Schiff’s Memo Also States FBI, DOJ Used Dossier to Obtain Warrant
They used it, but only a tiny bit, which I guess makes that okay…
House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Adam Schiff (D-CA) released his memo that he claims counters the GOP memo on the FBI and DOJ using a dossier with unverified information to obtain a warrant to spy on Trump’s former campaign member Carter Page.
Except…it doesn’t. In fact, it also confirms that the agencies used the dossier to obtain that warrant.
Schiff wrote that these officials “did not ‘abuse’ the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) process, omit material information, or subvert this vital tool to spy on the Trump campaign.”
The minority justified the spying on Page because he was “someone the FBI assessed to be an agent of the Russian government.” They insist the DOJ and FBI “met the rigor, transparency, and evidentiary basis needed to meet FISA’s probably cause requirement.”
THAT WASN’T THE ARGUMENT OF THE GOP MEMO. The argument was that they used the unverified information in the dossier to receive that warrant.
“but only made narrow use of information from Steele’s sources.” In other words…THEY DID USE THE DOSSIER TO OBTAIN THE WARRANT. I mean, come on.
Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) told the audience at CPAC that we will not see “anything that actually rejects what was in our memo.”
He’s correct. The main purpose of the GOP memo was to show abuses by the FBI and DOJ to obtain that warrant on Page and Schiff’s memo says they did. Now, Schiff and the minority claim that the agencies used other information, but yes, they also used the dossier from Steele.
We have to remember that no one has verified the information in the dossier that FAILED Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign and DNC paid for against then-candidate Donald Trump. Even former FBI Director James Comey said it was filled with “salacious” and “unverified” information.
So…what was the point? No wonder Nunes and the other Republicans had no problem with him releasing this memo.
Schiff also wrote that this was not spying on Trump’s campaign since Page left the campaign months before the DOJ and FBI started to spy on him. However, Schiff states in one point that the “FISA applications also detail Page’s suspicious activity after joining the Trump campaign.”
So they didn’t spy on him when he was on the campaign, but activities DURING the campaign set off red flags with officials.
Democratic rebuttal to GOP FISA memo by Fox News on Scribd
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If the Obama FBI and DOJ were above board on this, WHY didn’t they immediately tell the Trump campaign they were compromised or may be, by the Russians???? Why would they suspect, ( no , I don’t believe this was EVER believed… it’s just their spin )… but why would they suspect members of a rival campaign being influenced by Russia… but they don’t bring the Trump folks in to warn them or protect them… no… they spy on them… all of them.
This whole “spin” smells… and it is incoherent. Unless you have the mindset that, Trump must not win.. and cannot win.. and he’s evil… and we can use all of this to destroy him after Hillary wins. And that’s what I think they intended to do… to destroy Trump for daring to run. He ruined everything by winning.
“This whole “spin” smells…”
You said it!
You do realize that Schiff is literally insane right?
Well………
Adam’s head is full of…….
The theory is that Schiff has his nuggets in a crack and is trying to extricate them. That he knows if he doesn’t put the kibosh on all this ‘investigating the investigators’ stuff right now he’s going to lose those nuggets.
No one knows just what his problem is, but some shady and/or illegal stuff must be hidden or he wouldn’t be this unhinged.
We shall learn that in fact the dossier was 100% of the causation spinning around a bunch of garbage words and suppositions that are more speculation than not. Note, for example, even if Pappadopoulis’s drunken talk about meeting a Russian pofessor for some Clinton emails were true, it does not describe a crime of any sort. In fact the FBI was theoretically also trying to get these emails ( sure). The Carter Page reference was a pure lie and the FBI knew it because Page was employed by the FBI. In other words, the entire FISA unmasking operation was a fraud. It was a political spy and extortion attempt by the FBI and DOJ.
Anymore, would we expect anything else from the
Department of F.I.B.?
I agree, now someone needs to wake up Sleepy Sessions and give him a backbone
Bulldust. This is a lie deliberately invented by the Nuthouse, and repeating it exposes you either as a knowing liar or as a gullible fool who reads the Nuthouse and believes what he finds there.
Milhouse > Is this ( In March 2016 Carter Page Was an FBI Employee – In October 2016 FBI Told FISA Court He’s a Spy… ) the article you are hinting about?
Now the Reuters story and the subsequent NY Times story tend to corroborate The Conservative Tree House accounts and conclusions.
Help me out …. what am I missing?
No, they don’t. In fact they prove the exact opposite. The Nuthouse made this up just as they make up every other story that you will find there and nowhere else.
Milhouse, from the NY Times article:”Russian intelligence operatives tried in 2013 to recruit an American businessman and eventual foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign who is now part of the F.B.I. investigation into Russia’s interference into the American election, according to federal court documents and a statement issued by the businessman.
The businessman, Carter Page, met with one of three Russians who were eventually charged with being undeclared officers with Russia’s foreign intelligence service, known as the S.V.R. The F.B.I. interviewed Mr. Page in 2013 as part of an investigation into the spy ring, but decided that he had not known the man was a spy, and the bureau never accused Mr. Page of wrongdoing.
The court documents say that Mr. Page, who founded an investment company in New York called Global Energy Capital, provided documents about the energy business to one of the Russians, Victor Podobnyy, thinking he was a businessman who could help with brokering deals in Russia.
In fact, Mr. Podobnyy was an S.V.R. officer posing as an attaché at the Russian mission to the United Nations.
Court documents do not identify Mr. Page, but the details in a statement he emailed to reporters on Tuesday match the individual described as “Male-1” in the court case. Mr. Page’s contact with the Russian spy was first reported on Monday by BuzzFeed News.”
Your assertions directly contrdict this news article’s statements (as you are challenging the blogger’s veracity. Yet you offer no proof of your assertion. Once again, who is UCE-1 if not Carter Page; who is CS-1 and who is UCE-2 if not Carter Page?
Surely the coincidences are way too close to just have us let it go at “No, they don’t corroborate” and they prove the exact opposite.
I covered this about 2 weeks ago. “Male 1”, whom Victor Podobnyy tried to recruit, is clearly Carter Page. Nobody disputes that. “Male-1” is also very clearly not the same person as “UCE”, an FBI employee posing as an analyst at a New York energy firm, who formed a close relationship with Igor Sporyshev. The supposition that they are the same person is literally insane, completely contradicted by the sources the Nuthouse supposedly relies on, and rests entirely on the Nuthouse writer’s paranoia and inability to comprehend simple English and make simple inferences from what he reads.
Not employed in the remuneration-for-labor sense, but otherwise ’employed’, as in providing evidence/testimony in the investigation of two Russians.
That is not employment in any sense. They questioned him, exactly as they do hundreds of people every day. There is no possible way to stretch the definition of “FBI employee” to cover every member of the public who has ever been questioned by an FBI agent.
And of course if it could be stretched that far it would be meaningless. What point, exactly, is made by claiming “In March 2016 Carter Page Was questioned by the FBI – In October 2016 FBI Told FISA Court He’s a Spy…”? How is that at all surprising? Has the FBI ever labeled someone a spy without ever speaking to them?!
Carter Page has said that he was not employed by the FBI
And nobody but the Nuthouse has ever claimed he was.
Carter Page already admitted he was the unnamed consultant (paragraphs 32-34) who helped the FBI:
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/2015_0126_spyring2.pdf
There is supposition that Page is also the “confidential source working for the FBI” (CS-1) in paragraphs 66-74.
CS-1 and a FBI undercover employee (UCE-2) met with Russians, according to this:
https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/evgeny-buryakov-pleads-guilty-manhattan-federal-court-connection-conspiracy-work
Page denied being UCE-2. I have not read anywhere he denied being CS-1, I don’t know that he’s been asked.
Page definitely was “Male 1”, an independent energy consultant whom Victor Podobnyy attempted to recruit as a source.
The paranoiacs at the Nuthouse invented the ridiculous claim that he was also “UCE”, an FBI employee who formed a close relationship with Igor Sporyshev by posing as an analyst at a New York energy firm. In fact it is blindingly obvious that these are two different people.
“There is supposition”, by whom? More paranoiacs? “CS-1” is clearly a third person, who formed a relationship with a third Russian, Evgeny Buryakov, by posing as the representative of an investor in the casino industry. Nothing to do with energy.
“by whom? More paranoiacs?”
If ex-FBI agents are nothing but paranoiacs, sure.
https://meaninginhistory.blogspot.com/2018/02/my-theory-of-carter-page-fisa-fraud.html
I like how you know for a fact that CS-1 was “clearly” someone else, even though we clearly do not know this. Carter Page boasted about having contacts with all kinds of people, not just in the energy business. CS-1 never represented himself as a builder of casinos, just as one who could introduce the Russians to them. I don’t know why this is so out of the realm of possibility, especially since we already know that Page worked with FBI.
Carter Page, a former naval intelligence officer, has indicated (via CNN in April, 2017) that he was an informant for both the FBI and the CIA. Sharyl Attkisson also reported this in an interview on Fox where she corrected Sara Carter that he was first with the CIA then FBI, Attkisson added that he went back to the CIA. His work with the FBI has been reported on numerous times, microphones in notebooks, etc.
In the indictment of the Russians who tried to recruit Page, Person #1 is clearly Page. IF, it is true that the DOJ used Carter Page’s contact with Russians as a rationale for the FISA Section 1 warrant then this is a true cluster***k. They were using an FBI informant’s contact with Russians on behalf of the FBI (or was it the CIA?) to engage in surveillance of individuals in the Trump campaign and transition team.
One thing that is beyond dispute is that Carter Page did have contact with Russian agents and worked as an informant for the FBI.
Bulldust. “Male 1” in the Podobnyy indictment, who clearly is Carter Page, was not an FBI informant, and did not approach Podobnyy on the FBI’s behalf. On the contrary, the FBI first learned about this contact by listening in to Podobnyy’s conversations with Sporyshev. They then contacted Page, ascertained that he had not followed up with Podobnyy, warned him not to, and that was the end of the story. Podobnyy never got anywhere with Page, and there’s no sign that the FBI had any further interest in him until they got involved in this plot against Trump in 2016 and decided to use him as a pretext.
So both of your “undisputed” assertions are very much disputed. And Attkisson’s an anti-vaxxer nut, so nothing she says on any subject can be taken completely seriously.
Milhouse ” If “Male 1 in the Pobodny indictment is clearly Carter Page” and if the FBI contacted, questioned and warned Page not to contact Pobodny (How could they threaten a lawful US citizen about contacting a foreign national w/o an NDA or a withdrawal of remuneration or some similar threat that might cause a Republican-connected businessman to go public and thereby jeopardize their investigation?)
Carter Page in testimony to the HPSCI alleges his identity was leaked to ABC News, the Washington Post, and Buzzfeed by the IC communities. He also strongly (like General Flynn) critical of the IC’s then current approach to Russian matters. Just a coincidence?
The conservativetreehouse article states:
“The entire FISA Title I surveillance authority over Carter Page was cover, most likely retroactive cover, for the DOJ and FBI conducting surveillance on the Trump campaign.
The DOJ-National Security Division and FBI Counterintelligence Unit didn’t care about Page because to them he was a useful tool. It wasn’t Page they needed, per se’, they just needed someone, anyone, who had contact with the Trump campaign that they could apply the label “foreign agent” upon. The DOJ/FBI just needed someone they could position to gain the FISA “Title I” surveillance approval that would retroactively make all prior campaign surveillance legal. Who Carter Page was simply checked the right boxes.
Page wasn’t a “plant”, or a “participant”, he was a useful body upon which they could attach a label to justify their surveillance and monitoring. Nothing more.
Clear enough?”
– https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/02/05/in-march-2016-carter-page-was-an-fbi-employee-in-october-2016-fbi-told-fisa-court-hes-a-spy/
Also, from the 4/4/2017 NY Times article:
“Russian intelligence operatives tried in 2013 to recruit an American businessman [Page] and eventual foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign who is now part of the F.B.I. investigation into Russia’s interference into the American election, according to federal court documents and a statement issued by the businessman.
The businessman, Carter Page, met with one of three Russians who were eventually charged with being undeclared officers with Russia’s foreign intelligence service, known as the S.V.R. The F.B.I. interviewed Mr. Page in 2013 as part of an investigation into the spy ring, but decided that he had not known the man was a spy, and the bureau never accused Mr. Page of wrongdoing.”
– https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/04/us/politics/carter-page-trump-russia.html
Then in a counterintel investigation, the FBI obtains a Title 1 FISA warrant to investigate Carter Page as they are waving about a “dodgy dossier” and leaking it’s existence to the media.
Perhaps I am relating too much to Robert Littell’s discussions of the CIA use of and recycling of “legends” in its OPs but this pattern perfectly fits in past scenarios he states the CIA has used. Was Carter Page’s background and prior usage not a perfect rationale to apply for the FISA warrant?
I do appreciate your views.
What are you talking about? Their warning to Page would simply have been that this was not someone he should get involved with. Anyone dealing with Russians would know what that meant.
Again the Nuthouse paranoiacs are mixing up three different people, each of whom had contact with a different Russian spy. The three Russians ostensibly had no connection to each other. They took care not to be seen together. Anyone dealing with them would not have known they were all working together. UCE was an actual FBI employee. CS1 was also working for the FBI, but as an informant, i.e. an independent consultant. Both approached their respective Russians, knowing or suspecting them to be spies. Male 1, i.e. Carter Page, had nothing to do with the FBI, and had no idea the Russian he spoke to was anything but a businessman. Which is why the Russian despised him so much, while the other two were seen as valued sources, to be paid and cultivated.
The whole Pappadopoulis story seems mighty incomplete.
There plenty of stories around the time of the ‘drunken confession’ that ‘hostile powers’ had been in the Clinton bathroom closet email server. Is what Pappadopoulis claimed to the Australian diplomat based directly or indirectly from these claims.
I mentioned in a previous thread that the memo would not contradict the facts presented in the Nunes memo, because it could not be done. I further said that it was presented to the President, knowing it would be rejected by the DOJ and would not be “corrected” prior to the Sunday talks on that occasion. Here we have the memo, which does not, in fact, rebut any facts present in the Nunes memo merely presenting an argument that even though the FBI and DOJ dis all of these things, it was somehow justified. And, it was released in time to be the premier topic on the Sunday talks.
It is all smoke and mirrors. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
Now, Schiff and the minority claim that the agencies used other information, but yes, they also used the dossier from Steele.
All right, I’m getting a headache. This “other information” was the material Sid Blumenthal leaked to … who, the press? … which just happened to verify the Steele dossier because that’s where the material originated. Is that it? So Schiff’s pals would have done better to leave the Steele dossier stuff out of the FISA request and go exclusively with what the press was peddling, which was safer as it could hide behind another layer of deniability. Or perhaps they figured they’d never need to account for it because Associate SC Justice Loretta Lynch would save them if any investigation got too close. Something like that, maybe. And damn, I wish I could find my stash of Tylenol.
The bottom line remains the same: Hillary Corrupt-o-crat spent millions of $$$ to buy 2 things: a FISA court warrant, and the democrat nomination for potus.
The former a still-running, errant torpedo that will either implode or sink someone. The latter is a flaming pile of poo.
I’m happy.
Nunes had his cake and was allowed to eat it also. After declaring that the Steele Dossier was the only basis for the FISA application to monitor the guy who admits that he acted as an adviser to Putin, the Republican representative from California admitted at the end of his revelation that the drunken admission by George Papadopoulos to the Aussie Ambassador was the basis for the FISA hearing.
Somewhere along the way we have to get past what Nunes argument was and examine whether it made any sense. If the FISA judges who reviewed the applications and granted 90-day extensions to the monitoring, there had to have been evidence collected about Page’s activites to support their decision to extend.
Nunes has spent his time attempting to bailout Trump every time Donald steps in something, so I do not trust his motives. If the President believes that his FBI and his Justice Department are screwing him – he is the President and he can open up the entire investigation to the GSO auditors but he doesn’t authorize that action. My guess is that there is “stuff” that he doesn’t want to become public.
The Republican Congress appointed and authorized a Republican Special Counsel to investigate the possibility of Russian interference in our election and Trump has thrown every roadblock he can in order to impede the investigation. Politics are being stirred up by the Senate and House committee investigations.
The fact is that nobody knows what is going on inside the Special Counsel’s office – no leaks. In the meantime the West Wing and the the Congress are making everyone damp.
No, he didn’t. He declared (and cited the FBI’s own admission) that the application depended on information from Steele, and would not have stood a chance without it.
WTH is this? Where did you pull that one from?
First we have only Nunes’ words to support what “the FBI said.” Nunes wrote that Comey said that the Dossier was “salacious and unverified” and that statement is false.
Second, to the best of my knowledge, the exact statement by Andrew McCabe has not yet been released, so we don’t know if he was misquoted as well. As for whether or not there was nothing in the warrant to justify its issuance is above your paygrade and mine. I remind you that the FISA warrant has not been declassified and likely will not be.
But FISA judges have to look at data collected in extending the warrant – what kind of argument is that? Don’t forget that the government has been watching Page since 2013 and Page openly bragged about his status with the Russians.
As for Steele testifying in court that his Dossier was unreliable, I couldn’t find your source but I did see that WSJ and Fox opined that the FBI knew Steele to be unreliable but didn’t tell the courts – more hearsay.
From the Nunes memo, quote:
“The Papadopoulos information triggered the opening of an FBI counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016 by FBI agent Pete Strzok.”
From the Justice Department Order appointing the Special Counsel, quote:
(b) The Special Counsel is authorized to conduct the investigation confined by then-FBI Director James 8. Comey in testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on March 20, 2017, including:
(i) any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump; and
(ii) any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation; and
(iii) any other matters within the scope of 28 C.F.R. § 600.4(a).
You need to keep up with the facts, Milhouse. I used to be like you until I found out that Trump lemmings don’t like to be confused by facts. Do not ask questions – just protect Trump’s ass.
Wrong. We also have Grassley’s and Graham’s word, and they report directly on what was in the application.
FISA judges, like all judges, cannot issue a warrant without reason to believe that the source of the information they’re given is credible. Since Steele was not the source of his information, his credibility, even if it were 100% (which we know it wasn’t) would not justify the warrant, and the judge who signed it must be forced to explain him/herself.
No, it hasn’t. In 2013 they overheard a Russian spy talk about his unsuccessful plan to develop Page as a source. They asked Page about it, verified that this hadn’t gone anywhere, warned him not to get involved with the person he’d spoken to, and that was the end of it. He was never under suspicion, then or later.
He legitimately touted his professional experience as an energy consultant. What on earth could be wrong with that? And how does that connect with your LIE that he claimed to have acted as an adviser to Putin?
Bulldust. I don’t believe you. This was widely reported, and is incontrovertible. It’s literally a public record.
The FBI fired Steele for lying to it. That by definition means it considered him unreliable, but it lied to the court about this.
Oops. This is so easy to mess up. Here it is again, more legible:
No, he didn’t. He declared (and cited the FBI’s own admission) that the application depended on information from Steele, and would not have stood a chance without it.
WTH is this? Where did you pull that one from?
No, he didn’t, and no, it wasn’t. It couldn’t be; there was nothing in there that could possibly justify a warrant. Indeed the Steele info shouldn’t have justified a warrant either, since no matter how reliable the FBI thought he was, he was not the source for his info, and didn’t know any of it to be true. Nunes needs to subpoena the FISA judge who issued the warrant, on threat of impeachment, and find out once and for all exactly what s/he was thinking when s/he granted and kept renewing this warrant.
Or not. Despite Steele having admitted in court that his info was unreliable, and despite the FBI having fired him for lying, it kept telling the judges that its confidence in him remained steady. Though as mentioned we need to find out how that confidence could justify a warrant in the first place.
Really? Such as?
More bulldust. Congress neither appointed nor authorized Mueller, and the supposition that Mueller is a Republican is based on what?
You’re joking, right?
Milhouse – you are correct that Congress wasn’t involved with the Special Counsel but they did pass a law that imposed some heavy sanctions on the Russians last July. “The bill aimed to punish Russia not only for interference in the election but also for its annexation of Crimea, continuing military activity in eastern Ukraine and human rights abuses.”
But we all know that Trump refused to implement the law and piss off his buddy Vlad. It’s kind of funny that Putin tries to take over our country but he has not yet been given a nickname like “Better Red.” We need to have a contest to help our President out of his conundrum.
How is any of this relevant to your false claims?
Trump did not “refuse to implement the law”. He exercised his rights under the law.
And what do you mean by your claim that “Putin tries to take over our country”? You may be Ukranian, Georgian, or Armenian, but I’m not, and I’m not aware of any other countries he’s tried to take over. He’s certainly never been so foolish as to attempt anything of the kind with the USA.
The central problem is there is no actual source of allegations named by Steele, or by anyone else. For a warrant you do not need for the allegations to be proven true, but you need for them to be the statements of witnesses. There are no witnesses in the FISA applications, unless both Nunes and Schiff forgot to mention it.
Fairly simple answer there. Steele’s sources were Russian intel, Sid Blumenthal, and a few of Hillary’s own campaign staff. For Schiff to admit that the Hillary campaign was paying for Russian intel, to admit that Sid Vicious was part of the dossier source, and that Hillary’s own staff contributed their own fever dreams to the giant ball of crap, would shoot his argument more full of holes than a colander.
In short, Hillary’s campaign was doing exactly what they claim the Trump campaign was doing.
I’m looking forward to somebody doing a point-by-point fisking of this pile of crap. A good example is the “FBI did not pay Steele for the Dossier” point.
Well, duh. They were *going* to, until they got caught, then they backed out of it faster than a rat out of a trap. That’s exactly what the Republicans claimed, so thank you Dems for confirming your legally dubious actions. Next!
The sources you mention are not witnesses. Are there any named witnesses to anything remotely illegal?
Nothing illegal has even been alleged. Even if the allegations were 100% true, no laws would have been broken.
PS that’s why it wasn’t a criminal investigation, it was a counterintelligence one. Nothing illegal has to be alleged for that. But probable cause is still needed, which means the facts alleged must have come from people claiming to have witnessed them.
The problem for you is that the law establishing FISA required that corroboration before a warrant could be issued. There’s a reason why the same judge who was involved in issuing it had to be removed as trial judge.
Legal Matter Question:
Could Peter Strzok, as an FBI agent, or Lisa Page, in her DOJ position, serve as affiants in a FISA application?
Schiff Memo p7 gives the fact that neither of them served as affiants as proof of no political bias infecting FBI, DOJ.
p3 hand-written corrections! Now the sentence reads, “… 2 of whom were appointed by President George W. Bush by George H.W. Bush Bush…” Not my typo, Bush written twice – George H. W. Bush Bush!
p6 4th paragraph states “The January 2018 renewal…” There was NO January 2018 renewal, it was January 2017 (per p7: …three renewals – in early January 2017, early April 2017, and late June 2017…”
Do the Democrats on this committee have nobody to serve as an editor? Did no one read this before making copies????
mssmith44a – Those are also my preliminary takeaways from readings so far. However, this is the first blog site I have encountered that is even aware of this published info (note “Justice with Jeanine Pirro’s last night remarks that she was unaware of this published info (after the 20 minutes with “Donny Two Scoops.)
I hope to hear more input from all I have read on here so far!
Cheers.
“Just the tip…”