Travesty
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Education is extremely important.
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I'm sure all the good people who hate Trump will get right on considering, with all their intellectual honesty, whether Mr Barr is right about that.
I said waaaay at back, this investigation was one of the worst things to happen to American politics. Very hard to make the Level 4 TDS guys see that.
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The press: "When can we expect a report from Durham?"
Barr: "He's not interested in writing reports. He's interested in writing indictments"
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An analysis of what Barr said: https://meaninginhistory.blogspot.com/2020/04/bill-barr-without-any-basis.html?fbclid=IwAR2nfINeQuYXtJ1bWU91YhgJN0xYxvLgBnQ3b_TXIRqSbH3Hz5nxvIo_Ko0
First of all, it seems apparent that the Durham investigation has completed most of its evidence gathering--whether documentary or through interviews. That doesn't mean the investigation is finished. There is also the question of putting together a prosecutive case, and that will probably involve complicated negotiations with the lawyers for the persons being investigated. That, in turn, could lead to further substantive investigation. But the bottom line is that at this point Barr appears confident that he knows what happened and, most likely, who was behind it. As Barr says, this is a "sprawling" case.
Second, Barr several times refers to things that "they" did. Not things that "were done." So, multiple human perpetrators. That points toward the strong likelihood that a conspiracy case is being pursued that will encompass an attempt to "sabotage the presidency." As Barr says, this is a "sprawling" case. And this case is very much focused on developing a criminal prosecution of the conspirators.
Third, Barr says that, while Durham's "primary focus" is not on preparing a report, a report will "probably" result from Durham's investigation. That's important. IMO, the American people deserve a report that lays out the narrative of how a group of highly placed federal government operatives conspired to "sabotage the presidency." Such a report would be unusual coming from a prosecutor, but this is an unusual case that goes to the heart of our constitutional order. The American people deserve to have a report that they can read and readily understand, rather than having to glean the narrative from complicated testimony, court proceedings, and documents written in bureacratic language and, possibly, released without full context. The release of the Papadopoulos interview is a down payment, as are no doubt the firings of corrupt Deep State operatives such as Dan Coats, Michael Atkinson, and others.
Fourth, there is a twofold key in what Barr tells. He tells us that Crossfire Hurricane--"this investigation of [Trump's] campaign"--was inititated "without any basis." That means that Crossfire Hurricane was initiated without proper predication and was an unlawful investigation. I think we will see confirmed what we've always known, that Crossfire Hurricane was initiated for the purpose of developing a narrative that could derail and sabotage a presidential election. But, that baseless investigation nevertheless served as the predication for what Barr says he has found "even more concerning": "... what happened after the campaign--a whole pattern of events while [Trump] was president ... to sabotage the presidency."
From this I think we can readily gather why this Durham investigation is so "sprawling." What happened after the campaign? The attempt to frame Michael Flynn and to sabotage the presidency through the frame job on Flynn, at the very inception of the administration, to tar it as "colluding" with Russia, rather than conducting foreign policy. The continued renewals of the Carter Page FISA, known to be fraudulent, which implicate the highest levels of the FBI and of DoJ--McCabe, Comey, Yates, Boente, Rosenstein, and many more. The bogus Intelligence Community Assessment, the development of which we're told Durham has spent so much time examinging.
And lastly but far from least, the entire Mueller Witchhunt--which, as framed by Rod Rosenstein, purported to be a continuation of the baseless FBI investigation, Crossfire Hurricane. The release of the Papadopoulos transcript not only is a dagger in the heart of the predication for Crossfire Hurricane and the Carter Page FISA, a dagger in the heart of the FBI's role in the conspiracy. It is also a dagger that, along with the final FISA renewal, we may learn is directed at Team Mueller through its pursuit of George Papadopoulos.
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Where are all our resident Trump haters? Why aren't y'all defending lying to judges, circumventing the constitution or a group of bureaucrats considering themselves better than the law?
If this doesn't outrage you, you don't give a damn about this country. You're only interested in telling your friends how bad the Orange Man is, while you solemnly jerk each other off in a round of masturbatory political orgasm.
Just remember, if we can't have a fair election or vast swaths of people feel like the system is rigged, it's a very short step to much unpleasantness.
Always remember, Operation Valkyrie was an act of sedition.
Warning: I post things that interest me. Read and comment at your own discretion. -
So, yeah, it looks like the Russians did interfere with the election, by providing disinformation against the Trump campaign, and the FBI bought it, hook line and sinker. 6 months later they knew it was disinformation, and persisted with the Mueller (cough) investigation.
Senator Ron Johnson writes:
Declassified footnotes to a Justice Department inspector general report show that the Federal Bureau of Investigation team investigating members of the Trump campaign received classified reports in 2017 identifying key pieces of the Steele dossier as products of a Russian disinformation campaign. This might be only the tip of the iceberg because other recently declassified information demonstrates that even more disinformation may have been planted in Christopher Steele’s reporting.
Let that sink in. The FBI knew that at least some of its evidence against the Trump campaign, and maybe more, was likely part of a Russian disinformation campaign—evidence from a source that was “central and essential” for getting the first FISA warrant. It isn’t clear what if anything the FBI did to determine whether their investigation was based in substantial part on Russian disinformation.
Yet the FBI assistant director in charge of the investigation, Bill Priestap, told the inspector general that as of May 2017 (when Robert Mueller took over as special counsel), the FBI “didn’t have any indication whatsoever” that their evidence was part of a Russian disinformation campaign.
I first learned all this in late December 2019, when a member of my staff reviewed the classified version of the inspector general’s report and asked me to meet him in a secure room under the Capitol. As he walked me through the four footnotes, my immediate reaction was that the American people needed to know this information as soon as possible. My colleague Sen. Chuck Grassley and I began pressing Attorney General William Barr, and eventually acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, for full declassification of these footnotes. That’s why they’re now public.
The FBI team’s handling of these intelligence reports seems consistent with how it ran the entire investigation. From the opening of the investigation, the FBI team kept accumulating exculpatory information. Yet rather than wind the investigation down, they ramped it up. Minimally intrusive open-source searches became Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants and confidential human sources targeting campaign staffers.
Then it got worse. The FBI team excluded exculpatory information from its FISA application; it ignored exculpatory evidence provided by another U.S. government agency; and, when that later became an issue, an FBI attorney doctored an email to cover it up. Given all that, it’s not surprising that the FBI, on learning their evidence was the product of a Russian disinformation campaign, simply shrugged it off.
As Mr. Grassley and I wrote in our declassification request to Mr. Barr, these footnotes provide “insight essential for an accurate evaluation of the entire investigation.” Consider these questions:
• Why did former FBI Director James Comey and former FBI general counsel James Baker refuse to have their security clearances reinstated before they were interviewed by the inspector general? Was it so they wouldn’t have to explain this information?
• Which members of the FBI team reviewed these reports? Did Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, who referred to the opening of the investigation as an “insurance policy”? Did the FBI attorney who doctored the email? Did Mr. Mueller?
• What, if anything, did the FBI do to follow up on these reports?
• Did the FBI team have access to other reports like this?
• Is this another example of the FBI team’s sloppiness, or is it sufficient to show their ignorance was willful?The Steele dossier already ranks as one of the dirtiest political tricks of all time. The Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign paid for it, laundered it through friends and allies in the Justice and State departments, and spun it into a full-blown FBI investigation of her political rival. Then, after Donald Trump was elected, it was used as a political cudgel to bludgeon his administration and set up an 18-month special counsel investigation. Now it’s been revealed the FBI had evidence that it was based in substantial part on a Russian disinformation campaign.
Last month, my committee’s vote to obtain a subpoena for Andrii Telizhenko—a former Ukrainian diplomat who later worked for a U.S. Democratic political consulting firm—was delayed because of last-minute concern that information he might provide could be part of Russian disinformation (a cloak-and-dagger operation to derail that subpoena also needs to be revealed). So I’ve heard a lot of concern and outrage from my colleagues across the aisle about the perils of “foreign interference” and the need to steer well clear of anything remotely suggestive of Russian disinformation.
Clearly, the FBI did not exhibit similar concern and act accordingly. It also will be interesting to see how many of my Democratic colleagues will join tenacious oversight efforts to determine how the FBI misused actual Russian disinformation.
Read the bolded part...
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Where are all our resident Trump haters? Why aren't y'all defending lying to judges, circumventing the constitution or a group of bureaucrats considering themselves better than the law?
If this doesn't outrage you, you don't give a damn about this country. You're only interested in telling your friends how bad the Orange Man is, while you solemnly jerk each other off in a round of masturbatory political orgasm.
Just remember, if we can't have a fair election or vast swaths of people feel like the system is rigged, it's a very short step to much unpleasantness.
I notice several of you low-life bastards don't have the courage to actually stand up for your country, if it means you have to defend anything Trump.
Sad. Pitiful. And pathetic.
Always remember, Operation Valkyrie was an act of sedition.
Warning: I post things that interest me. Read and comment at your own discretion. -
Who exactly is that directed to?
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Where are all our resident Trump haters? Why aren't y'all defending lying to judges, circumventing the constitution or a group of bureaucrats considering themselves better than the law?
If this doesn't outrage you, you don't give a damn about this country. You're only interested in telling your friends how bad the Orange Man is, while you solemnly jerk each other off in a round of masturbatory political orgasm.
Just remember, if we can't have a fair election or vast swaths of people feel like the system is rigged, it's a very short step to much unpleasantness.
I notice several of you low-life bastards don't have the courage to actually stand up for your country, if it means you have to defend anything Trump.
Sad. Pitiful. And pathetic.
This was made irrevocably clear when crickets were heard from Trump haters about the anonymous white house insider bragging in the NYT and in a published book that forces are at work at the highest levels actively subverting Trump's intentions as the elected President.
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You all might as well name names.
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For all I know you weren't even posting at the time, Aqua. I only noticed that no Trump hater raised an objection. Maybe at most "well see this is what happens when you elect a lunatic". I mean had a similar thing happened to Obama it would have been treason this and treason that splashed across every media outlet's front pages until the terrorists in the White House had been rooted out.
In any case, I said my piece about it then. It was merely amusing. I really don't expect much in the way of intellectual coherence when it comes to the opinions of Trump haters regarding anything Trump. It would be madness to expect much. People are enjoying their righteous hatred and it's not within normal human parameters to be motivated to care about hypocrisy etc as long as the tribe encouraging the hate is large enough.
I actually think it's pretty normal, if one feels about a president the way TDS folk feel about Trump, to be perfectly fine with breaking all the rules to get rid of him.
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People are enjoying their righteous hatred
Yeah I think maybe it would be healthier to tone that down a little. I know very little about this topic and it's absolutely possible you're right about everything that's being said about Trump. But to me it sounds like this thread stopped being about him a handful of posts back.
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This thread is not really about Trump, other than the fact that people are so colored by their opinion, that they will ignore treason and sedition, not really caring what happens to the country.
I've been beating a drum from the beginning of this subversion of the U.S. system.
Always remember, Operation Valkyrie was an act of sedition.
Warning: I post things that interest me. Read and comment at your own discretion. -
This thread is not really about Trump, other than the fact that people are so colored by their opinion, that they will ignore treason and sedition, not really caring what happens to the country.
I've been beating a drum from the beginning of this subversion of the U.S. system.
Yes
Obviously
Someone has to be held accountable -
Somebody needs to go to jail.
Always remember, Operation Valkyrie was an act of sedition.
Warning: I post things that interest me. Read and comment at your own discretion. -
I haven't been following this investigation too closely. Some questions I'd have:
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How loose / tight are judges normally with granting a FISA request?
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Is the sloppy rationale for the (was it papadopolous?) warrant the norm, or an exception? Maybe most FISA requests are pretty flimsy and don't really follow the letter of the law
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What was the genesis of the probe? Was someone out to get Trump, or did this investigation just escalate in an organic manner
I feel like I can't really have a good opinion here until at least the Durham report is done and there are more facts. Also - I'm inclined to be against surveillance in general (didn't like the Patriot Act), I feel like shady stuff is gonna happen if you have shady programs.
Comey is also an interesting character. Reviled across the political spectrum. Let's not forget he was most probably the decisive factor in Trump getting elected in the first place.
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