July 22, 2018

"Carter Page on Sunday called the accusations against him detailed in the foreign surveillance warrant application released by the FBI 'so ridiculous.'"

"'You talk about misleading the courts, it's just so misleading... It's literally a complete joke.'"

CNN reports on the interview that was on CNN's "State of the Union."

I have not attempted to read the long document that was released, but one of the commenters in last night café, Yancey Ward, did:
Believe it or not, I read the FISA applications in less than an hour. It is 90%+ redacted, so there are about 40 pages of actual material. The bulk of the material that is redacted appears to be nothing related to Page at all — it appears in procedures, minimization, and is connect otherwise to general descriptions of what Russia is thought to do in such areas- in other words, classified means and methods. Indeed, the only portions that are unredacted are the parts related to Page.

Here is the absolute truth — all of the applications rely on the Steele Dossier and the Isikoff story from September 2016 — a story that Steele himself was the source for. Those are the only two pieces of "evidence" the FBI supplied to the FISA court that could reasonably be inferred to assign probable cause that Page was a knowing Russian agent. The only other things mentioned in regards to Page are that he lived in Russia for a time, travels there sometimes as an energy consultant, and was approached by Russian agents in the past, one of whom Page himself helped to trap and convict by serving as a willing FBI informant. That last part is incongruous with designating him as a Russian agent, but is included any way as an attempt, not to exonerate him, but to tar him.

Also, if you do a page by page comparison of all four applications, there is little material added from one to the other —if you compared the applications side by side, practically every redacted section is identical in shape and length and page designations. In other words, in each of the renewals, it is apparent that the FBI got jackshit from the surveillance — there was nothing they could add to each application, and so just mostly copied the first application serially.

In addition, none of the applications told the court that the Clinton Campaign is the one who paid Steele and FusionGPS — not a single time. Indeed, the only mention in all the applications of "Candidate 2" is in the very last renewal, and that section wasn't discussing who hired the law firm, but was instead discussing some letters Page wrote criticizing the Clinton Campaign. The FBI knew who hired the law firm — they knew Steele (Source 1) was hired by Glenn Simpson (aka US citizen), and they knew Simpson was hired by a law firm- i.e. the FBI knew which law firm and thus it was the Clinton Campaign. The applications studiously avoid mentioning "Candidate 2" at every point they describe the chain of cutouts- always ending with "law firm".

Finally, it clear the FBI confirmed nothing of the Steele Dossier. At no point does it appear that Steele revealed his sources to the FBI- they are always described as "subsources"- this is FBI legalese for "we don't even know the name so that we can designate them by number".

The House Intelligence Republican memo was correct on all counts. The Democrat memo was extremely misleading — there is nothing else other than the Steele Dossier and the story Steele sourced to Isikoff.
I don't have the patience to read the thing myself, but that shows why government officials may chose to write long, evasive documents. Let me know if there's anything about Yancey Ward's description that you think is wrong and tell me exactly why. And don't be verbose! I'm suspicious of verbosity. It makes me feel that you are hiding something.

310 comments:

1 – 200 of 310   Newer›   Newest»
Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

You can mislead all you want, when you're on Corruption Team D.

Ask Teddy K.

Fernandinande said...

Justice for Dunky took (at least) three weeks, so these fancy "colluding with the FBI" get-togethers should last for thousands of years.

Michael K said...

Andrew McCarthy has an interesting discussion of this here.

I finally sent a link to my FBI agent daughter who used to write FISC warrants fo the FBI.

I'll see if she comments. It is really embarrassing.

Molly said...

(eaglebeak)

Former Federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy characterized the FISA application as being so sloppy that the judges who signed off on it in its various renewal iterations should be under scrutiny along with everyone involved in its production.

By the way, the FBI has to this day not even interviewed Carter Page, so the Feds must have known they were full of prunes when they claimed, variously (different pages of the application) that he was a target of the Russians seeking to make him an agent and that he was already a Russian agent.

Nor has he been charged with anything.

John Pickering said...

Here's Ann, standing tall to defend the civil rights of Carter Page, American patriot. Hey, when are they going to drop the charges against Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort, they're Ann's kind of patriotic Americans as well.

Original Mike said...


P. 2 Nunes is correct, the initiating ‘info’ came from State.
P. 5 The ‘instigator’ was Clapper.
P. 8. Timing onset suspicions confirmed. The ‘surveillance’ started 3/16, NOT with the official opening of ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ on 7/31/16.
P. 53 ‘verified in accordance with FBI 4/5/2001 policy.’ NOT. Both Comey and McCabe testified under oath to congress otherwise.
Pp. 63 and 65. Attested to by Comey and Yates. Both in violation of 18USC1018, felonious false attestation by federal officials.
The heavy redactions do NOT obscure the basic illegality of this FISA application.

Darrell said...

So the bottom line is that the FBI was lying--and knew they were lying--to the FISA Court to get the warrants. They knew Page was their informant. And they got him near the Trump campaign, to facilitate the warrants.

Which are all felonies.

Felonies were usually addressed when we had Law in this country.

Paco Wové said...

And here's Pickering, cheerleading for a police state. Obviously the state in its infinite wisdom would never accuse anyone who is not guilty.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

Yancy Ward was wrong on all counts. It’s appears that the warrant was granted based on more than just the dossier, every last one of them. Also they mentioned a candidate who had paid to have the dossier made, nothing was hidden from the judges in any of the warrant applications. Also this release shows Nunes to be nothing more than a political hack for Trump. It’s amazing how Trumpists are able to see things in exactly the opposite manner than is shown in reality, wow.

Sebastian said...

Yancey got it right.

He shows why the initial application was worse than we thought: it relied entirely on the Steele memo, plus some MSM articles. They had nothing else. They did not even try to verify the Russian disinformation.

McCarthy couldn't believe, a while back, that his deep-state buddies would act in such bad faith. But they did, and here we are.

And apparently, the renewal applications had no new info, as required. Nothing.

Two issues remain:

1. Who were the judges that approved this nonsensical, fraudulent application? What remedy is there against the obvious partisanship that would motivate their lack of professionalism?

2. What exactly did the FBI do with the surveillance that the FISC approved? Did they tap all Trump's communications? Did they listen in on all his associates? Did they put bugs in the Oval Office and at his golf courses? Where is the info collected, and who looked at it?

And maybe a third issue:

Does Trump in fact know what the deep state got on him? Has he forced Rosenstein and Wray to come clean? If not, can he?

rehajm said...

This is so bad that they should be looking at the judges who signed off on this stuff...

Yes. The whole thing falls apart when you don't have dirty judges to backstop the whole thing. That's why there's so much bedwetting rather than waiting out the election cycle- you need the Supremes to be in on it.

David Begley said...

Yancey Ward should be on TV. Excellent work!

1. Strzok should be indicted for perjury. He verified NOTHING in the Steele dossier.

2. The application is full of speculation, opinion and hearsay.

3. Ward’s comment about not disclosing who paid for the dossier (Crooked Hillary) is a serious problem. As I understand FISA court procedure, because there is no adversary the government has the unusual duty of disclosing bad stuff about their case (Brady material.).

4. Andy McCarthy said on Fox today that the judges need to be investigated!

5. Nice trick where the FBI cites *newspaper* stories to get a wire tap. And the stories were nothing new; just the Steele dossier regurgitated.

Darrell said...

Things appear to Inga that have nothing to do with reality.
Doctors have a name for that, I bet.

Darrell said...

It's an honor system essentially.
That's where they fucked up.

rehajm said...

Judges don't need to be dirty, I suppose. A legal mind can rationalize anything.

David Begley said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Darrell said...

The judges don't have the staff or the budget to verify what the FBI tells them.
It's an honor system.

Now it's time for the lying FBI agents to pay the piper.

Darrell said...

And put them in Genpop.

Michael K said...

Hey, when are they going to drop the charges against Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort, they're Ann's kind of patriotic Americans as well.

Flynn will probably have the case dismissed soon. Manafort is a crook but the abuse by Mueller and cohorts is so bad that I expect that case will also be thrown out.

Bay Area Guy said...

Peter Stork and his FBI enablers (McCabe & Comey), made Carter Page into a false target and then used the salacious and unverified Steele Dossier as a pretext to spy on him and, more importantly, the Trump campaign.

FBI Director Christopher Wray should make the above statement in public at a press conference.

Original Mike said...

Inga said...”It’s appears that the warrant was granted based on more than just the dossier, every last one of them.”

You provide no argument or evidence to back up your claim.

Yancey Ward said...

Inga wrote:

"Also they mentioned a candidate who had paid to have the dossier made, nothing was hidden from the judges in any of the warrant applications."

Where, Inga? Give me the page number in the PDF. I found exactly one mention of "Candidate 2" in the entire 412 pages, and it had nothing to do with who funded the Dossier. At every point in all four applications that discusses who hired who, it always ended with "law firm" which was Coie Perkins. Tell me where I missed it.

David Begley said...

Original Mike is correct. Indict Yates and Comey.

If these people get away with these OBVIOUS and SERIOUS crimes we are in big, big trouble as a country. Imagine what happens when a Dem gets elected President. Howard Schultz has s decent chance.

I now know why the FISA judge hasn’t called up a contempt hearing on the DOJ. It would expose his own sloppiness, laziness and incompetence. Someone should file an ethics complaint.

Michael K said...

The whole thing falls apart when you don't have dirty judges to backstop the whole thing.

This is why the original FISC judge, Contreras, quickly recused himself. He is trying to avoid being impeached as a judge when the whole edifice collapses.

Francisco D said...

"I'm suspicious of verbosity. It makes me feel that you are hiding something."

Absolutely! When it comes to college students, it usually means that they have not thought out what they want to say. They are just vomiting words and phrases on a page and asking me to organize their thoughts.

When it comes to experienced professionals, it usually means they are trying to plaster over facts that do not fit the narrative they are presenting. In many cases, the purpose is to bore the reader into acquiescing to their narrative because it takes too much time and energy to dig through the trash.

In that sense, Yancy Ward has done great work here!

Michael K said...

"Tell me where I missed it."

Asking the fool to answer questions like this is cruel and unusual.

She has not had an original thought since that bedpan fell on her. The full one.

Kevin said...

Inga supplies the “everything they said is wrong” defense for those needing someone to “say it ain’t so.”

Say it ain’t-so-ism doesn’t need facts, just someone to immediately post that every allegation is wrong so they can return to their brunch.

glenn said...

Looks to me like the career guys and gals at the DOJ are trying to save their lucrative careers. It’s going “All those bad Obama appointees misled us Boy Scouts. Shame on them and give me my pension”

Francisco D said...

"It’s appears that the warrant was granted based on more than just the dossier, every last one of them. "

Inga,

Can you provide any evidence of "more than just the dossier"?

I will even tolerate a cut and paste job to back up your assertion.

rhhardin said...

Bureaucrats accent prepositions, when talking. English requires frequent accenting on important words, and bureaucrats have no important words, so the frequency goes to preposotions.

We'll be checking ON that.

BUMBLE BEE said...

I downloaded from the NYT. Yancy nailed it. The application would be discussed, primetime, by all the networks 6 o'clock news, if the target was democrat. As revealed by her comments here, it is no surprise that Inga neither reads or comprehends the English language. The application is better suited tween the covers of Mad Magazine.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

President of Judicial Watch says:

"These documents are heavily redacted but seem to confirm the FBI and DOJ misled the courts in withholding the material information that Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the DNC were behind the “intelligence” used to persuade the courts to approve the FISA warrants that targeted the Trump team. Given this corruption, President Trump should intervene and declassify the heavily redacted material."

BUMBLE BEE said...

Michael K @10:51... My thoughts exactly. Purge him from the bench with prejudice.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Inga does not comprehend, she regurgitates her loyalty to Corruption Team D talking points. She's utterly clueless and willfully blind.

n.n said...

Judges don't need to be dirty, I suppose. A legal mind can rationalize anything.

The so-called "Twilight" Amendment, not limited to invention of abortion rites, comes to mind.

It seems that the credibility of the claims was established on two premises: peer review (without independence) and confirmation bias. The legal community behind Water Closet suffers from the same failures as the scientific community behind catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, and in both cases the journolists and politicians were forward thinking and blind.

Bay Area Guy said...

I can't continue this discussion - Bernie Sanders and Alexandria OC are together on Face the Nation. I must watch this. This is more than awesome. Socialist wonder twins activate!

rcocean said...

I don't know, 40 pages of support.

That's pretty damn convincing.

rcocean said...

I believe its time for CNN and MSNBC to have another Stormy Daniels story

Inga...Allie Oop said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Yancy said...
The only other things mentioned in regards to Page are that he lived in Russia for a time, travels there sometimes as an energy consultant, and was approached by Russian agents in the past, one of whom Page himself helped to trap and convict by serving as a willing FBI informant. That last part is incongruous with designating him as a Russian agent, but is included any way as an attempt, not to exonerate him, but to tar him.

The democrat hack press tarred him - especially the usual suspects on MSDNC and at CNN - the Clinton News Network.

Leland said...

I haven't read it, but unfortunately, I don't think it is literally a joke. At least, I'm missing the humor, but then I might be one of those "it's not funny" people.

"I don't know, 40 pages of support.

That's pretty damn convincing.
"

How? Because 39 pages wouldn't be, but the 40th convinces you? Is that your price, 40 pages? The Steele Dossier is 35 pages, and I find nothing convincing in it.

Kyzer SoSay said...

What a clown show this whole affair has been. It is infuriating that the feds are using manufactured evidence against Trump and his associates, while REAL, ACTUAL EVIDENCE against Clinton and her cronies was ignored, destroyed, lost, or mishandled. Stuff like this isn't supposed to happen in America. We don't have royalty, and nobody should be above the law just because of their political affiliation.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Inga said

It’s appears that the warrant was granted based on more than just the dossier, every last one of them.



"appears" ? - What kind of mealy-mouthed bullshit is "appears"? Did you hear that from Rachel Maddow or some hack on CNN?


No Inga- you are wrong on all counts. You are a corruption excusing liar who lies on behalf of your corrupt party.

Kyzer SoSay said...

Inga said...

(Insert meaningless and factually incorrect bullshit here)

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Shorter Inga and the liar left bullshit machine:

Carter Page was/is a Russian agent who helped steal the election from its rightful owner, Hillary Clinton. The Steel Dossier is real, and it wasn't used at all anyway.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

The application was granted based on not just the dossier. The FBI had been watching Carter Page all the way back to 2013, long before the dossier. Also in the application the judge was informed that a candidate had commissioned the investigation that resulted in the dossier to discredit Trump. The warrant was granted despite this based on the history Steele had with the FBI and they deemed him a credible source.

The dossier is heavily redacted and not one of us knows what is behind all those big black spaces in the application.

BamaBadgOR said...

Excellent work by Yancy Ward. Sally Yates is at the center of all of this but virtually escapes all congressional and media scrutiny.

Yancey Ward said...

On page 309 in the Pdf is the last renewal describing the chain of cutouts. The FBI knew the time of the first application the entire chain of cutouts- all the identities. I will reproduce verbatim this section from the last renewal:

"Source #1, who now owns a foreign business/finacial intelligence firm, was approached by an identificed U.S. person, who indicated to Source #1 that a U.S.-based law firm had hired the identified U.S. person to conduct research regarding Candidate #1's ties to Russia (the identified U.S. person and Source #1 have a long-standing business relationship). The identified U.S person hired Source #1 to conduct this research. the identified U.S. person never advised Source #1 as to the motivation behind the research into Candidate #1's ties to Russia. The FBI speculates that the identified U.S. person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit Candidate#1's campaign."

That is the provenance of the dossier from the very last renewal in June of 2017. The FBI knew before the first application who the U.S.-based law firm was- they knew it was Coie Perkins- that is how they know the law firm was U.S. based. The FBI also knew who the law firm's client was before the first application was filed, but that detail is not mentioned in any of the applications. The section I quoted above appears in all four applications and is unchanged or amended in all of them. That little bit of "speculation" near the end is clearly designed to mislead because the FBI didn't have to speculate- they already knew the purpose, but if they mention that they know, then they have to point out that it was Candidate #2, Hillary Clinton, who paid for it.

I rest my case.

Michael K said...

The fool is not to be deterred from her slavish devotion to the leftist liars.

It is useless to try to argue. This is a bot named Inga.

Original Mike said...

”The dossier is heavily redacted and not one of us knows what is behind all those big black spaces in the application.”

You forgot “lol”.

h said...

Here's the most liked comment in the wapo article on this: "The application shows that the FBI portrayed Steele to the court as a trusted source. The FBI also disclosed that his work was on behalf of a client who was likely looking for politically damaging information about Trump. Republicans had accused the bureau of failing to notify the court of the dossier’s political origins. In short, Republicans were lying."

Yancy Ward notes that the notification of the dossier's political origins omitted any reference to the fact that it was paid for by the Clinton campaign and DNC. Inga disputes this, but is unable or unwilling to provide a page reference to support her opinion. (And I've looked and I don't see one.) In my opinion, Yancy Ward is right on this; I am convinced by the argument that the omission of the Clinton/DNC connection was made deliberately because the FBI feared the the FISA warrant would not be granted if they included that information.

ga6 said...

Inga: WRONG misleading, not watched but assisting the FBI. Paige was assisting the
FBI in another investigation which resulted in criminal indictment of a Russian, then suddenly a few months later he becomes a target in another criminal investigation.

Kathryn51 said...

David Begley said...
Yancey Ward should be on TV. Excellent work!

1. Strzok should be indicted for perjury. He verified NOTHING in the Steele dossier.


Strzok didn't sign the application, so although he may have perjured himself many times, it won't be in the application.

However, the application is prepared by attorneys who are supposed to follow the "Woods" protocols (which, I believe, requires identification of sub-sources).

Sally Yates fingerprints are all over the original application (and she signed the 1st renewal as well). For instance, claiming that Steele wasn't a "direct" source for the Sept. 2016 article, knowing full well that Simpson provided the information. Yates should be disbarred.

Mattman26 said...

"Also in the application the judge was informed that a candidate had commissioned the investigation that resulted in the dossier to discredit Trump."

Page cite please?

Yancey Ward said...

Inga again:

"Also in the application the judge was informed that a candidate had commissioned the investigation that resulted in the dossier to discredit Trump."

Again, where in the 412 pages was this done? At no point did I find "Candidate #2" discussed as being in the chain of provenance- not once. If you can support your assertion, give me the page in the pdf. If you can't then admit it. I told you above where the last renewal describes this provenance. Prove me wrong.

Original Mike said...

Goodlatte said this morning that there’s nothing of substance in the redacted portions over and above the Steele dossier.

I agree with Alan Dershowitz this morning. 90% of redactions are just to cover somebody’s butt. We need someone other than the IC to go over those redactions.

rhhardin said...

Scott Adams has Carter Page as a topic today, but the talk is on his blog but not on his periscope page.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

Also all four of the judges who granted the FISA warrants were appointed by Republican presidents. You’re seriously saying all these judges were duped? It’s amazing to what lengths you Trumpists will go to make your ( and Trump’s) narrative a reality, well at least in your minds. That is what happens when you join a cult.

Yancey Ward said...

Strzok says he had nothing to do with the FISA applications, which is odd since he was the lead counterintelligence agent in Crossfire Hurricane. I will point out that the case agent responsible for the FISA warrant applications signs all four, but that name is redacted all four times. Here are signatures on the applications and the approvals:

Application 1- James Comey, Sally Yates, Rosemary Collyer (the FISA court judge)
Application 2- James Comey, Sally Yates, Michael Mosman (the FISA court judge)
Application 3- Jams Comey, Dana Boente, Ann Conway (the FISA court judge)
Application 4- Andrew McCabe, Rod Rosenstein, Dearie (the FISA court judge, can't remember his first name right now).

Michael K said...

Inga bot still running at speed 11.

This will be an interesting week. I doubt Trump will declassify everything until October.

n.n said...

Sanders and Alexandria OC ... Socialist wonder twins activate!

Is she wearing a potato sack to obfuscate her feminine female aesthetics from the eyes and minds of masculine males?

Sebastian said...

One more thing.

Let's assume, as is now pretty clear, the FBI had nothing but Steele and his Russian sources. Assume that it was all BS. Assume that the Russians know it was all BS, and that they knew the FBI ran with it anyway.

As I said at the very beginning of this saga: What would the Russians infer? What would it tell them about the competence and integrity of their adversaries?

At the very least: they are gangsters just like us, except less honest and less capable; they will do anything to abuse their so-called system and harm their adversaries in the pursuit of domestic power. That fundamental weakness we can exploit.

Michael K said...

Rosemary Collyer is the one who is releasing these documents.

I get the impression she (presiding FISC judge) is pissed and will be releasing more if she can get Trump to declassify it.

Yancey Ward said...

Inga again:

"Also all four of the judges who granted the FISA warrants were appointed by Republican presidents. You’re seriously saying all these judges were duped?"

Yes, duped. I suspect none of them actually read the applications closely enough to figure out what was going on. Andrew McCarthy is correct- they need to be investigated for dereliction of duty at the very least.

So, did you find the part of the applications I asked for in reply to your first comment, Inga, or are just going to play stupid as usual?

ga6 said...

Mr Ward here has done excellent work. Also see the following web link to a site which has been on this from the beginning.

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/

Saint Croix said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Kyzer SoSay said...

"or are just going to play stupid as usual?"

Play?

Kyzer SoSay said...

"Mr Ward here has done excellent work"

Hear, hear!

rcocean said...

I think the higher you stack the Bullshit, the more convincing it is.

rcocean said...

Listened to a little of NPR coming back from the golf course.

They discussed the FISA application and Doisser and never once mentioned the Clinton Campaign's financing or GPS.

Charlie Currie said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
MayBee said...

Beloved Commenter Yancy Ward!!!

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“FISA application, Oct. 21, 2016: The identified U.S. person hired Source #1 to conduct this research. The identified U.S. Person never advised Source #1 as to the motivation behind the research into Candidate #1’s ties to Russia. The FBI speculates that the identified U.S. Person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit Candidate #1’s campaign.”

Democrats response to Nunes memo.
————————————————————————
Now we have some additional information in the form of the redacted FISA applications themselves, and the Nunes memo looks even worse. In my earlier post, I observed that the FBI’s disclosures about Steele were contained in a footnote, but argued that this did not detract from their sufficiency: “As someone who has read and approved many FISA applications and dealt extensively with the FISA Court, I will anticipate and reject a claim that the disclosure was somehow insufficient because it appeared in a footnote; in my experience, the court reads the footnotes.” Now we can see that the footnote disclosing Steele’s possible bias takes up more than a full page in the applications, so there is literally no way the FISA Court could have missed it. The FBI gave the court enough information to evaluate Steele’s credibility.

Original Mike said...

”Also all four of the judges who granted the FISA warrants were appointed by Republican presidents. You’re seriously saying all these judges were duped?"

By all reports, the FISA court is a rubber stamp.

Etienne said...

If they would water-board Carter Page, they could cut through everything. It's like they don't have any testosterone.

Carter Page... what kind of mother would apply that stupid name to a live birth?

Yancey Ward said...

People point to the redacted sections as possible unknown support for the warrants. Here is my educated guess about all of that:

The four applications are almost identical- even the redacted sections- you can compare them page for page- there are few additions from one to the other, and I identified exactly zero deletions from the original application to the final renewal. In other words, it doesn't appear that the surveillance yielded any new information to add to the renewals regarding Carter Page. Indeed, I am fairly certain now the only additions are all in the unredacted material- and they include discussion of Steele's termination in late October of 2016, include a couple of new sections describing letters Page wrote to the DoJ complaining about what he asserted were lies being passed in the media, and, finally, new sections describing additional news stories and US agency material publicly released (for example, the assessment released in December 2016 by the US intelligence agencies).

So, what do I think is in the redacted areas? If you look at the structure, most of the redacted material appears in the sections that relate to Russian activities- not related to Carter Page. The other major redactions occur where the FBI describes its methods it would like to have approved, how minimization will be handled, and what the FBI hopes to do with any information it hopes to gather. The other major redactions occur in the portion prepared by the FISA court itself in which it outlines what the FBI is approved to do.

All in all, I think it unlikely there is any redacted material that relates directly to Carter Page himself- it seems that the portions pertaining to him are the parts that were unredacted altogether, and probably due to House memos which had already exposed all of it.

Yancey Ward said...

Inga,

That is not what you claimed in your first comment which was that the FBI "Also they mentioned a candidate (emphasis added by Y.W.) who had paid to have the dossier made, nothing was hidden from the judges in any of the warrant applications."

At no point did the FBI point out that the Clinton Campaign hired Coie Perkins and thus funded the Steele Dossier. I take you last obfuscation as the only retraction of your first claim I am going to get. You are just too dishonest to engage with, aren't you?

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“There is a full page of footnotes that includes an exploration of the motivations behind Steele’s research, specifically noting why Steele’s “reason for conducting the research” doesn’t disqualify its validity.

You’ve noticed that Steele isn’t mentioned by name in the application and is referred to as Source #1. The critique that Steele and Fusion GPS aren’t identified by name is especially hollow because none of the key actors are.
Trump is “Candidate #1.” Clinton, “Candidate #2.” The Republican Party is “Political Party #1.” Clinton, Fusion GPS, Steele and the DNC aren’t identified by name because no one is, save Page, some Russians and Papadopoulos.

The context for naming Papadopoulos isn’t clear; the document is largely redacted in the section where he’s mentioned. But that section does include two important unredacted lines: “the FBI believe that the Russian Government’s efforts are being coordinated with Page and perhaps other individuals associated with Candidate #1’s campaign,” and “Page has established relationships with Russian Government officials, including Russian intelligence officers.””

WaPo

PB said...

I see nothing that should have have convinced a judge to sign this warrant. The judge just rubber stamped it.

Dude1394 said...

So bottom line, Obama was spying on trumps campaign, just as he said.

Yancey Ward said...

And Inga, I am referring to the pdf. We don't need to hear from either of the House memos- we have the actual applications in hand. For the last time, point me to the section of the applications where the FBI tells the court that Candidate #2 hired all of this out. I quoted verbatim the section from the last renewal describing this provenance, and at that time the FBI was still playing dumb even though they knew for a fact who was who.

PB said...

This was due July 20. It was released July 21. The judge should toss someone in jail for contempt.

Michael K said...

You are just too dishonest to engage with, aren't you?

I hope you are not just discovering this. She is dishonest but mostly just stupid and regurgitating what is probably coming from DNC memos to the clueless faithful.

Republicans in Congress are like a herd of cats.

Democrats march in time with perfect discipline.

Reminds me of the Red Army or the North Korean army.

Yancey Ward said...

Inga,

The FBI never links Candidate #2, Hillary Clinton, to the dossier- not a single time. I am asking you to provide the location of that link, which you claimed was there. Again, you are playing stupid (could someone really be as dumb as you appear in these comments). The furthest the FBI goes is to Coie Perkins, even though the FBI has already admitted it knew the DNC and Clinton were the ultimate employers. The FBI didn't need to speculate about the motives of Glenn Simpson- they already knew who Simpson worked for, but hid that from the court by playing dumb themselves.

You should apply to the FBI, you would fit right in preparing FISA warrants of this quality- playing dumb is your specialty (or maybe it isn't a talent but defect in your case).

In any case, I am done correcting you- everyone here sees how wrong you are.

Mattman26 said...

Inga,I know you're Inga and everything, but do you really think this helps your case?


Blogger Inga said...
“FISA application, Oct. 21, 2016: The identified U.S. person hired Source #1 to conduct this research. The identified U.S. Person never advised Source #1 as to the motivation behind the research into Candidate #1’s ties to Russia. The FBI speculates that the identified U.S. Person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit Candidate #1’s campaign.”

It does not say what you claimed originally; and it is flatly and indisputably dishonest. The FBI "speculates" that Simpson was looking to discredit Trump's campaign? Even though FBI knew damn well this was hired and paid for by Clinton campaign? You've got to be kidding.

Francisco D said...

"The application was granted based on not just the dossier. The FBI had been watching Carter Page all the way back to 2013, long before the dossier. Also in the application the judge was informed that a candidate had commissioned the investigation that resulted in the dossier to discredit Trump. The warrant was granted despite this based on the history Steele had with the FBI and they deemed him a credible source."

You have failed to indicate or allege what the other information was that supported the FISA application. That is because it does not exist.

Carter Page cooperated with the FBI in 2013. They thought he was an agent and decided otherwise. I wonder how they pulled that rabbit out of the hat 3 years later. If you were honest with yourself, you would see that the whole FISA application was based on purposeful fabrications and half truths.

It was an espionage operation! Let's see. What was Peter Strzok's job at the FBI?

Howard said...

FISA needs to be abolished

Michael K said...

f you were honest with yourself,

You're kidding, right ?

This is predigested bullshit from a faithful DNC troll.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

Yancey,

FWIW, "Candidate #2" is mentioned on p. 18 of the .pdf. The context is a Russian agent mentioning to Page that he had "kompromat" on her. So it's not quite the case that she's mentioned only once, and that in the third renewal application. Of course, it has nothing to do with your point, or Inga's.

Michael K said...

Blogger Howard said...
FISA needs to be abolished


It certainly has metastasized from what was intended. This is a consequence of 9.11 when anything seemed to acceptable.

Rand Paul is correct about this.

Amadeus 48 said...

Cue more crying babies at the border.

Francisco D said...

"You're kidding, right ?"

Think of it as an example of the triumph of hope over experience.

My hope is that leftists begin to see that their arguments are Swiss cheese and their leaders (like Adam Schiff) are blatant liars because ...

... By Any Means Necessary.

Francisco D said...

Carter Page - the alleged Russian spy/collaborator has been charged with ...?

As Trey Gowdy said, "If Mueller had any evidence of collusion with the Russians, Adam Schiff would have leaked it by now."

alan markus said...

Looking back for something else and came across this:

Inga said...
“The investigation into what happened under at the DOJ/FBI/CIA/obama staff is still on-going.”

Indeed. And I suspect that it too will be a huge disappointment to you folks.
6/14/18, 2:00 PM



Indeed, I have yet to be disappointed.

Yancey Ward said...

Michelle, you are correct- I had forgotten the mention of Clinton about the purported Divyetkin/Sechin meeting.

Saint Croix said...

The FBI said over and over that Carter Page is a Russian spy.

Isn't that illegal?

Shouldn't you arrest the man?

Or at least have a conversation with him?

I mean, everybody and his mother has now heard about Carter Page. So this idea that the FBI needs to keep this whole thing secret to protect its spying on Carter Page is out the window. Arrest him already, G-man. What are you waiting for now?

Or is this an "oops"?

And if it's an oops, don't you think the FBI should acknowledge how wrong it was?

I mean, it seems like the FBI was really, really, really interested in spying on Carter Page in 2016. But now they're not interested at all. Why is that?

Bob Boyd said...

Mueller expands investigation to include Yancy Ward.

Sebastian said...

And let's think just a bit more about how the Russians might look at all this.

Assume, again, that it was everything was BS, from beginning to end, an insurance policy executed on false premises by deep-state gangsters to undermine Trump. Keep in mind that the right expressed great skepticism about it from the outset--there was ample reason for doubt.

What, then, do they make of progs' fervent faith in the veracity of the Page targeting and the collusion story, in their fanatical defense of obvious gangsterism, of the eager support for the abuse of state power against domestic political opponents?

If you were a Russian mover and shaker, how would you exploit prog credulity, corruption, and hatred next time?

Yancey Ward said...

There has been a theory for some time circulating on the Right that Page never ceased being an FBI informant. I had always dismissed this theory, but after seeing these applications, the theory makes far more sense than it did before. I am going to remind people of a few things that they might have forgotten:

Andrew McCabe testified before Congress that without the Steele Dossier, no FISA warrant for Page would even have been applied for. This testimony basically guts the assertion that the redacted portions of the applications are where the real meat of the evidence lies- if that were true, McCabe never makes that statement in his testimony- if the real meat were in the redacted sections, the Dossier is clearly unnecessary. Even worse for the narrative is that the Dossier is still front and center in the last renewal- the very application McCabe himself signed as the acting FBI director. Again, if the meat of the evidence (in other words, the facts) are in the redacted sections, why continue to cut and paste the dossier all the time still describing in the same words rather than confirming the information had been supported during the surveillance?

Carter Page himself has stated that he hasn't been interviewed by anyone connected to Mueller or the investigation prior to Mueller's appointment, despite the fact that they think he is a Russian agent. He hasn't been indicted or questioned, and since the warrant has lapsed, it is pretty fucking obvious they no longer think he is a foreign agent. All that meat that is hidden behind the redactions can't be even as incriminating as the claims in the Steele Dossier. Indeed, Page has felt completely unconstrained to go on television multiple times proclaiming his innocence. At some point, you just have to believe him since no one has contradicted him with actual facts.

So, where does this leave us? You would like to think that if Page were really believed to be a spy, someone in Mueller's office would have sent agents to interrogate him- even in just an informal way to develop some leverage in order to flip the guy on Trump. And yet Page has seemed largely unconcerned about his legal jeopardy the entire time and in every appearance. He just seems, at worst, bemused by it all. Could he have just been playing a role for the FBI to get a warrant whose real targets were the connections Page had made in the campaign? It isn't implausible any longer.

wwww said...

"And don't be verbose! I'm suspicious of verbosity. It makes me feel that you are hiding something."


Succinct:

Redacted portion is SIGINT.

David Begley said...

Ward: Do you agree with my comment,”If these people get away with these OBVIOUS and SERIOUS crimes we are in big, big trouble as a country.”

You are the expert here.

Yancey Ward said...

And one last thing I will point out- Page, after the Isikoff story, was basically ostracized from the Trump Campaign. No one from the Trump circle would meet with him after September 23rd 2016. If Page were a mole, his usefulness after September 23rd 2016 was zero. At that point, if you really were using him as a mole, you might fall back to a FISA warrant ASAP in order to not lose the value you spent in setting him up in the Trump organization- if you wait too long before getting the warrant, a judge might turn it down or greatly narrow the scope of information you could access in Page's connections to the Trump team. I think the warrant might have been a panic reaction to Page basically getting fired and cut off by the Trump Campaign.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Democrats response to Nunes memo.


Lying liars who cover for other lying liars.
LOL!

buwaya said...

Doubtful that redacted portion is actual Sigint.
Seems more likely that its boilerplate given its chapter headings.
Especially as the same unchanged stuff is present from one version to another.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Inga relies on D-party loyalty and D-party lies for her talking points. Even old and busted talking points.

tim in vermont said...

You provide no argument or evidence to back up your claim.

Which is why this blog is such a more pleasant read if you skip Blindy’s comments.

buwaya said...

Cant Page sue for libel?

cacimbo said...

Our elite investigators get warrants based on unverified stories in media. This is a debacle, I expect to see member of Congress call for major changes in how the FISA court operates.

tim in vermont said...

I would love it if the lefties here provided evidence based rebuttals. It would be a great service. But, as they say, when the evidence is on your side, talk about the evidence, when logic is on your side, talk about logic, if neither are on your side, bang the table.

Yancey Ward said...

David,

I don't expect any indictments. I am a pessimist here. I think this situation will just get worse and worse. I don't believe anything coming out of the mouths of people in the CIA and the FBI, even when it correlates with my own hopes. I am basically drowning in my own cynicism at this point.

A real US Attorney in the right jurisdiction could probably pry loose the actual evidence you need to prove what you and I think is going on here, but that would require Jeff Sessions to act. Now, I know some people think there is such a US Attorney working on this, but I still doubt it.

tim in vermont said...

But Pickering is a cheerleader for using the Patriot Act to spy on political opponents, as long as those opponents are his opponents.

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

"morbidly verbose"

John henry said...

Dmitri Alperovitch

Any thoughts, Inga?

John Henry

tim in vermont said...

The left was right about the Patriot Act, but now that they see the abuses are going to break in their favor, they are all about the surveillance state.

Bruce Hayden said...

“The only other things mentioned in regards to Page are that he lived in Russia for a time, travels there sometimes as an energy consultant, and was approached by Russian agents in the past, one of whom Page himself helped to trap and convict by serving as a willing FBI informant. That last part is incongruous with designating him as a Russian agent, but is included any way as an attempt, not to exonerate him, but to tar him.”

What wasn’t apparently mentioned in the application was that Carter Page was an FBI informants from at least 2013 up through 3/2016, when he magicly becomes a target. Or that he claims to have reached out to the FBI at several points during that summer. The critical thing there is that the FBI is only supposed to be able to get FISA warrants on USPERS when there is no other way to surveil a target. This time, the FBI had a long term relationship. With the target, had used him as a witness at trial, and he offered to come in and talk to them, and was apparently brushed off. No wonder he is calling BS.

Thanks to CTH:

Now, go back to the March 2016 DOJ Press Release of the guilty pleading for Evgeny Buryakov, announced from the New York office:

…”Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and John P. Carlin, Assistant Attorney General for National Security, announced”…

Because “FISA Title-I” surveillance authority against a U.S. citizen is so serious (the U.S. government is essentially calling the target a spy), only a few people are authorized to even apply for such surveillance warrants.


And one of the few is the DOJ-NSD AAG. It should also be noted that AAG Carlin resigned as head of the DOJ-NSD in 10/2016, the same month that the first FISA warrant targeting Page was applied for. Carlin had worked with Page all the way up through 3/2016, on those Russian spy cases, and, as DOJ-NSD AAG, would have had to either include that in the paperwork supplied to Yates and Comey for their signature, or lie. Instead he left the DoJ. He could have lied, been caught, and been pushed out as a result, but that should have ended up in the application they filed and submitted to the FISC, which leaves the probability that he left so that he wouldn’t have to lie.

John henry said...

Andrew McCarthy in that excellent clip Michael K mentioned, shows us the last page where someone signed certifying under penalty of perjury that the document was accurate.

The name of the person is redacted.

McCarthy questions why. Me too.

Inga, do you have an opinion on this?

John Henry

Jim at said...

Why are you people conversing with a vile, despicable person who takes personal glee in shitting her partisan politics all over dead people?

Shun her.

Michael K said...

If the fool, and God forbid, Ritmo show up, this thread will go over 200.

Here's hoping useful info continues. More from CTH:

After all, the DOJ and FBI never thought anyone would ever be looking at this issue; they thought Hillary Clinton was going to win. To quote the disposition of FBI Counterintelligence Agent Peter Strzok: “I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office that there’s no way he gets elected – but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.” Key word: “unlikely“, they never contemplated -until later- the full scope of justification that would be needed…. they were setting up something no-one really thought would need to be utilized…. all of the legal apoplexy and ass-covering came in hindsight.

Hence the frantic spinning and lying.

Francisco D said...

DNC to Inga,

Hold on! We are working on new talking points.

You will be able to devastate those Althouse hillbilly with our new narrative.

Sneak preview: Stormy Daniels was a CIA plant. She is John Brennan's illegitimate daughter. She has the goods on Trump.

Yancey Ward said...

"Doubtful that redacted portion is actual Sigint.
Seems more likely that its boilerplate given its chapter headings.
Especially as the same unchanged stuff is present from one version to another."


Buwaya is almost certainly correct here. I again point out that McCabe testified late last year that without the Steele Dossier, there is no FISA warrant on Carter Page. Again, if the meat of the evidence against Page is in the redacted sections, then the Dossier doesn't matter at all in the first application, and it certainly doesn't matter in the last renewal. And yet I could not find a single redacted section that didn't appear in all four applications outside of the FISA court sections, though I am admittedly just basing this on side by side comparisons of long redacted sections- they all have the same line count, headings, and sidebar designations- and they appear in the exact same places when you account for the added unredacted material.

Also, the heading are important- as I noted, great swaths of the redactions occur in the portions of the application that are surely generic to all FISA warrants- like methods and means and minimization- and then there are the FISA court limitations of what the FBI is approved for- all of that is also redacted.

Again, we have view all of this, now, with the hindsight that Page has not been indicted or interviewed, and that the warrant was allowed to lapse. Again, if the meat of the evidence is in the redacted sections, why is Page not only walking free, but has never been questioned. I assert that the simplest explanation is that no one questioned him because all the surveillance basically proved the guy wasn't a Russian agent after all, and if the surveillance couldn't find any evidence he was a Russian agent, then there can be no meating evidence against Page in the redacted sections.

Ralph L said...

The MSM might mention this scandal once or twice in passing, but it won't be on every day like Iran Contra or Watergate. Even some of the early 90's Clinton scandals were covered better.

Heads must roll, or it will happen again. The FBI got away scot free with sending Repub files to a Dem WH.

PhilD said...

■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■,
■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ !
Voila, that's all you need to know.

Sebastian said...

"I am basically drowning in my own cynicism at this point."

I have been a cynical conservative all along, but selectively--not to the point of dismissing every governmental institution, not assuming everyone at the top is corrupt, not believing the worst just because.

But it is hard to avoid that drowning feeling. If you were a foreign adversary, what would you like better than to fatally undermine the faith and patriotism of the right?

It's the O/Brennan legacy: to degrade institutions to the point that even the right will think they are no longer worth conserving.

David Begley said...

Indict the FBI agent who signed the application. I thought it was Strzok because he was the top counterintelligence FBI agent, Then flip him. Indict McCabe for perjury. He’ll flip. That’s how Brennan, Comey and Yates end up in federal prison.

Bob Boyd said...

I don't think Carter Page has even hired a lawyer despite all this.

Yancey Ward said...

Bruce Hayden reminds us of an important detail I forgot to mention in my many comments:

"The critical thing there is that the FBI is only supposed to be able to get FISA warrants on USPERS when there is no other way to surveil a target. This time, the FBI had a long term relationship. With the target, had used him as a witness at trial, and he offered to come in and talk to them, and was apparently brushed off. No wonder he is calling BS."

This is an important point- normally a US citizen is supposed to be protected by utilization of the normal warrant process of the US federal court system. If you want to utilize the FISA system, you are supposed to prove that no other method is sufficient, including interviewing the subject. If Page isn't lying about offering to talk to them, that is damning evidence that the warrant process was actively corrupted.

Bruce Hayden said...

Let me clarify, maybe, about AAG Carlin. In a situation like this, a FISA warrant is most often applied for by the DOJ-NSD AAG. That was Carlin, up until 10/2016. But he had first hand knowledge that Page had been a cooperating witness/informant up through seven months earlier (3/2016). He couldn’t credibly claim that he didn’t know this critical information, that was mysteriously not included in the FISA application, that the person in his position would be submitting to the FISC. It was critical information, because if the FISC had known that Page had, a scant 7 months earlier, cooperated with the FBI and DoJ in getting convictions of real Russian spies, they very likely wouldn’t have issued the FISA warrants targeting him. Classic definition of “material” information, that was mysteriously omitted from the FISA applications. Everyone else could play dumb therecif caught. Carlin couldn’t.

Yancey Ward said...

I wouldn't be a bit surprised to find that great swaths of the redactions are the FBI's justification for going to FISA rather than just interviewing Page directly, or going to the regular US federal court system. It is all redacted because it is too embarrassing to ever let the public see it. But that is just my guess- at no point in the unredacted sections did I see justification for a FISA over every other method of information gathering- not one justification.

Bruce Hayden said...

“Andrew McCarthy in that excellent clip Michael K mentioned, shows us the last page where someone signed certifying under penalty of perjury that the document was accurate. “

My guess? The DOJ-NSD AAG (who very likely was not Carlin)

hstad said...

Mr. Yates, I would be interested in your view! Why was this FISA document released? Aren't all FISA/FISC data not subject to FOIA release - so why release?

Would also like your opinion of FISA Court Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer! She seems to be a central figure and it appears she is really pissed off with the granting of these subpoenas?

Yancey Ward said...

Just because it is the versions that are signed by the FISA court doesn't mean this is Collyer's work. Indeed, I doubt she even has the power to release these documents, though she definitely could order the people in the DoJ who signed them to appear in front of her and answer questions, and I hope she does, but this would almost surely be in closed court.

I think it likely this is Rosenstein's work- the release.

Original Mike said...

wwww said...”Redacted portion is SIGINT.”

More likely Andrew McCabe’s $70k conference table. The IC is way past getting the benefit of the doubt on redactions.

Bay Area Guy said...

A few thoughts in no particular order:

1. Yancey Ward has done the Deplorable Commentariat proud with his excellent review.

2. Carter Page - super spy - never indicted, never interviewed by Mueller. What does that tell you?

3. Peter Stork is still a dork.

4.Hillary is wearing a muu-muu at that boring OZY fest.

John henry said...

Yeah, I've been remiss.

Thank you Yancey for reading and commenting.

Very good work.

John Henry

John henry said...

Bay Area Guy said...


3. Peter Stork is still a dork.

Agreed, but is he also an Iranian agent?

John Henry

Chuck said...

Unknown said...
So bottom line, Obama was spying on trumps campaign, just as he said.


Bullshit. Bull-fucking-shit.

Trump never laid out a clear and detailed case about how there was a supposedly inappropriate FISA warrant. Trump put out in a series of Tweets that "Obama had my wires tapped in Trump Tower just before the victory...How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!"

Even if you wish to believe that the FISA applications now in the news were defective, nothing in this story supports Trump's oblique, reckless Tweets in March of 2017. Trump never explained what he meant. Trump never once specified what his story was, and what he was claiming. What was it about "Trump Tower"? Where is the "just before the victory" timing? What was or is Obama's personal role in a FISA application, or a FISA warrant issued by an Article III judge?

Fucking Trumpist trashtalk.

Michael K said...

It's a shame to think of Putin being amused at all this tail chasing by the left and, worse, by theUS intelligence agencies.

Even Tenet and his "Saddam has Nukes," was not this bad.

He was a staff member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) from 1985 to 1988, then Staff Director of the SSCI from 1988 to 1993.[11] Later, Tenet joined President-elect Bill Clinton's national security transition team in November 1992.[12] Clinton appointed Tenet Senior Director for Intelligence Programs at the National Security Council, where he served from 1993 to 1995.

Like the FBI Directors, he had no background as an agent and was just another DC lawyer and staffer.

We are humiliated and infuriated by the colossal fuckups.

At Least Brennan was an agent, if a crazy one.

Brennan began his CIA career as an analyst and spent 25 years with the agency.[2][6][19] He was a daily intelligence briefer for President Bill Clinton.[6] In 1996, he was CIA station chief in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, when the Khobar Towers bombing killed 19 U.S. servicemen.[6] In 1999, he was appointed chief of staff to George Tenet, then-Director of the CIA

Of course he had no clue that Iran was about to bomb the barracks in Saudi.

Michael K said...

chuck, try not to embarrass yourself anymore.

You are getting to be a poor man's Ritmo.

Yancey Ward said...

Michael, be sure to capitalize the c in Chuck because there is another commenter here whose handle is lowercase chuck, and isn't a blithering idiot like big C Chuck.

Bruce Hayden said...

The person who would normally sign FISA warrants of this type would have been the DOJ-NSD AAG. Except that John Carlin resigned 10/15/2016, to apparently go to work at MoFo. Turns out that that position remained vacant up through 2/2018. Mary B. McCord was acting AAG from Carlin’s resignation up until his replacement this year. Except that apparently AG Lynch reorganized the DoJ in 2015, and took some of that responsibility away, and gave it to Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Intelligence Tashina (“Tash”) Gauhar and Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Counterterrorism and Counterespionage George Toscas, both of whom were frequent guests in the Strzok/Page text messages. So, my guess is either McCord, Gauhar, or Toscas signed the warrant applications.

Shouting Thomas said...

So, how to shut Mueller down?

The existence of the investigation is now the only proof the left has to offer of its Russian collusion fabrication.

Original Mike said...

Hey Chuck, even the NYT calls it wiretapping:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/21/us/politics/carter-page-fisa.html

Yancey Ward said...

Chuck,

The FBI had full fledged FISA warrant that described Carter Page as a knowing Russian spy. This allowed the FBI to do electronic surveillance on people Carter Page contacted by phone, text, and e-mail, both contemporaneously, going forward, and going backwards in time. In addition, it is possible that the warrant allowed similar surveillance on the people Page had contact with inside the campaign, but that part would be covered in the approval restrictions made by the FISA court judges.

I suspect Trump is probably right- the people in his campaign and maybe Trump himself were caught in that net of surveillance approved for Carter Page. Just because Page was no longer member of the Trump Campaign after the Isikoff story, the retroactive nature of the FISA process would certainly catch some members of the campaign because they did have some contact with Page prior to September 23rd 2016.

David Begley said...

The thing that drives me wild about this entire matter is that Hillary and her crew committed all sorts of crimes. At its base, it was about her private server and how she conducted her bribery scheme on it. The FBI did nothing. Immunity was handed out like candy in return for zip. And then the DOJ destroyed much of the evidence.

Now that it is clear that the FBI and its crew committed all sorts of crimes, it looks like nothing will happen to these criminals.

Lesson? If you are a politician or a cop, then you commit all the crimes you want and never have to pay. Recall that smirk on Strzok's face. He knows he's immune and Jeff Sessions won't do a thing about it. I thought Sessions revered the Department of Justice. If he doesn't do something, he's ruined it.


Kevin said...

Even if you wish to believe that the FISA applications now in the news were defective

(slow clap)

Why wish or believe when you can read?

You can read, can you?

Drago said...

LLR Chuck knows perfectly well what this new informatiom means for his lefty/dem operational allies as well as his beloved lefty MSM heroes.

Its clear now that LLR Chuck's fall back #StrongDemDefense will revolve around a moronic and laughable assertion that requires Trump himself to have provided a detailed lawyerly complaint in early 2017 laying out with specificity what the dems did or else the dems are in the clear!

LOL

So very, very, pathetic.

Yet in his defense, what else does he and Inga and rest of the lefties have?

Nothing.

And I wouldnt be surprised if Trump did not declassify the bulk of the remaining redactions by Oct.

Boy, its just getting harder and harder for our LLR schmuck to keep up appearances, isnt it?

Original Mike said...

”I suspect Trump is probably right- the people in his campaign and maybe Trump himself were caught in that net of surveillance approved for Carter Page.”

That was the whole point to the application. As has been pointed out, the FBI already had a well established relationship with Page. They didn’t need to spy on him.

Kevin said...

The FBI had been watching Carter Page all the way back to 2013, long before the dossier.

And yet did not get a warrant to spy on him until after it was created.

Bruce Hayden said...

@Chuck - the problem is not that the FISA warrants were defective - rather that they were fraudulently obtained. The big difference there is scienter (intent). The missing material information was, almost assuredly, known to the people preparing the FISA applications. Knowing the information, and knowing that it was likely material, means that they very likely intentionally omitted it, which is why I believe that the applications were fraudulent, and not merely defective.

Drago said...

The lefties and LLR's lies are collapsing in on themselves.

The only hope for LLR Chuck and his dem pals was to create so much smoke that separation between Trump and his base would have emerged and thus give cover ti the GOPe to work with the dems to remove Trump.

That has clearly failed.

What next from the left and their LLR Chuck type allies?

My prediction: coordinated escalating violence. They have nothing else left.

Kevin said...

Also all four of the judges who granted the FISA warrants were appointed by Republican presidents.

Did you think to look that up yourself Inga? Did you do your own research?

These are exactly the kind of cut and paste arguments you make all the time, which only prove to show someone else is doing your thinking for you.

Here's the truth: The FBI says in the documents it has verified everything in the dossier used to get the warrant. The FBI lied. It didn't matter who the judge was if the FBI is going to lie to them. You can get a Trump-appointed judge to put out a warrant on Trump if the FBI is going to lie to them, because the judge can only go on what was presented and must accept the FBI's statements, or the whole FISA system comes crashing down for lack of trust.

Michael K said...


Blogger Yancey Ward said...
Michael, be sure to capitalize the c in Chuck because there is another commenter here whose handle is lowercase chuck, and isn't a blithering idiot like big C Chuck.


I thought little c chuck was the idiot. I missed another Chuck. I don't remember seeing a different commenter.

Maybe that was chuck when he made sense.

Yancey Ward said...

Original Mike quoting me, first, then making a comment:

”I suspect Trump is probably right- the people in his campaign and maybe Trump himself were caught in that net of surveillance approved for Carter Page.”

That was the whole point to the application. As has been pointed out, the FBI already had a well established relationship with Page. They didn’t need to spy on him.


Maybe not, Mike. Here is the thing- the FISA court can issue a narrow approval- for example Rosemary Collyer could have told the FBI that they could do surveillance on Page, but that they were could not extend this warrant to his contemporaneous contacts, or to those people he was in contact prior to the warrant's approval. That entire section of the applications describing both what the FBI wanted and what Collyer gave approval to are redacted. It could well be the case that the FBI kept renewing the application in the hope of finding a judge who gave a broader approval to what the FBI could actually, legally do.

Michael K said...

the whole FISA system comes crashing down for lack of trust.

I think that is about to happen.

I still have not heard from my daughter. She may not be reading her email.

Original Mike said...

”The FBI says in the documents it has verified everything in the dossier used to get the warrant. The FBI lied.”

Yeah, that’s a whopper. Why isn’t somebody in jeopardy over that?

Bruce Hayden said...

“The FBI had been watching Carter Page all the way back to 2013, long before the dossier.”

Don’t you love how they spin this? The FBI (and DoJ) worked with Page up until 3/2016 to get convictions for actual spying by actual Russians. He was their informant, and testified for them in court. So, yes, I guess you could say that they were watching, while he worked closely with them and testified for them at trial. But that is not what most people think when they hear about the FBI watching someone, and hence, the dishonest spin.

Original Mike said...

”It could well be the case that the FBI kept renewing the application in the hope of finding a judge who gave a broader approval to what the FBI could actually, legally do.”

That doesn’t obviate the suspicion that the point was to spy on Trump. I think you’re pointing out that the FBI may not have got what they wanted.

Ralph L said...

I think it likely this is Rosenstein's work- the release.

I thought this was from a Judicial Watch FOIA request.

Chuck said...

Bruce Hayden said...
@Chuck - the problem is not that the FISA warrants were defective - rather that they were fraudulently obtained. The big difference there is scienter (intent). The missing material information was, almost assuredly, known to the people preparing the FISA applications. Knowing the information, and knowing that it was likely material, means that they very likely intentionally omitted it, which is why I believe that the applications were fraudulent, and not merely defective.


You can argue that if you want. For my part, I'd want to see the entire file, unredacted, and all of the relevant materials before I reached any judgment of illegality or even criminal wrongdoing on the part of anyone involved in the FISA warrant applications.

My point is narrow and perfectly clear; this latest story cannot possibly be seen as somehow proving what Trump Tweeted about back in March of 2017. We still don't even know what the fuck Trump meant back at that time and nobody in the White House made it clear when they had every chance to do so.

Bay Area Guy said...

Recall that after Ken Starr's Independent Counsel investigation, both parties let the statute lapse to revert back to the current situation (Special Prosecutor), where Attorney General and the President are still in charge of the investigation.


Maybe, after this nonsense, both parties can reign in FISA. Too much power, too many weasels in gov't can abuse it.

Drago said...

YW: "Maybe not, Mike. Here is the thing- the FISA court can issue a narrow approval- for example Rosemary Collyer could have told the FBI that they could do surveillance on Page, but that they were could not extend this warrant to his contemporaneous contacts, or to those people he was in contact prior to the warrant's approval."

The former FBI and DOJ agents that I have seen have clearly stated that the two-hop surveillance of Carter Page (Everyone Carter Page communicates with AS WELL AS everyone those "everyone's" are in communication with) were likely surveilled too.

That means Donald Trump and everyone Donald Trump has ever communicated with going back years.

LLR Chuck and Rachel Maddow (or at least LLR Chuck's Maddow blow-up doll) hardest hit.

Ralph L said...

Wasn't there a FISA application that they tried multiple times to get approved until the Dossier was added? Or were we misinformed and it was multiple renewals of this one?

Kevin said...

I thought little c chuck was the idiot.

Little c chuck should do everyone a favor and change his name to "Not that Chuck".

Drago said...

LOL, as expected, LLR Chuck is going to hang his Dick Durbin-lovin' hat on the Trump March 2017 statement.

For obvious reasons: LLR Chuck and his lefty pals are now exposed so it's time for the biggest of big-time Dem Defense via obfuscation.

It won't work of course. Nothing LLR Chuck and his lefty pals have pulled has worked.

Thus their increasingly unhinged antics.

Expect more. Lots more. Fast.

Yancey Ward said...

RalphL,

Sure, there were FOIA requests, but someone finally approved it and released the redacted form to The New York Times. It was that release to the Times that caught my attention. I assert that whoever made that initial release did so to give the NYTimes the first word to try to set the narrative before other people got a chance to look at the document. I would bet that the story was written before the pdf was publicly released to anyone else. That smells like Rosenstein to me.

Drago said...

Next up for LLR Chuck: Trump wore an inappropriate tie back in 2017 so there's no way anyone at the FBI/DOJ/NSA/CIA did anything wrong!!

Plus Hope Hicks!

Plus Non-payments to people!

Plus emoluments!

Ralph L said...

We still don't even know what the fuck Trump meant back at that time

We don't know what the NSA director told him during the transition, but he moved his work out of Trump Tower right after. Doubt it was to golf in December.

Yancey Ward said...

The problem was, though, the document is a quick read given all the redactions. There were people like me that read had read it in less than hour after it was released. The narrative never got off the ground the way NYTimes wanted it to.

PackerBronco said...

Even if you wish to believe that the FISA applications now in the news were defective


Ah yes, there is no discussion here. No facts to sort out. It's just what you wish to believe or not not believe.

Chuck fancies himself as some kind of wise pundit but actually he's just John Cleese in the "Argument Clinic" sketch, coming up with any contrary statement that he can fasten onto at any given moment.

Kevin said...

My point is narrow and perfectly clear; this latest story cannot possibly be seen as somehow proving what Trump Tweeted about back in March of 2017.

OK, perfectly clear.

We still don't even know what the fuck Trump meant back at that time

Wait, what?

If we don't know what he meant, then how can you say unequivocally that this cannot be seen as proving what he said.

Once again Chuck makes an argument and invalidates it in the same post.

Drago said...

Kevin: "Once again Chuck makes an argument and invalidates it in the same post."

LLR Chuck's posts have nothing to do with making valid arguments and being consistent.

It's about protecting dems and advancing lefty talking points.

Nothing more, nothing less.

Original Mike said...

”You can argue that if you want. For my part, I'd want to see the entire file, unredacted, and all of the relevant materials before I reached any judgment of illegality or even criminal wrongdoing on the part of anyone involved in the FISA warrant applications.”

Which is why you’ll never see it. They aren’t protecting sources and methods. They are providing cover for their apologists.

Dr Weevil said...

"We still don't even know what the fuck Trump meant back at that time . . ." That's true, for some values of "we". I believe the Thomists call that "crass ignorance": taking good care not to find out the answer to some easily-answered question so you can say "I didn't know" without technically lying.

Achilles said...

Chuck said...

Unknown said...
So bottom line, Obama was spying on trumps campaign, just as he said.


Bullshit. Bull-fucking-shit.

Trump never laid out a clear and detailed case about how there was a supposedly inappropriate FISA warrant. Trump put out in a series of Tweets that "Obama had my wires tapped in Trump Tower just before the victory...How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!"

Even if you wish to believe that the FISA applications now in the news were defective, nothing in this story supports Trump's oblique, reckless Tweets in March of 2017. Trump never explained what he meant. Trump never once specified what his story was, and what he was claiming. What was it about "Trump Tower"? Where is the "just before the victory" timing? What was or is Obama's personal role in a FISA application, or a FISA warrant issued by an Article III judge?

Fucking Trumpist trashtalk.



It must be humiliating for Chuck.

A bunch of LLR's like Comey and Mueller are going to jail.

Humiliating.

Yancey Ward said...

Drago, I have seen the same thing, and if the judges didn't peer closely at this document, then they probably gave the government everything it asked for. I am just saying that given the fact that the renewals are basically copies of the first application, I have to entertain the possibility that it kept getting renewed because it never filled purposes for which the agents really wanted it, which was clearly to get inside the Trump Campaign.

Of course, there is still the story about Trump decamping from Trump Tower the day after Mike Rogers visited the Trump Campaign in a meeting he didn't inform his bosses in the Obama Administration he was going to make. That suggests strongly that Rogers warned Trump he and his team were under inappropriate surveillance (at least in Rogers' opinion). We will see- I have yet to see Rogers deposed in open proceedings on this.

LA_Bob said...

Original Mike said, "By all reports, the FISA court is a rubber stamp."

PB said, "The judge just rubber stamped it."


Given that so many "approvals" in the business world are just rubber stamps, this wouldn't surprise me as the simple nature of Large Organizational Behavior. But, when it comes to FISA, it ought to bother all of us.

Original Mike said...

”A bunch of LLR's like Comey and Mueller are going to jail.”

I’ll believe it when I see it.

Drago said...

YW: agreed.

I'm simply considering probabilities based on what has come out and what we've seen so far.

It's hard to believe that after conjuring up this entire exercise out of whole cloth that the parties involved didn't push the corruption to the max.

Which is no doubt why NSA Director Adm Rogers went to Trump on Nov 22 without giving ANY heads up to any other of LLR Chuck's "magnificent" obambi's administration.

And why Trump moved his entire transition on operation out of Trump Tower on Nov 23 to Bedminister NJ. The very next day.

Completely.

And that information shared with Trump by Rogers is why all LLR Chuck's heroes on the obama admin immediately started calling for Rogers to be fired.

This is the same info that Nunes was given which also sent the lefties and LLR Chuck over the edge.

LLR Chuck and the lefties: in perfect harmony all the way back....in every way.

FIDO said...

Inga eschews verbosity as too long and goes straight to mendacity.


So if I mention in a 9 point font footnote that SOMEONE (not named) had unknown motivations for buying information (and this someone is a LAW firm, not a PERSON named Clinton) that is, in Inga World, a 50 foot tall billboard LED on the top of a hill, instead of being some bureaucrat trying to hid VERY IMPORTANT FACTS while still keeping enough of a fig leaf to cover his mendacity.

Yet somehow, when you have FBI guys breathing down your neck with 'time sensitive' documents, Inga expects that the judges read EVERY word and foot note and thought hard for long periods of time about inferences and doing references about who hired whom in Washington.


Well, I don't actually think INGA per se believes this, but she is willing to assert it.

Yancey Ward said...

I do doubt the judges even read these things. I am not sure I would want to read 101 pages of a warrant like this.

If there really were a warrant that was turned down in the Summer of 2016, that is the FISA warrant I would much rather see. I suspect it was turned down, if it really exists, because the target was Trump himself. At least the judge in that case was diligent enough to read the name of the target.

Achilles said...

Sebastian said...

"I am basically drowning in my own cynicism at this point."

I have been a cynical conservative all along, but selectively--not to the point of dismissing every governmental institution, not assuming everyone at the top is corrupt, not believing the worst just because.

But it is hard to avoid that drowning feeling. If you were a foreign adversary, what would you like better than to fatally undermine the faith and patriotism of the right?

It's the O/Brennan legacy: to degrade institutions to the point that even the right will think they are no longer worth conserving.



It is not cynical to realize what the foundations of the Republic are.

The Republic does not exist because of the government.

It exists because of the Citizens that make it up.

The Republic only dies because the citizens relinquish responsibility and willingly become serfs.

I see a lot of outrage here. Rightfully so.

But nothing will change until you get involved. What you are describing is not cynicism, it is collective apathy.

Apathy is how the Republic dies. Evil is persistent and pervasive. It must be actively opposed.

Right now that means that until these people are put in jail or more appropriately executed we cannot relent.

Winning elections is not enough at this point. They only need to win one more time.

No justice. No Peace.

Yancey Ward said...

And, I think these judges need to answer questions about this in some forum. Their names, for the record, are Rosemary Collier, Michael Mosman, Ann Conway, and Raymond Dearie.

Achilles said...

Original Mike said...

”A bunch of LLR's like Comey and Mueller are going to jail.”

I’ll believe it when I see it.


Justice doesn't just happen. Evil is as evil does.

The Republic did not arise out of providence alone. It was founded on action by Men and Women that served more than a nation.

People keep making the assumption we are powerless in this.

If that is true the Republic is dead and it has nothing to do with Mueller/McCabe/Comey/Obama etc.

It is dead because we allow it to die.

It will take blood to see justice done. The rule of law means nothing to them and they will not go willingly.

David Begley said...

We know Rush Limbaugh reads the Althouse blog. Don't be surprised if on Monday, Limbaugh cites Yancey Ward's work.

Limbaugh is going to get the word out about this disaster. People need to go to jail over this.

Curious George said...

Inga, or are just going to play stupid as usual?

SHe's not playing. She's truly a dullard. I'm shocked she can find her way back to the blog.

Yancey Ward said...

This is what I sadly think about the state of the country. A Garden of Idiots. I was going to make a comment on his site, but couldn't think of anything to disagree with.

Yancey Ward said...

In any case, I will check back in later tonight to see if Inga ever found her evidence to link to.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“I don’t think they did anything wrong. I think they went to the court, they got the judges to approve it. They laid out all of the information,” Rubio said on State of the Union, adding that Page “went around the world bragging about his connections in Russia.””

Send Rubio to jail!!

Achilles said...

"If it weren’t for President Obama we might not have done the intelligence community assessment that we did that set up a whole sequence of events which are still unfolding today including Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation. President Obama is responsible for that. It was he who tasked us to do that intelligence community assessment in the first place."

James Clapper

Shouting Thomas said...

That's about as silly and desperate a non-response as I've ever seen, Inga.

FIDO said...

Shouting Thomas,

It is hard to put lipstick on a pig because their lips are so thin. Inga has her work cut out for her.

Chuck said...

Achilles said...
...
...

A bunch of LLR's like Comey and Mueller are going to jail.


Wanna bet? Let's have a bet, on whether "Comey and Mueller" ever go to jail.

robother said...

To quote from Conservative Treehouse on the Carter Page FISA warrant application:

"The DOJ National Security Division and the FBI Counterintelligence Division, knew he wasn’t a Russian agent. The DOJ-NSD and FBI flat-out LIED to the FISA court."

That's the thing: Comey and Sally Yates and Rosenstein and McCabe all attested the truth and accuracy of the applications (including renewals), which declared that "Carter Page is a foreign agent." Apart from the lies about verifying the accuracy of the Steele Memo and lies of omission about the provenance of the Steele Memo and his reliability, this is a clear smoking gun felony.

Achilles said...

Inga said...

“I don’t think they did anything wrong. I think they went to the court, they got the judges to approve it. They laid out all of the information,” Rubio said on State of the Union, adding that Page “went around the world bragging about his connections in Russia.””

Send Rubio to jail!!

More likely Rubio is just a coward and should be driven from leadership positions. He has always been a globalist shill.

If he is in active collusion/conspiracy with traitors like Comey and McCabe and Obama and Strzok then yes he needs to go to jail.

Gretchen said...

Cll me crazy but why was an application even considered when it was clearly political (Candidate 1) AND the claim of wrong doing was that the candidate had a policy not of aiding an enemy (like Obama did for IRAN) but softening a stance, which is an acceptable policy.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

Footnote on all four FISA applications

LOL

“Notice the footnote here is the FBI directly alerting the FISC that this news article is based on Source #1's underlying reporting. This is the exact opposite of them asserting the news article is corroborating Source 1's info”.

LOL

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“Wanna bet? Let's have a bet, on whether "Comey and Mueller" ever go to jail.”

Let them keep dreaming.

Achilles said...

Chuck said...

Achilles said...
...
...

A bunch of LLR's like Comey and Mueller are going to jail.


Wanna bet? Let's have a bet, on whether "Comey and Mueller" ever go to jail.


Have fun watching your heroes driven from power and humiliated.

Trumpkins are in power now Chuck. You are forgotten.

Let the humiliation sink in.

The cuck wing of the democrat party is dead.

steve uhr said...

How can you tell if the warrant establishes prob cause w/o reviewing the redactions?

Shouting Thomas said...

Inga and Chuck's diversionary program kicks into high gear.

All we need now is Ritmo to tell us how this all relates to global warming.

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