The Official Former President Trump thread

[Granny Danger]

5 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

Doubt it, the memo is getting ripped apart on US media. It falls on the fact that the FBI probe on Russian interference and possible contacts with the Trump campaign started months before requesting permission to tap Carter Page's phone. I think Page is probably a fantasist, but it's down to the judges who authorised the wire tap, not the FBI if the reasons were insufficient.

You're looking at the facts; a worthless exercise in US politics these days.

I'm looking at the optics and wider issues.  A Wray resignation would hurt Trump; him sticking around will hurt him more.

 

[Jacksgranda]

On ‎30‎/‎01‎/‎2018 at 20:45, Fullerene said:

Not really.  She would have thought it crazy, pulled them out from under bed, given each of them a clean and polish and then placed them properly lined up in the cupboard  along with a note saying "Hello, my name is Cindy, and I am the cleanliness facilitator for this floor.  Please contact me if you require anything!"

If that doesn't get a good tip - then I don't know.  

"Stay away from the C&W show across the street"?

[Paco]

. I think Page is probably a fantasist, but it's down to the judges who authorised the wire tap, not the FBI if the reasons were insufficient.

 

I think that’s the crux of the whole thing. If the memo is accurate it should be alarming to the US in many regards, but the issue is probably with the law itself, and definitely the judge, not the FBI.

 

US politics has went in such a direction that if every detail of the memo was true, I wouldn’t be at all surprised. Equally if it were entirely made up? Not really a surprise either.

 

Looking forward to the revolution.

 

Edit - I suppose we should also be fair to Trump (bear with me) and say if he doesn’t know of any fabrication in the memo he’s well within his rights to be outraged. It’s not really massively different to the FBI getting a FISA warrant on Clinton because of those pizza place/paedo rumours.

[welshbairn]

12 minutes ago, Paco said:

 

I think that’s the crux of the whole thing. If the memo is accurate it should be alarming to the US in many regards, but the issue is probably with the law itself, and definitely the judge, not the FBI.

 

US politics has went in such a direction that if every detail of the memo was true, I wouldn’t be at all surprised. Equally if it were entirely made up? Not really a surprise either.

 

Looking forward to the revolution.

 

Edit - I suppose we should also be fair to Trump (bear with me) and say if he doesn’t know of any fabrication in the memo he’s well within his rights to be outraged. It’s not really massively different to the FBI getting a FISA warrant on Clinton because of those pizza place/paedo rumours.

I haven't read the full memo yet, but I'd say there was a massive difference between investigating Russian interference in the election and some daft internet rumours.

[Zetterlund]

I'm not sure how it could be on the judge? The judge apparently authorised the wiretap on the strength of the 'evidence' in the dossier. The FBI and DOJ were aware the dossier was funded by Clinton as opposition research but didn't disclose this in the application. Or the fact that Steele himself said he was passionately opposed to Trump being elected.

That being said, I don't see how it's directly related to Mueller's investigation so that may well continue. It has just exposed the predictable political bias present throughout some of America's sacred institutions.

[welshbairn]

4 minutes ago, Zetterlund said:

I'm not sure how it could be on the judge? The judge apparently authorised the wiretap on the strength of the 'evidence' in the dossier. The FBI and DOJ were aware the dossier was funded by Clinton as opposition research but didn't disclose this in the application. Or the fact that Steele himself said he was passionately opposed to Trump being elected.

That being said, I don't see how it's directly related to Mueller's investigation so that may well continue. It has just exposed the predictable political bias present throughout some of America's sacred institutions.

The dossier was unproven intelligence, not evidence. The judges and the FBI thought it worth pursuing. What's wrong with that? The Steele dossier was originally funded by a Republican campaign group. Intelligence is either true or false, the source is only a guide to it's reliability. Steele had dealt with the FBI and the CIA for many years as an MI6 agent. Supposedly a lot of the dossier is spot on. Mueller by the way is a Republican, as is Rosenstein. Should they sack every FBI agent who voted Democrat now?

[Zetterlund]

1 minute ago, welshbairn said:

The dossier was unproven intelligence, not evidence. The judges and the FBI thought it worth pursuing. What's wrong with that? The Steele dossier was originally funded by a Republican campaign group. Intelligence is either true or false, the source is only a guide to it's reliability. Steele had dealt with the FBI and the CIA for many years as an MI6 agent. Supposedly a lot of the dossier is spot on. Mueller by the way is a Republican, as is Rosenstein. Should they sack every FBI agent who voted Democrat now?

Andrew McCabe, who was essentially forced to retire early when this memo came to light, said the dossier was essential in the granting of the warrant. Do you not think the fact that it was funded by the opposition would have been relevant to the application?

[welshbairn]

22 minutes ago, Zetterlund said:

Andrew McCabe, who was essentially forced to retire early when this memo came to light, said the dossier was essential in the granting of the warrant. Do you not think the fact that it was funded by the opposition would have been relevant to the application?

Not really, it's whether the information might be true, not how its gathering was funded. Andrew McCabe was trying to retire as soon as his pension became available because of Trump's attacks on his wife for trying for State office. The other FBI agent under attack for slagging of Trump in personal test messages was the one who persuaded Coney to say they were re raising the investigation into Clinton's emails, a week before the election. Trump and the thicko sect of the Republicans are doing anything they can to undermine Mueller, but they've got f**k all.

[Zetterlund]

2 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

Not really, it's whether the information might be true, not how its gathering was funded. Andrew McCabe was trying to retire as soon as his pension became available because of Trump's attacks on his wife for trying for State office. The other FBI agent under attack for slagging of Trump in personal test messages was the one who persuaded Coney to say they were re raising the investigation into Clinton's emails, a week before the election. Trump and the thicko sect of the Republicans are doing anything they can to undermine Mueller, but they've got f**k all.

Of course it's relevant. Unverified information from a credible source may be of interest, but obviously biased opposition research has a forensic value of zero.  Again, I don't see this directly related to Mueller as the Trump-Russia investigations had started by this point. But assuming the stuff in the memo is true, and I assume it's taken from private testimony to the intel committee, it's pretty damning, if not very surprising. 

As I've said before it's remarkable how the same news can be spun in complete opposite directions by both sides - for Democrats it's the surest sign yet that Trump and the R's are desperate and need a pretext to shutdown the Russia probe before he's inevitably outed as Putin's agent, while for the Trumpets it'll have Hillary hanging from a noose by Monday. The whole thing is an utter clownshow.

[welshbairn]

8 minutes ago, Zetterlund said:

Of course it's relevant. Unverified information from a credible source may be of interest, but obviously biased opposition research has a forensic value of zero.  Again, I don't see this directly related to Mueller as the Trump-Russia investigations had started by this point. But assuming the stuff in the memo is true, and I assume it's taken from private testimony to the intel committee, it's pretty damning, if not very surprising. 

As I've said before it's remarkable how the same news can be spun in complete opposite directions by both sides - for Democrats it's the surest sign yet that Trump and the R's are desperate and need a pretext to shutdown the Russia probe before he's inevitably outed as Putin's agent, while for the Trumpets it'll have Hillary hanging from a noose by Monday. The whole thing is an utter clownshow.

Just to point out that Steele was a credible source, and was considered as such for decades. When the Republican funding of his work stopped and Democrat funding took over, I'm not sure, neither am I that it matters much.

[Zetterlund]

7 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

Just to point out that Steele was a credible source, and was considered as such for decades. When the Republican funding of his work stopped and Democrat funding took over, I'm not sure, neither am I that it matters much.

That's kind of my point - he may well have been credible, but the moment it's known his research was paid for by the opposition (never mind his own stated political bias), his work should count for nothing all things being fair and equal. 

If you're referring to the Washington Free Beacon research, their involvement with Fusion was before Steele was involved and they also paid for research into other Rep primary candidates as well as Clinton.

[welshbairn]

3 minutes ago, Zetterlund said:

That's kind of my point - he may well have been credible, but the moment it's known his research was paid for by the opposition (never mind his own stated political bias), his work should count for nothing all things being fair and equal. 

If you're referring to the Washington Free Beacon research, their involvement with Fusion was before Steele was involved and they also paid for research into other Rep primary candidates as well as Clinton.

My point from the beginning was that it's the facts that are important, nothing else. The evaluation of whether intelligence is worth pursuing to establish truth (ie authorising wire taps) should be dependent on the reliability of the source, not who funded it.

[mjw]

One judge authorised the surveillance and three more reauthorised it.
That's a lot of judges being fooled/corrupted by a dodgy dossier.

[Zetterlund]

24 minutes ago, mjw said:

One judge authorised the surveillance and three more reauthorised it.
That's a lot of judges being fooled/corrupted by a dodgy dossier.

Not so much fooled, they just weren't aware of some pretty important background facts. Imagine Trump's guys tried to get the Clinton camp wiretapped on the strength of some juicy allegations uncovered by a spy paid by Breitbart. They'd rightly be laughed out of court.

[mjw]

Not so much fooled, they just weren't aware of some pretty important background facts. Imagine Trump's guys tried to get the Clinton camp wiretapped on the strength of some juicy allegations uncovered by a spy paid by Breitbart. They'd rightly be laughed out of court.

That'll be the stuff Nunes left out of his memo that convinced the judges then.

[Zetterlund]

Genuine question as I've paid little attention to the dossier, assuming it to be nonsense. What was in it that has been since been proven to be legit and incriminating? As from what I've read it would be impossible to verify much of it (watersports etc).

If I was to try to think of the absolute least credible source of intelligence imaginable, it would be an opposition politician paying a former spy to garner unverifiable stories from anonymous sources in the Kremlin. 

[mjw]

Maybe if Nunes released the hundreds of pages of reports he had access to rather than the three he did release the story would be clearer.

[welshbairn]

Russian spy not too impressed with Carter Page.

Quote

The bureau was looking into a suspected Russian spy ring and learned that one of their suspects, Victor Podobnyy, had met with Page in hopes of finding a potential recruit. In fact, Podobnyy was caught on a wiretap discussing Page:

He writes to me in Russian [to] practice the language. He flies to Moscow more often than I do. He got hooked on Gazprom thinking that if they have a project, he could be rise up. Maybe he can. I don’t know, but it’s obvious that he wants to learn lots of money. ...

... I will feed him empty promises. ... You promise a favor for a favor. You get the documents from him and tell him to go f**k himself.

Podobnyy said one more thing about Page on the tap. “I think,” he said, “he is an idiot.”

Page did end up giving some energy business documents to Podobnyy, and the FBI interviewed him about it in June 2013. But they decided Page didn’t know Podobnyy was a spy, and didn’t charge him with anything.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/2/16956014/nunes-memo-carter-page

[Savage Henry]

One has to wonder which hill Nunes is dying on here. Much of his memo runs contrary to Comey’s testimony under oath. Comey’s testimony is available on YouTube. It shows that the dossier can’t be dismissed entirely, as Nunes would have the world believe.

Carter Page seems like an alt-right conspiracy theorist loonball. But Nunes is a serving elected official. He’s also supposed to have recused himself. But he’s managed to drive the media narrative into allowing Trump to claim he’s been cleared. And the 30% have bought it.

[welshbairn]

Pierce Morgan's gone tearful snowflake.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/feb/2/piers-morgan-rages-against-bbc-over-cartoon-him-ki/