Comey, McCabe, Strzok have all been fired already.

113. Tom,
     I'm not sure I agree with you. My problem is that I don't think an FBI investigation is a zero cost prospect if the people being investigated have done nothing wrong. Far from it. If anybody being investigated gives the FBI anything *it considers* to be a lie during the course of the investigation, the consequences can be extremely severe. Therefore the cost of a baseless investigation can still be quite high. *ANY* investigation, of anything by the FBI, is to some extent weaponized just by nature of FBI.
     .
     If there is only a very low bar to getting an FBI investigation going, it appears to be in the interest of the opposition party to make sure there is *always* an FBI investigation of opponents going on. This doesn't seem like a great idea.
     .
     My problem really stems from the FBI in the first place. Essentially gestapos in my view, America's secret political police. They have been and can be used for legitimate federal crime investigation, but all too often it has not been their history that (IMO) they have been used for legitimate purposes.
     .
     [Edit: Add to it the leaks. Anything the FBI comes up with is likely to leak. Or if it's politically valuable it can be obtained by Congress by whatever device and *then* leaked. Regardless of whether or not the info is germane in the legal context..]

114. Tom Scharf, there is a difference between opening an investigation and getting a FISA warrant. FBI opened counterintelligence investigations on at least four targets in the Trump campaign.

     Counterintelligence are not the same as criminal investigations, and should have a lower bar, but practices have to be followed to ensure this is not a pretext to a criminal investigation. Perhaps the referral to criminal division should be outlawed, to ensure maximum privacy protection.

115. Tom Scharf (Comment #174560): "The threshold to open the investigation should "theoretically" be about the same for tapping some drug dealers phone."

     When the political process is involved, investigators should err on the side of not interfering in the process. Otherwise, there is just too much risk to the democratic process.
     .
     Tom Scharf: "They probably had enough to open an investigation,"

     To tap a drug dealers phone requires probable cause: "a reasonable amount of suspicion, supported by circumstances sufficiently strong to justify a prudent and cautious person's belief that certain facts are probably true". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probable_cause#Definition
     The FBI might or might not have had some grounds for suspicion, but I see no reasonable claim for probable cause.
     .
     Tom Scharf: "and they certainly had plausible deniability that this wasn't targeting Trump specifically."

     That is an insanely low standard which they nevertheless failed to meet. The plausible deniability can only stand up to superficial examination.
     .
     Tom Scharf: "It's like trying to prove Trump with obstruction,"

     Which can not be proved because it never happened.
     .
     Tom Scharf: "knowing something and proving it are different things."

     I have yet to see any rational basis to think that Trump obstructed justice. At best, there is some hearsay evidence that he was tempted to do so.
     .
     Tom Scharf: "One can certainly wonder why this thing kept going on and on when nothing was ever found."

     That is obvious. It went on and on because the investigators were desperate to find something.

116. > they certainly had plausible deniability that this wasn't targeting Trump specifically."

     Not really. They presented to FISA court the Steele Dossier, with no verification, and declared they found Steele to be reliable. The dossier says Carter Page was agreeing to drop sanctions in exchange for brokerage fees on sale of 20% of a large company. However, Page was speaking on behalf of Trump, and the dossier makes clear that the conspiracy is between Trump and Russia, including having Michael Cohen go to Prague and pay off hackers.

117. Tom
     ***They probably had enough to open an investigation,**
     I think you are getting muddled here. Enough to "open an investigation" is not the same as "to get a search warrant". They need almost nothing to open an investigation– that's just a questoin of whether it's worth setting asside time and money to cover the salaries of staff. They *ought* to need enough to get a search warrant, and it appears they did not. It appears the only way to make it look like enough for a warrant was to be misleading.

     **ejected, but I don't really believe it was going to change things much if it was.**
     Define "things". It would have affected who they could legally wiretap. With respect to people's 4th amendment rights that's a BIG thing, so I count it as "much".

     **One can make a fruit of a poison tree argument, but it looks like small potatoes at this point. T**

     Well… no. The fruit of the poisoned tree is evidence the found as a result of a 4th amendment violation. There "fruit" even if they were trying valiently to harvest stuff from a poisoned tree. No one is going to make a "fruit of the poisoned tree" argument in court because FBI didn't charge anyone based on the information gathered from the wiretaps because the FBI got bubpkiss.

     So "fruit of the poisoned tree" ideas are irrelevant to whether or not the FBI deserves criticism or needs to be reigned in.

     The important issue is: A federal bureau involved in Fourth amendment violations. This is a *civil rights violation* and it's even worse if they found nothing. People can sometimes sue for violation of rights *independently* of having evidence thrown out because it was acquired illegally. This is not a "fruit of the poisoned tree" issue.

     **The FBI had many self inflicted wounds here and their reputation has suffered, so assuming that this application was clearly out of bounds what is the suggested remedy?**
     Air the issue and amend the FISA process to make sure these sorts of Fourth amendment violations are less likely to occur. Make sure judges are aware they were duped so they become more vigilant.

     The point isn't to fix something that happened in the past. It's to find out what happened and restructure things so similar things don't happen in the future. We need information about the flaw in the system to do that properly.

     *Comey, McCabe, Strzok have all been fired already.*
     Sure. But the point isn't to punish them. The point is to investigate how they did what they did so we can fix the process. Punishing them punishes them, but it doesn't fix the process which is the more important thing.

118. >Punishing them punishes them, but it doesn't fix the process which is the more important thing.

     The investigators will be limited by their desire to protect the process. They want the FBI to have maximum leeway to get warrants, since the target is supposed to be threats to the US.
     The exceptions are people like Rand Paul, who would gut the FISC and Patriot Act.

119. MikeN,
     “The investigators will be limited by their desire to protect the process. They want the FBI to have maximum leeway to get warrants, since the target is supposed to be threats to the US.”
     .
     I really doubt anybody involved wants to “protect the process”. The process was corrupted by politics from the get-go. It was a 100% politically motivated hit job. IMO the FBI doesn’t need more leeway, they need much, *much* LESS leeway! They have clearly shown themselves to be unworthy of trust on any politically sensitive subject. Cut their budget by 50% for two years; start by firing the 25% who earn the most at the FBI. After that we can talk about it.

120. MikeN,
     What the "investigators" want depends entirely on who the investigators are. If by "investigators" you mean "people associated with the FBI, you might be right. But we live in a democracy with voters who elect representatives. There are plenty of people who are concerned with civil liberties.

     Ultimately, the rules for the process are a political decision and that can be changed by the legislature. Some rules also must not violate the constitution– that is the 4th amendment. (Though getting that the SCOTUS could be an issue.)

     We here are discussing and event and formulating our own opinions, deciding to criticize the FBI (or not) and making decisions about who or what we vote for.

121. lucia (Comment #174565): "The important issue is: A federal bureau involved in Fourth amendment violations. This is a *civil rights violation* and it's even worse if they found nothing."

     That is true, but the *really* important thing is that it was done in an attempt to influence/invalidate an election. That is an attack on democracy. It is orders of magnitude more serious than anything the Russians did.
     .
     "Sure. But the point isn't to punish them. The point is to investigate how they did what they did so we can fix the process. Punishing them punishes them, but it doesn't fix the process which is the more important thing."

     I disagree. The perpetrators must be punished. Criminally. Yes, there are issue with the process, but a bigger problem is that the existing process was not followed. There is no point in having rules if violating the rules has little consequence for the violators. If in fact Comey, McCabe, Strzok, etc. deliberately misled the FICA court for political purposes, then they need to go to prison as a deterrent to those in future who might consider following their example.

122. Tom Scharf (Comment #174560): "…what is the suggested remedy? Comey, McCabe, Strzok have all been fired already."
     .
     Lucia (Comment #174565): "The point is to investigate how they did what they did so we can fix the process. Punishing them punishes them, but it doesn't fix the process which is the more important thing."
     .
     SteveF (Comment #174567): "Cut their budget by 50% for two years; start by firing the 25% who earn the most at the FBI. After that we can talk about it."
     .
     Mike M: "If in fact Comey, McCabe, Strzok, etc. deliberately misled the FICA court for political purposes, then they need to go to prison as a deterrent to those in future who might consider following their example."
     .
     MikeM is right; being forced to the private sector without a government pension is not exactly 10 years in Leavenworth. Also, Lucia is right; there had to be people above Strzok, giving him orders and dozens of people below following Strzok's direction, as Strzok himself pointed out during his testimony, trying to show the implausibility of any malfeasance. This makes SteveF's butcher knife approach surprisingly sensible. According to Lisa Page's Sept. 2, 2016, text exchange, Page writes that she was preparing the talking points because "potus wants to know everything we’re doing."
     https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/fbi-texts-obama-wants-know-everything-we-re-doing-n845531
     .
     Sen. Lindsey Graham, Reps Meadows, Jordan and Nunes are also correct that we need a new special council to investigate the hacking of our democracy.

123. Excerpt from congressional testimony of Special Agent Peter Strzok:
     "Because, first of all, I never, ever considered or let alone did any act which was based on any personal belief. My actions were always guided by the pursuit of the truth, and moreover, anything I did was done in the context of a much broader organization. It was done with other agents, with agents and analysts below me, with agents and analysts above me, with the rules and regulations that govern everything we do in the FBI. And so I think when you look at the totality of what occurred, the procedures that were followed, demonstrably followed and followed in accordance with law and our procedures, they were complete — were thorough. They were absolutely done with no motive other than a pursuit of the truth."
     .
     Everything Strzok said looks to me to be true except the procedures were gamed, and based on his private text messages belay nefarious motives. The underlying problem is that there was nobody above to report malfeasance to when that malfeasance is being directed from the top, (or can be plausibly made to appear so).

     Edit: Actually, there is the office of the IG. But whistle-blowers do not have long-lived careers, or even live long period (surely in some instances).

124. A previous "reliable" source is held up as legitimate by people the FISA judge probably was inclined to believe. At the time this was OK'd much of the dirty laundry was not yet known, at least by the judge. I'm trying to find out who the bad guys are here. The judge, or the FBI? I assume it is the FBI who claimed the Steele dossier was trustworthy. The origin of the information was disregarded because it was too useful to not be true. If anyone from the FBI can be proven to have willfully misled the FISA court at the time of the warrant then they should be fired and potentially prosecuted. Who are we talking about here exactly?
     They did CYA with 0.2 point font in a footnote. What I think we have is a situation where the FBI didn't want to try to verify anything and hand waved this through, and succeeded.
     .
     I assume lots of information from shaky known criminal confidential informants is routinely used to get search warrants. Steele had better cred than these people. Steele apparently decided to burn his reputation to the ground in order to try to take down Trump. The whole thing stinks pretty bad, but I'm not seeing much in the way of smoking guns. Was this probable cause for a search warrant with what we know today, no. Was it enough back then? Meh. There were many true believers in the collusion delusion, and there still are.
     .
     Steele is done as a trustworthy source. The FBI is on double secret probation. FISA and the NSA cowboy days are over (hopefully). If I'm the new FBI director and someone has a brilliant idea to investigate a political campaign on a pretext then I'm going to suggest CIA rendition as a reward for them.
     .
     Although it intuitively ought to be different thresholds for Joe Meth Distributor and Presidential Campaigns this is a bad idea in practice. There needs to be rules in place that treat everyone fairly but allows law enforcement to get the job done. We have to be able to trust law enforcement and this is why the Comey's of the world are clueless how much damage their higher calling has done to this process.
     .
     Note to FBI: Stay out of politics.

125. There were no remotely credible sources used to get the FISA warrant. Steele's credibility was irrelevant. Steele was *not* a source. Steele merely transmitted info he claimed came from his sources. Many of Steele's claimed sources were secondhand and therefore unusable. None were verified at all.

126. Tom, reporter Sarah Carter said she had sources showing that the Carter Page FISA application was rejected at least once before they added the Steele dossier. That makes it doubly suspicious that Steele was rewarded handsomely to sell his reputation.
     .
     Reporter from The Hill, John Solomon, wrote in December that he had sources that saw emails of a conversation about Steele going to the media BEFORE the first FISA containing the dossier. Comey was in the middle of that string discussing the decision to go forward. Also, Solomon said that there were concerns voiced by the intelligence community against Steele in that email string.
     https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/419901-fbi-email-chain-may-provide-most-damning-evidence-of-fisa-abuses-yet
     .
     But that is all nitpicking until we know if Professor Joseph Mifsud, who approached Popadopoulos in March 2016, dangling "Hillary dirt" from Russia, was a Russian agent or a western intelligence asset. If the later it true, and if the former head of Australian intelligence, Alexander Downer, was also acting as a western agent to set up Popadopoulos (as P claims now) to report him to the FBI, then we have a full-blown information op (dirty trick) as the origin of the collusion delusion.
     .
     Trump volunteer Michael Caputo was approached by a Russian national with a Hillary email dangle. This "Henry Greenberg" turns out (after Caputo hired a PI to investigate), was only in the USA on an FBI informant Visa. He has the phone number of his handler on his web site, but Mueller ignored who Greenberg was or the fact that name is an alias and not his real name.
     .
     This would dwarf Watergate. BTW, Downer was found by Solomon to have directed 25 million to the Clinton foundation from the Australian treasury when he was prime minister.
     https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/426464-how-the-clinton-machine-flooded-the-fbi-with-trump-russia-dirt-until

127. Tom there are actual rules about relying on informants:
     https://www.hg.org/legal-articles/what-are-the-rules-regarding-warrants-based-on-informant-tips-34191

     You can NOT just bring in a shaky informant and nothing else to get a warrant. If you do, you would have grounds for appeal. In the case of an ordinary 4th amendment process, the search becomes public and there is transparency quickly. The evidence in the FISA would NOT be sufficient for a valid warrant in other cases.

     ***
     What I think we have is a situation where the FBI didn't want to try to verify anything and hand waved this through, and succeeded.
     **
     Which would be an abuse by the FBI which should be dealt with.

     **Although it intuitively ought to be different thresholds for Joe Meth Distributor and Presidential Campaigns this is a bad idea in practice.**
     Agreed. And that is precisely why we should't allow the threshold for allowing spying on an American citizen to be different in the two cases. In this case, it appears to have been LOWER for the presidential campaign. That ought not to happen.

128. Correction: Downer was minister of foreign affairs when he diverted Australian foreign aid to the Clinton foundation.

129. Donald Trump was elected by the American people, just as Teddy Roosevelt was. Both are prone to rhetorical exaggeration and insulting their enemies. Roosevelt was immensely popular because he dared to challenge the corrupt Guilded Age establishment that controlled business, the press, and even the government via buying elections, threatening employees who voted "wrong" and other measures.

     Anyone who campaigns to overthrow an entrenched power structure will make a lot of enemies. The question is whether Trump is the right's only possibly successful answer to the increasingly radical and in some cases fascist tactics of the left. Many people feel this is true especially after Bush's weak performance. If you don't punch back you lose or at least the last 60 years seem to show that. In that time period social conservatives have lost on virtually social issue partly because of the Supreme Court. And they are being marginalized by the media and attacked by anyone who doesn't like historical Christianty. That explains why they love Trump.

130. Papadopoulos is letting his imagination run wild with his theories. Best to seek verification for everything he says. For example, the Australian government has Pap meeting Downer on May 10, while Mueller says May 6, which is the day Pap met Downer's assistant.

131. dpy6629 (Comment #174577): "Anyone who campaigns to overthrow an entrenched power structure will make a lot of enemies. The question is whether Trump is the right's only possibly successful answer to the increasingly radical and in some cases fascist tactics of the left. Many people feel this is true especially after Bush's weak performance."

     Indeed. But it was not just Bush's weak performance that did it for me. Bush was matched or "exceeded" by McCain, Romney, and all of Trump's opponents in the primaries.

132. Just several comments about issues that have arisen for whatever they are worth.

     …..
     If we are going to stop people from being slick and dishonest in getting warrants, those who violate the law need to be given jail time. That is the only thing that will stop it. Administrative procedures will not work because those on the inside will figure out ways to game the system, just as what happened with FISA here.

     …..
     We have a very serious problem now with the "collusion" issue being regarded as a potentially impeachable offense. Foreign governments (or rogue American intelligence agents) can simply set up fake evidence of collusion and then generate a special counsel probe. One very simple way for any number of governments (Iran, China, Russia, Syria Turkey et cet.) to put sand in the gears of the American government is to manufacture fake collusion evidence with surface appearing legitimacy. Then, a 2-year investigation, rummaging through a President's files can be generated. In my mind, there is a good chance that the Steele Dossier was not only mistaken, but a fraud. If so, look what one bad source did to the American government.

     …..
     Fruit of the Poisonous Tree — Popehat had an article why the Fruit of the Poisonous Tree doctrine doesn't apple to the Mueller probe — one major reason is that only the target (Page) can raise the issue. Others, whose crimes are discovered by the spying can't raise the issue.

     JD

133. JD Ohio,
     Yep. If all contacts with "collusion" being seen as impeachable, all a foreign power needs to do is reach out to campaigns repeatedly. At least someone on the campaign won't have a clue the person reaching out is an unfriendly foreign power and will do something like have lunch, take a call, return a call, or supply them with yard signs. (I've asked campaigns for yard signs. No one asks for credentials. The answer is always "Yes, How many!")

     Then suddenly: "Impeachable!"

     I do agree Feds who break the law in implementing the process need to go to jail. That punishment has to be formal punishment not just "lost a job".

     But I do think it's also important that the public *know* what happened. That's where I think discussion is important with these things.

134. Lucia: " If all contacts with "collusion" being seen as impeachable, all a foreign power needs to do is reach out to campaigns repeatedly. "

     …..
     I wasn't quite saying that. I was saying that foreign intelligence agencies or fairly intelligent or connected people could easily manufacture as much "evidence" as was contained in the Steele Dossier. Many, many people have gripes with the US government or with important political people. The Carter Page Fisa Application shows them how to easily put sand in the gears of the US government.

     …..
     I, of course, agree that it is important for the public to know what happened or happens.

     JD

135. Carter Page Speech in Moscow — Sheesh — Made very clear he wasn't speaking for Trump. On the other hand, the non-collusion aspects of his visit were publicly known and could easily be incorporated in Steele Dossier. https://abcnews.go.com/International/trump-foreign-policy-adviser-calls-mutual-respect-moscow/story?id=40417854

     ….
     " At the event, Page declined to speak directly about the Trump campaign’s policy regarding Russia or what advice he was providing, insisting that his remarks were his personal views and skirting direct policy questions. He also avoided naming Trump throughout the speech.

     “I am here as a private citizen,” Page told the auditorium. “These ideas that we discuss night may not necessarily reflect those of other people or other organizations that I may be working with….

     At the event, Page was at pains to avoid making comments that could be construed as Trump policy. He repeatedly declined to answer questions on specific issues of U.S.-Russian relations, including whether he supported the lifting of sanctions on Russia.

     “I’m not here at all talking about anything outside my academic endeavors and personal experience on the business front,” Page said. “You can read between the lines and see some of the thing I’ve written in past so you can know my personal thoughts.” But he said, “Today is not the time and place.”

     JD

136. Was it public that Page met with someone at Rosneft?

137. MikeN: Was it public that Page met with someone at Rosneft?

     Don't know. He did have an old friend, Baranov, who worked for investor relations at Rosneft. Previously, Baranov had worked 10 years for Gazprom. The significant part of Page's testimony before Congress was:

     "MR. SCHIFF: Dr. Page, this is my specific q u e s t i o n : Did you or did you not discuss

     with Mr. B a r a n o v in July a p o t e n t i a l sale of a significant p e r c e n t a g e of R o s n e f t ?

     MR. PAGE: I c a n ' t recall a n y discussion.

     MR. SCHIFF: So you m a y have, b u t you d o n ' t recall.

     MR. PAGE: He m a y h a v e briefly m e n t i o n e d it w h e n we w e r e looking up f r o m this

     Portugal — Ronaldo, w h o e v e r t h e — you know, t h e goals t h a t a r e being s c o r e d . That may

     have c o m e up. But I h a v e no definitive recollection of t h a t . And, certainly, w h a t n e v e r

     c a m e up, certainly, w a s my i n v o l v e m e n t in a n y – t h a t t y p e of a t r a n s a c t i o n .

     MR. SCHIFF: And did you e v e r e x p r e s s –

     MR. PAGE: ITS INCONCEIVABLE [All Caps JD]" p. 139 of Page transcript

     Of course, Steele claimed he met Sechin and not Baranov

     JD

138. Has there been any comment from the judge who granted the FISA warrant? Any testimony or public comments from those who crafted the warrant? Their viewpoint is the one that matters, although I doubt they will give an honest assessment at this point since this subject has gone nuclear. It has been repeated ad naseum in the left leaning media that the dossier was not the only evidence and it was a minor part. If this is plausibly true or that they were "really" targeting Russians to a nonpartisan jury this conspiracy is dead.
     .
     The FBI should have informed the Trump campaign they were being targeted, instead of a presumption of collusion and trying to effectively entrap people. Humorously the media still holds up the statement by Trump his phones were being tapped as a "lie".
     .
     I still struggle with motivation. Trump was a laughing stock, unlikely to win until about 11 pm on Nov 8th (NYT said HRC had 87% chance to win), and theories are that high level people were willing to jeopardize their careers by willfully misleading a court to listen in on low level Trump operatives. It seems implausible, maybe not impossible.

139. "One very simple way for any number of governments (Iran, China, Russia, Syria Turkey et cet.) to put sand in the gears of the American government is to manufacture fake collusion evidence with surface appearing legitimacy."
     .
     What kind of baffles me is why the Russians didn't do this. They have half the country willing to believe just about anything regarding Trump's malevolence. There is zero chance Putin didn't ponder it. I suppose they felt it might be an act of literal war if they got caught.

140. The NYT editorial board channels Ilhan Omar:
     "The bombings in Sri Lanka and the many unanswered questions they raise reflect the complexity and variety of passions that drive people, usually young, to embrace terror. The band accused of masterminding the attack, National Thowheeth Jama’ath, will hopefully be neutralized and brought to justice."

141. Tom Scharf, #174587
     Steele's sources are supposedly Russian, so it can't be ruled out that the collusion narrative did, in fact, originate with Russia. It's true it wasn't backed up with forged evidence to fool Mueller, but it's not like their play-both-sides social media campaign was very competent either — and even as is, if their motivation was to disrupt America and lower faith in the political system they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
     .
     I still have a hard time understanding how/where the line is drawn for permissable activity by foreign nationals. On townhall's tipsheet I saw an item about convicted spy Maria Butina:
     https://townhall.com/tipsheet/bethbaumann/2019/04/20/heres-how-long-the-doj-wants-russian-spy-maria-butina-to-sit-in-jail-n2545092
     .
     I don't know what sort of fraud her attempts to "infiltrate" organizations involved, and the linked article didn't show, but some of the comments attributed to prosecutors make me wonder what the issue is. Such as:
     —
     "Activities at issue in this case are part of Russia's broader scheme to acquire information and establish relationships and communication channels that can be exploited to the Russian Federation's benefit," prosecutors wrote in a pre-sentencing memo. “Acquiring information valuable to a foreign power does not necessarily involve collecting classified documents or engaging in cloak-and-dagger activities."
     —
     What they say is obviously true, but why would it be relevant to *sentencing*? I would hope that we are doing the exact same thing positively everywhere, because relationships and communication channels are a diplomatic asset.
     —
     “Something as basic as the identification of people who have the ability to influence policy in a foreign power’s favor is extremely attractive to those powers,” prosecutors said. “This identification could form the basis of other forms of intelligence operations, or targeting, in the future.”
     .
     “Butina’s work involved building a rolodex of and information about powerful people who had, or were likely to get, access to and influence over the next presidential administration,” prosecutors said. “Butina’s reports back to the Russian Official on the people she was meeting have all the hallmarks of spotting-and-assessing reports.”
     —
     I wouldn't think identifying people who are likely to have access/influence would be illegal. Do we have some vested interest in foreign nations being ignorant or ill-informed of our power structure that I'm missing? I would think it is the job of our intelligence agencies to find out this exact sort of information for other countries, and that it's usually both legal and safe to do so. I would also expect the British or Israelis or Mexicans to make the same sort of assessments, without counter-intelligence trying to put them in prison for doing so.
     .
     Now it's true that having such a list would tell you the attractive recruitment targets, but it doesn't do anything to tell you how to recruit them — no spy agency suffers from a lack of identifiable foreigners they *wish* they had on payroll. I think it would be more useful for identifying possible conduits for back-channel communication, which in my reading of history I see as a useful tool for *both* sides and a net good.

142. Tom, the only commentary I've seen from FISA court is:
     1) Redacted item I linked above about contractor abuse at NSA.
     2) Congress asked FISC to produce their copy of warrant application.
     Chief judge Collyer refused.
     3) Former FISC judge Reggie Walton spoke about the court at Carnegie Mellon in Jan 2018.
     4) FISC judge Rudolph Contreras recused from the Michael Flynn case after accepting the plea deal. This was originally misinterpreted as Contreras approved Page FISA. No reason was given for recusal.

143. Dale S,
     I have found it strange that attempts to communicate and gain favor with the US government are considered criminal by those who listen now with Trump et. al. I imagine this happens with every administration, and if one dissected every Obama operative foreign contact with a paranoid view then lots of conspiracies can be had. These aren't even thought crimes, they are "imagined thought" crimes. Team Trump wasn't exactly well versed in this stuff so it's hard to separate incompetence and bad intentions.

144. MikeN,
     I find it a bit distressing that Congress cannot examine a high profile FISA warrant if it wants to. Trust, but verify. There is a big problem of any legitimate secret info that a congress critter considers politically useful will be likely leaked. It's probably a more complex problem than I think.

145. I doubt very much that the problem we are discussing here can be fixed by firing people or tweaking the failed system. It needs a major overhaul. The US voting population has to be more aware of the freedoms that they relinquishing in the name of making it easier for the government to "get" the bad guys. That populace is always more easily duped when the government calls for more power during an "emergency".

     https://mises.org/wire/obstruction-justice-isn%E2%80%99t-what-people-think-it

146. Tom, Collyer said Congress can ask DOJ or FBI to provide the same info. Some in Congress are suspicious that DOJ gave them a forged document.

147. Tom S: "I find it a bit distressing that Congress cannot examine a high profile FISA warrant if it wants to."

     …..
     I believe that the intelligence committees of the House and Senate can see everything. However, I believe their rules prevent the release of some records.

     JD

148. Trey Gowdy, and others have seen the FISAs unredacted.

149. I had forgotten about this, but Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz has been conducting a probe into the FISA warrant and related matters. It seems that his report is expected in the next few weeks.

150. Tom Scharf: "I still struggle with motivation. Trump was a laughing stock, unlikely to win until about 11 pm on Nov 8th (NYT said HRC had 87% chance to win), and theories are that high level people were willing to jeopardize their careers by willfully misleading a court to listen in on low level Trump operatives. It seems implausible, maybe not impossible."
     .
     First, are you disputing the two-hop rule? The eavesdroppers can recover past and future personal communications of people with two degrees of separation from the target. Just imagine if Kevin Bacon was the target. 🙂
     .
     Also, you might be missing the point that having confidence that Trump wouldn't win also provided confidence there would never be consequences. And, for the small risk they took out an "insurance policy" (Strzok's text's words from his and Page's planning meeting with McCabe.)

151. According to The Hill's John Solomon There are three basic rules of presentation to the FISC.

     "First, the FBI must present evidence to FISA judges that it has verified and that comes from intelligence sources deemed reliable. Second, it must disclose any information that calls into question the credibility of its sources. Finally, it must disclose any evidence suggesting the innocence of its investigative targets."
     https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/434054-the-damning-proof-of-innocence-that-fbi-likely-withheld-in-russian-probe

     The article goes:
     "Thanks to prior releases of information, we know the FBI fell short on the first two counts. Multiple FBI officials have testified that the Christopher Steele dossier had not been verified when its allegations were submitted as primary evidence supporting the FISA warrant against Page. Likewise, we know the FBI failed to tell the courts that Steele admitted to a federal official that he was desperate to defeat Trump in the 2016 election and was being paid by Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to gather dirt on the GOP candidate. Both pieces of information are the sort of credibility-defining details that should be disclosed about a source.

     What remains uncertain in the court of public opinion is whether the FBI possessed evidence suggesting Papadopoulos and Page — and, thus, the larger Trump campaign — were innocent of collusion."
     .
     Solomon then reveals that FBI informant Stephan Halper approached first Page then Papadopoulos posing as a professional with interest in their expertise. Halper, after gaining each man's trust, broached the subject of getting compromising information on Hillary from the Russians. Both targets rebuffed the idea. In Page's case it was in August of 2016, a month before the approval of the first FISA against him.

152. The most powerful forces in DC are self preservation and self advancement. Everyone within the city limits might hate Trump but they like themselves even more. Nobody is going to martyr themselves for Trump.
     .
     I'm not saying don't look for malfeasance, I'm saying there very likely won't be a new pot of gold at the end of that rainbow. Even if there was bad intentions these people are more skilled at covering their tracks.
     .
     The FBI and intelligence agencies have done nothing but disgrace themselves lately. Are Comey and Clapper good PR people? The media parading these people around making highly partisan statements without evidence is simply bad for everyone.
     .
     The FBI occasionally does some good work like uncovering the admissions fraud, but the value of the expansive intelligence apparatus is becoming questionable. If these people had half the budget and a new set of rules would anybody notice a difference? The justification for their existence needs a refresh in my mind.

153. It's not criminal to investigate someone and find out they aren't guilty. All the rules can be followed in good faith with a subsequent dead end. Eyewitness testimony can be enough for a search warrant, it depends on the reliability of the witness, the credibility of the witness, and the exact statement and facts provided by the witness.
     .
     I imagine they "verified" Steele actually produced the report, and Steele was reliable in the past. It would be interesting to know if Steele vouched for its contents prior to the warrant. He likely vouched that those people actually told him those things, and him and the FBI agreed it needed to be checked out. What level of evidence should be required to get a search warrant in an investigation into the alleged Clinton Foundation's pay to play scheme? These are gray areas and somebody has to decide. My prediction is that the FISA warrant will be deemed "gray enough" legally, even if instant replay would have overturned the call 2 years later.

154. Tom,
     >>The most powerful forces in DC are self preservation and self advancement. Everyone within the city limits might hate Trump but they like themselves even more. Nobody is going to martyr themselves for Trump.
     .
     Earlier you wondered "I still struggle with motivation. Trump was a laughing stock, unlikely to win until about 11 pm on Nov 8th (NYT said HRC had 87% chance to win), and theories are that high level people were willing to jeopardize their careers by willfully misleading a court to listen in on low level Trump operatives. It seems implausible, maybe not impossible."
     .
     Everybody thought Hillary was a sure thing. Perhaps people thought the risk was minimal and the opportunities were profitable to demonstrate their loyalty or value to Madam President's regime by these actions.
     Who can say. We don't have enough information for more than idle speculation, and people can be complicated sometimes.

155. Also,
     >>It's not criminal to investigate someone and find out they aren't guilty. All the rules can be followed in good faith with a subsequent dead end.
     .
     I agree it's not criminal to investigate. I still think the FBI basically sucks. It ought to be criminal, IMO, for the FBI to investigate people it wants to 'flip', find legal threats it can leverage against the loved ones of the target, and use this intimidation to coerce cooperation. We can use pretty words like 'not criminal' and 'follow rules in good faith' all day long. It doesn't change how the FBI operates. I still think the existence [of the] entire organization ought to be reconsidered seriously.
     At the level we're talking about, I question whether there can truly be such a thing as 'good faith' investigation. I'm not sure, but I doubt it.

156. Mark,
     I found out there is a word for FBI actions such as prosecuting for lying to the investigator, "process crimes". These are a travesty.

157. Tom,
     The way the FBI conducts itself.. I'm tempted to call it a travesty as well, although that's not quite right. It's *adversarial*. It's not objective. There's a pointy end that you stick on the bad guy and a not pointy end that the good guys hold.
     https://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobfrenkel/2017/11/27/will-michael-flynn-plead-guilty-and-cooperate-to-protect-his-son/#558b902f14fe
     When an organization uses tricks like this, look the heck out. The difference between the FBI and a criminal organization [can become small]; they look awfully similar to people on the receiving end of their attentions.
     .
     Anyway. I apologize for interrupting you repeatedly with my FBI rants. I understand that's not exactly the point you're concerned with. I will endeavor to keep a slightly tighter lid on it, I guess.

158. Going back over motivation — there's no way to figure Comey out. None of [well, very little of what] he did was arguably in his interests, or in the interests of the FBI over the short, medium, or long term. Looking at it through the lens of expecting Hillary to be elected or expecting Trump to be elected doesn't appear to shed all that much light.
     Personally, I think the guy had a messiah complex of some sort and whatever psych problems are associated [with] that are what ultimately governed his ill advised behavior towards the end of the last Presidential election cycle. I don't think it was rational self interest at all. But like I said, people are complicated. Sometimes they do stuff for obscure reasons.

159. Comey's behavior I think underscores Tom's assertion that self-reservation is the overriding force in any large organization and thus 10X in the federal bureaucracy. The Weiner laptop came to the attention of Lisa Page (in DoJ) in late September, as evidenced by her texts. Comey did not initiate an FBI search warrant until late October, prompting speculation that his initial instinct was to delay any news that could affect the election. But Comey had two problems with that plan. One, a large number of NY FBI field agents were watching Comey's plan and they were not part of the 7th floor "insurance policy" cabal. Two, congress had elicited the promise from Comey in August that he would immediately inform them of any new facts appearing in the Hillary email investigation.
     .
     Still, I don't see Comey as any nefarious mastermind. He was a bureaucrat that acquiesced to corruption from above, which in turn means that had he been corrupted even though such a thing I'm sure is impossible in his mind.

160. Ron, could be. But the business about reopening the investigation into Clinton's emails 11 days before d-day didn't strike me as self preservation. That struck me as posturing – look at how righteous and pure the FBI is under my enlightened leadership – sort of thing.
     .
     But could be. It's sort of like looking for the distinction between [knowingly] wrong and [innocently] stupid after the fact. Maybe Comey's intentions were self preservation and he was just an idiot [in how he went about it]. We may never know.

161. Ron Graf (Comment #174607): "Still, I don't see Comey as any nefarious mastermind. He was a bureaucrat that acquiesced to corruption from above, which in turn means that had he been corrupted even though such a thing I'm sure is impossible in his mind."

     Nope. Comey is a wealthy man with a net worth in 8 figures as a result of eight years in the private sector cashing in on his contacts.
     .
     mark bofill (Comment #174608): "But the business about reopening the investigation into Clinton's emails 11 days before d-day didn't strike me as self preservation. That struck me as posturing – look at how righteous and pure the FBI is under my enlightened leadership – sort of thing."

     Yep. Comey is a self-righteous jerk who thinks that everything he does is good and pure. Hence, he did nothing that he believed to be wrong, but his judgement was severely impaired by being blind to his personal biases.

162. FISC has individuals selected to serve as amici curiae. One resigned saying he rarely gets called to be on a case.
     https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/2017-12-19-FISC-resignation-letter-1.pdf

     Rarely means one case in 2016 for all the amici.

163. Ron Graf,
     "…I don't see Comey as any nefarious mastermind. He was a bureaucrat that acquiesced to corruption from above…)
     .
     I see him as profoundly nefarious and dishonest. Idiots can't easily become masterminds, they just follow the crowd of other idiots. So not being a mastermind doesn't mean all that much.
     .
     Yes Comey liked Hillary… a lot, especially in comparison to the 'great orange whale'. But that is no excuse for not forwarding a recommendation of prosecution for Hillary's multitude of obvious felonies, or worse, an excuse for suggesting Trump was under the control of Russia. Comey was (and is!) a lowlife swamp dweller who Trump should have fired on the day he took office… along with every single one of Obama's holdovers.

164. SteveF: "Trump should have fired on the day he took office… along with every single one of Obama's holdovers."
     .
     I know we are straying off topic here, (sorry JD,) but this is an interesting question. Is it right to assume that every individual of your rival party predecessor's administration is a liability to the country? Certainly some might be net positives, in at least offering transition information and continuity. And, looking in hindsight Wray might have gone along with Rosenstein's leadership of the cabal. Sessions was neutered the day he walked in the door, not just by one individual, certainly. Putting this all together, along with the insider's knowledge that there was a transition counter-intelligence operation active on the Trump administration, Trump was in an impossible box. My guess is that Obama's advisers and Susan Rice spent the last two months on nothing else but sabotaging the incoming outsider.
     .
     If I were a Dem coming in to take over the Trump WH in 2024 I am not sure what I would do as far as securing loyalty from spying, leaking and general dirty tricks to undermine my presidency. History should not be kind to Obama for this. He's done far more damage than any foreign power could ever do.

165. >>Is it right to assume that every individual of your rival party predecessor's administration is a liability to the country?
     .
     It's a fun idea, that the federal bureaucracy could get cleaned out every eight years. It might well could have bigger downsides than upsides, but it's still a fun idea.

166. MikeN,
     Of *course* the guy had nothing to do! The FISA ‘court’ is a fraud on the body politic. There is a solution: eliminate the FISA law and disband the kangaroo court. A blanket ban on spying on citizens for anything less than a normal criminal activities, with normal court orders for spying, is a simple solution, and one long past due.

167. Ron Graf,
     “My guess is that Obama's advisers and Susan Rice spent the last two months on nothing else but sabotaging the incoming outsider.”
     .
     Obviously true. Which is why they should ALL have cleaned out their desks and left on day 1.
     .
     There is nothing good to say about the ‘transition’ period; it may have been sensible 100 years ago, but really, why give the outgoing administration 3 months doing their best to disrupt the next. I’d support a change to 2 weeks or less between election and assuming office.

168. >>There is a solution: eliminate the FISA law and disband the kangaroo court. A blanket ban on spying on citizens for anything less than a normal criminal activities, with normal court orders for spying, is a simple solution, and one long past due.
     .
     You got my vote Steve. When will you be forming that exploratory committee?

169. SteveF (Comment #174614): "There is a solution: eliminate the FISA law and disband the kangaroo court. A blanket ban on spying on citizens for anything less than a normal criminal activities, with normal court orders for spying, is a simple solution, and one long past due."

     What about spies or terrorists that have managed to cross our border, either legally or illegally? What about federal employees spying for a foreign power? What about home grown terrorists working with foreign governments or international terrorist cabals?

     Not sure if those are real questions or rhetorical ones. I guess it depends on if SteveF has real answers.

170. Mike M,
     They are rhetorical, but here are my answeres: Spys or terrorists are not US citizens. Federal employees can spy on foreign powers; has nothing to do with FISA warrants against US citizens. If conversations with foreign terrorists are intercepted, that’s fine. My objection is court orders against US citizens for something other that actual crimes. Crimes always generate court orders. The FISA court is unique, out of control, and IMO contrary to constitutional principles.

171. Tom Scharf: " "I still struggle with motivation. Trump was a laughing stock, unlikely to win until about 11 pm on Nov 8th (NYT said HRC had 87% chance to win), and theories are that high level people were willing to jeopardize their careers by willfully misleading a court to listen in on low level Trump operatives. It seems implausible, maybe not impossible."

     ….
     To me, not that difficult to ascertain motivations for the first FISA. It was assumed that Hillary would win and this would all be thrown under the rug. If Hillary could lose her emails and destroy her cell phone, she could easily cover up or lose a FISA application.

     A potential motivation for investigating Russia (and not Carter Page) were all of the various rumors out there. Carter Page with his long history with Russia, contacts with mostly lower Trump officials (who undoubtedly were in contact with higher officials) was a nobody who would have little ability to fight back. To me it was arrogance combined with dishonesty combined with a schmidgen of honest suspicion as to what the Russians were doing. The easiest thing for the Obama administration to do was to FISA Page and take the position of see no evil and hear no evil after he publicly called the Steele Dossier complete garbage.

     JD

172. What about spies or terrorists that have managed to cross our border, either legally or illegally? What about federal employees spying for a foreign power? What about home grown terrorists working with foreign governments or international terrorist cabals?"

     How do you even know how effective an agency is when it operates under the cover of secrecy? We have seen many cases of terrorism where these agencies have failed miserably. I do not take seriously an agency working in secrecy telling me that they have squelched many potential criminal actions when because of the secrecy under which theyt operate they cannot provide hard evidence.

173. >no excuse for not forwarding a recommendation of prosecution for Hillary's multitude of obvious felonies,

     Comey knew that Hillary wouldn't be prosecuted. There was no reason for him to make a recommendation, even if Lynch said it was his decision. Recommending prosecution would amount to interfering in a Presidential election. So he decided to leave it to the public by clearing her and simultaneously laying out the charges against her.
     People keep blaming his letter reopening the investigation as flipping the election, but this initial press conference was far more damaging. Trump used Comey's statements in ads throughout the campaign: 'reckless', 'extremely careless'.
     Trump then used this service to his campaign and made that his stated rationale for firing Comey. Mueller Report makes it clear that this idea originated with McGahn/Rosenstein.

174. SteveF, FISA already requires actual crimes for warrants against US citizens.
     The issue is that the methods used involve catching many more conversations and then looking afterwards. Right now, they collect a record of e-mails and who everyone has called, just to make the connection to a terrorist after the fact.

     Mark Bofill's objection gets to my point that the investigators of the spying conspiracy will be reluctant to reveal everything, because they want to protect the FISA court.

175. Mike N,
     I think it beggars belief to suggest there was credible evidence of criminal activity by Carter Page. I have seen no such evidence. There *was* overwhelming desire to spy on Trump via the two-hop rule.

176. SteveF, the FBI presented evidence of a crime by Page in the FISA. Your call above of how things should be run, would not have changed anything.

177. MikeN,
     From what I can read (heavily redacted) the evidence was at best misleading, and perhaps false. We will see what happens with Barr’s investigation of the application.
     .
     One thing that might help is to always have an adversarial hearing with an opposing advocate always present, and giving that opposing advocate the right to appeal the judge’s decision. But severe criminal penalties (minimum of many years in prison) for applying with false or misleading information should be part of the law, and those penalties should be enforced against each person who approved the application. The two-hop rule should be eliminated. Renewal of any FISA warrant against a citizen should require clear and direct proof of criminal activity by the target collected via the first warrent.

178. MikeN: "SteveF, the FBI presented evidence of a crime by Page in the FISA. Your call above of how things should be run, would not have changed anything."

     ….
     I disagree. The evidence if fairly presented — Steele was desperate to defeat Trump and hadn't been to Russia for about 10 years should have defeated the application. Instead, Steele's credibility was strongly slanted against Page. Also, hard to believe FBI didn't know that Yahoo article that was extensively quoted was using Steele as a source — Steele was in essence authenticating himself, the way the FBI slanted the application.

     JD

179. We only know the tip of the iceberg of the Ohr-Steele-Clinton story. The Mueller investigation probed very superficially in that direction. From other investigators, however, it has come out that Bruce Ohr was working with Steele for at least two years(2014-2016). The official operation was to try to flip Russian oligarchs, Putin's power base, by promising individual relief from sanctions. Whereas Oleg Deripaska had been hiring K-street lobbyists since 2005 to lift his sanctions, it makes sense that he would be a prime target. Last July it came out that Ohr's notes revealed Steele and Deripaska were working together with Ohr in January 2016. We know some of Steele and Deripsakas communication was through Adam Waldman, Deripaska's lobbyist, a DC lawyer that Steele also retained, likely to create a legally confidential intermediary.
     .
     What did they discuss? We know what Deripaska wanted. What did the US IC want from Deripaska? Of course, they wanted Russian state secrets but Deripaska surely wanted to live to enjoy his bargain. What could Deripaska give that Putin would also gladly approve of?
     .
     Paul Manafort we know now was deeply in debt to Deripaska and during his position as Trump campaign chairman emailed his Russian employee that he would supply briefings personally to Deripaska in efforts to "get whole." We know now that Steele and Ohr were still working with Deripaska during the summer of 2016. Steele reported that Deripaska's lawyer was "investigating" Manafort.
     .
     Question: Did Deripaska induce Manafort to join the Trump campaign, and what value did insider briefings or polling data have to Deripaska except as a currency to barter, but to whom?
     .
     Was the information going to Putin, as Dems suggest, or did they have more value to Steele? Keep in mind Manafort never worked for free for anyone before volunteering for the Trump campaign.

180. Here is a Newsweek article outlining that Steele and Ohr worked with Deripaska since 2014: https://www.newsweek.com/bruce-ohr-christopher-steele-tried-flipping-russian-oligarch-trump-dirt-1101183
     .
     "Emails show that the first time Ohr and Steele ever discussed making Deripaska an informant happened during a meeting in Washington D.C. in November 2014, about seven months before Trump announced his candidacy for president. "
     .
     This article doesn't mention that the first FISA was against Manafort was 2014. Deripaska was Manafort's most high profile client (other than former Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych). Is it just coincidence that the dossier alleged that Manafort was using Page as a go-between with the Russian state? Perhaps the FISC rejected a FISA against Manafort in 2016 since he was the chair of a rival political campaign but they could get the same access with two hops through a lower campaign volunteer. They just needed evidence on Page, which the dossier conveniently provided.
     .
     On another topic, last night Joe DiGenova revealed on Fox News that the Obama IC had 4 separate surveillance FISAs against conservatives since 2012. Indictments are coming.

181. Wow. Here is a newspaper columnist (Phil Kadner, Chicago Sun-Times) openly advocating a coup:
     https://chicago.suntimes.com/columnists/impeachment-trump-mueller-report-phil-kadner/
     "No one can trust the outcome of the next presidential election. Now is the time for impeachment."

182. The readable part of the FISAs provides allegations against Page by Source #1 (Steele), but provides no independent evidence to support his allegations, other than the footnotes saying the FBI trusts him. Interestingly, comparing the different FISA renewals I see no update at all in the main text concerning Page's activities, but the footnote on Source #1 regularly gets updated. If the point of the FISA is to surveil Page and get information about his activities, why does his non-existent meetings in Russia continue unchanged from renewal to renewal and still rest on Steele's information? If his coordination with Russia is real, why not supply the real information — and if it's not, how has that not been discovered in the intervening months?
     .
     The irony of the entire application is that the (readable) rationale is that the Russians are interfering by providing damaging information about Candidate #2 (Clinton). But the allegations about Page are from a foreign national, known to have been an intelligence agent, getting his information from unnamed sub-sources in Russia, and known to be seeking damaging information about Candidate #1 (Trump). And that information is *right in the footnotes*, along with the information that he was paid both on behalf of Candidate #2 and the FBI itself. If what Page did was alleged to be criminal, how on earth is Fusion/FBI paying Steele not criminal?
     .
     Further, Russia is accused of interfering in the election by releasing negative information about Candidate #2 to the public via wiki-leaks. But the application makes clear that information from Steele was leaked to the public in September (they don't blame Steele) and that Steele himself *personally* leaked damaging information against Candidate #1 in October after getting in a snit about Comey and Hilary's e-mails. So is there a FISA application out there against Fusion folks, or is this just a bit of special pleading?
     .
     And what I don't really get, if the application was done in good faith, is what it was supposed to accomplish both initially and getting renewed well into the next year. I mean, if the Russians weren't already gun-shy about Page after getting an agent busted and imprisoned when trying to recruit him a few years back, Page was publicized as supposedly meeting with Russians on September 23rd–unless the Russians are complete morons, even if they were communicating with Page they'd assume everything they tell him would be recorded. And what they'd try to get from him is also a mystery, seeing how he was quickly disassociated with the campaign and had absolutely no role in the following administration. There's simply nothing for the Russians to get and nothing for the FBI to hear in October, let alone all the way to the following September with renewals.
     .
     So if surviellance of Page himself was an obvious waste of time from Oct 2016 – September 2017 who would it be useful to spy on? Page has Russian contacts, but surely we spy as much as possible on those people *without* having to get a FISA on Page. That leaves contacts on the other side, the people in the Trump campaign. If the FISA *wasn't* used to spy on the Trump campaign/administration, what earthly good was it?

183. MikeM
     **What about spies or terrorists that have managed to cross our border, either legally or illegally? **
     As steveF already pointed out, a ban on US citizens is not a ban on spies or terrorists who managed to cross our borders, who presumbly are not citizens.

     **What about federal employees spying for a foreign power? **
     The government can already read all their emails and monitor work phones because employers can monitor those of employees. This isn't "spying" on them and we don't need FISA.

     **What about home grown terrorists working with foreign governments or international terrorist cabals?**
     Spying on their outside of the US contacts would do the trick here. Nothing prohibits anyone from spying on a foreign ISIS member. This doesn't somehow get prohibited if an American happens to phone them.

     If the american is identified as having done something criminal, go get an ordinary warrant through the ordinary, not secret FISA route. Same as with the massage therapists in Florida. Blocking the FISA route for US citizens doesn't prevent investigating crimes involving US citizens. Rhetorical questions that suggest it does are easily answered to show it doesn't.

184. Mike,
     .
     I wish the Democrats would impeach Trump. I can think of few things off the top of my head that would damage their chances of prevailing in 2020 more than doing that.
     Unfortunately I suspect Dem party leaders understand this as well. In my view, they aren't going to impeach if they can possibly avoid it, unless the crazy/extremist wing and those among them who cater to the crazy extermist wing of their party outmaneuver them somehow.

185. lucia (Comment #174631): "As steveF already pointed out, a ban on US citizens is not a ban on spies or terrorists who managed to cross our borders, who presumbly are not citizens."

     Some could be. Perhaps they were born here, raised elsewhere, then returned here for nefarious purposes. It is not clear to me if the intelligence agencies always know for sure who is a citizen, who is a legal resident alien, who is a legal visitor, and who is here illegally.
     .
     lucia, re federal employees spying for a foreign power: "The government can already read all their emails and monitor work phones because employers can monitor those of employees. This isn't "spying" on them and we don't need FISA."

     I agree that FISA is not needed to catch really stupid spies. But I think most spies know enough to try to cover their tracks.
     .
     lucia, re home grown terrorists working with foreigners: "Spying on their outside of the US contacts would do the trick here. Nothing prohibits anyone from spying on a foreign ISIS member."

     Again, I don't think the bad guys make it that easy.

186. mark bofill (Comment #174632): "I wish the Democrats would impeach Trump. I can think of few things off the top of my head that would damage their chances of prevailing in 2020 more than doing that."

     From a partisan point of view, you might well be correct. But that would definitely be harmful to our democracy.

     The idiot columnist I quoted seems to think "impeach" is equivalent to "remove from office" and that the Dems could do it unilaterally.

187. Mike, yes on both counts. I started my comment going into why the author was being moronic, but realized how pointless it was halfway through and rewrote.

188. >>But I think most spies know enough to try to cover their tracks.
     .
     This is interesting to me. I am skeptical that much of the dragnet mass surveillance that goes on is of any use whatsoever in catching *sophisticated* espionage players. If the Powers That Be (Spyin On You) don't yet have you identified as a person of interest, I'd think it'd be relatively easy to avoid most if not all of the automatic trigger mechanisms for notice. And then, if anybody *does* have specific reason to think they have been identified as a person of interest, I'd think that they could take more sophisticated steps as countermeasures. I mean, PGP is thought to be near military grade encryption. One time pads are unbreakable in principle. So on – there are things that could be done.
     .
     >>I agree that FISA is not needed to catch really stupid spies. But I think most spies know enough to try to cover their tracks.
     .
     I guess my point is, FISA and our surveillance programs in general seem to be optimized (to me right now anyway) to catch amateurs. And to spy on citizens… I doubt they're catching much among intelligence professionals who know how to 'play'.
     .
     [Edit: hey, here's a related link:https://www.foxnews.com/tech/nsa-recommends-dropping-controversial-mass-surveillance-program
     Basically says the same thing. The people you really want to spy on, you don't actually get information on using these mass surveillance tricks. Those tricks only work on the uninitiated]

189. So something I got wrong above – FISA and the mass surveillance programs don't necessarily have anything in common. I sort of assumed they did; that FISA would allow an investigator to 'tap into' stuff collected that way.
     Not necessarily on point. Anyways..

190. mark bofill (Comment #174636): "I guess my point is, FISA and our surveillance programs in general seem to be optimized (to me right now anyway) to catch amateurs. And to spy on citizens… I doubt they're catching much among intelligence professionals who know how to 'play'."

     That definitely seems to be true for mass surveillance and may be true for FISA. I do not claim that FISA is either effective or necessary compared to conventional warrants. What I objected to above is the distinction between citizens and non-citizens, especially given our inane citizenship laws. If FISA is effective and necessary to deal with bad guys among resident aliens, I would think it effective and necessary to deal with bad guys among citizens. And if it is not effective and necessary, then it should be scrapped altogether.
     .
     Hmm. The U.S government can spy on conversations between citizens in the U.S. and foreigners outside the U.S. Can they legally spy on conversations between citizens in the U.S. and citizens outside the U.S.?

191. Thanks Mike. I get you now.
     >>And if it is not effective and necessary, then it should be scrapped altogether.
     Yeah, that's how I lean anyway.
     .
     Don't know about legality of spying on conversations between citizens inside and outside US.
     .
     I'm thinking out loud here and this isn't a topic I actually know anything about (like that usually stops me anyway, but I digress). But I would wager that there is a certain amount of illegal spying that is sanctioned, just to 'know' if there's some catastrophic threat. I mean, if the spying was illegal, well, so what? So the information couldn't be used in court I guess. So what. It could still be used to avert a terror attack, for example.
     .
     I wouldn't get too hung up on legal vs illegal spying. I'd bet there's a good bit of illegal spying going on. It's just that no legal action will ever come of the illegal spying, maybe. I guess I mean, the evidence collected won't be used in court. The police will just 'happen' to be in the right place at the right time coincidentally to head off an attack…
     .
     Heck I don't know. Maybe you don't care about illegal spying. I sort of do. I don't think the legality or illegality of the cases is a particular barrier, perhaps. I don't know I'm still kicking it around. Out loud. Sorry.

192. Mark
     Broad wiretap info on us citizens from the nsa has (is still ?) been shared with us law enforcement that has nothing to do with foreign espionage.

     One example of news reports on this
     https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2013/08/05/the-nsa-is-giving-your-phone-records-to-the-dea-and-the-dea-is-covering-it-up/?noredirect=on

193. Thanks Ed. If I ever knew about that I'd forgotten, but that's an example of exactly the sort of thinking & behavior I expect from these agencies with regards to spying.

194. Mike M,
     "Here is a newspaper columnist (Phil Kadner, Chicago Sun-Times) openly advocating a coup.."
     .
     I think that the unhinged like Kadner are finally realizing that with no collusion narrative, Trump could well win re-election. The predictable result is panic, irrationality, and delusional thinking. Which is to say: the guy is bonkers.

195. Dale S: "The irony of the entire application is…"
     .
     …that the alleged crime of Candidate #1 had advance knowledge of the publishing of real emails of Candidate #2's campaign. The emails were damaging because they exposed real wrongdoing and potential illegalities. Yet, OTOH, there's no hesitation to allow Candidate #2 to publish lies about Candidate #1 laundered through the UK and USA IC to trigger investigations and facilitate fake news leaks using the auspices of official federal law enforcement, (basically running a disinformation black op).
     .
     BTW, I predicted 18 months ago at CA that Roger Stone was set up by Guccifer 2.0, who apparently contacted him and I suspect is the source of advance information on the Podesta Wikileaks. Stone tweeted in advance that "It will soon be Podesta's time in the barrel." Stone separately bragged that he had been emailed by G2.0. My belief is that G2 was not a Russian intelligence officer but part of Hillary's network. I suspect that HRC and Syd Blumenthal were able to infiltrate the Obama intel agencies, DoS and DoJ with friendly contacts in order to orchestrate events.

196. MIkeM
     **I agree that FISA is not needed to catch really stupid spies. But I think most spies know enough to try to cover their tracks.**
     The point is: they government already can spy on the people they are communicating with. And the government can monitor LOTS of their communications. We don't need FISA even if the government employees are smart.

     **Some could be. Perhaps they were born here, raised elsewhere, then returned here for nefarious purposes. It is not clear to me if the intelligence agencies always know for sure who is a citizen, who is a legal resident alien, who is a legal visitor, and who is here illegally.**
     If the intelligence agencies can't figure out that a person who has a green card is a foreign national, or a person who returned to the US showing a US passport is american, or that a person who was born in the US is american, or where a person was born, they aren't much of an intelligence agency. If they are THAT incompentent, they shouldn't be allowed to spy on anyone owing to their incompetence.

     **Again, I don't think the bad guys make it that easy.**
     I didn't say spying was eady. In fact, I assume it requires some skill. That the job requires skill is no reason why Americans civil liberties should be allowed to be violated.

197. lucia (Comment #174644): "If the intelligence agencies can't figure out that a person who has a green card is a foreign national, or a person who returned to the US showing a US passport is american, or that a person who was born in the US is american, or where a person was born, they aren't much of an intelligence agency."

     That may or may not be easy, but it is moot. The Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment prohibits treating resident non-citizens differently from citizens in most respects.

198. "It will soon be Podesta's time in the barrel."

     Is this on video? I think he said, "the Podestas' time in the barrel', as Tony Podesta was working with Manafort. Tony shut down his company once Mueller started indicting.

199. Mike M, #174645
     There's a discussion of FISA surveillance and aliens here:
     https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1020&context=res_gestae
     .
     FISA as amended by the Patriot act draws the line between resident and non-resident aliens, so it appears resident aliens would be protected as effectively as Carter Page was, while non-resident aliens require a lower bar. The article writer feels this should *not* be the case, but the second circuit upheld the disparate treatment:
     —
     “Although both the Fourth Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause afford protection to all aliens, nothing in either provision prevents Congress from adopting standards and procedures that are more beneficial to United States citizens and resident aliens than to nonresident aliens, so long as the differences are reasonable.”
     —

200. I'm not sure if a President has ever said they consider FISA constitutional. As in, their position is even without FISA, the President has the authority to wiretap anyone for national security reasons without needing to get a warrant first.

201. MikeN, your quote is the correct one. The Washington Post on 1/25/19 dropped the critical "the" in the Stone's now deleted August 2016 tweet, changing the meaning from brothers plural to possessive singular. Their reporter must have forgotten about Tony Podesta.
     .
     "In looking for that I found CNN doing a similar misinformation on the critical evidence of Stone's claim to be in contact with WL. Wolf Blitzer says that Stone claimed to have dinner with Julian Assange in an interview.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pwz_RfNpxQ
     .
     The actual quote is that Stone claimed to have dinner with someone who claimed to have talked to Assange.https://miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/2016/10/roger-stone-admits-to-wikileaks-back-channel-over-clinton-emails.html
     .
     Stone was predicting the upcoming WL would expose the Clinton Foundation corruption. Stone predicted wrong but Wolf did omitted that point.
     .
     BTW, I have no idea why Stone wanting to know what WL was going to publish is unusual or improper. It seems like he was doing his legitimate job for the campaign.

202. If the Democrats are foolhardy enough to go with impeachment you can pretty much guarantee Comey et. al. will face felony charges. Tit for tat. The left is currently executing a "we are serious about impeachment but won't for the good of the country" marketing campaign to their base, helped on by the media. Impeachment now will guarantee the next Democratic president will be impeached on the drop of a hat. It would be insanely stupid to impeach, the more they talk about it, the better it is for the right.

203. I just watched last month's Frontline on the Mueller investigation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEjzF2Cx1UY
     PBS makes a convincing case (by omissions) that Trump DID collude with the Russians and was guilty as sin of obstruction. For example, the NYT reporter states that in setting up the Trump Tower meeting the Russian lawyer promised Hillary dirt coming from the top of the Russian government. There is no mention that Natalia Veselnitskaya had no knowledge that Rob Goldstone misrepresented her meeting's purpose, or that she brought in a Hillary Clinton connected Russian friend at the last minute who happened to be in NYC to sit in, and everyone's sworn testimony regarding the meeting jibed that it was short, awkward and only discussed the harm the Magnitsky Act is doing to relations and in particular the ability for Americans to continue to adopt Russian orphans.
     .
     Vesenitskaya was not interviewed until well over a year into the Mueller investigation and I am not sure they ever found Goldstone, a British entertainment publicist who told a reporter that found him that he "puffed" when promising Hillary emails in order to get the meeting so he could get a chance to possibly meet Trump and get an autograph for one of his clients, a Russian oligarch's daughter, a singer. Also, Frontline never mentioned that Veselnitskaya was working with Fusion GPS for a year up to that meeting as co-counsels representing a Russian firm against a law suit by Bill Browder's (initiator of the Magnitsky Act) firm, Hermitage Capital. She met with Glenn Simpson before and after the meeting in Trump Tower and was in the country on a special visa that had to get approval by the office of attorney general, Loretta Lynch, according to The Hill's reporting.

204. Ron, Jr was told they would be getting dirt on Hillary from the Russian government who was trying to help Trump win, he responded, "I love it.", and got Manafort and Kushner to show up as well.

205. DaleS: "So if surviellance of Page himself was an obvious waste of time from Oct 2016 – September 2017 who would it be useful to spy on?"

     Very good question. It is a waste of time if you accepted the stated purpose was to surveil Page who was alleged to be a criminal agent of Russia. If the idea is to spy on foreign policy people in the Trump administration, it all makes sense.

     …..
     DaleS "So if surviellance of Page himself was an obvious waste of time from Oct 2016 – September 2017 who would it be useful to spy on?"

     See above. With what we know now, it seems to be pretty clear that the FBI had to have known that Page, an unpaid volunteer on an informal committee, was innocent within 20 or 30 days of filing the first Application. From that point on, and a good chance from the very beginning, the Page FISA was just a fig leaf for spying on people in the Trump administration. The point of the Application being a fig leaf becomes even clearer when you consider that Page called the allegations "complete garbage" in Sept. of 2016, and no effort was made to go straight to the source after Page went public.

     JD

206. Harry Reid had no problem exposing an active counterintelligence investigation with his pre-election letter to Comey. No one seems to care about this exposure of an investigation into a Russian foreign agent who was committing or about to commit crimes against the US.

207. Pence's chief of staff married to an FBI agent. Suspected of spying on behalf of Strzok and Page.

208. "… he responded, "I love it.", and got Manafort and Kushner to show up as well."
     .
     Yes, there is mounting evidence that the Trump campaign was engaged in an effort to expose Clinton as a crooked and corrupt insider. So far they have only succeeded with Fox News viewers. As I have been showing, there is collusion in the media to cover up revealing facts.
     .
     There is abundant evidence that some person or group took advantage of Hillary's legendary status by approaching the Trump campaign with phantom Russians offering the goods. Jr. was just the highest one and who bit the hardest on the bait. Like all the others when investigated more than the headlines a different picture emerges.
     .
     The media, Schiff, Swawell and Nadler all point out that Trump publicly asked the Russians to hack Hillary and DNC. Collusion in plain sight, they call it. In fact, Trump called for the Russia's help in the recovery of illegally destroyed US government property. If Trump had asked the Chinese they would have been really uncomfortable since we know since last year from the IC IG office that China was getting cc on every email coming and going out of Hillary's home brew server.

209. In 2015, clintonemail.com was using MxLogic as a spam filtering service. This means all e-mails were going to this company, now owned by McAfee. It is not known whether MxLogic was being used when she was Secretary of State.

210. MikeN,
     “… who was committing or about to commit crimes against the US.“
     .
     I think a good argument can be advanced that Harry Reid’s very existance is a crime against the US.

211. NYT gets Trump tax return "anonymously" left in reporters mailbox. It's fortunate NYT reporter's addresses are public knowledge, or not.
     .
     Trump staff gets offer of HRC dirt from someone allegedly connected to Russian government.
     .
     Steele dossier is privately paid opposition research with unconfirmed reports from anonymous alleged Russian agents.
     .
     These only seem vaguely different. If there was no representation that this information was directly from the Russian government, as opposed to Russians, as opposed to anonymous, it's hard to differentiate these actions clearly.
     .
     The source shouldn't be a big issue with true information, it should be pretty much open season. If the NYT's hides behind a public good argument in disclosing Trump's private tax return, it's hard to see how DNC emails is much different. Trafficking unconfirmed or false information is a different story. I don't see how this is ever warranted, this was a media failure.
     .
     At what point is receiving valid information on an opponent a crime? Apparently when it is on behest of a foreign government (the UK doesn't count as foreign obviously). The Russians aren't stupid, so the only reason someone would assert the Russians government was behind any information would be to specifically trap Trump, not help him. The KGB is well versed on information warfare and plausible deniability.

212. Tom, the answer to your hopefully not rhetorical questions is that most people allow others to do their thinking, happy to blend in to popular consensus.
     .
     "The KGB is well versed on information warfare…"
     Also subverting a target by a honey pot trap is the oldest trick in the book. But the Trump family and campaign volunteers were babes in the woods. This would not only be noted by the Russians, however. Trump had stronger rivals that were well versed also.
     .
     Rosenstein today criticized Obama for not taking stronger measures against the Russian interference during the campaign. It might be because his IC was cultivating it. Remember, the cyber defense complained to the IG that Obama had issued an un-explainable stand down for countermeasures against Russian cyber attacks. We also know that Ohr was working with Russian oligarchs through Deripaska. We also know that it was Dutch intelligence who found Cozy Bear on the DNC server nine months before Crowdstrike's public declaration of it.

213. So I was thinking. Lets see if I can frame this *not* in the form of a bunch of rhetorical questions..
     I think if the electorate in the US decided to put a President in the White House who was a yuge fan of Putin, a yuge admirer say, … I think they could do that.
     I mean, why not. We could put somebody in office who was a yuge critic of Putin. We could put somebody in who was an admirer of Trudeau. We could put somebody in who thought Che Guevara was the second coming of Christ. I mean, that'd make us stupid as the voting public, but there's nothing shocking or new there.
     I think we could put somebody in office who was *in fact* an open sycophant for some other leader. Say we as a people thought Macron was the guy. Say he was the Winston Churchill of the 21rst century, whatever. We *could* elect somebody who'd be a Macron puppet.
     There doesn't seem to me to be grounds to propose removing Trump *even if it were demonstrated* that he was a Putin puppet, is where I'm going with this.
     I mean, what's the essential difference between what I was saying above and what liberals thought about Trump? Maybe that he was doing this in secret, that he was deceiving everybody about it. Well.. It's not like politicians don't lie to us *ALL THE TIME* to get into office anyway. 'Read my lips, no new taxes' — it's not like the IC could remove Bush for having lied to us about that.
     .
     I say all this because two years of the spectacle of this complicated illusion maybe has left us with warped perceptions. I don't think at this point there was *ever* even a theoretical basis for removing Trump, even if all the crazy allegations were nothing but the simple truth.

214. I think it'd have to be established that a foreign power managed to install a President against the will of the people, say by hacking and falsifying the results of the election, before there would be a legitimate basis for removing a President in this situation.
     What do you people think. It's perfectly fine to tell me why I'm full of hooey, in case y'all have forgotten that… 😉
     [Edit: But I'm going to find someplace to have some sort of reasonable dinner with my wife right now, so I won't respond until later or tomorrow if anyone replies.]

215. Mark Bofill’
     “There doesn't seem to me to be grounds to propose removing Trump *even if it were demonstrated* that he was a Putin puppet, is where I'm going with this.”
     .
     I really don’t think most of the oppostion to Trump has much to do with what he thinks of Putin. 90% of the pearl clutching is really about not agreeing with Trump’s policies. Yes, Trump is offensive in his personal behavior (and especially his foolish tweets!!!) and in his less than honest statements, but even if he were an understated secular saint, almost every person who trashes ‘Trump the terrible’ would STILL trash ‘Trump the saint’, because they fundamentally disagree with the substance of his policies.
     .
     The only thing that troubles me is the consistent dishonesty among the ‘woke’ left: focusing on style and personal behavior when the real disagreement is about substantive policy. As I noted somewhere above, I would oppose Hillary, even if she where not a totally corrupt, money grubbing, life-long criminal and liar, because I think the policies she supports are wrong, destructive, and damaging to the long term prospects of humanity. I don’t give a rat’s as…err…I don’t give a hoot about her many personal failings.

216. mark bofill (Comment #174663): "There doesn't seem to me to be grounds to propose removing Trump *even if it were demonstrated* that he was a Putin puppet, is where I'm going with this.
     I mean, what's the essential difference between what I was saying above and what liberals thought about Trump? Maybe that he was doing this in secret, that he was deceiving everybody about it."
     .
     Something like that could be a reasonable argument. I don't think it could ever be legitimate to impeach a president for doing what he openly said he would do during the campaign. Trump is doing what he said he would do.
     .
     But let's suppose that the Manchurian Candidate managed to get elected by pretending to be a patriot, then acting in office as the agent of a foreign power. Such could well be deemed "high crimes and misdemeanors" even if not treason or some other actual crimes. A betrayal of the public trust is an impeachable offense.
     .
     So what would be short of an actual crime but still qualify as "high crimes and misdemeanors"? I would say that would be actions in office that cause an overwhelming and irrecoverable loss of public trust. That would be consistent with the original meaning of high crimes and misdemeanors".
     .
     So if most people felt about Trump the way most Democrats do, that would be grounds for impeachment. But that is not the case. Not even remotely close.

217. Thanks Steve. I think that's pretty much it as well.
     Thanks Mike, seems reasonable.

218. The only way to impeach a president or indict someone for political intrigue is to prove they knowingly defrauded the public. To prove such is the essence of "what did he they know and when did they know it." And, I am not saying just that they lied, but that they actually plotted for personal gain by clandestine means. Making a deal with a foreign power in exchange for the use of their intelligence apparatus to win an election would definitely be that, whether it be with Russia, Britain or the outgoing administration.

219. The ambiguity of impropriety lies in the degree in which a foreign power can secretly help a candidate even without a secret deal. I would say if the support is clandestine then there is an implicit deal. This is why it's illegal for a US politician to accept campaign donations from foreigners, I think.
     .
     If the foreign help is unsolicited then the question is to what degree is it the responsibility of the candidate to refuse the help or block it if the candidate becomes aware of it. If Trump became aware Russians were trying to secretly give him Hillary emails for him to do what he wanted with, and he accepted them, is that an impeachable offense? Real question.

220. Ron,
     >>I would say if the support is clandestine then there is an implicit deal.
     .
     No I don't agree with you here. Because then all a foreign power needs to do to interfere with our elections is to give a candidate clandestine support. You seem to be saying that even if the supported candidate didn't agree to the support, ask for the support, or make a deal for the support, there is an implicit deal. So a foreign power can wipe out a candidate just by offering unsolicited support, and then allowing the clandestine support to become known.
     .
     [Edit:"If the foreign help is unsolicited then the question is to what degree is it the responsibility of the candidate to refuse the help or block it if the candidate becomes aware of it." Yeah, but simpler and better in my view just to say 'nah.']

221. I don't see what makes foreign support diabolical by default. If the Brits are happy that candidate X is running and they generally support him, so what. I fail to see why that obligates candidate X in any way shape or form to do or say anything about the darn Brits. Or the Russians. Or whoever.

222. There are lots of nations in the world today, nearly 200. Maybe a dozen have 'decent' intelligence agencies. How is a candidate supposed to stay on top of what a dozen intelligence agencies in different countries are or aren't doing while running for office – this seems unreasonable to me. It would require the cooperation of U.S. intelligence. I think recent history has shown that U.S. intelligence can be fairly uncooperative towards candidates who it has decided a priori are suspect for whatever reason.

223. The problematic part is anything that is done outside public view. If the help is open for all to see then the electorate can decide how they feel about the foreign entity's support. If the help is secret but candidate X is unaware then again there is no foul on X. But if X becomes aware of the secret support that is where the question is of to what measures X must take in order to rebuff the support or make it public.
     .
     If we would require X to make unsolicited help public then a foreign power could meddle by helping the candidate they oppose by putting them in a compromising situation. For example, if the Russians gave Assange DNC emails by fooling Assange into believing they were a DNC leaker but then approach the Trump campaign and give them advance notice that DNC emails will be coming out in WL does this require Trump to announce the Russians are helping him? I suppose Trump could be expected to go to the Obama FBI to tell them of the Russian contact. This is why the FBI is supposed to be trusted as non-partisan.

224. Ron,
     Yes, it gets complicated fast. I think that once we decide foreign powers can obligate candidates to do anything by their own (the foreign powers own) independent actions we've already made a wrong turn.
     Just my two cents.

225. I agree with mark's comments above.

     We should judge office holders by what they do (or refuse to do) in office. We should not judge them by what they may or may not have said in private or by what they may or may not have known; doing so merely enables the most effective propagandist.

     I don't much care who Russia or China might support in our elections, provided they don't break our laws. I very much care if officeholders take actions that are against the interests of the nation and its people. If they do that, I really don't much care about their motivations.

     Murder is murder and treason is treason, regardless of motivation.
     .
     There are lots of public figures in the USA, in both parties, who are eager to sell out the nation and the people. The media and corporate boardrooms are cheering them on. Thank god for Trump.

226. Winston Churchill's history of WW2 is full of instances where he is asking the President of the United States for some secret favor, and offering consideration. I'm not sure the laws that apply to a private citizen in regard to acting on behalf of a foreign power would apply to POTUS, who legitimately *should* be receiving appeals from foreign powers. But I'm sure there are complexities involved…
     .
     For example, in the famous destroyers-for-bases deal in WW2, FDR was constitutionally obliged to present it as a transaction, since he didn't think he had the authority to give away the destroyers. Churchill was obliged to present it as a mutual exchange of presents, since he had authority to lease the bases to the US as being in the interest of Britain, but not to essentially sell them for armaments. Since they both needed to interpret the deal different ways, the official records were ambigious.

227. Dale S (Comment #174676): "Winston Churchill's history of WW2 is full of instances where he is asking the President of the United States for some secret favor, and offering consideration. I'm not sure the laws that apply to a private citizen in regard to acting on behalf of a foreign power would apply to POTUS, who legitimately *should* be receiving appeals from foreign powers. But I'm sure there are complexities involved…"
     —
     Good point. That is why the issue should not be acting in concert with a foreign power or acting in secret. The issue should be whether the President is acting in the interests of the USA. During WW2, the USA, UK, and USSR had a common interest. By acting in that common interest, FDR was acting in the interest of America and its people even if that was also in the interest of foreign powers.

228. We have moved from the question of a foreign power meddling in an election to presidential openness in foreign policy.
     .
     "Murder is murder and treason is treason, regardless of motivation."
     .
     No, there are various intricate legal considerations to determine what murder is and in what degree. Treason is even more complicated. In the FDR example if he had made a secret deal to send canned food to Stalin in 1941 after the German invasion in exchange for respecting the oil embargo against Japan that would not be treason. But if the return favor was to run an information op on FDR's 1944 presidential opponent that is closer to treason but more like corruption. If FDR's political rival, Charles Lindbergh, gave US rocketry secrets to Hitler in exchange for support of an anti-FDR movement because FDR was hostile to Lindbergh's business associates THAT might be treason. If Lindbergh gave Germany US military secrets after December 1941, THAT would definitely be treason.

229. The qualification for impeachment is whatever a majority of the House agrees is worthy of removal.

230. MikeN,
     "The qualification for impeachment is whatever a majority of the House agrees is worthy of removal."
     .
     Sure, and based on how badly the Dems have handled Trump, with constant talk of impeachment, starting before he even took office, it is clear the impeachment bar is now very low indeed. I think we can count on multiple efforts to impeach future presidents whenever the house is controlled by the opposing party. Two thirds of the Senate is not going to happen, of course; not for Clinton, nor for Trump, nor likely for any future president who is being pursued for what is little more than policy differences. But it is still a bad omen for the future stability of the country. I will not be around to see it, but I would not be surprised if the country split up along political lines within the next 40 years.

231. MikeN (Comment #174679): "The qualification for impeachment is whatever a majority of the House agrees is worthy of removal."

     That is not only nonsense, it is destructive nonsense.

     It is technically true in a tautological sense, but as such it is meaningless. It is like saying that the law permits anything you can get away with. But it would be perverse to adopt the attitude that the law permits murder, since some people have gotten away with murder. Civil society can not survive the widespread adoption of such an attitude. Government would then devolve into the mere exercise of raw power.

     Of course, reducing everything to the exercise of raw power seems to be what the left wants.

232. MikeM,
     “Government would then devolve into the mere exercise of raw power.”
     .
     Well, that is exactly what the House is now doing. Some people might argue that Harry Reed’s nuclear option on Obama judges, followed by McConnell’s tit-for-tat on Trump’s SC judges, is just more of the same. I do not see it getting better, only much worse. There is a deep divide in the country about the proper role and scope of government, along with deep divides on fundamental things like immigration, marginal tax rates, wealth confiscation, single-payer health care, guaranteed income, and even basics like free speach (the left is very much against it, of course). Which is why I an beginning to doubt the country will stay together.
     .
     The hysteria about Kavanaugh is illustrative; the left recognized it would delay getting a progressive majority on the SC for a long time, and correctly so, thus the hysteria. The moment there is a progressive majority on the SC, the court will simply ignore the actual words and meaning of the constitution, and substitute whatever ‘understanding’ of the Constitution is required to institute their desired progressive policies. Scap the sceond amendment and confiscate guns? Sure! Drastically restrict free speach? Of course! Confiscate wealth? Absolutely! Limit personal liberties as needed ‘to make progress’? Of course.
     .
     Conservatives value the past and value the rule of law. Progressives? Not so much. There are two opposing visions for what the USA should look like in 50 years, and those visions are utterly incompatible.

233. MikeN " "The qualification for impeachment is whatever a majority of the House agrees is worthy of removal.""
     .
     Mike M: "It is technically true in a tautological sense, but as such it is meaningless. It is like saying that the law permits anything you can get away with. But it would be perverse to adopt the attitude that the law permits murder, since some people have gotten away with murder."
     .
     Yes, although it is true that every alleged crime has a unique and complex relationship with the law such that all killing is not murder and murder can be of varying degree, the law is not purely subjective. The Constitution outlines the just cause for impeachment:
     .
     “The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”
     .
     Scholars also generally agree that the crime must be while in office. In other words it must be an illegal abuse of the power of the presidency such that an overwhelming majority of the people would lose confidence in the president's right to continue in office.

234. SteveF (Comment #174682): "Well, that is exactly what the House is now doing."

     Yes, the devolution of our government into mere power is proceeding apace, driven by the Democrats. Republicans have also made contributions, but it seems reluctant. Like a country building up its military, not out of martial spirit but because a belligerent neighbor is arming like mad.

235. Mike M (#174677),
     I won't argue that FDR wasn't acting in what he saw as the best interest of the United States, rather than his own personal self-interest at the expense of the United States — the same is true of Churchill. But that could also be said of others — Petain, Leopold, Mussolini, Stalin, Chiang, Tojo, and even Hitler. And at the time, there were certainly people in America who felt the best interest of the USA would be to stay out of an expensive and bloody conflict in Europe. With the value of hindsight, a reasonable case could be made that we should have done more to stay out of an expensive and bloody conflict in the Pacific.
     .
     Speaking of self-interest, if Russian intelligence really stole the information about Hilary rigging the primary, and absent Russian action the American public would never find out about it, does it make more sense for them to try to get a deal with Trump (widely expected to lose, no personal power to do anything immediately, and completely unnecessary for actually leaking the information), or for them to try to get a deal with Hilary (widely expected to win, friends in current administration, information would reflect badly on her win or lose — and has cut deals with the Russians before). I could see trying to set up a bidding war, but contacting Trump and ignoring Hilary seems very counter-intuitive to me. The Steele Dossier posits the Russians have compromising information on Trump — but the claim is that the IC *knew* the Russians had compromising information on Hillary pre-election, and as far as we know did absolutely nothing about it until the election was over. Why not? And does the IC know that all the damaging material (or even the most damaging material) was actually released?

236. "If Trump became aware Russians were trying to secretly give him Hillary emails for him to do what he wanted with, and he accepted them, is that an impeachable offense?"
     .
     This is impeachment on the grounds of stupidity. Every seasoned corrupt politician knows how to handle this without being tied to it directly. If you are the right hand man of a politician then you handle it without the boss ever knowing, and you never tell him, at least in any way that can ever be discovered. If you are truly trying to help a candidate with DNC emails than you don't ever ask, you just send them to the media and Wikileaks anonymously. Trump's ET tape showed up with obvious political timing, if Clinton's team had surreptitiously discussed when to release it with the source then I would just yawn.
     .
     The only way to really impeach AND remove a President is to first get the people who elected them to turn against them. Otherwise it will be a disaster for all. Bill Clinton's impeachment ended up backfiring. You don't need to over-learn that lesson, but you do need to learn from it.

237. Dale S (Comment #174691): "I won't argue that FDR wasn't acting in what he saw as the best interest of the United States, rather than his own personal self-interest at the expense of the United States — the same is true of Churchill."

     That sounds like a roundabout way of suggestion that FDR and Churchill conducted WW2 in a way that put their self interest ahead of their countries' interests. If so, I strongly disagree.
     .
     Dale S: "And at the time, there were certainly people in America who felt the best interest of the USA would be to stay out of an expensive and bloody conflict in Europe."

     Yes, and the America First Committee disbanded just after Pearl Harbor. At the time, some of its leaders maintained that war could have been avoided. But after the war, I don't think there was any significant support for the idea that the America First Committee was right all along.
     .
     Dale S: "With the value of hindsight, a reasonable case could be made that we should have done more to stay out of an expensive and bloody conflict in the Pacific."

     I have never heard that claim before and I am frankly incredulous.

238. Dale: "With the value of hindsight, a reasonable case could be made that we should have done more to stay out of an expensive and bloody conflict in the Pacific."
     .
     I would agree with that if you meant to say without the benefit of hindsight. Otherwise, I agree with Mike M (currently), in a hundred more years, who knows. But since Lindbergh and the American First Committee did not have the benefit of hindsight their activities are not generally seen as treason, just misguided. Lindbergh saw Russia as the greater evil and felt Germany would be civil after conquering Europe, a power we could do business with. Actually, the Duponts and Rockefellers WERE doing business with Hitler until Pearl Harbor. William J. Donovan, the founder and head of the OSS was actually a traitor to the Wall Street anti-FDR coalition, being originally THEIR coordinator of international intel. He was one of the early ones to sound the alarm against Hitler from insider knowledge of the fascists sympathetic anti-communist interests. To a large degree the same dynamic is true for Churchill's turn against Britain's Clivedon Set interests to speak out against the Munich Pact.
     .

239. Returning to an old topic that I have been trying to get my head around: Student loans.

     There is much angst about student loan debt. The prevailing narrative seems to be that such debt is a terrible burden on recent college grads (and dropouts). I have tentatively come to the conclusion that is exactly backwards. The problem with student debt is that it is an *insufficient* burden on recent students.

     To understand why I say that, we have to look at some numbers. I may be misunderstanding some of these, so the following sounds more confidant than I actually am.
     .
     There are about 3.6 million high school grads per year.
     70% of HS grads enroll in college.
     70% of college students take out loans.
     That makes for about 1.8 million new borrowers per year.
     The average debt at graduation is $30K for those who borrow.
     That makes for $54 billion new debt per year.
     That last number is not all inclusive; there is also debt taken out by postgrad students and by parents. But it should be the majority of new debt.

     Student loans are supposed to be paid back in 10 years. So the new debt ought to be largely balanced by repayments and the increase in net debt ought to be much less than $50 billion per year. In fact, total debt has been growing by $80 billion per year:
     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Student_loan_debt.png
     That is a massive disconnect that demands explanation.
     .
     Two of the most cited numbers are that there is $1.56 trillion in outstanding student debt owed by 45 million borrowers (nearly 20% of the adult population). That is $35K per borrower, which is *larger* than the average debt at graduation of $30K. For people who are paying off loans, the average debt should be about half of the initial debt. Also, with 1.8 million new borrowers per year, it would take 25 years to accumulate 45 million total borrowers. But students loans are supposed to be paid off in 10 years and the number of total borrowers is still increasing.
     .
     Obviously, many people are not paying off their loans. That is why total student debt is increasing so rapidly.

240. The rise in student loan debt seems to be due to people choosing not to pay off their loans. More evidence is provided by loans owed by age group. This data is from 2017, the most recent data I could find. Totals owed are in $billions, per borrower in $thousands:

     age borrowers owed each
     under 30 16.8 million 384 22.9
     30-39 12.3 million 461 37.4
     40-49 7.3 million 279 38.2 !
     50-59 5.2 million 177 34.0 !!
     60+ 3.2 million 85 26.6 !!!

     Note that borrowers over 40 owed $80 billion more than borrowers in their 30s.
     Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/2019/02/25/student-loan-debt-statistics-2019/#5a1ed1da133f
     .
     Also https://www.finder.com/student-loan-debt-statistics:
     "In 2015, 46% of borrowers had the same or higher balance than the previous quarter due to accumulated interest."
     The spin on this is that people are having trouble paying their debt. I think it more likely that they are just not bothering.
     .
     The average debt at graduation is $30K; the median is considerably smaller. With an interest rate of 4.5%, to pay the average loan off in 10 years requires payments of $310 per month. Hardly a crushing burden.

     So why don't people pay off their loans? Doesn't it trash your credit to not pay them off?

     There seems to be no actual requirement that student loans be paid off. From what I can find, all that is actually required is that borrowers make a minimum monthly payment. For most borrowers, that is $50/month; not even enough to cover the interest on a $14K debt. As long as that payment is made, the account is considered current and carrying the loan indefinitely does not hurt one's credit. In some cases, it can actually improve one's credit.
     .
     The actual student debt problem seems to be that people are not required to pay off their loans. If people were required to make payments on the principle, the problem would largely go away. That is why I say the problem with student debt is that it is an insufficient burden on the borrowers.

241. MikeM,
     If accurate, those numbers for people over 40 are almost unbelievable! The weird thing is that so long as the Federal government borrows for less than the former students are paying, it looks like a ‘profit’ on the loans, while in fact it is anything but…. those 50+ year olds will one day die, and from the grave they will pay nothing on their debts. I’m guessing there is no stomach in Washington to collect student loan debts from estates. It is too bad that the reality of student loan debt, with many just not willing to pay, is not more widely known. The arm-waving to ‘forgive’ student loan debt by the usual suspects is as dishonest as it gets.

242. Mike M (#174697),
     I see that my double negative is confusing. Let me be clear. IMO Churchill and FDR were *absolutely* acting in what they felt was in the best interest of their country and *not at all* to personally enrich themselves. But that's true of Herr Schicklgruber as well. Patriotism is no bar to tyrrany, the rule of law and the rights of people is. If FDR had been dictator rather than President we would have been at war sooner and many lives would have been saved, but it would not be worth the cost.

243. Mike M & Ron Graf:
     As of December 7th, 1941 certainly the Pacific War had to be fought, and fought to a victorious conclusion. I'm not at all suggesting that once the war started it should not have been fought and I have little patience for the second-guessing of the use of nuclear weapons against Japan (for example). I even have sympathy for strategic mistakes like encouraging Russian participation or trying to force Chiang to actively fight instead of prepare for the post-war struggle, despite the terrible cost that followed.
     .
     But that the Japanese would attack us on December 7th was not inevitable, and ultimately the war was neither in the interest of Imperial Japan *or* the United States (though thankfully Germany declared war and helped us get into the war we wanted and needed to actually be in). With the benefit of hindsight it's not hard to see how the Pacific War could be avoided and in fact it took a bit of bad luck for it to pan out the way it did, including problems of translation in both directions. If you're interested in the subject I recommend reading John Toland's _Rising_Sun_. With that said, Imperial Japan was highly dysfunctional and I think Japan itself was likely better off being nuked, conquered, and turned into a republic than continuing on the path they were on, to say nothing of all the devastation they caused to other nations and peoples. But I also think the chances of them making that transition peacefully would be non-zero if our country had tried befriending them instead of isolating them following WW1. (For their part, the Japanese leaders should've let their people know that Teddy did them a huge favor by negotiating the end of the Russo-Japanese war, instead of letting him and America be cast as a villain depriving them of the spoils of victory.)

244. Dale, I think I have a few of Toland's WWII books. I read about half of "Infamy"doing some personal research. It's pretty clear that FDR wanted to provoke Japan to get into WWII to save Europe. It's also pretty clear he underestimated Japan's capabilities and especially the potential effectiveness of a carrier attack. One of the still unsolved mysteries of WWII is why Hitler declared war on the US. There's never been evidence of a German-Japanese deal. It would make no sense though since Germany had its hands full and the last thing it wanted was a mobilized USA at its flank. So there's the practical disadvantage of having a dictator in charge: they tend to go mad.
     .
     As far as trading liberty for the practical effectiveness of an empowered central authority, the central authority is always for it.

245. In a shocking development, Pelosi and Schumer have written to Trump before their scheduled meeting to discuss ‘infrastructure’ to announce they only want infrastructure spending tied to a host of progressive wish-list programs, incliding higher taxes (I’ll make a wild guess: higher taxes on the ‘rich’), climate change legislation, contract set-asides for minority owned and female owned businesses, subsidized housing projects, etc. IOW, no infrastructure projects unless Trump goes back on everything he has done. They are clearly not serious about anything except defeating Trump next year.

246. IMO student loans biggest problem is the cost hiding and subsidizing the massive cost increases in higher education. There is little incentive for academia to lower costs when the Feds just increase their loan size to match tuition increases. As I recall Obama tried to tie federal loans sizes to how effective the schools were in placing graduates in decent jobs. This was as popular as one might expect in academia.

247. Tom Scharf: "If you are truly trying to help a candidate with DNC emails than you don't ever ask, you just send them to the media and Wikileaks anonymously."
     .
     Exactly. If Russia wanted to help Trump, which makes much less sense than wanting feed our growing national divide, they would have simply given the DNC goods to WL. Period. The only reason the Russians would reach out to Trump would be to taint him, almost indistinguishable from a Dem (HRC) dirty trick. If the FBI was probing to Trump volunteers to see if any could be susceptible to ill-appearing advances, there seems little justification in a law enforcement of counter-intelligence capacity. If the US IC feared Russian advances to the Trump campaign a warning seems appropriate, nothing more.
     .
     The DNC got a warning from the FBI that their server had malware on it in the fall of 2015 after they learned of it from Dutch intelligence in the summer of 2015. (I think the Mueller indicted Russians came from this intelligence.) The FBI first made phone calls to the DNC computer service vendor, MIS Inc, who said they thought the calls were spam. After a couple of months an FBI agent physically walked up and knocked on the door of the DNC in Jan 2016 to tell them. MIS again did nothing. The malware was discovered again by Crowdstrike after being called by Perkins Coie in early May 2016. They scanned the server and immediately found two Russian associated threats which for some reason they either could not quarantine or intentionally left in place to see what they were doing. DNC emails up to May 21, 2016 were in the July WL release.

248. Tom Scharf (Comment #174706): "IMO student loans biggest problem is the cost hiding and subsidizing the massive cost increases in higher education."

     What evidence is there for that? Real question. I have probably heard that a thousand time, but can't ever recall seeing any actual evidence.

     A student whose parents qualify for a PLUS loan has a limit of $31K in federal student loans as an undergrad. That is not per year, it is a lifetime limit. It does not even cover one term at some colleges.

     A student whose parents do not qualify for a PLUS loan has a lifetime limit of $57.5K, still less than one year at a private school.

     I don't see how that could be driving tuition increases.
     ————–
     Addition: The maximum subsidized Stafford loan (almost all loans) has been constant at $23K lifetime limit since 1993. In 1967 it was $6K.
     http://www.finaid.org/loans/historicallimits.phtml
     Loan limits rising much more slowly than tuition can't be driving tuition increases.

249. Ron Graf (#174704),
     I think it's clear that FDR wanted into the war against Germany, but I don't think he necessarily thought war with Japan would automatically accomplish it — certainly immediately before Pearl Harbor, the modus vivendi shows that FDR was more interested in keeping Japan out of the war than the Dutch, Chinese, British or his own state department, and if it had been sent instead of shelved it might actually have prevented war.
     .
     Churchill himself wanted to keep Japan out of war — but his great fear was that Japan would attack Britain and/or Dutch only, leaving a great practical and constitutional obstacle for the US entering the war. Japan never seriously considered that option, thinking (incorrectly IMO) that the USA had already decided on eventual war, so the only options were to fight before the odds got any longer or surrender in advance. However, if they had done it, I'm not sure FDR would've been able to get a DOW on Japan, let alone Germany, and certainly not near-unanimous support.
     .
     Both Churchill and FDR were convinced that Germany would follow Japan into war against the US, though I'm not sure exactly why Churchill was convinced. He wrote the King that Germany/Italy was obligated to do so, which wasn't technically correct (the Tripartite Pact was *defensive*, which is how Japan avoided war with Russia), and treaty obligations weren't exactly binding on Hitler anyways. But he read his opponent correctly. FDR was reading the Japanese mail, so he knew that the Germans had at least *promised* to join a war the Japanese started. Though again, German promises weren't exactly reliable.
     .
     But was it madness? It was a huge mistake, but it was a madness that even preceded the war, as in Hitler's second book he prophesied the coming war with America. Hitler was convinced that war with America was inevitable, and if that had been true there was no better time to enter the war than when the US Navy was damaged and distracted. Entering the war conferred an *immediate* and massive advantage to the Germans in fighting the Battle of Atlantic, the only tool they had to force Britain out of the war and deprive America of a forward base. We can be thankful Hitler didn't appreciate FDR's political difficulties and did his level best to get unified American opinion behind war against Germany and not just Japan. He rushed back to Berlin to declare war on us before we could declare war on him.
     .
     To anyone interested in Hitler's motivations up to and during WW2 I highly recommend Adam Tooze's _Wages_of_Destruction_. It's really focused on the Nazi economy rather than high strategy, but looking at economic choices tells us more about real priorities than rhetoric does. In 1941 the Nazis were not investing in armaments or ammunition for the war with the Soviet Union — the Wehrmacht was expected to take out Russia in a maximum of one year, with supplies and forces already in hand. If they could not do that, things would go very badly for Germany (and did!). They were investing heavily in industrial expansion to produce more naval and especially air for the coming war with America.
     .
     The fruit of the retooling and industrial expansion investment would later make Speer's reputation, but be no match at all for what would happen in the USA. Churchill had it right when he put his reaction down to the US entering the war, "So we had won after all." It was just to be a matter of applying overwhelming force.

250. Dale, thanks for the detailed reply. As I said, I feel certain FDR wanted to get into the fight in Europe. We know he was working to support Churchill. We also know that he was aware a Japanese attack was imminent, which he took active steps to provoke. I did not see that FDR had information of German promise to support Japan in an attack on America. Do you have a source? As you point out that was beyond the Tripartide Pact, which was purely defensive.
     .
     Seeing that Hitler's attack on Russia was premature, (by several years according to some) perhaps it comes down to Hitler's impatience. Also, the Russian campaign was going so well in October 1941, perhaps Hitler green lighted Japan for the attack on America. By December when the Wehrmacht got bogged down without capturing Moscow it was too late to call it off. It still makes little sense for Hitler to have declared war on America. He was very familiar with American sentiment. The Abwehr were very active in supporting Fritz Kuhn's German American Bund as well as the isolationist movement. Lindbergh was still America's greatest hero and being promoted to run for president by some.

251. Mike M,
     It's a correlation, so the inference must obviously be true, ha ha.

     That college costs are inflating shouldn't be questionable.
     https://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-ongoing-inflation-of-higher.html#.XMhh3uhJEuU

     Loan debt has increased to pay for this
     http://us.milliman.com/insight/insurance/The-student-loan-debt-crisis-in-perspective/

     There is a huge mish-mash of grant, loans, etc backed by the government in some form or another. To what extent are these cause/effect or effect/cause is a reasonable question. They are likely significantly co-dependent. Would tuition be lower if there wasn't so much student aid available in a strict free market system? I would say yes because the customer pool would drop significantly if cheap loans were not available. Schools might just shrink or disappear instead but brutal competition for survival would drive down costs.

252. The post of the day award goes to all who can discuss Hitler without bringing up Trump. Congratulations! You are a small group indeed.

253. Tom Scharf (Comment #174711): "It's a correlation, so the inference must obviously be true, ha ha.
     They are likely significantly co-dependent."

     Yes, there is a correlation. That proves nothing. The co-dependence is plausible, but I am pretty sure it is wrong.

     The increase in student loan debt is almost entirely due to people not repaying their loans, with only a small fraction due to increased college costs.

     Student loans finance maybe 10% of higher education spending.

     College tuition is rising much faster than the availability of loan money.

     There is almost no connection between the two, except in people's minds.

254. The idea that "everyone " needs to go to a four year ( or more) college, and doing so will automatically bring financial rewards, is completely bonkers.

     Successful higher education generaly falls into two main areas, education to train future managers or education for higher technical areas such as medicine or engineers. The percentage of these openings in the general population, and people capable of the work, are VERY limited.

     A social degree in "studies" generaly qualifies one to work at Starbucks as a line server.

     The loan program is basically furthering a scam on the working class promising a brighter future where the truth is that it takes one out of the workforce for a number of productive years and saddles them with massive debt.

     A two year program at the local two year Community College in a technical field such as plumbing, auto mech, air conditioning, carpentry makes more sence for most, especially since high schools have almost completely eliminated these programs in favor of the four year college bound.

255. Ron Graf (#174710),
     While wikipedia isn't always trustworthy, I think the account given here is correct:
     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshi_%C5%8Cshima
     Japanese ambassador to Germany Hiroshi Oshima sent his messages home in PURPLE over radio and we (the Navy IIRC) had cracked the code and intercepted them. On November 28th 1941 Ribbentrop assured Oshima that Germany would join Japan should war break out with the United States. At a minimum, this would make the information available to FDR. However…
     .
     That doesn't prove the FDR *did* see the message or believe in when he read it. My copy of _Rising_Sun_ is packed so I can't check if Toland discussed this particular bit of intelligence as he did others. It's also quite close to the date Pearl Harbor and intelligence can take a while to pass up the chain of command. And even if seen, it's somewhat less than a guarantee — the pro-German Oshima could be putting a positive spin on the conversation with Ribbentrop, Ribbentrop himself was neither particularly well-connected nor trustworthy, and Hitler himself would not be bound by anything Ribbentrop said (nor anything he himself said, for that matter). Still, it is hard intelligence indicating Germany was likely to join the conflict in the event of war, solving FDR's immediate problem.
     .
     However, it's way way too late to be a basis for FDR trying to bait Japan into an attack, nor was there any guarantee that the embargo would result in an attack on America and not just British/Dutch possessions. FDR did not guarantee foreign colonies nor could he constitutionally do so, and from the modus vivendi it's clear that FDR personally was willing to budge on the embargo in the interest of preventing war. It's a pity that the Konoye-FDR summit never happened.
     .
     Whether Hitler's attack on Russia was premature really depends on your point of view. If you conceive of Russia as the last enemy, then it does make some sense to build up first, if time is your friend. Whether it was clear that time was *really* on the side of Germany relative to Russia is debatable (based on the economic information in _Wages_of_Destruction_ I think it was not — like the attack on France, Germany bet on a short war knowing full well that a long war would work against them). However, if you take the assumption — which we know Hitler held — that war with *America* was inevitable, time was not *remotely* on the German side. Nor could Stalin be relied upon to be an ally in that war.
     .
     And I think that view explains why Germany went to war so lightly. Yes, I think Abwehr was well aware of pacifist sentiment in America and valued it — I just don't think there's any evidence that *Hitler* valued it, or saw FDR as actually being restrained by the sort of constitutional barriers that Hitler trampled over so quickly and easily. (I also suspect that some of the plotters in Abwehr weren't displeased by America joining the fray, at that.)

256. I read a book The New Dealers War which stated that FDR sent a ship to the Pacific, and the captain was convinced afterwards that FDR's true intention was to have their ship be sunk to give him a cause for war with Japan.
     When I got the book, I thought it would be about drugs.

257. Dale S, no need to dust off Toland. I just searched Oshima and found that Soviet documents came to light in 2004 that Russia had broken the Japanese code as well and deciphered the Japanese foreign ministry message to Oshima on November 27, 3 days before the US did. In the message Germany is to be informed that Japan is likely to go to war with the US "earlier than planned."
     .
     And Japan's final war plan: " The telegram instructed Oshima to convey to Hitler Japan’s intention to deploy its forces mainly in Southeast Asia and the Pacific." https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2004/08/10/national/soviet-union-deciphered-japans-coded-telegram-on-war-with-u-s/#.XMjU3OhKhPY
     .
     Do you think that Japan's first contact with Hitler on this topic was November 1941? I don't. Even a 12-year-old playing Risk would know the value of getting a commitment out of Germany that Japan would not be left to go one-on-one with the USA while Hitler was left to finish taking Europe and Soviet Union.
     .
     It seems more plausible to me that FDR knew the plan and did everything he could to accelerate it. He even had a document crafted (I forget who ) spelling out 12 points on how do it.
     .
     Edit: "It's a pity that the Konoye-FDR summit never happened."
     .
     Your are kidding. Right?

258. Dale S: "(I also suspect that some of the plotters in Abwehr weren't displeased by America joining the fray, at that.)"
     .
     If you are referring to Admiral Canaris, the head of the Abwehr. Actually, I think Canaris would have been fine with Hitler winning in the east. He just was not in favor of war with the west (UK and USA). There is strong evidence he was joined in this sentiment by many, including the Haushofers and Rudolph Hess. I believe the plan Hess had in mind when he stole an Me-110 on May 12, 1941, and flew to Scotland, was to convince the remnants of the pro-German brits that America was NOT coming into the war and that peace was the only sensible option.
     .
     Churchill, however, would under no circumstances have peace with Hitler, and also knew of the plans for Barbarossa, bringing Russia into the war the next month. Churchill was also counting on FDR and had won him over completely by that point. The night Churchill was told Hess was captured and asking to talk, Churchill said, "Hess or no Hess, I'm going to go watch the Marx Brothers [new movie]." They put Hess in the Tower of London. Churchill never did visit him.

259. Ron Graf (#174723),
     No, I don't think November '41 was the first time that the Germans were told that Japan was looking south. The Germans had *encouraged* Japan to look south prior to war with Russia, Japan had more to gain from going south, and Japan had signed a non-aggression pact with Russia *after* getting hints from the Germans that their relationship with Russia might not last. More importantly, Japan had lost their last tussle with the Russians and attacking Russia does *nothing* to provide the raw materials the embargo was stopping them from getting.
     .
     But if there's anything resembling a German commitment to join the war against the United States prior to Ribbentrop's statement to Oshida you'll have to bring it to my attention as I've forgotten it. I also think German commitments, oral or written, have been well-demonstrated to be worthless by December 1941–Germany was only going to join if they wanted. Nor do I remember concern in the Japanese councils reported by Toland on the subject of whether Germany would join or not.
     .
     A 12 year old playing Risk would know the value of creating a two front war against America, where armies can invade the North American continent through the Alaska/Kamatchka bridge and the Iceland/Greenland bridge. But the island-dwelling Japanese knew that in a conflict with America it was *navies* that mattered in the Pacific War, and the German surface fleet was a non-factor. Germany entering the war was enormously helpful — to FDR, who wanted and needed to get involved in the European war. But it did squat for the Japanese, who were crushed by a small fraction of America's industrial might.
     .
     Did FDR know Japan was looking South? Absolutely. Did he know war, started by Japan, was likely? Absolutely. Did he know prior to Pearl Harbor that the war would include an attack on American possessions? I think so, and I think that's a contributing factor on why he shelved the modus vivendi. But if FDR was not only wanting to go war but trying to *accelerate* the process, why propose the modus vivendi at all? And what specific post-embargo actions by FDR *personally* do you consider accelerating the process?
     .
     Yes, I'm serious about the Konoye/FDR summit. I don't believe either FDR or Konoye actually wanted war with each other, even though both were demonstrably willing for events to take it that way, and both were less hawkish than their chief diplomats. If they had met personally, it's *possible* that something would be worked out acceptable to both sides–unlikely, but possible.

260. Ron Graf (#174727),
     I'm thinking most of Colonel Oster, the center of Abwehr resistance to Hitler and a plotter against Hitler before the war even started. Oster tried to warn the Netherlands of the *exact date* of the attack on them before it happened; making Germany win in the west was not his priority. (If I remember _Second_Oldest_Profession_ correctly, he also had a hand in sending agents to Britain that he thought were likely to be turned and funneled intelligence to the west through them — MI6's sterling reputation from the war was built on Oster's "treason").
     .
     Yes, Canaris (not really an active plotter, but certainly had "guilty knowledge") would be fine with Germany winning in the East. That's true of pretty much every plotter in Germany, because being conquered by Stalin is a Really Bad Thing in its own right. But I don't think Hess was representing, informally or formally, either active plotters or those turning a blind eye like Canaris. There's an important person in Germany that Hess knew well and wanted the war with Britain to end — Hitler himself. In Hitler's unpublished second book he saw Britain as an ally *against* America, and in his mind continued resistance would lead to Britain spending her blood and treasure only to become wholly dependent on the United States. From his point of view a peace that left Britain's empire intact was win-win and could lead to cooperation against the true enemies east and west. This had absolutely no chance with Churchill himself — but as Churchill never tired of reminding FDR, if he were to fall and his successor made peace, keeping the British Navy from being used against Americans may not be a priority. (I don't think Churchill regarded that as a serious possibility, but he certainly wanted FDR to regard it as one.)

261. Dale, thanks for your valuable facts and perspectives. I agree that Hess was not a plotter against Hitler, though it is clear that he had a fear of a foreseeable two-front war, likely the same as Canaris. In fact, if Hess somehow had reached the Duke of Hamilton that night against the odds and was successful in gaining a British peace coalition that led to a deal then Hitler would have surely succeeded in Russia and been the greatest conqueror since Alexander.
     .
     "Yes, I'm serious about the Konoye/FDR summit. "
     .
     A peace with Japan would have meant America remained divided and isolationist, supplying only cargo to Britain that was mostly getting sunk by U-boats.
     .
     Edit: A successful US peace accord with Japan would have made Hess's mission a success or even unnecessary, IMO.

262. Previously pasted under wrong topic — Venezuelan.

     I am amazed by the obtuseness of the media regarding the Steele Dossier. There is an assumption that the falsity of the Dossier must be due to Russian disinformation. For instance, see the WSJ article.

     https://www.wsj.com/articles/collusion-or-russian-disinformation-11556663662

     Seeing how Steele admitted he was desperate to defeat Trump and he aggressively shopped his Clinton paid for work through irregular channels, one very reasonable conclusion is that the Dossier was pure fraud. I would say there is a 50% chance that the Dossier was pure fraud, a 25% chance it was caused by Russian disinformation, and a 25% chance it was "half fraud". — Steele could have known there was a very good chance what he was being fed was cr*p, but wasn't sure it was cr*p and looked the other way.

     JD

263. Ron Graf (#174732),
     Forgive me, I saw your Konoye/FDR question as pushing back on the possibility of avoiding war, not the desirability of avoiding war. I'm of the opinion that despite the bloody cost, the aftermath of the war left Japan in a better place than it had been on its self-destructive, dysfunctional course. War with Japan, and especially the way the war started, caused a unified US to enter WW2, and if you believe peace with Japan in 1941 would've caused US to stay out of WW2 and let the Nazis win then that would be a disaster for the world. Substitue "Pearl Harbor" for "Edith Keeler" and you have the plot for City on the Edge of Forever.
     .
     I don't believe peace with Japan would've prevented war with Germany, nor let the Germans win. In 1941 we were still divided, but not really isolationist, between lend-lease and our escalating activity in the Atlantic we were nearly offering all aid short of war to the allies. Our cargo was not only going to Britain, and it was not mostly getting sunk — the first danger was past, and the "happy times" for the subs only resumed when we *entered* the war (we weren't prepared, and we foolishly didn't organize convoys right away along our coast). The subs were actively hampered by Germany's desire (at that time) to keep us out of the war, and we had repeatedly extended the amount of protection we were willing to give shipping. I see no reason the process wouldn't have continued until either the U-boat threat was a non-factor or Hitler starts unrestricted submarine warfare and gives us the war we (well, FDR — not the isolationists) wanted. That wouldn't make us unified, but it does get us in the war.
     .
     Nor am I especially worried that with us out of the war, but still providing Lend-Lease, that Germany is going to win the war with Russia. As Uncle Joe points out to Churchill/FDR whenever he gets the chance, the Russians were facing the vast majority of German troops from 1941 on. They ended up winning handily. It was actually a significant feat of arms on Germany's part to drag out the defeat as long as they did. At no point was Germany capable of actually winning a war of attrition with Russia.
     .
     As I see it, the main danger of the US staying out of the war was actually Russia's victory — absent US manpower, it's hard to see Britain invading the continent with any amount of US supplies, and Russia "liberating" all of continental Europe would have been disastrous. But that certainly would not have been obvious to FDR in 1941; the worry in the West well into the war was Russia folding or making a separate peace. Even at Yalta FDR and his advisors were willing to overlook Russian bad behavior in the interest of getting them *into* the Pacific War — in that respect, the existence of the Pacific War served us very badly.

264. Dale, I appreciate your points and glad you cleared up your "It's a pity that the Konoye-FDR summit never happened." You do make a valid point that FDR likely would have found another way to get the US into the war to save Churchill, knowing the alternative for Europe was unthinkable. Although Germany was likely trying to avoid another Lusitania they were sinking US cargo ships (bound for England and well away from US shores) with increasing regularity in 1941, it's hard to see how the US would have mobilized for another war in Europe short of being directly attacked. Think how hard it was for France and Britain to effectively mobilize to help Poland. Peal Harbor was exactly what FDR needed (perhaps without the devastating second wave.)
     .
     Now, giving the thread back to JD, who wrote: "…there is a 50% chance that the Dossier was pure fraud…"
     .
     I would say 99%. Even a pure fraud must sprinkle some truth in order to disguise the fraud. For example, the recent cold fusion scams were not 50% right just because they spouted some true physics in with the fraud.
     .
     Whether the origins of the dossier were Russian, Dem, or both in collusion, is something to be investigated. I would say both had equal motive if the aim was to destabilize the US. They both likely discounted the cost to themselves if exposed, even if Russia thought nothing of taking to blame.

265. I am wondering how far off the parade route the Nadler will march before some Dems stop following. It looks like William Barr is now in the crosshairs in order to prevent investigation of the FISA abuse and spygate, or to discredit him so that the news can plausibly ignore the likely criminal findings that will be coming out of the AT's office.
     .
     Nadler is threatening to find Barr in contempt for not appearing in a this morning's hearing where Nadler was trying to re-create the optics of Watergate, with hired lawyers interrogating Barr on the members time. Also Nadler has thrown out the rules of the judiciary committee and taken on the role of dictator, quashing minority motions by cutting off their mics. He did allow Doug Collins, the minority ranking member to speak, who excoriated Nadler for scrapping decorum.

266. I think it is a very small number of citizens who want Congress to behave like this. There must be some toxic air borne pathogen inside the city limits of DC that causes this, the only thing remaining is aggressive zombie attacks. The media already behaves like a zombie mob if it gets a whiff of a Trump hit story.

267. The people who spied on Trump are already in damage control mode, putting their spin on things before the IG report comes out. NYT has now revealed a second spy against the Trump campaign, who was placed as an assistant to the first spy they revealed last year. Last year's revelation was likely meant as a distraction to keep people from finding out about the other spies. It worked, as there was an argument over the spying then, that is ongoing.

268. I hate to distract, but the weightier posts seem to have diminished for the moment, so I'll throw in this bit of levity. A recent fortune cookie advised, "Learn from how people in the arts react to criticism." I've selected Jussie Smollett as the exemplar.

269. Tom Scharf: "I think it is a very small number of citizens who want Congress to behave like this."

     …..
     I wish I could agree with you. However, when the leading Dem candidate, Sanders, says he would let terrorists vote from prison, (something 3 years ago I would have thought would have been a Saturday Night Live skit), I think there are large numbers of nutcases out there.

     JD

270. Tom Scharf: "I think it is a very small number of citizens who want Congress to behave like this."
     .
     I think the Dems in congress and MSM can no longer delude themselves from seeing that Hillary and Obama created a huge scandal. They have been guided to point and now have no choice but to escalate to the most ferocious offense possible. It's their only defense. They must discredit anyone who might expose the scandal so the de-legitimized person can thus be ignored. That's their coverup. What will we coin this scandal? Hillary-Obamagate. Spygate doesn't seem to cover it.

271. This speaks for itself, you just got to love the framing and attempted narrative in that headline.
     .
     NYT: The Economy That Wasn’t Supposed to Happen: Booming Jobs, Low Inflation
     https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/03/upshot/unemployment-inflation-changing-economic-fundamentals.html
     .
     "Not that long ago, the overwhelming consensus among economists would have been that you couldn’t have a 3.6 percent unemployment rate without also seeing the rate of job creation slowing"
     .
     "The jobless rate receded to its lowest level in five decades. Employers also added 263,000 jobs; the job creation estimates of previous months were revised up; and average hourly earnings continued to rise at a steady rate — up 3.2 percent over the last year."
     .
     "After more than two years of the Trump administration, warnings that trade wars and erratic management style would throw the economy off course have proved wrong so far, and tax cuts and deregulation are most likely part of the reason for the strong growth rates in 2018 and the beginning of 2019"
     .
     I bet they needed about 5 hard shots of whiskey after having to write that article through gritted teeth. It's once again time to bring this back up. Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize Winning Economist, Nov 9, 2016 – "If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never."

272. I have noted multiple stories from MSM outlets have already begun the rationalization (excuses) for the obvious spying that took place. The argument goes something like: “Yes, they spied on the Trump campaign, but it was justified by all the illicit contacts with Russia.” It is a convenient excuse, but the extent to which it is credible is doubtful in light of the personal animosity those same people showed toward Trump. I think the more accurate case is that they wanted to spy on Trump because they viewed his election as national emergency, not because they thought he was a manchurian candidate. The talk of invoking the 25th ammendment, and wearing a wire to secretly record Trump for damaging quotations are more consistent with simply not wanting Trump in office than honestly thinking him a Russian asset. What Barr and the FBI’s IG come up with will define the extent of the scandal. Of course, if it turns out the FBI actually was listening in on Trump’s telephone calls via the Page warrant and the ‘two hop’ rule, that would be very bad for all those involved, including those up the chain of command.

273. Tom Scharf,
     “Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize Winning Economist, Nov 9, 2016 – "If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never."
     .
     Proving (yet again) that Krugman is a politically motivated moron, who’s preferred economic policies always line up perfectly with his leftist take on the world; he probably knows more economics than Ms Occasional Cortex, but not a lot more, and most of what he ‘knows’ is flat wrong. The most entertaining thing about Krugman is that even faced with contrary reality, he never admits he is mistaken….. about anything. He’s a political hack, and a dumb one. Which makes him a perfect fit for the NYT.
     .
     The Nobel Prize in economics can be given to anybody, so why not Ms Occasional Cortex? She gets my vote. But I suspect the Nobel committee will opt for someone better known, like Maduro.

274. Comey's op-ed characterizes President Trump as a creature of demonic character and proportion with the 'He eats your soul in small bites' thing. I had no idea Comey was such a poet.
     .
     I kinda like it. This might help swing the goth vote.
     .
     [Edit: Satan for President, 2020!:
     "Accomplished people lacking inner strength can’t resist the compromises necessary to survive Mr. Trump and that adds up to something they will never recover from. It takes character like Mr. Mattis’s to avoid the damage, because Mr. Trump eats your soul in small bites."]

275. mark bofill,
     Here's the irony: The president who routinely ruined careers and lives was Bill Clinton. Hillary was a joined-at-the-hip partner in all that. The Clintons did very bad things to good people, took endless obvious bribes (starting with the cattle futures scam), and seemed to always get away with it.
     .
     Hillary's loss in 2016 was arguably due to voter disgust with the Clinton's being arrogant, dishonest, and corrupt, rather than the horribly damaging policies and SC appointments Hillary would have pursued. So one good thing did come out of all their malfeasance over the decades: the country is finally rid of them and their damaging policies.

276. Tom Scharf (Comment #174743): "This speaks for itself, you just got to love the framing and attempted narrative in that headline.
     .
     NYT: The Economy That Wasn’t Supposed to Happen: Booming Jobs, Low Inflation"
     ——–
     I see nothing wrong with the headline. It expresses surprise. Well, the leftists and Keynesians *are* surprised. What attempted narrative do you see in that headline? The implied narrative that I see could be slightly exaggerated as "Trump has done the impossible!"

277. Steve,

     Funny, I was thinking about that too, what a balm and benison to the spirit it must be to work for the Clintons.
     EaterOfSouls2020!
     (Sorry, just trying it out)

278. mark bofill (Comment #174746) quoting Comey: "Accomplished people lacking inner strength can’t resist the compromises necessary to survive Mr. Trump and that adds up to something they will never recover from."

     Wow! What an insight! I am *not* being sarcastic. That explains a lot. But I am guessing that Comey is completely unaware of the implications.

     Our elites are lacking in inner strength. They derive what they perceive as moral fiber from the virtue signalling echo chamber. People like Comey, Mueller, and probably about 95 Senators and 400 Representatives can only stand up to Trump (or anyone else who is actually strong) if they are surrounded by like minded people who can constantly reassure them that they are right and good. Put them outside the echo chamber (say, in the Trump White House) and they fall apart.

     That explains why Trump has so much turnover: He chews up anyone lacking a backbone and a moral compass. Those qualities have been bred out of people by the time they reach the levels of knowledge and experience needed for high level jobs. So Trump has to keep discarded them and searching.

     The more such souls that Trump eats, the better.

279. NYT: "…tax cuts and deregulation are most likely part of the reason for the strong growth rates in 2018 and the beginning of 2019."
     .
     Most likely *PART* of the reason? No they are 100% of the reason. Everything Obama (and Clinton) did and wanted to do was to reduce economic growth, reduce after-tax incomes, and reduce personal liberties. Those were the desired outcomes of their policies, not bugs. Of course, the people at the NYT would never actually acknowledge how economically damaging all those policies are…. it's a hive of leftist know-nothings who weep into their pillows every night about how life is 'unfair'… starting with Trump being president. They need to get out of their cocoon more often.

280. Mike,

     I like that insight, you may be on to a truth there.

281. Mike M,
     "Our elites are lacking in inner strength."
     .
     Surely many are (heck, many people in general are!). But consider Bill Barr. He testified in confirmation hearings "I will not be bullied" and it is now pretty clear he will not be. Bad news for those in the 'intelligence community' who are at risk for their choices in the "Trump Russia collusion" scam.

282. In The Laundry series of books by Charles Stross, the Eater of Souls is one of the good guys.

283. SteveF (Comment #174753): "But consider Bill Barr. He testified in confirmation hearings "I will not be bullied" and it is now pretty clear he will not be."

     I agree. Barr is one of the few with backbone. But he is the exception; Sessions is the rule. I am sure that Trump's relentless winnowing has uncovered more like Barr. With luck, his new Secretary of Homeland Security will be another such.

284. The attempted narrative was along the lines of "we absolve ourselves of any bias because we simply listened to what all our fellow elitist smartish people were telling us, and we certainly weren't selectively repeating the doomiest and gloomiest of those predictions for a political objective, there's no reason you can't trust us the next time when we confidently assert the Bernie economy will be even more gangbusters, this was a one-off thing".
     .
     This seems to be the last stage of grief, acceptance. You can't help but feel how disappointing this outcome is to them. I think its obvious to everyone that being credentialed automatically means you aren't biased. Experts are not prone to the same emotional influences the rest of have. The temptation to use one's expert designation for selfish reasons increases exponentially as this expertise touches the political realm. The media no longer even tries to sort this stuff out.
     .
     We want and need expertise. Credentialism, correct-think, and completely ignoring failures have wounded the confidence of the public in alleged experts. They have nobody to blame but themselves. The correlation between leftist dogma and the assertion of academia experts is very strong. It's very predictable.

285. Mike M,
     The interesting thing about Barr is that he is going to ignore all the crazy demands from the Democrats in Congress. The House can try to "hold him in contempt", which is perfectly OK…. the wacko lefties in the House are in fact contemptible…. and Barr is just dealing with them in the most efficient way he can. I very much doubt the moderate Dems in the house from swing districts are anxious to fall on their swords by voting to hold Barr in contempt over Jerry Nadler's witch hunt. Even if the House does unwisely vote for contempt, then aside from a few wack-job lefties, Federal judges will not want to get involved: Congress can impeach Barr to remove him or do nothing. (Mitch McConnell is probably telling Nancy that they are wasting everyone's time… the Senate is not going to remove Trump or Barr from office.) So the House will likely do nothing at all except make a lot of noise.

286. Every time Comey opens his mouth lately, I lose respect for him. FBI employees who have pride in their profession have to be cringing. He seems to be fearful, maybe because he has something to fear, or that he is about to endure a witch hunt of his very own.

287. Tom Scharf,
     "The temptation to use one's expert designation for selfish reasons increases exponentially as this expertise touches the political realm."
     .
     Yup. Consider 'climate science'…. distorted and misrepresented by by the politics (green/left) of most of the experts. They do not want an open and honest policy debate about costs and benefits, they want to "fundamentally change how people live their lives".

288. Tom Scharf,
     "He seems to be fearful, maybe because he has something to fear, or that he is about to endure a witch hunt of his very own."
     .
     He should be afraid, but not of a witch hunt. He has multiple instances where he could be changed with lying under oath and with leaking of confidential FBI documents. If I were Barr, Comey would be my first target.

289. Tom Scharf,
     "He seems to be fearful, maybe because he has something to fear, or that he is about to endure a witch hunt of his very own."
     .
     Think about this, Comey either knew the story that the dossier was originated for a "never Trumper" was a cover, or he should have known. "Where did this come from" is the first thing any reasonable person would ask when reading those papers. Comey signed the first Carter Page FISA, paving the way for the others, knowing that it was unverified, salacious and coming from an extremely biased source, to say the least. That is a crime right there. But continuing on, Comey briefed Trump in January 2017 about the existence of the dossier, "just so he would know, but that also I was not pulling a J. Edgar Hoover one him." But Comey likely knew he could not be accused of that because the documents were going to made public the next day by leak to Buzz Feed, who could then print them since the leak also was that they were presented to the President, making them reportable news. If Comey can be proven to have had any knowledge that leak and not prevented it, or investigated after, that is criminal.
     .
     If the President was put under surveillance without his knowledge and Comey knew and did not inform him before or after that would be criminal. Telling Trump he was not under investigation while he was, although is fire-able, is not likely criminal. The same goes for publicly telling congress that the Trump campaign was under investigation, even if there had been a proper pretext for it. Barr says he will now investigate whether the predicate was only very thin or whether it was completely contrived (criminal). If Comey needed to reveal the counter-intelligence investigation of the campaign he had an obligation of making it clear there was no evidence of Presidential involvement.
     .
     Comey's note-taking of Trump's meeting to document Trump's potential obstruction, while knowing that Flynn was set up, is very similar to Rod Rosenstein's plan to wear a wire at that same time period. Comey's theft of those notes, government property, and their release to the NYT is a clearly leaking and maybe criminal conspiracy.
     .
     Comey must be prosecuted or nobody will be. And the coup will have been partially successful.

290. SteveF (Comment #174757): "So the House will likely do nothing at all except make a lot of noise."

     I think you have that exactly right.

     In other words, business as usual. I wonder how much global warming all the hot air will produce.

291. Comey did not brief Trump on the Steele Dossier. He only briefed on one portion which spoke of Russia having compromising material on Trump including video with prostitutes.

     The part of the dossier that said he was conspiring with Russia was not briefed by Comey.

292. "Dems See GOP Effort to Drive Them to Impeach Trump"

293. From the New York Time Editorial Board: "President Trump is right: There is a crisis at the southern border."
     https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/05/opinion/trump-border-crisis-funding.html

     Of course, they immediately take the obligatory swipe at Trump: "Just not the one he rants about. " But tweets are not policy statements and they go on to endorse an important part of Trump's policy: "On Wednesday, the White House sent Congress a request for $4.5 billion in emergency funding to help manage the surge." They imply that should be passed by Congress pronto, with no more than minor tinkering.
     .
     One can only deny reality for so long.

294. A recent poll showed 17% more Dem's now consider the border issue a "crisis" in the last 3 months (from 7% to 24%, ha ha). 80% of everyone calls it a serious problem or crisis. The left is so conflicted on the immigration issue that they don't even know what their own stance is. It seems it is a 100% political calculation.

295. "Earth is on the brink of a catastrophic mass extinction, report warns"
     "Humans Are Speeding Extinction and Altering the Natural World at an ‘Unprecedented’ Pace"
     "Is nature over? Maybe"
     "Human activity has put 1 million species on verge of extinction, U.N. says"
     .
     Yawn. Curiously the species "on the verge" of extinction weren't listed, nor was there a list of recent extinctions caused by the alleged threat. It goes without saying that the validity of previous such claims wasn't discussed. The humorous part here is that nobody cares, because nobody trusts the source. Boy who cried wolf, chicken little, etc. This stuff is just outright propaganda now.

296. The one major fact I see everyone forgetting regarding Carter Page FISA is that we were told by Comey, Clapper and others that the dossier was just a small part of the intelligence making up the FISA. Of course, most of us never believed that, especially after it was leaked that McCabe testified in closed session that the dossier made up "the bulk" of the FISA and there would be no approval without it. But nevertheless evidence a Trump campaign-Russia conspiracy, besides the dossier, was promised for two years. How can the average MSM liberal news consumer be forgetting this?
     .
     Does the public even know what lie Pelosi is accusing Barr of? Is that even relevant that Mueller was displeased, after the Barr's summary, that Barr did not release Mueller's summary immediately so the media could use it for the four weeks while waiting for the full report. Is that the media-supported Dem position now? Are the Dems really going to vote hold Barr in contempt of congress for not making an un-redacted Mueller report to congress (so they can leak it to the public)? I don't see how when the full report has been available to selected congressional members for secure viewing since the release.

297. If it can be confirmed the FISA was the deciding factor in the warrant, then some people have some big problems. It is pretty apparent this will be disputed because of the consequences. The only person who can really answer the question is the judge and it's unclear if that can or will happen.

298. Ron Graf (Comment #174769): "The one major fact I see everyone forgetting regarding Carter Page FISA is that we were told by Comey, Clapper and others that the dossier was just a small part of the intelligence making up the FISA."

     I sure have not forgotten that. If memory serves, Comey (and perhaps others) testified to that effect before a Congressional committee. Under oath. Prison would be appropriate.

299. Mike M, do you have any citing of Comey stating there was other evidence against Carter Page? All I can find is his leaked closed-door testimony last December where he states he knew the dossier was unverified and thought that it didn't matter as long as Steele had a "reliable track record." I have never heard or ANY information against Carter Page despite at that same congressional hearing that a Justice Department lawyer Sally Moyer testified that the FISA against Page still had a 50-50 chance of being approved without the dossier.
     https://dailycaller.com/2018/12/09/comey-fbi-unverified-dossier/
     .
     If there was nothing besides Page's 2013 FISA where he cooperated with the FBI after being approached by two Russian agents trying to recruit him.
     .
     I am thinking the "mosaic of evidence" against Page, Comey claimed in his book tour interviews with Fox's to Bret Baier, was really evidence against Russia. I'm thinking it was the Guccifer 2.0 and WL was their evidence. Could Comey have missed that both the Crowdstrike info and Steele dossier were presented to the FBI by highly paid Hillary Clinton contractors? I am thinking that Comey had to be bowing to pressure from Brennan, Clapper, Lynch and higher up.
     .
     Clinton today claims she had the election "stolen from her." If anyone asked me for evidence of God watching over the USA I would point to the 2016 election.

300. What's with the 'Trump won't leave office in 2020' blitz? Seriously. It's enough [there's enough there] to start to look coordinated. I wonder what the point is.
     https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/07/politics/2020-electoral-challenge-trump/index.html
     https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/06/politics/donald-trump-2020-election/index.html
     http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/05/democrats-trump-2020-election-results.html
     Putting the cart before the horse, you ask me.
     [Edit: I didn't link Pelosi, who apparently kicked all this off. Maybe it's just a Pelosi echo.]

301. Maybe they're setting the stage to brush off the unprecedented amount of election fraud they're planning.

302. Dave,
     :>
     .
     I think now it's just people trying to respin Pelosi:
     https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/04/us/politics/nancy-pelosi.html
     >>>…offered Democrats her “coldblooded” plan for decisively ridding themselves of Mr. Trump: Do not get dragged into a protracted impeachment bid that will ultimately get crushed in the Republican-controlled Senate, and do not risk alienating the moderate voters who flocked to the party in 2018 by drifting too far to the left…
     [Edit: If I'd realized Pelosi was the original source when I posted I wouldn't have posted in the first place. My apologies]

303. The left/right divide (Tim Pool).

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6grXCooL3-M&t=131s

304. mark bofill (Comment #174774): "I didn't link Pelosi, who apparently kicked all this off. Maybe it's just a Pelosi echo."

     Tucker Carlson is fond of doing segments that consist of a series of clips in which the Democrats and their media toadies all suddenly use almost identical language on some topic. He sure makes it look like they are all getting their talking point marching orders from a common source. Of course, the viewer has no idea of how much tape they they had to comb through to produce those segments. Fun anyway.

305. I think it's just the Twitterati "cool kids" consensus. This is decided upon well before the first media stories start making the rounds to the less politically engaged. Twitter has been a disaster for media independence, they do all seem to speak strikingly similar phrases in unison. A herd is a perfect term. It's not at all obvious what if any redeeming value Twitter has for journalism. They used to have to write public articles before they knew what everyone else was thinking.

306. An article on analyzing expert prediction, the results are … errr … very predictable.
     The Peculiar Blindness of Experts
     https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/06/how-to-predict-the-future/588040/
     .
     "Incredibly, the hedgehogs performed especially poorly on long-term predictions within their specialty. They got worse as they accumulated experience and credentials in their field. The more information they had to work with, the more easily they could fit any story into their worldview."

307. Tom Scharf (Comment #174779): "I think it's just the Twitterati "cool kids" consensus. This is decided upon well before the first media stories start making the rounds to the less politically engaged. … A herd is a perfect term."

     I think that is an excellent explanation of the lockstep talking points. It does not reflect on them any better than receiving marching orders from the Central Committee. Reporters have always been herd animals; twitter just makes the herd that much more like a marching band.

308. >Tucker Carlson is fond of doing segments that consist of a series of clips in which the Democrats and their media toadies all suddenly use almost identical language on some topic.

     That's because when he was a newspaper editor, Tucker published e-mails from the Journolist, which was a collection of hundreds of reporters arranging talking points on subjects. As a result, they shut down Journolist, which I think was started by Ezra Klein, but presumably something popped up in its place. One e-mail was in response to Obama's pastor, suggested 'take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares – and call them racists'

309. >>presumably something popped up in its place.
     .
     There need be no single explicit network. Ad hoc networking between individuals in media and politics in this highly connected digital age yield essentially the same result. If we can't measure latency to less than about a day I doubt there'd be any noticeable difference between a single explicit network and the inevitable ad hoc digital social networks of friends and colleagues.

310. FBI Director Wray testified today," “We continue to assess that the Russians are focused on sowing divisiveness and discord in this country." [since about 1946.]
     .
     Amazingly, the US IC put a presidential campaign under surveillance when the HRC campaign said that they had reliable information from Russians that Trump was attempting to gain reliable information on HRC from the Russians. The FBI's lead agent on the case texted that they could us this as "their insurance policy" in the case Trump got elected. Wray is appalled anyone, especially the AT would have a problem with that. Nevertheless, Wray is encouraging ALL 2020 campaigns to contact the FBI if anyone approaches them claiming to have derogatory political information. Wray also wanted to remind everyone that FBI stands for fidelity, bravery, integrity. And anyone with dirt on Trump can write him directly.

311. You may recall the media blitzkrieg in the past 10 years with the reductionist argument that "inequality causes bad outcomes to be worse". Obesity, life expectancy, violence etc. Here's the 10 year update on the statistics used in that oft repeated argument. This is your basic abuse of statistics to prove a predefined theory that gets rerun on newer data.
     .
     The Spirit Level ten years on
     http://spiritleveldelusion.blogspot.com/2019/03/the-spirit-level-ten-years-on.html
     .
     I don't know what is worse, people who just don't understand how to properly use and read statistics, or people who understand it but intentionally misuse it for their own agenda. I suppose the latter. If opposing sides don't each give an opinion on a data set, I don't think I can trust anything anymore.

312. More Evidence of FBI Deceit in the Filing of the Page Fisa Application.

     ….
     John Solomon at the Hill points out that: Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec documented that: "Steele’s client “is keen to see this information come to light prior to November 8,” the date of the 2016 election, Kavalec wrote in a typed summary of her [Oct. 10, 2016] meeting with Steele and Tatyana Duran, a colleague from Steele’s Orbis Security firm." https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/442592-steeles-stunning-pre-fisa-confession-informant-needed-to-air-trump-dirt#.XNIAVvr8PT0.twitter

     …..
     This raises very serious perjury issues with respect to the Fisa Application which stated on p. 15 that "Source #l's [Steele] reporting has been corroborated and used in criminal proceedings and the FBI assesses Source #1 to be reliable. Source #1 has been compensated ….
     by the FBI and the FBI is unaware of any derogatory information pertaining to Source #1. "

     …..
     Of course, not only does the original Application appear to be based on lies, the 3 renewals look even worse.

     JD

313. JD,

     I am curious as to what constitutes a lie (or maybe I should say perjury) with regard to a prosecutor presenting information to a court. If I am testifying under oath, I am not committing perjury if I answer a question in a manner that is technically true but that can reasonably expected to be misinterpreted. Is there a higher standard when a prosecutor presents information in support of a request for a warrant? I would hope the answer is yes.

     For example, consider the text that you quoted: "Source #l's [Steele] reporting has been corroborated and used in criminal proceedings". That appears to say that the dossier has been corroborated etc, which would clearly be a lie. But it does not actually say that. It only says that at some time in the past, prior information provided by Steele had been corroborated etc. That would actually be irrelevant to the warrant against Page, so even if technically true it was knowingly misleading.

     It is my understanding that such a statement made under cross examination is permissible since it is up to the examiner to ask the right questions and to follow up. But a warrant application has no adversary present. So I think that a higher standard should apply. But is that what the law says?

314. Mike M: The strongest case for perjury is the phrase "the FBI is unaware of any derogatory information pertaining to Source #1. "

     ……
     That appears to be a lie to me. Undoubtedly, the Left hand will claim that it didn't know what the Right hand was doing.

     I am not a criminal law lawyer but I believe there are separate duties apart from perjury penalties upon those making the application. Those were probably violated and if strictly enforced those signing off on the Application could face serious consequences. As to this portion, though, I am speculating but I did hear a clip from Rosenstein emphasizing how serious the FISA procedures were. We will see.

     JD

315. More lies from Comey — Not under oath:

     ……
     "At Thursday's town hall, however, Comey defended the agency's use of the dossier, noting that “the most important part” of it, that the “Russians coming for the American election,” was accurate. He also said in a recent Fox News interview that the FBI used a "significant amount" of other material in its FISA application. At least, from his "recollection." The correct term for the FBI obtaining the warrant, the former director said, was "investigating."

     …..
     It is beyond stupid for him to claim that " “the most important part” of it, that the “Russians coming for the American election,” was accurate." The title of the application was "In Re Carter Page" who was accused of being a foreign agent. The FBI was not seeking an Application to generally investigate Russian collusion. As I pointed out in my post, for the purposes for which it was used in conjunction with FISA, surveilling Carter Page, the Dossier was 100% wrong. Amazing lying, arrogance and deflection on his part.

     Also, if the FBI was really investigating, it wouldn't have waited 4 months to question Page. It delayed in questioning Page so that it could have a fig leaf for spying on his contacts, some of whom were connected to Trump.

     JD

316. Left out link for Comey quote. Here it is https://townhall.com/tipsheet/cortneyobrien/2019/05/10/jim-jordan-reminds-comey-of-his-own-words-about-fisa-warrant-n2546139

     JD

317. JD, take a closer look at Kavalec's notes. Steele appears to be claiming he compiled a dossier on Hillary too, that the Russians had an agent inside DNC, and that Brennan was a Russian agent.

     Kavalec in this short interview managed to debunk Steele's claims noting that there was no Russian embassy in Miami. How did FBI not do so?

318. MikeN: "Kavalec in this short interview managed to debunk Steele's claims noting that there was no Russian embassy in Miami. How did FBI not do so?"

     …..
     My best insight is that FBI wasn't really investigating; it was spying. As I said above the Application dealing with Page was merely a fig leaf used to get to other people.

     Also, some may say that the FBI wanted the element of surprise, but that was gone by Sept. 2016 when Page got wind of the rumors and called Steele Dossier "complete garbage." Certainly, everyone knew from that point on there was zero chance that Page would contact any Russians where he could remotely be implicated in some sort of collusion.

     JD

319. Page was also by that point not involved in the campaign, so wasn't a plausible conduit for collusion anyways (as if he ever was, or as if the Russians actually *needed* any cooperation from the Trump campaign to leak whatever they want to wikileaks).

320. Dale S (Comment #174801): "Page was also by that point not involved in the campaign, so wasn't a plausible conduit for collusion anyways"

     I think that if I were colluding with a foreign power, I'd want a go between who was not formally involved in my campaign.

321. DaleS: "Page was also by that point not involved in the campaign, so wasn't a plausible conduit for collusion anyways"

     …..
     The bigger point is that he had only a trivial connection to the campaign from the beginning — he was an unpaid volunteer on an informal committee.

     JD

322. MikeM:"I think that if I were colluding with a foreign power, I'd want a go between who was not formally involved in my campaign."
     .
     Page was neither formally involved nor informally involved at the point of the FISA (and as JDOhio pointed out, his involvement was slight in the first place). He was never a plausible go-between. And of course, Russia doesn't *need* the Trump campaign to do anything anyways — if Trump had damaging information he wanted to launder through a foreign intelligence agency, that'd be one thing (indeed, the Dossier itself was laundered through a domestic intelligence agency). But *Russia* allegedly had the damaging information and filtering it through Trump's campaign would do nothing but damage its credibility (and unlike the dossier, the information is actually true).
     .
     The collusion narrative involves Russia coordinating information they had no need to coordinate, for the purpose of hypothetical future favors from a candidate expected to lose, while losing any under-the-table leverage on the candidate expected to win. Doesn't make sense to me.
     .
     Spying was justified on the false claim that Russia had compromising information on Trump. But the IC claims that Russia had *actual* compromising information on Clinton, and they not only claim they knew that at the time, they used that "fact" as bait for the Trump campaign. So where's the spying on the Clinton campaign? What makes the IC so sure that the Russians wouldn't compromise *Hilary*, and approach her campaign to see what favors they could get for keeping her shenanigans quiet?

323. Dale S,

     I regard the entire Russia collusion narrative as conspiracy theory nonsense fueled by partisanship. My only point was that Carter Page's exact role in the campaign is a very weak argument.

324. Mike M,
     Quibbling about his *exact* role might be questionable, but surely the fact that he had *no* role in the campaign (official or unofficial) at the time of FISA is relevant? And given that he ended his minor role with the campaign *because* of allegations about contact with Russia, can you think of a less plausible go-between?

325. Dale S: "Spying was justified on the false claim that Russia had compromising information on Trump. But the IC claims that Russia had *actual* compromising information on Clinton, and they not only claim they knew that at the time, they used that "fact" as bait for the Trump campaign. "
     .
     Dale, you hit the nail on the head. It's been hiding in plain sight. The claim that Russia had kompromat on Clinton is even in the Clinton-paid-for Steele dossier, presumably to give the dossier plausibility. Why else would Steele put that derogatory to Clinton claim in the dossier he wrote for Clinton? The reason had to be that it was known to the US IC already to be true, thus giving an air of truth to the untrue claims on the target, Trump.
     .
     "What makes the IC so sure that the Russians wouldn't compromise *Hilary*, and approach her campaign to see what favors they could get for keeping her shenanigans quiet?"
     .
     The answer: because Clinton was working with Brennan, Clapper and Obama. She was their SoS for four years. She was a good fella. She would never do something like sell out the nation's strategic uranium mineral reserves in exchange for donation laundered through her charity. But if she did do something like that it would be the perfect false allegation to preemptively make against Trump, thus putting him on the defensive on that claim, inoculating herself from it.

326. The confusing thing to most Democrats and independents is how the US IC and FBI could be totally wrong on their investigation of Trump. After all, they are supposed to have the best information in the world.
     .
     Imagine, however, if the writer of the dossier had access to all that intelligence without the US IC being aware they had access to it. The writer could then write a very convincing document from the outside to be presented as fresh intelligence that meshed with what was already known (or thought) to be true.
     .
     Russian meddling was already known to be fact by the US IC as early as the fall of 2015. Dutch intelligence had caught the Russian IC red-handed hacking into the DNC server and the Dutch shared that with the US IC. What were the chances that Clinton would not be told? Why was the DNC server left infected until and outside cyber security firm was called in by Perkins Coie in early May 2016? If the Russian were behind the WL to help Trump why would they have activated an online persona, Guccifer 2.0, to claim credit for hacking instead of allowing the presumption to remain it was a DNC leaker? Without Guccifer 2.0 the MSM and US IC would have had no evidence to claim suspicion of the Russian's hand.

327. Comey and James Baker, chief counsel for the FBI, doubled down on their lies with respect to the FISA warrant in Washington Post interview. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/05/10/deep-state-strikes-back-former-fbi-leaders-rebut-questions-about-russia-investigation/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.71ea53abc1c7

     Baker made the ridiculous statement that: "“The FBI. We’re not stupid,” he said. “People come in to give us information all the time for all kinds of different angles. .?.?… So they “vet the hell out of the information that comes from these sources,” he said.

     Right, they vet the hell out of it by not even bothering to talk to Page for 4 months who was begging to give his side of the story. The FBI conveniently left out of the Application that Steele was desperate to defeat Trump.

     Comey stated:

     “The bureau began an effort after we got the Steele dossier to try and see how much of it we could replicate,” he said. “That work was ongoing when I was fired. Some of it was consistent with our other intelligence, the most important part. The Steele dossier said the Russians are coming for the American election. It’s a huge effort. It has multiple goals .?.?. And that was true."
     …..
     Note the dishonest deflection to Russia [the warrant was a request to spy on Page not to spy on Russia generally] and the false statement that the FBI made a huge effort to replicate it. If the FBI had been acting honestly, it could have, at the very latest, determined after 10 days of spying that Page was completely innocent.

     Amazing brazenness by Comey & Baker

     JD

328. JD Ohio,
     It is possible the many Obama apointees will all skate, but it seems to me there is a reasonable chance some will face inditements. Did they really think Trump was a Russian asset? I very much doubt that, but that is what they will claim. Absent a clear ‘smoking gun’ email, it will be difficult to prove otherwise. But no matter what happens, these scumbags will serve as a clear warning to the next group of political miscreant scumbags. I also suspect that the next president to take over on a change of parties will absolutely fire every single holdover on January 20th. Which is what Trump should have done… it only makes sense to take away the soap box of those politically opposed to you (eg Sally Yeats).

329. Don't be too sure about the absence of a smoking gun e-mail.
     Kavalec's written notes show Cohen travel to Prague, which she might have looked up in her State Department databases.
     John Solomon reports she sent an e-mail to someone at the FBI who forwarded it to the investigating team, which included Strzok. This was all 10 days before they went to FISC and declared they found Steele reliable.

330. SteveF: "It is possible the many Obama apointees will all skate, but it seems to me there is a reasonable chance some will face inditements. Did they really think Trump was a Russian asset? "

     ….
     You raise an interesting political point, but a mostly irrelevant legal one as it pertains to Page FISA. The real question is: Was there any justification to spy on Page. I see none. If so Comey, Yates and person who signed the application, but whose name was redacted, are in serious legal jeopardy. Doesn't matter at all if Trump was a Russian asset if the Page Fisa Application as it pertained to Page was a lie.

     I would point out that Cohen went to jail on a Mickey Mouse charge of lying on a loan, when there was no financial motive behind the lie. The Page FISA lies appear to be much worse in that they were made directly to deceive the court, and attempting to prevent deception of the court is the obvious reason for penalizing lying on Fisa Applications.

     JD

331. JD Ohio (Comment #174814): "The real question is: Was there any justification to spy on Page. I see none. If so Comey, Yates and person who signed the application, but whose name was redacted, are in serious legal jeopardy."

     I am pretty sure that prosecutors can not be held liable for judgement calls; so as long as they presented an honest case to the court, they are in the clear. The question is whether they did something improper because they lacked justification for what they wanted to do.
     .
     JD: "The Page FISA lies appear to be much worse in that they were made directly to deceive the court, and attempting to prevent deception of the court is the obvious reason for penalizing lying on Fisa Applications."

     The lying would be punishable and should be punished whether or not the application was otherwise justified. Motives don't matter; actions matter.

332. JD, I understand you are focusing on the Carter Page FISA to get a tangible hold on a specific illegality but in the broader view it is only a small part of what has to be the largest scandal in US history. There are guilty players in the tops of the DNC, FBI, DoJ, DoS, CIA, NSA, DNI, NSC, White House and all the major news networks (besides Fox). In Washington DC terms the whole world is Through the Looking-Glass. General Flynn is advised to plead guilty for lying and goes along with it even though he knows he was set up and likely told an inconsequential lie, if any. The same is true for Papadopoulos, who was willing to go to jail knowing he was set up. Michael Cohen accepted the Clinton family lawyer to be his defense counsel. This to me is all much scarier than the DC establishment willing to claim Benghazi was a protest against a Youtube video even AFTER the agents on the ground had gone to Fox to recount the attack minute by minute. Nobody was ever held accountable for a clearly composed information op then. It was just a matter of time before another, more consequential, information op was composed and executed, one that would never be revealed once the election was won.
     .
     How do you take over a country? You make ordinary people fear a politically corrupt media and political establishment.

333. R Graf: Re:Other Non-Page Scandals

     ….
     Ron, I believe you have to separate out the 100% "easily proved wrong issues" from others that may have a tinge of subtletly. For instance, before I looked closely at the Page FISA issue, I read a Lawfare post stating that the Dossier was substantially right because Russia tried to influence the US election. It didn't seem right to me, but I thougt maybe I was wrong in my preliminary assumptions. Turned out that I was correct.

     …
     As I pointed out in my post, when separated from the specific allegations pertaining to Page (and also Cohen), the Dossier is simply general speculation about Russia that anyone could make — not difficult to allege generally that Russia would be interfering in the US elections. I have a lawyer friend who thinks I am a conspiracy theorist on FISA. Be impossible to persuade him if I threw in all of the other issues. If I focus on this one easily understandable wrong, i have a chance.

     … .
     This brings up a pet peeve of mine in that many climate realists don’t work hard enough to provide easily understandable data or summaries for people who don't follow the issues closely. For instance, Roy Spencer makes his monthly temperature updates unintelligible to 98% of potential readers by presenting them solely in the form of anomalies. Why not present the anomalies AND have an addititional table of what the actual temperatures were? I pound my head because there is such a simple way to get his work and points across much more effectively, and he doesn’t do it. I see the same thing in many other instances.

     JD

334. "I have a lawyer friend who thinks I am a conspiracy theorist on FISA. Be impossible to persuade him if I threw in all of the other issues. If I focus on this one easily understandable wrong, i have a chance."
     .
     I agree that it is a common mistake to underestimate the art of presentation. Doing this well makes great litigators and teachers. Also, in the case of a political discussion one must overcome enormous power of bias. I would explain this point in your presentation.
     .
     Speaking of the power of bias, this is a key factor in the exploitation and propagation of misinformation. The whole point of an information op is to make the deceptive misinformation seem plausible and, at the same time, propagate it fast as far enough that everybody hears of it twice. Propagation is achieved by influencing unwitting victims to become active participants, aided by personal bias as well as groupthink (bandwagon) effect. Compartmentalized misinformation is a tool which allows for cover stories to justify abnormal acts "for a greater good." When the cover story evaporates participants are placed into a situation of self-preservation to keep their now unjustified act concealed by concealing all information. Voila!, conspirators are born.
     .
     One clear example of a cover story is the "never Trumper" origin of the dossier. Both Steele and Simpson maintained this story when approaching Corn and Isikoff to write stories before the election. Simpson also testified to it under oath and tried to block congress from obtaining his bank records to reveal the never Trumper. Just before the investigators were about to win in court the editor of the Washington Free Beacon revealed himself as the "never Trumper," though he claimed that he only paid a couple of thousand dollars to Fusion GPS and got nothing about Russia connections or Steele. The dossier originated with HRC as Fusion GPS was hired before she clinched the nomination, though she controlled the DNC finances anyway, according to Donna Brazile's book.
     .
     The cover story of the never Trumper is still a commonly believed by many Dem bloggers. There was never a MSM news blast exposing it. Not even the Wa Po's story was very clear. Wikipedia is not clear. One must Google "October 27, 2017, Washington Free Beacon Steele dossier" to find the truth.
     .
     "The Free Beacon had no knowledge of or connection to the Steele dossier, did not pay for the dossier, and never had contact with, knowledge of, or provided payment for any work performed by Christopher Steele. Nor did we have any knowledge of the relationship between Fusion GPS and the Democratic National Committee, Perkins Coie, and the Clinton campaign."
     .
     I have not heard anyone calling for Simpson to be prosecuted for intentional lying to congress and intentionally propagating disinformation on the president of the USA. Most of the press had no interest in finding the truth and reported the false story dutifully even after the truth was known. The had become conspirators after the fact.

335. "Nor did we have any knowledge of the relationship between Fusion GPS and the Democratic National Committee, Perkins Coie, and the Clinton campaign"
     .
     In the Fox interview of James Comey in April 2018, six months after the WFB revealed the "never Trumper" origin to be bogus, Comey sticks to the cover story at 9:00 minutes in. When Bret Baier tried to correct him with the WFB revelation Comey said that he "heard that in the press" but did not know it to be true. He then said it did not matter to him where the information came from. A few minutes later he claims that the dossier was "uncritical" to the Page FISA, only one piece of a mosaic.
     .
     I don't think anyone believes that Comey is the mastermind behind anything. But it is a perfect example of a subverted person becoming a conspirator after the fact to CYA. He likely disliked Trump and believed HRC would win like everyone around him. Ironically, he sees himself as having perfect morals and superbly qualified to be a professor of ethics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqdE0sMDKTo
     .
     Edit: Bret should have asked who originally informed the FBI as to the source of the dossier original funding.

336. https://dailycaller.com/2019/05/18/james-baker-steele-dossier-fbi/
     "James Baker [Comey's top counsel] said Friday he believes FISAs against Page would have been granted even without the dossier. He also declined to say whether Steele’s reporting was used to obtain other FISA warrants."
     .
     Baker also claimed they tried to verify the dossier. All of Baker's claims appear to be counter to the facts we now have except on the existence of other possible FISAs. There must have been one on Paul Manafort since according to the dossier Manafort was directing Carter Page's Russian rendezvous. Both Page and Manafort had prior FISAs unrelated to the Trump campaign. This information would have been on the US IC database, which we now know was shared with private contractors. It hasn't been confirmed that Fusion GPS is one of those contractors but that would be the next logical dot.
     .
     Think about this: Baker is claiming that even now the Carter Page FISA was justified regardless of the Steele dossier. Baker was in the top legal office of the FBI. These are the brightest and wisest of the USA.
     .
     Real question: is there some incriminating past events in Carter Page's file that nobody can talk about? This makes it all the more important for the FISAs to be declassified. If Baker's insinuations against Page prove to be false Baker should serve time on that alone. Well — he can share a cell with Comey.
     .
     In other news Devin Nunes asserts that Mueller knew on day one there was no evidence of Trump Russia collusion, which infers Mueller is guilty of a crime.

337. Ron Graf,
     It was, from 2016 to now, nothing but a fishing expedition to disqualify Trump from office, or failing that, to drive him from office, or failing that, to dimish what he could accomplish in office. The ‘investigations’ will continue through Trump’s second term if he is reelected and Dems control either house of Congress. IMO, it is 100% politically motivated, and, yes, lots of those responsible broke both laws and the public trust. Should many be sitting in prison? Sure, starting with Brennan, Clapper, Comey, and a bunch of Obama era people involed with ‘unmasking’ and doing their best to undermine the incomming Trump administration. Will they ever go to prison? Almost certainly not. These are the most well connnected of swamp creatures, and they know how to maintain “plausible deniability”…. besides, putting them in jail with a jury from DC’s population is just about impossible. The guilty in this case will walk.

338. "The guilty in this case will walk."
     .
     For the sake of the country they should at least be exposed and made to answer to a court. We already can see their defense strategy: "It was them."

339. R Graf: "Baker also claimed they tried to verify the dossier. All of Baker's claims appear to be counter to the facts we now have except on the existence of other possible FISAs. "

     I have read about half of Baker's testimony before Congress. Some of it appears to be comical — such as the claimed stringent and multiple layers of verification that were part of the FISA process according to him. A Sixth grader in 2 weeks could have found out whether Page was guilty of what he was accused of after the the first FISA warrant was granted. Almost certainly at the beginning the FBI knew Page was innocent, but intentionally didn't investigate areas that would truly show whether he was innocent or not. FBI simply went straight to his contacts, which was the goal of the fishing expedition from the outset.

     ….
     I would add that Baker would have to defend the FISA Application because he was the main legal person responsible for it — he is straight in the cross-hairs of the current investigation.

     JD

340. JD Ohio,
     I couldn’t get past the first 25 pages of his testimony. He seemed to me to be somewhat ‘less than forthcoming’. Baker is at legal risk, but more likely for unlawful leaking of information about the FISA warrant than the FISA application itself.
     .
     One revealing thing: Baker describes the 2016/2017 efforts to discount Clinton’s email server liability, ignore all of Clinton’s other ilegalities (with a promise to Clinton’s lawyers by the DOJ that FBI investigators would not even be allowed to read her email messages about the Clinton foundation… and the blatant pay-to-play schemes those emails would likely prove) and conducting the clandestine investigation of Trump as “a terrible time” for those actually doing these things. It is clear some of those involved understood what they were doing was, if not outright ilegal, clearly improper and likely ‘career-ending’ if they were caught. They were right about that. It is like the pseudo-rational Comey offers: Trump was so bad that we had to do everything possible to keep him out of office or drive him from office, even if we knew those things were unlawful. “We knew it was wrong, but….. TRUMP!”. They should all be sitting in prison.

341. Most important under-stressed points:
     .
     1) The most direct answer to everything is in the actions of Jospeh Mifsud, the "Russian agent" that approached Papadopoulos, and Rob Goldstone, the British music promoter that emailed Trump Jr., writing Russia wanted to supply HRC's recovered emails. Mueller's investigation was content to follow Manaforts personal business back 10 years but ignored investigation of these two critical Russian links to the Trump campaign. That makes no sense unless he knew there was no link to Russia. We know that Stephan Halper and Henry Greenberg were US assets. Alexander Downer we can't confirm was hired but certainly acted like an agent. If Mifsud and Goldstone were western hired then ALL the Russian connections were really US IC surrogates. The only conclusion then would be they were engaged in a domestic op going back to at least March 2016. We then need to see a predicate for that, especially if it was illegal.
     .
     2) There was never any evidence that the Russians had any interest in helping Trump, even less if there was no "collusion." Trump only said it would be nice to find common interest with Russia in fighting ISIS. He never said, for example, Russia was unfairly maligned by the US for the invasion and annexation of Crimea. Even the liberal aligned cyber-security firms analyzing Guccifer 2.0 came to the conclusion that the hacks, if by Russia, were not to aid Trump but to sew chaos and embarrassment to the US in general. This was the same assessment made by the anti-Trump Mueller investigators. Considering all this why would US intelligence officers be predisposed to believing the dossier? In fact, the claims in the dossier, for example that Trump was being groomed to be a Russian asset for many years, are unbelievable.
     .
     3) The Page FISA claims the dossier came from the DoS. But Victoria Nuland claims she told Steele he had come to the wrong department and told him to go the FBI. This month we found that Kalthleen Kavalec of the DoS interviewed Steele and warned everyone, including Peter Strzok 10 days before the FISA that Steele was a political player and many of his facts proved not true with the slightest check. Kavlec's typed up notes of her talk with Steele were submitted again to the FBI two days before the FISA.
     https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/05/14/state-dept-warning-memo-outlining-sketchy-steele-info-was-delivered-to-peter-strzok-a-week-prior-to-fisa-submission/comment-page-1/

342. Sergei Millian (aka Siarhei Kukuts), a Russian national living in the USA, is said to be Steele's source D and E in the dossier, which I believe is the hookers stuff. Millian approached, you guessed it, Papadopoulos with lucrative offers of contracts from un-named Russian business friends. Pap told Millian to get lost. A week later the FBI knocked on Paps door and wanted to him to recount every conversation with Millian, according to Pap.
     .
     Looking at Kavalek's hand notes from Steele interview, Millian is a central part of Steele's story. "Sergei Millian claims to signed contract with Trump." And this scribble: "Having used kompramat, agreed on info XD [? not sure] without use of kompramat.
     .
     Later down in the notes Millian is marked as one of three central conduits between Russian and Trump. "Milliand — Kukes" [has to be Millian — Kukuts, Millian's born name]. Millian is noted as the source of a note: "DNC — Out of Russia – cyber criminals".
     .
     #3 conduit is Carter Page, through Manafort. Steele stresses Manafort is "key player." Pages is a connection to Manafort but is "not family."
     .
     "Manafort owes $100 million to Russia." This is clear reference to Oleg Deripaska debt, showing Steele was using this debt as evidence of collusion. We know Steele was working with Deripaska since at least Jan 2016, according to an Ohr memo. It's interesting that Mueller was never able to develop anything of Deripaska, making him a possible friendly to the Dems from the beginning.
     .
     There is a few pages about Florida real estate sales by Trump to Russians. It might not be coincidental that Millian claimed to his friends of being connected to Trump by having a contract to sell Trump FL real estate, which he said he had many Russian buyers. Millian said that he negotiated with Michael Cohen, whom denies ever hearing of Millian and flatly calling him a "liar".
     .
     It is quite possible that Millian is Steele's primary source. If so, it's quite ironic that Hillary went to a foreign Russia expert who hasn't visited Russia in a decade but did a lot of work in the US with US residing Russians.
     .
     Roger Stone is also in Kavalec's notes as being connected to the Podesta Wikileaks. It's very interesting how loyal the Mueller investigation was in following Steele's story.
     https://www.scribd.com/document/409363897/State-Department-handwritten-notes-of-meeting-with-Christopher-Steele

343. Ron, thanks for link to what looks like a very good article. Will read it soon.

     ……
     Here is a link to a very interesting article the summarizes the FISA Court's holding that 85% of important computer queries dealing with US persons were unlawful or non-compliant and that unredacted access was given to outsiders.

     Some of the more pertinent quotes from the article were:

     ……
     "We can tell from the space of the redaction the number of searches were between 1,000 and 9,999 [five digits]. If we take the middle number of 5,000 – that means 4,250 unlawful searches out of 5,000.

     ……
     Also notice this very important quote: “many of these non-compliant queries involved the use of the same identifiers over different date ranges.” So they were searching the same phone number, email address, electronic “identifier”, or people, repeatedly over different dates. Specific people were being tracked/monitored.

     Additionally, notice the last quote: “while the government reports it is unable to provide a reliable estimate of” these non lawful searches “since 2012, there is no apparent reason to believe the November 2015 [to] April 2016 coincided with an unusually high error rate”.

     That means the 85% unlawful FISA-702(16)(17) database abuse has likely been happening since 2012.

     ……

     Private contractors with access to “raw FISA information that went well beyond what was necessary to respond to FBI’s requests“:

     All of this is laid out inside this 99-page opinion from FISC Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer who also noted that none of this FISA abuse was accidental in a footnote on page 87: “deliberate decisionmaking“ https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/04/23/the-obama-use-of-fisa-702-as-a-domestic-political-surveillance-program/

     One very important part of the article is the way it explains the massive reach of the spying and how if you entered different dates for the same person you could track their movements. I have forgotten the exact terminology, but it explains how broad the "2-step removed" ability to spy is. The points made by the writer were all supported by excerpts from the FISA court.

     JD

344. Doug Collins has released the transcript of Loretta Lynch's testimony, and in it she appears to confirm the existence of FISA against Flynn, Papadopolous and Manafort. Sheila Jackson-Lee asked the question, and produced the names.

345. Reading the first installment of Steele's dossier, dated June 20, Source D is identified but redacted. Source D, is definitely Millian, which was revealed in the book by Isikoff and Corn, "Russian Roulette." Steele apparently revealed Millian to the reporters he was meeting and to Kavalec but did not reveal the other "confirming" sources, leading to speculation that these were Millian's sources, not Steele's.
     .
     Reading the Mueller report Millian's name only comes up in connection with his association with Papodopoulos, which they infer (deceptively) was initiated by Pap. Mueller claims they were unable to interview Millian since, although he is a US citizen, he had fled the country to an unknown location.
     .
     Knowing now that Millian, who according to the dossier met with Steele in June, and we can see was a central source, and Millian was used in the Mueller report to cast suspicion on Papodopoulos, how could Mueller not have mentioned Millian's meeting with Steele?
     .
     Clearly, none of the relevant information Millian supplied panned out. His allegation that the Trump connected meetings with Russia occurred out of the Miami Russian consulate were even flagged by Kavalec, who noted there is no Russian consulate in Miami. Considering Papadopoulos only came to the FBI attention officially after Alexander Downer tipped them off in July, how could Millian know to seek out Papadopoulos? Whoever was controlling Millian is still unknown but seems to be critical. Mueller apparently did not even acknowledge any significance to this. Hopefully Barr's investigators will answer this question. Papadopoulos feels it was the FBI and they were setting him up for a trap.

346. If they had FISAs on Pap, Manafort and Flynn as well as Page why wouldn't the FBI have one on Millian? Steele claimed that Millian, a US citizen living in FL, had confirmed information that only a Russian agent could have. Clearly, the FBI was tracking Millian. After all, they pounced on Pap the week after he told Millian to get lost. If a FISA was approved on Pap but none sought for Millian that would logically lead to the conclusion the FBI was confident Millian was working for them. Why did he flee the country then? Maybe he's laying low with Mifsud, Halper and Goldstone.
     .
     Henry Greenberg, another member of Florida's Soviet emigre community, was also was in real estate. Wonder if he knew Millian?

347. Be careful about identifying Millian as Source D. He has also been identified as Source E. It is suspected by some that this may have been a deliberate leaking of a false name to hide the true sources.

348. Steele told Simpson that source D was Millian according to Corn and Isikoff. https://dailycaller.com/2018/03/13/russian-roullette-book-steele-dossier-source/
     .
     "Simpson would later learn from Steele the identity of Source D, the main source for the ‘golden showers’ allegation: It was Sergei Millian." -Russian Roullette
     .
     The Kavalec handwritten notes confirm Steele tells her the same thing. Millian's name along with his description about the kompramat is in the notes along with his claim of having a contract with Trump. But interestingly, that latter part of his story about having a contract, which he claimed to another FL friend, is not in the Steele dossier.
     .
     Also, I was mistaken to state that source D was the redacted space in the dossier; it was source E. But since Millian is the only named source in the Kavalec notes, and we know now that none of these other sources were ever produced after a 30 million-dollar, 2-year, investigation it seems apparent that Steele made up the confirming sources. The only real question was how much of the story was Millian's and how much was projected onto Millian by someone else, and who was that: Clinton, Simpson, Steele or Putin?

349. I don't get why no FISA on Michael Cohen given his role in the dossier. Is it because he is included so late?

350. MikeN: "I don't get why no FISA on Michael Cohen given his role in the dossier. Is it because he is included so late?"

     I think partly because he was Trump's lawyer and there are potential attorney client privilege issues. Also, I think they picked on Page notwithstanding, his virtual non-involvement with Trump campaign because of his long history with Russia. Between Cohen and Page, from the FBI's standpoint the risk/reward ratio was much higher.

     JD

351. Also for Cohen vs Manafort, Cohen vs Flynn, Cohen vs Papadop?
     I'm wondering if the answer is it would have highlighted they couldn't verify travel to Prague.

352. Remember the reaction to Trump's tweet about 'Obama tapped my wires'? The liberal media is no longer reacting like this, and is instead playing defense or ignoring Trump's tweets.

353. Wouldn't the two hop from existing FISA let them spy on Cohen anyway?
     .
     I'm not sure that we can say the lack of identified sources in the Mueller report means that Steele made up those sources. I think it's more likely that it reflects the investigation's priorities — while they were happy enough to spin off unrelated criminal charges if they dug it up on cronies, there's no interest at all in pursuing any leads among his foes. It's much less an investigation of Russian interference than it is an investigation of *Trump's* connection to Russian interference, so anything that looks like it leads to Russia but can't implicate Trump is dropped.

354. Dale S: "…so anything that looks like it leads to Russia but can't implicate Trump is dropped."
     .
     The dossier is the main thing implicating Trump. The dossier recounts multiple independent sources that confirm its claims. That is the only thing making them remotely credible. The first thing that anyone would want to know is who are these sources and when can they be spoken to directly to scrutinize their story, their independence and how Steele located them. That this these these questions, let alone the answers, are entirely missing from the Mueller report is damning to its credibility. That Millian is only mentioned by Mueller as a suspicious contact of Pap and never mentions he is Steele's only named source for the dossier is outrageous.

355. Steele's name does not appear in the entire first volume, even though Mueller went and interviewed him.

356. President Trump has given Barr declassification authority for the Russia investigation. Rest of Carter Page FISA should appear within a week. The order is also addressed to the Secretary of Energy. Is Barr investigating Uranium One?

357. MikeN,
     “Is Barr investigating Uranium One?”
     .
     If so, it couldn’t happen to a more deserving politician (Hillary).

358. Mueller was a signer on U-1 through CFIUS approval process.
     .
     "James Comey, Robert Mueller, [Rod Rosenstein,] Andrew McCabe, and Andrew Weissmann all appear to have been involved in both the investigation of long-running Russian nuclear conspiracies and in the attempt to unseat a duly elected president who threatened to expose them."
     https://www.worldtribune.com/report-7-reasons-why-uranium-one-scandal-wont-go-away/

359. MikeN: “Is Barr investigating Uranium One?”
     .
     SteveF (Comment #174879): "If so, it couldn’t happen to a more deserving politician (Hillary)."
     .
     I sympathize with the sentiment. But one lesson we should draw from the Russia Conspiracy Theory is that the government's investigative powers should be used with great discretion when political opponents are involved. Otherwise, there will be an endless procession of witch hunts. So as far as I am concerned, Hillary is a sleeping dog that Trump should be let lie.

360. "… Hillary is a sleeping dog that Trump should be let lie."
     .
     I hear some say that we have had enough of Russia and Trump should just let it all die. This is certainly Christopher Wray's position. I think there is clear evidence of a mis-information operation, in which case it needs to be exposed to deter it from being repeated.
     .
     As to Hillary, she seems to be keeping a high profile with constant sharp criticism of Trump, supporting the resistance movement and questioning the legitimacy of the 2016 electoral outcome. I say she is fair game, especially if she proves to be implicated in Spygate. If by chance she was just an unwitting victim of a Russian-born misinformation op (or just charlatans) then I think it would suffice to only prosecute the Obama administration persons that eagerly used the clearly bogus intel as a pretext for abuse of their offices.

361. Ron Graf (Comment #174882): "I hear some say that we have had enough of Russia and Trump should just let it all die."

     Yes. Such people are taking a firm stand against democracy.

     The discretion to which I referred pertains to political opponents. Government power must be restrained, especially where the political process is concerned.

     But the anti-Trump investigation was an abuse of government power, all the more serious because it was directed at the political process. Such abuses must be rooted out and prosecuted vigorously and without quarter.
     ——-
     Ron Graf: "As to Hillary, she seems to be keeping a high profile with constant sharp criticism of Trump, supporting the resistance movement and questioning the legitimacy of the 2016 electoral outcome. I say she is fair game …"

     No. That would be using the power of the government against political opponents.

     Ron Graf: "… especially if she proves to be implicated in Spygate."

     Only *if* she used her contacts in the administration to promote the investigation. But there is no evidence of that.

362. Mike M,
     I wish she were a sleeping dog, but she is actually a profoundly corrupt politician who used her influence to enrich herself. Yes, since at least 2016, Dems have been happy to use government power to attack political opponents. It would be better if they agreed to stop. Unfortunately, they show zero interest in that. I suspect Barr is applying pressure via new investigations to force them to stop the endless Russia conspiracy nonsense. If certain people (say Hillary, Comey, and some Obama Intelligence officials) end up facing felony charges, that would be unfortunate, since nobody really cares about their many politically motivated crimes. People do care about the corruption of government power for partisan political purposes, and that is ongoing.

363. Mike M: "Only *if* she used her contacts in the administration to promote the investigation. But there is no evidence of that."
     .
     Yes. I agree as it pertains to Spygate. If she collected mis-information and handed it to the FBI that is not a crime unless she had an active hand in producing it. I think there is evidence she used her DoS contacts to help vouch for Steele and she knew him from working in the DoS on the Ukranian issue when she served.
     .
     Steve F: "…but she is actually a profoundly corrupt politician who used her influence to enrich herself."
     .
     It is pretty clear already that her email investigation was a whitewash. I don't know how the Clinton Foundation or Uranium One investigations have been run to date. But she deserves ordinary scrutiny that any politician would receive.
     .
     Steve F: " People do care about the corruption of government power for partisan political purposes, and that is ongoing."
     .
     People need to care even when it's their own party involved. That seems to be the difference between today and the Nixon days. Corruption will *always* be ongoing. A successful democracy can only expose it from time to time and knock it back.

364. Mike Flynn has fired his lawyers. All that's left in his case is sentencing that keeps getting delayed, while Flynn is cooperating with some other cases dealing with foreign lobbying.

     Judge Sullivan asked for public filing of the audio of Flynn's call with the ambassador, and Mueller team refused, saying they didn't use it for the case. They have since made a sealed submission to the judge, presumably this call.

365. The Russian who Paul Manafort gave polling data, was a State Department CI. Somehow this detail didn't make it into the Mueller Report.

366. Trump said he'd listen to information provided by a foreign source on an opponent. Of course he would, just like any other candidate would (and the Clinton campaign did). FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub, is being quoted in support of the resistance's howling that would be illegal:
     https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/448507-fec-chair-responds-to-trump-saying-hed-accept-foreign-intel-on
     Weintraub: "It is illegal for any person to solicit, accept, or receive anything of value from a foreign national in connection with a U.S. election".

     But so far as I can tell, mere information is not a "thing of value" under either normal legal usage:
     https://definitions.uslegal.com/a/anything-of-value/
     or according to the FEC:
     https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/candidate-taking-receipts/types-contributions/

367. Mike M,
     Were the FEC serious about this nonsense, they would long ago have gone after Hillary and the DNC for indirectly contracting a foreign national (while using a law firm as intermediary to hide the transaction!) to dig up damaging information on Trump from Russia. That they didn’t go after Hillary and the DNC proves they are neither serious nor sensible.
     .
     I am more than a little puzzled why the FEC even exists; it is a complete waste of taxpayer’s money.

368. Because I will be traveling tomorrow, don't have much time to comment on something Steve Mc referred to in his twitter feed. Aaron Maté, of RealClearInvestigations shoots huge holes in Mueller's work. One highlight:

     "Lawyers for [Roger]Stone discovered that CrowdStrike submitted three forensic reports to the FBI that were redacted and in draft form. When Stone asked to see CrowdStrike's un-redacted versions, prosecutors made the explosive admission that the U.S. government does not have them. "The government … does not possess the information the defendant seeks," prosecutor Jessie Liu wrote. This is because, Liu explained, CrowdStrike itself redacted the reports that it provided to the government:

     At the direction of the DNC and DCCC’s legal counsel, CrowdStrike prepared three draft reports. Copies of these reports were subsequently produced voluntarily to the government by counsel for the DNC and DCCC. At the time of the voluntary production, counsel for the DNC told the government that the redacted material concerned steps taken to remediate the attack and to harden the DNC and DCCC systems against future attack. According to counsel, no redacted information concerned the attribution of the attack to Russian actors.

     In other words, the government allowed CrowdStrike and the Democratic Party’s legal counsel to decide what it could and could not see in reports on Russian hacking, thereby surrendering the ability to independently vet their claims. The government also took CrowdStrike's word that "no redacted information concerned the attribution of the attack to Russian actors."

     *********
     A second highlight: "According to a 2018 report by John Solomon in The Hill, Assange told the Justice Department the previous year that he "was willing to discuss technical evidence ruling out certain parties" in the leaking of Democratic Party emails to WikiLeaks. Given Assange's previous denials of Russia's involvement, that seems to indicate he was willing to provide evidence that Moscow was not his source. But he never got the chance. According to Solomon, FBI Director James Comey personally intervened with an order that U.S. officials "stand down," setting off a chain of events that scuttled the talks.

     Assange also made public offers to testify before Congress. The Mueller report makes no mention of these overtures,…" https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2019/07/05/crowdstrikeout_muellers_own_report_undercuts_its_core_russia-meddling_claims.html

     **********
     This is consistent with Mueller waiting about 6 months to question Carter Page, after Carter Page had called the Steele Dossier complete garbage. In both cases, it appears that Mueller was afraid that he would find exculpatory evidence and was attempting to avoid the exculpatory evidence and continue on with his fishing expedition. Appears to be a total clown show.

     JD

     "

369. JD Ohio- Thank you for this interesting post. The wheels of justice seem to be running backwards. April til August. Still, Could be a big moment shortly??

370. Angech, wouldn’t be surprised if some big news comes out in about 2 months. More and more records are being released, and so far, most of the record releases have provided damning evidence.

     To me it is clear that there was a seriously illegal attempt to spy on the Trump campaign that morphed into a coup attempt. Recently Andrew McCarthy has pointed out that George Papadopoulos almost certainly was not told by Paul Mifsud that the Russians had thousands of Clinton emails. That being the case, there was no reason for the Crossfire Hurricane "investigation" managed by Strzok.

     … .
     Although I believe a lot of evidence of criminality will be uncovered, there may not be any prosecutions because Trump manages attorneys very poorly and has no loyalty to his attorneys.

     JD

371. Fermat. Would like an opinion. More a gentle nudge as to why wrong like everyone else. OK to send?

372. "The Dossier began as political opposition research against Trump funneled through a Democratic law firm,"

     No it began as political opposition research for a GOP donor against Trump before he got the nomination, once he got the nomination that person dropped out and Fusion offered it to Perkins Cole.

373. Obviously, I think this is relevant to my post.

     Horowitz on the Carter Page FISA applications: "I don’t think the Dept of Justice fairly treated these FISAS and he [Carter Page] was on the receiving end of it."

     Horowitz on the Carter Page FISA application: "I would not have submitted the one they put in, no doubt about it. It was misleading to the court."

     From: https://twitter.com/nakashimae 14 hours before my post here

     JD

374. JD,

     This holds up real well some 10 months later. The coup attempt was real. The corruption in the FBI, CIA and Justice is shocking.

     Sundance at CTH has made some really interesting claims the handling of the Wolfe crimes now ties Barr's hands. Barr either needs to rug sweep or blow up the FBI, CIA and Justice. I'm hoping for a big explosion.

     I believe that Sharyl Atkisson's case will eventually tie in with the rest of this scandal. As will the illegal use of contractors by the Obama administration to sift through NSA intercepts for politically useful dirt.

     We're going to see that the scandalous use of FISA to spy domestically goes back years before they used it to try to create an "insurance policy" to get Trump. The only question is whether Barr has the balls to see that justice is done or gets cold feet when he faces the full extent of the Swamp and the hounds of hell.

375. Stan,

     Thanks very much for the compliment. As I am sure I wrote somewhere, after 15 minutes of reading Carter Page's congressional testimony (unequivocal denials of everything substantive), I knew he was 100% innocent or 100% guilty. Time has proven that he was 100% innocent.

     ***********
     It is useful now to remember the inacurrate statements/lies that were made by Adam Schiff about the Nunes report and the credibility of the FISA Application.

     ***********
     “DOJ met the rigor, transparency, and evidentiary basis needed to meet FISA’s probable cause requirement.”

     …
     “DOJ cited multiple sources to support the case for surveilling Page — but made only narrow use of information from Steele’s sources about Page’s specific activities in 2016.”

     …
     “Senior FBI and DOJ officials have repeatedly affirmed to the Committee the reliability and credibility of Steele’s reporting, an assessment also reflected in the FBI’s underlying source documents. The FBI had undertaken a rigorous process to vet the allegations from Steele’s reporting, including with regard to Page.” https://dailycaller.com/2019/12/10/devin-nunes-adam-schiff-memos-doj-ig-fisa-report/

     **************
     **************

     Additionally, since I wrote the post, many disturbing matters have come out. One of the most disturbing was the FBI Agents' professional organization fighting the Nunes release of the FISA materials on the grounds that the release would cause serious national security issues. A Sixth Grader could read the redacted FISA application and know that there were no security issues. Unfortunately, this was the FBI closing ranks to prevent the public from knowing of the fraud perpetrated on the FISA court as well as to hide the extremely poor performance of the FBI.

     **********************
     Also, amazing to me that Steele's source characterized the Dossier claims as gossip in December of 2016 and somehow this didn't get to Schiff, Nunes or Rosenstein as Mueller was grabbing thousands of files and emails for essentially no reason. Fraud after fraud, clown show after clown show.

     JD

376. This is a boring bit of house keeping (precipitated by looking at post after Stan posted) the that is reasonably important to me, but meaningless to other people. Would simply like to establish that I finished my post (other than very minor corrections b before the Mueller report was made public.

     On Apr 15, 2019, at 6:10 PM,[JD Ohio] @aol.com> wrote:

     "Lucia,

     It looks 100% better. The asterisks are simply my way of making simple separations. They look fine. There are some minor things, I would like to change and then we are good to go.

     1. At the beginning, please capitalize SUPER SHORT SUMMARY and have a space between it and the following text.

     2. In the second paragraph of Sec. II., there is this sentence. "Steele made the first contact with Ohr and his wife on July 30, 2016." I would like to change it to this sentence: "Steele made the first personal contact with Ohr and his wife concerning the Trump campaign collusion issues on July 30, 2016." 3. Next, in Sec. VII there is this phrase in the first sentence: " Comey and Yates went ahead with the FISA Application." I would like to change it to: "Comey and Yates went ahead with the FISA Application and filed it on October 21, 2016." 4. Finally, at the end, I would like a space between the word "CONCLUSION" and the text that follows.

     Once these are taken care of, we are good to go.

     Best wishes,

     JD Ohio"

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