FBI spreed sheet puts a stake through Steele dossier.

[Munchmasterman]

I can see where you would see the truth as a parade.

Why don't you make yourself useful and help you be find a link. Or find one that proves the opposite.

Originally Posted by bb1961

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh.....
Don't piss on MUNCHY parade!!

[I B Hankering]

Originally Posted by Munchmasterman

So you're right and everyone else is wrong?

You're a funny guy.

Link? One that refutes Chris Wallace, the FBI, and anyone not a trump apologist?
Show me.

McCabe was in the FBI. Wallace wasn't. FISC told the FBI they had shit to justify an investigation without the Steele Dossier; so, Comey, et al, lied about verifying what was in the dossier and used it to secure a FISA warrant to conduct the fucking "investigation".

[bb1961]

Originally Posted by Munchmasterman

I can see where you would see the truth as a parade.

Why don't you make yourself useful and help you be find a link. Or find one that proves the opposite.

>Why don't you make yourself useful and help you be find a link.<
I can't respond to and incoherent statement...please decipher the code!!
I think you're alluding to this...about a dozen LINKS MUNCHY!!

https://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt...rant&fr2=12642

Take your pick MUNCHY...MANY stories to choose from...let me guess THEY'RE ALL WRONG and YOUR RIGHT!!

P.S. Now a Hurricane has hit your PARADE!!

[Munchmasterman]

Sorry charlie. No link? Prove me wrong with proof. I know you would have if you could.
Looks like bb dropped your ball.

Originally Posted by I B Hankering

McCabe was in the FBI. Wallace wasn't. FISC told the FBI they had shit to justify an investigation without the Steele Dossier; so, Comey, et al, lied about verifying what was in the dossier and used it to secure a FISA warrant to conduct the fucking "investigation".

[bb1961]

A complete page of links...https://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt...rant&fr2=12642

I understand you dilemma MUNCHY...LIVE WITH IT!!

[I B Hankering]

Originally Posted by Munchmasterman

Sorry charlie. No link? Prove me wrong with proof. I know you would have if you could.
Looks like bb dropped your ball.

Everyone with half a brain knows FISC wouldn't give Comey a FISA warrant before Comey tacked on the Steele Dossier to justify the investigation.

No Steele Dossier. No investigation.

[oeb11]

MM hasn't figured out how to post in Red
To share the DPST "Outrage" at all things non-Socialist and non- DPST narrative.

[rexdutchman]

Paid for by your friends at the Clintonnnn foundation ,,,,, So lets see you really tired to "work" the election

[Munchmasterman]

How do you know what McCabe said? All you know is what nunes paraphrased. Let me know if you find a transcript.

"The Nunes memo was released Friday, and it was about what we expected: It argued that the Steele dossier and other biased information provided the justification for surveillance of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. The clear implication: The whole thing shows law enforcement is tainted.

Some of the central facts are in dispute — most notably the memo’s claim that the dossier was “essential” to the FISA application — but for now we’re probably in about the same spot we were before, with 43 percent of the country believing the Russia investigation is a witch hunt, and a majority believing its important.

But there is plenty left to play out here — and plenty of unanswered questions about the Nunes memo. Below are four of them:

1. What did McCabe actually say about the Steele dossier?

This might be the most consequential dispute involving the memo. Its authors — staff for House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) — wrote this: “Furthermore, [FBI] Deputy Director [Andrew] McCabe testified before the Committee in December 2017 that no surveillance warrant would have been sought from the FISC without the Steele dossier information.”
This seems to be the basis for the memo’s controversial claim that the dossier, authored by former British spy Christopher Steele, was “essential” to the FISA application. FISA applications are rigorous and generally require lots of evidence, so the idea that the dossier was so integral is very much in question. But McCabe saying such a thing would certainly lend credence to the claim.

Here’s the thing, though: Whatever McCabe said was behind closed doors in a private hearing of the House Intelligence Committee. What’s more, the memo for some reason doesn’t give his direct quote. So we’re left to rely upon the authors’ paraphrasing of what McCabe said. (Which is a little weird, if I’m honest!)

Democrats quickly cried foul. A Democrat on the intelligence committee, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), said the memo “seriously mischaracterizes the testimony of Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and the FISA application.” Others quickly called for a transcript of the McCabe hearing and/or that specific section of it.
It would seem difficult for Republicans to resist that pressure. There really doesn’t seem to be any reason to paraphrase what McCabe said but not be able to quote him. If the quote comes out and it turns out the paraphrase was misleading, the entire memo will be undermined. If the paraphrase is accurate, it bolsters the GOP’s argument.
2. How does law enforcement respond to the arguments about the FISA process?

Much of the memo is devoted to explaining things that weren’t disclosed in the FISA application — mostly, (a) that the Steele dossier was funded by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign and (b) that Steele was a biased and untrustworthy person (and so were others involved).

It bears noting, though, that the FISA application did disclose that some of the information was paid for by a political entity, as The Post's Ellen Nakashima reports. It’s also difficult to imagine a judge looking at a document like the Steele dossier and not assuming it was opposition research from Donald Trump’s opponents; almost all of the information is derogatory about Trump and his campaign. Both of these issues would seem to be justification for releasing the House Intelligence Committee's Democratic rebuttal memo, but the House Intelligence Committee voted not to.
The GOP memo does make some other notable claims, though, including that Steele met with Yahoo News but that the application “incorrectly assesses that Steele did not directly provide information to Yahoo News.”

Republicans seem to be arguing that the FISA process should have been more interested in the actual actors behind the dossier. But since FISA applications are handled behind closed doors and we don’t have the actual documentation, we simply don’t know how all of this played out.
3. How do Republicans account for their own timeline?

As The Washington Post's Karen Tumulty and Rosalind S. Helderman wrote Friday, the final point in the memo would seem to risk undermining the Republicans’ case. In Point No. 5, the memo confirms Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos set the Russia investigation in motion months before the Page FISA application in October 2016, thanks to his loose lips in a London bar:

Democrats quickly seized on that sentence to assert that the Republicans’ own memo shows that the Russia investigation would be underway with or without the surveillance of Page, and — more critically — even if the government had never seen a dossier of information about Trump that was compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British spy.

To be sure, this doesn’t necessarily disprove the idea that anti-Trump bias or other alleged abuses could have featured in the investigation after Papadopoulos set it off. But it does confirm that the investigation wasn’t predicated upon a partisan document — that there was something else that got the ball rolling on all of this, including the Page FISA warrant. And if the idea was to undermine the entire Russia investigation, that would seem to be a hole in the argument.
Even Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), the former head of the House Benghazi committee who announced his retirement this week, suggested the memo had no bearing on special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's probe.


Trey Gowdy
✔
@TGowdySC
It is important for the American public to know if the dossier was paid for by another candidate, used in court pleadings, vetted before it was used, vetted after it was used, and whether all relevant facts were shared with the tribunal approving of the FISA application.

25.8K
1:31 PM - Feb 2, 2018
Twitter Ads info and privacy
11.9K people are talking about this

Trey Gowdy
✔
@TGowdySC
· Feb 2, 2018
Replying to @TGowdySC
While this memo raises serious concerns with the FISA process, I have been and remain confident in the overwhelming majority of the men and women serving at the FBI and DOJ.


Trey Gowdy
✔
@TGowdySC
As I have said repeatedly, I also remain 100 percent confident in Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The contents of this memo do not - in any way - discredit his investigation.

33.3K
1:34 PM - Feb 2, 2018
Twitter Ads info and privacy
20.8K people are talking about this
4. Will Trump try to fire or force out Rosenstein?

Just before the memo came out Friday, Trump was asked in the Oval Office whether he was going to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein. “You figure that one out,” he said.
We’re sure as heck trying to figure it out. What we can say is this: Rosenstein oversees the Russia investigation, and getting rid of him could mean someone more loyal or sympathetic to Trump is put in that job — at least theoretically. Trump has also repeatedly derided Rosenstein both publicly and privately, suggesting he’s “a Democrat” and arguing he’s a threat to Trump’s presidency. And for a president who fired James B. Comey as FBI director and tried to fire Mueller, it seems only logical that Trump wants to get rid of Rosenstein, too.

The memo notably outlines five people who signed off on FISA applications for monitoring Page. Two of them have been fired by Trump (Comey and former acting attorney general Sally Yates). One of them resigned last week (McCabe). One of them switched jobs recently (Dana Boente, who became general counsel for the FBI).

The only one listed who hasn’t departed? Rod J. Rosenstein. The plot thickens."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.7b868460095a

Here is a fact-check also.

"In an interview about the special counsel’s report, Rep. John Ratcliffe said that what “started all of this” was “a fake, phony dossier.” But a House Republican intelligence committee memo said it was information about a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser that sparked the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into Russian interference in the election.
Ratcliffe, a Texas Republican who is a member of the House intelligence committee,said in the interview on Fox Business Network that “I had seen every classified document that any member of Congress was allowed to see. So I wasn’t surprised at all at the findings” of the special counsel investigation, as revealed in a four-page memo on March 24by Attorney General William P. Barr. He then turned to the dossier.
Ratcliffe, March 25:That this was a fake, phony dossier that started all of this, funded by the Democrats. … It wasn’t real and now Bob Mueller says it wasn’t real.
The “dossier” is a series of memos compiled by former British intelligence officerChristopher Steele on supposed contacts between Russian officials and members of the Trump campaign. It alleged the Russian government had compromising information on then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Steele was hired by the research firm Fusion GPS, which had been hired by a law firm representing Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee. (See “Q&A on the Nunes Memo” for more information.)
We don’t know what special counsel Robert S. Mueller III said, or didn’t say, about the dossier in his report to Barr. For now, Mueller’s report remains confidential. But we do know, according to Barr’s summary of it, that Mueller’s report said:“[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”
Barr wrote in his memo that “the Special Counsel did not find that the Trump campaign, or anyone associated with it, conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in these efforts, despite multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign.”
But Ratcliffe is wrong to say the dossier “started all of this.” Competing memos from the Republicans and the Democrats on the House intelligence committee both say that information about George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, had prompted the FBI investigation in July 2016.
Papadopoulos had contacts with Russian intermediaries during the campaign,according to the Justice Department, and later pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about those contacts. While he was a Trump campaign adviser, Papadopoulos met with a professor with connections to Russian government officials who told him “about the Russians possessing ‘dirt’ on then-candidate Hillary Clinton in the form of ‘thousands of emails,'” and he tried to arrange a meeting between the Russian government and the campaign, the DOJ’s statement of the offense said.
A memo released Feb. 2, 2018, by the Republicans on the House intelligence committee raised concerns about the use of the dossier in an application from the DOJ and FBI under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to conduct electronic surveillance on career Page, another Trump campaign foreign policy adviser. But it said the“Papadopoulos information triggered the opening of an FBI counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016.”
The Democrats on the House intelligence committee agreed with that,saying in a memo released Feb. 24, 2018,that the FBI investigation started “more than seven weeks” before the FBI received Steele’s intelligence reporting in mid-September of that year.
The two sides disagree about how essential the dossier was to the FISA court application to monitor Page. But one of the few points of agreement is that the FBI investigation began with information on Papadopoulos.
After the GOP memo was released, Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy, also a member of the intelligence committee, said the dossier didn’t have any effect on the Russia investigation.“I actually don’t think it has any impact on the Russia probe,”Gowdy said on Feb. 4, 2018, on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
Gowdy mentioned other incidents that had nothing to do with the dossier, including Papadopoulos’ contacts with the professor and the June 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting Donald Trump Jr. arranged with what he was told was a “Russian government attorney” offering incriminating information on Hillary Clinton. “So there’s going to be a Russia probe, even without a dossier.”
We asked Ratcliffe’s office how he could claim that “a fake, phony dossier … started all of this.” His office responded: “Very easily. Both statements are true. The Papadopoulos information is the stated basis for FBI Agent Peter Strzok’s opening of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane counterintelligence investigation on Sunday July 31, 2016. The Steele dossier, funded by the Democrats, started many months before that date. Further to that point, the sworn testimony of then DOJ ADAG Bruce Ohr is that he met directly with and was personally briefed on the dossier by Christopher Steele at the Mayflower Hotel on Saturday July 30, 2016, the day before the FBI officially opened its investigation.”
Ratcliffe’s office added: “The ‘Trump-Russia collusion’ narrative (which Mueller’s findings conclude is false) was started by and through the Steele dossier months and months before the FBI investigation was opened.” But that’s not correct.
The Steele dossier didn’t start “many months” before the FBI launched its counterintelligence investigation. Glenn R. Simpson of Fusion GPS testified to Congressthat he hired Steele in May or June 2016, asking Steele to “find out about Donald Trump’s business activities in Russia.” The first of a series of memos from Steele was dated June 20, 2016, and Simpson said he would have received it “within a couple days” of that date. That’s one month before the FBI counterintelligence investigation began.
There’s also no evidence that Ohr’s late July 2016 meeting with Steele precipitated the FBI investigation. Ohr,a former associate deputy attorney general with the Department of Justice,testified to Congress that he didn’t know about the FBI investigation at the time. Ohr said he reached out to then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and met with McCabe in August 2016 to provide the information Steele had given him. “I don’t recall the exact date. I’m guessing it would have been in August since I met with Chris Steele at the end of July, and I’m pretty sure I would have reached out to Andrew McCabe soon afterwards,” Ohr said in his August 2018 testimony.
Other Republicans Point to the Dossier
Ratcliffe wasn’t the only Republican to bring up the dossier after Barr released his memo summarizing the special counsel’s report.
Jay Sekulow, an attorney for the president,said in a March 25 interview on Fox News: “The whole impetus upon which this inquiry engaged, where it came out of, was this dossier, this counterintelligence investigation regarding collusion.” And Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee,said the same day on the cable network: “And it’s really shameful that for two years this cloud has been upon his presidency and it was precipitated by this fake dossier paid for by the Hillary Clinton and the DNC that the Justice Department ran with, that Democrats for two years have accused our president of being an agent for a foreign country.”
As we explained, dueling House intelligence committee memos agree it was the Papadopoulos information that triggered the FBI investigation.
Also on Fox News, Rep. Matt Gaetzclaimedthat “even [former FBI Deputy Director] Andrew McCabe indicated that in the absence of the dossier, the Papadopoulos meeting would not have been enough to continue the investigation.”
Gaetz is referring to the February 2018 Republican memo, which claimed that McCabe had testified in December “that no surveillance warrant would have been sought from the FISC without the Steele dossier information.” But that has been disputed, including by McCabe.
Democrats said at the time that the memo’s description of McCabe’s closed-door testimony was incorrect. In an interview with CNN, McCabe said his testimony had been “selectively quoted” and “mischaracterized” in the GOP memo.
“We started the investigations without the dossier. We were proceeding with the investigations before we ever received that information,” McCabe told CNN. “Was the dossier material important to the [FISA] package? Of course, it was. As was every fact included in that package. Was it the majority of what was in the package? Absolutely not.”
As for the special counsel’s investigation, Mueller was appointed by Rod Rosenstein, in his capacity as acting attorney general, on May 17, 2017, eight days after President Donald Trump had fired then-FBI Director James Comey. Rosenstein said in a statement that “the public interest requires me to place this investigation under the authority of a person who exercises a degree of independence from the normal chain of command.”
“I determined that a Special Counsel is necessary in order for the American people to have full confidence in the outcome” of the Russia investigation, he said. “Our nation is grounded on the rule of law, and the public must be assured that government officials administer the law fairly.”

https://www.factcheck.org/2019/03/do...d-all-of-this/

Originally Posted by I B Hankering

McCabe testified under oath that the FISC told the FBI to take a hike without the Steele Dossier, meaning they had jack-shit to proceed with without the Steele Dossier. It's only AFTER Comey and company used the Steele Dossier to secure a warrant that the FISC permitted the investigation to spy on Team Trump.

Claiming the Steele Dossier didn't start the investigation is bullshit, because the FISC told the FBI that it didn't have grounds for an investigation until Comey used the Steele Dossier as false evidence to justify an investigation.

A couple of things.

FISC doesn't give permission to investigate. They grant permission for surveillance warrants against foreign spies inside the United States.

Now you say FISC rejected the warrant request until the dossier was added as evidence.

Question #2 says it all. The nunes memo doesn't quote McCabe. They put their interpretation of what he said into the memo.

The democratic members of the committee and McCabe himself "said his testimony had been “selectively quoted” and “mischaracterized” in the GOP memo."

All the repubs need to do to put this to bed is release the transcript. But they won't.

Lots of bull shit and misinformation in your posts. And still no links.

[Munchmasterman]

The funny guy posts.

You have nothing to say but bullshit.
Again.

Originally Posted by oeb11

MM hasn't figured out how to post in Red
To share the DPST "Outrage" at all things non-Socialist and non- DPST narrative.

[Munchmasterman]

So you want me to pick one for you?

I say none of them refutes me. Prove me wrong

Originally Posted by bb1961

A complete page of links...https://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt...rant&fr2=12642

I understand you dilemma MUNCHY...LIVE WITH IT!!

[I B Hankering]

Originally Posted by Munchmasterman

How do you know what McCabe said? All you know is what nunes paraphrased. Let me know if you find a transcript.

"The Nunes memo was released Friday, and it was about what we expected: It argued that the Steele dossier and other biased information provided the justification for surveillance of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. The clear implication: The whole thing shows law enforcement is tainted.

Some of the central facts are in dispute — most notably the memo’s claim that the dossier was “essential” to the FISA application — but for now we’re probably in about the same spot we were before, with 43 percent of the country believing the Russia investigation is a witch hunt, and a majority believing its important.

But there is plenty left to play out here — and plenty of unanswered questions about the Nunes memo. Below are four of them:

1. What did McCabe actually say about the Steele dossier?

This might be the most consequential dispute involving the memo. Its authors — staff for House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) — wrote this: “Furthermore, [FBI] Deputy Director [Andrew] McCabe testified before the Committee in December 2017 that no surveillance warrant would have been sought from the FISC without the Steele dossier information.”
This seems to be the basis for the memo’s controversial claim that the dossier, authored by former British spy Christopher Steele, was “essential” to the FISA application. FISA applications are rigorous and generally require lots of evidence, so the idea that the dossier was so integral is very much in question. But McCabe saying such a thing would certainly lend credence to the claim.

Here’s the thing, though: Whatever McCabe said was behind closed doors in a private hearing of the House Intelligence Committee. What’s more, the memo for some reason doesn’t give his direct quote. So we’re left to rely upon the authors’ paraphrasing of what McCabe said. (Which is a little weird, if I’m honest!)

Democrats quickly cried foul. A Democrat on the intelligence committee, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), said the memo “seriously mischaracterizes the testimony of Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and the FISA application.” Others quickly called for a transcript of the McCabe hearing and/or that specific section of it.
It would seem difficult for Republicans to resist that pressure. There really doesn’t seem to be any reason to paraphrase what McCabe said but not be able to quote him. If the quote comes out and it turns out the paraphrase was misleading, the entire memo will be undermined. If the paraphrase is accurate, it bolsters the GOP’s argument.
2. How does law enforcement respond to the arguments about the FISA process?

Much of the memo is devoted to explaining things that weren’t disclosed in the FISA application — mostly, (a) that the Steele dossier was funded by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign and (b) that Steele was a biased and untrustworthy person (and so were others involved).

It bears noting, though, that the FISA application did disclose that some of the information was paid for by a political entity, as The Post's Ellen Nakashima reports. It’s also difficult to imagine a judge looking at a document like the Steele dossier and not assuming it was opposition research from Donald Trump’s opponents; almost all of the information is derogatory about Trump and his campaign. Both of these issues would seem to be justification for releasing the House Intelligence Committee's Democratic rebuttal memo, but the House Intelligence Committee voted not to.
The GOP memo does make some other notable claims, though, including that Steele met with Yahoo News but that the application “incorrectly assesses that Steele did not directly provide information to Yahoo News.”

Republicans seem to be arguing that the FISA process should have been more interested in the actual actors behind the dossier. But since FISA applications are handled behind closed doors and we don’t have the actual documentation, we simply don’t know how all of this played out.
3. How do Republicans account for their own timeline?

As The Washington Post's Karen Tumulty and Rosalind S. Helderman wrote Friday, the final point in the memo would seem to risk undermining the Republicans’ case. In Point No. 5, the memo confirms Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos set the Russia investigation in motion months before the Page FISA application in October 2016, thanks to his loose lips in a London bar:

Democrats quickly seized on that sentence to assert that the Republicans’ own memo shows that the Russia investigation would be underway with or without the surveillance of Page, and — more critically — even if the government had never seen a dossier of information about Trump that was compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British spy.

To be sure, this doesn’t necessarily disprove the idea that anti-Trump bias or other alleged abuses could have featured in the investigation after Papadopoulos set it off. But it does confirm that the investigation wasn’t predicated upon a partisan document — that there was something else that got the ball rolling on all of this, including the Page FISA warrant. And if the idea was to undermine the entire Russia investigation, that would seem to be a hole in the argument.
Even Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), the former head of the House Benghazi committee who announced his retirement this week, suggested the memo had no bearing on special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's probe.


Trey Gowdy
✔
@TGowdySC
It is important for the American public to know if the dossier was paid for by another candidate, used in court pleadings, vetted before it was used, vetted after it was used, and whether all relevant facts were shared with the tribunal approving of the FISA application.

25.8K
1:31 PM - Feb 2, 2018
Twitter Ads info and privacy
11.9K people are talking about this

Trey Gowdy
✔
@TGowdySC
· Feb 2, 2018
Replying to @TGowdySC
While this memo raises serious concerns with the FISA process, I have been and remain confident in the overwhelming majority of the men and women serving at the FBI and DOJ.


Trey Gowdy
✔
@TGowdySC
As I have said repeatedly, I also remain 100 percent confident in Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The contents of this memo do not - in any way - discredit his investigation.

33.3K
1:34 PM - Feb 2, 2018
Twitter Ads info and privacy
20.8K people are talking about this
4. Will Trump try to fire or force out Rosenstein?

Just before the memo came out Friday, Trump was asked in the Oval Office whether he was going to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein. “You figure that one out,” he said.
We’re sure as heck trying to figure it out. What we can say is this: Rosenstein oversees the Russia investigation, and getting rid of him could mean someone more loyal or sympathetic to Trump is put in that job — at least theoretically. Trump has also repeatedly derided Rosenstein both publicly and privately, suggesting he’s “a Democrat” and arguing he’s a threat to Trump’s presidency. And for a president who fired James B. Comey as FBI director and tried to fire Mueller, it seems only logical that Trump wants to get rid of Rosenstein, too.

The memo notably outlines five people who signed off on FISA applications for monitoring Page. Two of them have been fired by Trump (Comey and former acting attorney general Sally Yates). One of them resigned last week (McCabe). One of them switched jobs recently (Dana Boente, who became general counsel for the FBI).

The only one listed who hasn’t departed? Rod J. Rosenstein. The plot thickens."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.7b868460095a

Here is a fact-check also.

"In an interview about the special counsel’s report, Rep. John Ratcliffe said that what “started all of this” was “a fake, phony dossier.” But a House Republican intelligence committee memo said it was information about a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser that sparked the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into Russian interference in the election.
Ratcliffe, a Texas Republican who is a member of the House intelligence committee,said in the interview on Fox Business Network that “I had seen every classified document that any member of Congress was allowed to see. So I wasn’t surprised at all at the findings” of the special counsel investigation, as revealed in a four-page memo on March 24by Attorney General William P. Barr. He then turned to the dossier.
Ratcliffe, March 25:That this was a fake, phony dossier that started all of this, funded by the Democrats. … It wasn’t real and now Bob Mueller says it wasn’t real.
The “dossier” is a series of memos compiled by former British intelligence officerChristopher Steele on supposed contacts between Russian officials and members of the Trump campaign. It alleged the Russian government had compromising information on then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Steele was hired by the research firm Fusion GPS, which had been hired by a law firm representing Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee. (See “Q&A on the Nunes Memo” for more information.)
We don’t know what special counsel Robert S. Mueller III said, or didn’t say, about the dossier in his report to Barr. For now, Mueller’s report remains confidential. But we do know, according to Barr’s summary of it, that Mueller’s report said:“[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”
Barr wrote in his memo that “the Special Counsel did not find that the Trump campaign, or anyone associated with it, conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in these efforts, despite multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign.”
But Ratcliffe is wrong to say the dossier “started all of this.” Competing memos from the Republicans and the Democrats on the House intelligence committee both say that information about George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, had prompted the FBI investigation in July 2016.
Papadopoulos had contacts with Russian intermediaries during the campaign,according to the Justice Department, and later pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about those contacts. While he was a Trump campaign adviser, Papadopoulos met with a professor with connections to Russian government officials who told him “about the Russians possessing ‘dirt’ on then-candidate Hillary Clinton in the form of ‘thousands of emails,'” and he tried to arrange a meeting between the Russian government and the campaign, the DOJ’s statement of the offense said.
A memo released Feb. 2, 2018, by the Republicans on the House intelligence committee raised concerns about the use of the dossier in an application from the DOJ and FBI under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to conduct electronic surveillance on career Page, another Trump campaign foreign policy adviser. But it said the“Papadopoulos information triggered the opening of an FBI counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016.”
The Democrats on the House intelligence committee agreed with that,saying in a memo released Feb. 24, 2018,that the FBI investigation started “more than seven weeks” before the FBI received Steele’s intelligence reporting in mid-September of that year.
The two sides disagree about how essential the dossier was to the FISA court application to monitor Page. But one of the few points of agreement is that the FBI investigation began with information on Papadopoulos.
After the GOP memo was released, Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy, also a member of the intelligence committee, said the dossier didn’t have any effect on the Russia investigation.“I actually don’t think it has any impact on the Russia probe,”Gowdy said on Feb. 4, 2018, on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
Gowdy mentioned other incidents that had nothing to do with the dossier, including Papadopoulos’ contacts with the professor and the June 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting Donald Trump Jr. arranged with what he was told was a “Russian government attorney” offering incriminating information on Hillary Clinton. “So there’s going to be a Russia probe, even without a dossier.”
We asked Ratcliffe’s office how he could claim that “a fake, phony dossier … started all of this.” His office responded: “Very easily. Both statements are true. The Papadopoulos information is the stated basis for FBI Agent Peter Strzok’s opening of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane counterintelligence investigation on Sunday July 31, 2016. The Steele dossier, funded by the Democrats, started many months before that date. Further to that point, the sworn testimony of then DOJ ADAG Bruce Ohr is that he met directly with and was personally briefed on the dossier by Christopher Steele at the Mayflower Hotel on Saturday July 30, 2016, the day before the FBI officially opened its investigation.”
Ratcliffe’s office added: “The ‘Trump-Russia collusion’ narrative (which Mueller’s findings conclude is false) was started by and through the Steele dossier months and months before the FBI investigation was opened.” But that’s not correct.
The Steele dossier didn’t start “many months” before the FBI launched its counterintelligence investigation. Glenn R. Simpson of Fusion GPS testified to Congressthat he hired Steele in May or June 2016, asking Steele to “find out about Donald Trump’s business activities in Russia.” The first of a series of memos from Steele was dated June 20, 2016, and Simpson said he would have received it “within a couple days” of that date. That’s one month before the FBI counterintelligence investigation began.
There’s also no evidence that Ohr’s late July 2016 meeting with Steele precipitated the FBI investigation. Ohr,a former associate deputy attorney general with the Department of Justice,testified to Congress that he didn’t know about the FBI investigation at the time. Ohr said he reached out to then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and met with McCabe in August 2016 to provide the information Steele had given him. “I don’t recall the exact date. I’m guessing it would have been in August since I met with Chris Steele at the end of July, and I’m pretty sure I would have reached out to Andrew McCabe soon afterwards,” Ohr said in his August 2018 testimony.
Other Republicans Point to the Dossier
Ratcliffe wasn’t the only Republican to bring up the dossier after Barr released his memo summarizing the special counsel’s report.
Jay Sekulow, an attorney for the president,said in a March 25 interview on Fox News: “The whole impetus upon which this inquiry engaged, where it came out of, was this dossier, this counterintelligence investigation regarding collusion.” And Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee,said the same day on the cable network: “And it’s really shameful that for two years this cloud has been upon his presidency and it was precipitated by this fake dossier paid for by the Hillary Clinton and the DNC that the Justice Department ran with, that Democrats for two years have accused our president of being an agent for a foreign country.”
As we explained, dueling House intelligence committee memos agree it was the Papadopoulos information that triggered the FBI investigation.
Also on Fox News, Rep. Matt Gaetzclaimedthat “even [former FBI Deputy Director] Andrew McCabe indicated that in the absence of the dossier, the Papadopoulos meeting would not have been enough to continue the investigation.”
Gaetz is referring to the February 2018 Republican memo, which claimed that McCabe had testified in December “that no surveillance warrant would have been sought from the FISC without the Steele dossier information.” But that has been disputed, including by McCabe.
Democrats said at the time that the memo’s description of McCabe’s closed-door testimony was incorrect. In an interview with CNN, McCabe said his testimony had been “selectively quoted” and “mischaracterized” in the GOP memo.
“We started the investigations without the dossier. We were proceeding with the investigations before we ever received that information,” McCabe told CNN. “Was the dossier material important to the [FISA] package? Of course, it was. As was every fact included in that package. Was it the majority of what was in the package? Absolutely not.”
As for the special counsel’s investigation, Mueller was appointed by Rod Rosenstein, in his capacity as acting attorney general, on May 17, 2017, eight days after President Donald Trump had fired then-FBI Director James Comey. Rosenstein said in a statement that “the public interest requires me to place this investigation under the authority of a person who exercises a degree of independence from the normal chain of command.”
“I determined that a Special Counsel is necessary in order for the American people to have full confidence in the outcome” of the Russia investigation, he said. “Our nation is grounded on the rule of law, and the public must be assured that government officials administer the law fairly.”

https://www.factcheck.org/2019/03/do...d-all-of-this/




A couple of things.

FISC doesn't give permission to investigate. They grant permission for surveillance warrants against foreign spies inside the United States.

Now you say FISC rejected the warrant request until the dossier was added as evidence.

Question #2 says it all. The nunes memo doesn't quote McCabe. They put their interpretation of what he said into the memo.

The democratic members of the committee and McCabe himself "said his testimony had been “selectively quoted” and “mischaracterized” in the GOP memo."

All the repubs need to do to put this to bed is release the transcript. But they won't.

Lots of bull shit and misinformation in your posts. And still no links.

First, you can take Factcheck and shove it where the sun don't shine, because everyone knows they are a lib-retard outlet that distorts the facts to fit their agenda.

Second, Gowdy actually read the documents, unlike you and the mediocre, drooling idiots at Factcheck, etc., etc., etc., you're quoting and citing.

Third, to date, Gowdy and Nunes have been a whole lot more truthful than Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Brennan, etc., after all, Mueller shot down numerous of their collective lies when he found no collusion.

There would have been no investigation without the FISA warrants, there would have been no FISA warrant without the Steele dossier. FISC told Comey he didn't have shit to justify a warrant before he attached the Steele dossier. Ergo, Comey didn't have shit for an investigation.

[Munchmasterman]

No hurricane, just a fart.

"YOUR RIGHT"? Talk much? It's obvious you're wrong.
I asked you to help "you be hankering" to find a link. Instead, you got cute.

Now he's floundering the same as you, just in a different way.
Stop being lazy and find him a link. Pick your best one out of all the ones you say you have and post it.

I'm as right as the sources I use. All you have to do to prove me wrong is prove the Washington Post is wrong. That's why I post a link.
That must be why you don't.

Originally Posted by bb1961

>Why don't you make yourself useful and help you be find a link.<
I can't respond to and incoherent statement...please decipher the code!!
I think you're alluding to this...about a dozen LINKS MUNCHY!!

https://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt...rant&fr2=12642

Take your pick MUNCHY...MANY stories to choose from...let me guess THEY'RE ALL WRONG and YOUR RIGHT!!

P.S. Now a Hurricane has hit your PARADE!!

[Danielle Silver]

Chill out. Its too Damn hot outside for this mess.......

Yeah, that's on open warning to everyone......

[Munchmasterman]

Anyone with half a brain?

Oh, I get it.

You mean trump supporters "know".

Farther down in the posts you said, "Claiming the Steele Dossier didn't start the investigation is bullshit, because the FISC told the FBI that it didn't have grounds for an investigation until Comey used the Steele Dossier as false evidence to justify an investigation."


At best this is one more of your opinions (based on what? Only having half a brain?) you pretend is a fact.

Originally Posted by I B Hankering

Everyone with half a brain knows FISC wouldn't give Comey a FISA warrant before Comey tacked on the Steele Dossier to justify the investigation.

No Steele Dossier. No investigation.