FBI Forced to Cough Up Proof that they Confirmed Allegations in the Steele Dossier
In January 2017, US District Court Judge Amit Mehta sided with the FBI on their decision to ignore FOIA requests concerning their efforts to verify the controversial Steele Dossier, before it was used as the foundation of their application for a FISA surveillance warrant. The Judge ruled that Trump's tweets about the dossier didn't require the FBI and other intelligence agencies to act on records requests.
But by the end of the week on Friday, August 17th, Judge Mehta changed his mind. He said that President Trump's release of two House Intelligence Committee documents (the "Nunes" and "Schiff" memos) changed everything. He now wants to see the actual corroborations that the FBI said they had at that time, that confirmed the outrageous allegations that were made in the Steele dossier. "The ground shifted," writes Mehta of Trump declassifying the House memos. "As a result of the Nunes and Schiff Memos, there is now in the public domain meaningful information about how the FBI acquired the Dossier and how the agency used it to investigate Russian meddling."
I think all of us would all like to see the proof that those corroborations were made.
We do know that the FBI offered Steele $50,000 to verify the Dossier's claims. But according to the NYT, Steel was never paid. BuzzFeed tried to do the same to defend themselves in a dossier-related lawsuit, but they too were unsuccessful. And George Soros — his nose ever inside of everyone's tent — funded a $50 million investigation to continue the hunt for any corroboration and turned up nothing that we know of.
So, whatever documents the FBI may try to foist off on the court as proof of their successful effort to verify the Dossier could prove highly embarrassing for the agency. If they show up empty-handed, blaming a file clerk for the missing documents, it could be worse than embarrassing. It remains that the agency may still try and convince the judge that there are other grounds to withhold the records.
The fact is, however, the FISA Court now has FAIL writ large above its doors. Its existence is a breach of the Fourth Amendment that has stunk to the high heavens from Day One.
So what exactly happens when, at first, we do deceive? By forcing the FBI to prove they had an empty hand when they tricked the FISA Court into issuing the warrant and subsequent renewals, this fraud will likely embolden calls to disband the special counsel investigation into Trump's collusion with the Russians that handed him the election. The FBI's mercenary and politicized approach to "investigations" will be laid all the more bare for the world to see.
The moral to this story will surely follow, if there is any moral to be had in DC
Comments
Parallel Construction in a Star Chamber. It's the New American
Way.
When FISA came out, back in the day, I was big on calling it retroactive permission. Request data from one of the 5 eyes, get data and get familiar with the case, find a string to pull and show that string to the Lord of the Star Chamber.
Binney outlined parallel construction as a function of his case and it gave me the actual legal term for this fraudulent jurisprudence.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
dunno if this is the sort
of parallel construction you're meaning, but this is the one i know: ‘DEA ‘Parallel Construction’ Manuals Available Online;, feb 10, 2014, wd pinging off bruce dixon, reuters, at BAR, shadowproof
i still have all those dagnabbed images on my flickr account, lol.
"The documents showed quite clearly that law enforcement was to go to great lengths to hide the provenance of the tips, clues, etc., as to how the ‘investigations’ had begun, from not only defense attorneys, but often prosecutors and judges, even though the cases rarely involved national security issues .
From Reuters:
"The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to “recreate” the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant’s Constitutional right to a fair trial. If defendants don’t know how an investigation began, they cannot know to ask to review potential sources of exculpatory evidence – information that could reveal entrapment, mistakes or biased witnesses."
but my favorite part was:
"As described in the released portions of the module, parallel construction simply entails splitting the prosecutorial labor, with a Taint Review Team tackling pre-trial review so the trial prosecutor encounters as little classified evidence as possible.
But the released training modules provide no guidance on key issues noted in documents obtained by Reuters last August. In particular, the SOD slides barred agents from disclosing classified sources on affidavits or in courtroom testimony. Under this strain of parallel construction, the court would never know the classified origins of an investigation.
“You’d be told only, ‘Be at a certain truck stop at a certain time and look for a certain vehicle.’ And so we’d alert the state police to find an excuse to stop that vehicle, and then have a drug dog search it,” as one former federal agent described the process to Reuters."
I'm Sure It's the Same. Our Domestic Spying Apparatus is Not
about finding the needle in the haystack. It's about finding dirty hay on an individual needle.
They identify Citizen X as a threat. Get the goods on Citizen X via domestic spying, then set up some situation where the goods come from somewhere else or finagle the data so it looks like they're looking for the goods they already have on Citizen X.
Then they go to the Star Chamber with their "legit questions" and get permission to construct their case.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
@k9disc Very much like Henry
Very much like Henry VII.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Seems kinda lucky for cops to pull someone over
for a 'broken tail light, he was weaving or driving too fast or too slow' etc and "because they acted squirrelly" they call for a drug dawg and lo and behold they find lotsa of drugs.
When the cases go to court the cops have to tap dance around the fact that they got the tip from the DEA. Lawyers and judges know all about this scam to cover up the fact that they got their information illegally. And when the truth about this comes out people don't care if rights had been violated because they want the "scum bag druggers" in prison.
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?
As a reflection of this deceit in a different courtroom
...Paul Craig Roberts describes the Press' deceit in presenting the Manafort trial as part of Russiagate, and shows how the court itself is being compromised:
I don't know how the nation is expected to recover from betrayal on a scale this massive. I certainly have no intention of recovering.
I still haven't figured out why the
Manafort stuff isn't considered fruit of the poisonous tree.
Any lawyer around here that can comment?
dfarrah
The jury in Manafort's
trial may just end up confirming that.
The Mueller
witch huntoperation was designed to deflect attention away from Killary and make sure she is never really investigated. Truth be told, she should now be residing in a one room apartment at the Lexington.Meanwhile, the beatings continue....
@Pluto's Republic Well, the FDA could give
Well, the FDA could give them a good run for their money. Also the CIA, NSA, etc.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Is the US government more corrupt than it used to be?
Or, it the corruption just more apparent thanks to technology? Videos and the internet make it hard to retract or deny, not that it seems to matter to the public anyway. In a very non-partisan fashion, I hope they all hang each other.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
Going back and rereading US history
...I now find it utterly and completely corrupt. The years prior to World War I to the present are dripping with deceit and empire lust — into the present. The American people have been harmed or killed at every turn and their families and futures, destroyed. All for the sake of profits and the spoils of capitalism. And we are dumping the entire shitload of the costs onto children, who are now born into slavery.
It just happened to become apparent during your lifetime.
It seems to me a trip to Italy is in order. I'm up for that.
I was hoping you wouldn't say that.
Perhaps the scale of thievery is also bigger making it harder to miss. Sad commentary on capitalism for sure. Just got back from visiting my grandson in Stockholm. What a marvelous city. He picked out a hotel for us just a block off the water and surrounded by parks, cafes, eateries, and shops. The picture in my profile is of a mural painted on the side of an apartment building in Sodermalm. When enlarged and looked at, it is an incredibly imaginative piece of art. There are so many faces in it, they are hard to count. After being there, I truly understand why my grandson has zero interest in returning to the US. If Sweden and Michigan had opposite seasons, I would buy an apartment and winter there.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
bing! n/t
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
@Pluto's Republic The changes in this
The changes in this country during my lifetime have been both broad and deep, as is usual when you're experiencing a coup, even a velvet one.
Admittedly, this coup is a bit weird, in that the people already in charge had to stage a coup to keep from--well, in retrospect, it looks like they staged a coup to keep from having to hear the word "no" from time to time--but it has been a coup. I'm not sure why so many people I respect feel the need to deny this.
Trying to elide historical changes in favor of asserting an evil that is permanent and essential to the "character" of the United States serves nobody but the powerful. It gives people like us a small sense of self-satisfaction because we "see through" all the silly illusions stupider people believe, and enables us to believe we are both more intelligent and more ethical than your average bear. Which I think we probably are, given that the overall standards for intelligence and ethics are so low, but that small satisfaction is hardly worth erasing everything that has been done to rearrange this country since the 1968 Democratic convention and the 1971 Powell memo. I think our intellectual bonafides and our general liberation from the versions of history most of us were taught in grade school are clear and don't require additional emphasis. Further, there's no need to aver that the United States has always been what it is now in order to agree that the United States has always, in many profound ways, been both hypocritical and wrong.
In fact, if you believe the Powell memo is real, what is apparent is that the ruling class were in a panic in 1971 because things were NOT the same as they are now, and because the way things had been previously did not allow them sufficient control (near-absolute control) that would give them the policies they want, forever. That's why they asked Lewis Powell for help in the first place. They thought their world was coming to an end because the government was not constantly doing their bidding, and the country was moving away from their control. He said, no worries, you can keep your world alive; just end representative government in this country and you'll get your way in every particular from now on.
I could create an exhaustive list of things that are different now to what they were then, even without touching on technological advances, but I'll give you one example: some members of the Nixon administration actually went to jail, for involvement in something that today would hardly raise an eyebrow. Even the President himself had to resign or be impeached, and probably removed. Today, a Secretary of State can expose highly classified information basically to everyone in the world with a modicum of digital skill for two and a half months, and she will never even be investigated, a President's brother can get him into office by purging tens of thousands of African Americans off the voting rolls, another President can openly have a kill list, and nobody blinks an eye. Voluntary manslaughter goes unpunished specifically because the killer was rich (look up the "affluenza" defense,) while involuntary manslaughter of a secretary by a Wall St broker gets sixteen days, which is basically like the court saying "Of course he's guilty and we all know it, but you don't expect us to put a rich person in jail, do you?"
In short, we tortured some folks. But don't get too sanctimonious about it.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
That's a sobering but relieving comment.
It's wise and I find some comfort in knowing this will become an increasingly shared experience. People hold a lot inside, compartmentalized, never spoken. It's a survival mechanism, but a dangerous one. Thanks for your thoughts here, and the history. A lot of people, even recently, have made a point of telling me that things were always this way. Or worse. But I think one can look at society and judge how healthy it seems. We are in the midst of a suicide epidemic across several demographics. That's a failed state. The deceit of the nation has led to the dispair in society. In their hearts, people do know what could have been, what they have lost, and what is in store for their children.
@Pluto's Republic Thanks, Pluto. I am
Thanks, Pluto. I am often misunderstood when I make comments like this, accused of defending any number of atrocities and horrible bullshit done by the United States since its inception.
The truth, I think, is that there was still too much democracy and rule of law mixed into this non-democracy before the late 60s, and round about 1968, some people realized it. There was still too much give in the system, too much flexibility; the little guy still had too much power, enough to be a serious inconvenience. Also, their surveillance technology had not yet caught up with their weapons technology; a handful of "little guys" could actually break in somewhere and steal the COINTELPRO papers and make them public, though at a serious risk; most importantly of all, people's minds were capable of both reason and outrage.
I'm not saying Welch was a saint, but if you're in a world where "Have you no decency, sir?" both gets put on television and has an impact on people's minds, so much so that it actually shoots an authoritarian movement in the foot, then you're in a world where the culture of the United States, and its economy, allows for way too much real resistance, way too much independent thought on the part of the populace.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Again a poingnant observation, CS.
And absolutely yes to this:
That's exactly what it was. The perfect description. And, the rudimentary technologies did hold them back for a while, as you say. That was before the firehoses of propaganda were turned against the American people. For a long pause, they could read their newspapers and think and consider, though not for too long. in the late 80s the Fairness Doctrine was revoked and the media monopolies simply overwhelmed them.
Question about your definition of "coup"
Does that mean to you that the PTB have completed their coup? In what sense has it been completed? Are you proposing that Trump is now completely co-opted by TPTB? I don't believe that is the case. The new swamp Trump is building will no more sanitary nor salutary than the one he is attempting to dismantle. It will be HIS SWAMP--and in that lies the difference. His swamp will have His cons and lies--they just won't be the Deep States' lies. El Trumpo will concoct his own Deep State using the Obama method--only he will do it with less arrogance. Thus the distortions, lies, and plundering will have a new look; a new look only if you don't peer too deeply at the camouflage. The beneficiaries will be a different set of rich bastards and their lackeys than the Obamanation's Cadre of Corruption.
@Alligator Ed I wasn't thinking
I wasn't thinking about Trump at all. The coup I refer to is the one where politicians are working for an alliance of rich private sector types, in particular Big Energy, Big Guns, and Big Money, with Monsanto thrown into the mix because they're essentially a weapons developer disguised as agriculture. These private sector types have a longstanding handshake deal with some public sector friends in the CIA, the NSA, and apparently fifteen other "intelligence" agencies (who knew we had seventeen intelligence agencies? Why would anyone need seventeen?) Also with some people in the Pentagon--"fifth branch" military can get interesting.
When this coup began is debatable, but I think we can agree on some things:
after the Powell memo, a coup was definitely underway
by the late 70s it was picking up steam
the election of Reagan was its first really substantial victory
from the late 80s to the mid 90s any recalcitrant elements in the Democratic Party were bribed, intimidated, or eliminated from the picture
during the same period any dissident elements within the Republican party were similarly bribed, intimidated, or eliminated
that gutting any Democratic opposition to the coup was the Clintons' job
that with the rise of Newt Gingrich, Congress was brought into line with the coup, and never really recovered (despite a few attempts in 2002 to regain power)
that a legislature is unnecessary to a coup like this, so the legislature has essentially become vestigial, and the people who used to wield at least some power now function more like reality tv hosts (heh)
that since 2001 there has been an automatic justification for anything the security state wants--George W. Bush with his bumbling and Cheney with his hatefulness created an opening for questioning that, but
Obama shut all that right down, and cemented all the Bush policies in place, protecting those policies with the moral capital he derived from being the first black president
Which then roped in a lot of the previously dissident Democrats and made them into coup supporters
Which happened again in 2016, but worse, because now even parts of the independent left have abandoned their critique of the coup to shake their tiny fists at Trump
As for Trump, I don't think he had any idea what he was getting into when he refused to do the job for Hillary. "Do the job" meaning, the bad guy is supposed to tap out 20 minutes into the match, because that's what the booking committee says he should do, and then the bad guy and the good guy will go into the back and collect their paychecks together. Trump decided he wasn't going to do that, but was going to try and grab all the marbles, because he could actually win.
Which is why the actually powerful want his balls on a skewer. However, he's so useful where he is that I'm not sure they can afford to remove him. They have been making lemonade out of that lemon result like crazy ever since he got into office. I think their rage at getting an unexpected electoral result is real, but they are also practical men: pointing at the outrageous things Trump says gives their guttering system an entirely new lease on life.
I *think* most of us here agree on most of that.
Please let me know if that's not the case; I'm interested to see where we disagree.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
@Pluto's Republic Forgetting that things
Forgetting that things were once different covers up a series of world-changing crimes.
That is not to say that the previous reality was just or right.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
It comes and goes
There was a brief period after the Watergate scandal, when the US tried to clean itself up. Think, for example, about the Church Committee. There was progress on civil rights in the '60s and early '70s. Early in the 20 century trusts were busted and working conditions improved. All of these came about because of struggles and sacrifice. They were not given to us by a benevolent oligarchy and they were brief positive trends in a sorry history of malevolence. Since the Powell memo and the ascendancy of Ronnie Raygun, the US has been pretty much going down hill--nastier, more corrupt and dysfunctional
Baah!
The War (and how) on drugs shredded the Fourth Amendment decades ago. Long past time it was fully restored with teeth, and I mean fangs, BIG ones. Rec'd!!
Inner and Outer Space: the Final Frontiers.
Expert scrutiny of “the drug exception to the Fourth Amendment”:
https://circuit6.blogspot.com/2006/01/drug-exception-to-fourth-amendment...
It gets worse
Thanks to Craig Murray and Moon of Alabama it appears that the phony Novichok case of British (formerly Russian) double spy Skripal is connected to this. Skripal's MI6 handler, Pablo Miller, is employed by "private" intelligence company Orbis, as is Steele. These people have been generating anti-Russian dirt for a long time. Plus, tracks for the Steele dossier lead back to the Clinton campaign, the DNC and the CIA, and there isn't a hell of a lot of space between Clinton and the CIA.
Of course, in the US this isn't a serious problem. The media hasn't reported this and won't.
Essentially, the Deep State as represented by the CIA and DNC sought dirt on Trump and Russia back during the campaign and went to Steele, who produced the whole peeing prostitute story, apparently from whole cloth. Parts were played by the fascist Ukrainian government, whose intelligence apparatus was essentially created immediately after the coup in 2014. Robert Mueller, a lifelong CIA coverup artist, was assigned the special prosecutor role to pursue the case without accidentally exposing the CIA. CIA assets throughout the media, to include the likes of Rachel Maddow and scores of others, toil mightily to present one side of the story even if it requires lying. And, of course, all of this is based on lies.
I agree with a recent assessment that Trump's behavior is demonstrating pre-dementia, which is sometimes hard to see with his psychopathic narcissism.
It's all a pretty ugly mess, and if the Democrats win the House this fall how many of them (the DNC has run over fifty candidates with national intelligence backgrounds) how many of them will be working for the working class or working for more military interventions around the world?
Have you ever watched
Trump? And I mean a couple of hours worth, not just a sound bite here and there?
He is not an any pre-dementia state, despite state and media efforts to convince everyone that he is crazy. He is sharp as a tack and quick on the draw, and the way he provokes his opposition with humor is hilarious (yes, I can appreciate his humor just like I can appreciate Jon Stewart and others like him).
Even calling him psychopathic is ridiculous - unless you want to call out all of the other power-hungry idiots trying to overthrow him, too.
dfarrah
Hours of Trump?
I have not had the opportunity to watch hours of Trump, and I agree that the media may very well be developing yet another means of getting rid of him. He certainly displays the appearance of a pathological narcissist. The important part is what the permanent Deep State is doing. It's an unusual situation in that on one hand Trump is delivering on the agenda of Deep State: tax cuts et al, with the exception of war against Russia, which may occur anyway.
Whatever, unless I'm brought to a black site and made to watch hours of Trump I'm afraid I'll have to defer to your experience.
Before the election, I watched a video of Trump speeches,
, throughout his public life. It lasted somewhere over an hour. As such, it wouldn't speak to possible current dementia, but the whole video (most likely carefully edited) showed him to be thoughtful, and articulate...even though I didn't agree with much of what he was saying.
I cannot find any sign of it now, after the election.
"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X
I would concur.
I reported on Trump's campaign during the Primaries, with a focus on his rally speeches. I don't see a mental deficit, compared say to John McCain. Trump is lucid.
He is, however, uninformed and misinformed about crucial intelligence.
Pre-dementia? What is that?
Destined to die--yes, all of us.
Destined to dementia? Only half of us. 50% of individuals over 100 years old will be demented. Half won't.
Trump haters overlook the fact that Trump has outwitted the Deep State so far. I do not agree that he is co-opted. He will manufacture his own slime, not recycle Killary's evil plans.
@dfarrah I do want to call out
I do want to call out the power-hungry idiots who are trying to destroy him too. In fact, those people are a greater threat to me and mine than Trump is, because they represent an entrenched and long-standing system of corruption, intimidation and lies. In comparison with them, he's a blowhard wannabe. That said, of course, he can do plenty of damage, but given that I'm living in the cave of Polyphemus to begin with, I can't really get too fussed about one individual bastard.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
The cause of Trump's "dementia"
is probably connected to CIA's Operation Midnight Climax. They knew he had a propensity for bedding porn stars and other women of dubious background. Surely all those tens of millions invested in mind fucking since Operation Paperclip have not gone to waste?
Trump should have stuck with dining at McD's. Just because he was paranoid doesn't mean they weren't out to get him.
What are the chances his skull will be empty, just like JFK's, when he gets autopsied? Of course the media can just report it was that way to start with.
/s ????
yes, both bernhard
and craig murray have been all over that pablo miller, skripa's handler story; thanks for reminders.
and as to the king of the CIA coverups mueller: yes!
but they still ♫ Can’t get enough of that Novichok♪ Novichok♪ Novichok♫...Can’t get enough....♪
8/7/2108
i have a Q on your timeline for the 'moral of the stroy coming
soon. i'm likely missing your meaning, but at the end of your zerohedge link he notes:
"In other words, the FBI must show what they did to verify the claims contained within the Nunes and Schiff memos.
Because the case was heard on appeal, the ruling will not take immediate effect, notes Politico, which adds that the appeals court is now likely to remand the case to Mehta, while the FBI is going to try and convince him the records should remain unreleased."
and yes, the politico piece does note that. but i haven't been following the mueller invesigation/s that well. but i'd think if this were major news, emptywheel would have it! but no, she's giddy as a school girl that roger stone (the joker) is is threatening to sue her for her #fffffake news. and folks are chipping into her kitty again, of course.
Thanks, Wendy. I shall clarify my pun intended.
my apologies
for having missed your pun, not that i get it even now (smile); yet: good job, pluto.
Well, at best it is a play on words
...and not a pun at all. Either way, it fizzled when the timeline was shoved into the construct. I imagine an appeal brief will be quickly assembled:
But the language in the judgement leaves little room for concepts that defy logic as the Judge now sees it.
Winning the judgement is Act One. It's the presumed the lack of verification of the allegations that the FBI did or did not present to the FISA court — at that time — that will unravel the Russia/Trump collusion/blackmail narrative. That coupled with the lack of physical evidence for the alleged hacking, along with Assange's statement that he did not receive the documents from Russia but from a DNC insider, will finally expose RussiaGate for the contrived hoax that it is.
This, in turn, will cast a harsh light on the shoddy faked-up documents that CrowdStrike produced in June 2016 to convince the gullible and satisfy the conspirators that the DNC server appeared to have been hacked by very careless and amatuerish "Russian" hackers, using outdated kiddy code, and leaving their fingerprints everywhere. While the DNC server could have been hacked by a variety of actors, the emails that Wikileaks released were not the product of a hack, but a download directly from the server to a thumbdrive. This entire time, the server logs would show us both the download and any entry by unauthorized users, but no one has been permitted to see those logs, not even the Intelligence Community, that we know of. Without physical evidence, Shrodingers Cat left the room in disgust.
That's my take, but I'm in it just for the cheap thrill of unbiased intellectual honesty.
If the FBI had corroborated, they would not have fought the
FOIA request in court at public expense. They would have smugly provided proof of corrobated, with sources and other sensitive info redacted.
Since they came into existence, thanks to a Democratic Congress and a Democratic President (Carter), FISA courts in particular have behaved as though they exist to serve the Executive Branch. Courts, especially flipping FISA courts, need to remember that the Constitution set up three branches of government to be checks and balances on each other. ALL federal judges need to realize that their role is to enforce the Constitution, and especially to protect the rights of individuals under the Bill of Rights.
Congress has powers and our money (or our debt to China) to spend; the Executive Branch has the same. The rest of us must rely in the federal judiciary, which we also fund or get into debt for, to fulfill its Constitutional role.
FBI will find a way
never to turn anything over other than almost completely redacted white pages.
"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott
FBI will find a way
never to turn anything over other than almost completely redacted white pages.
"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott
My main problem with the Steele dossier was that
Steele himself never actually investigated the claims he made in it. From what I understand he just called people in Russia to see if they had any information about Trump and if he had any connections to people in the Russian government. Th dossier would be thrown out in a trial because it's hearsay, not something that Steele himself witnessed. Plus there's the fact that Sydney Bluemanthol, Hillary's BFF was in close contact with Steele and told him who to call.
The deeper one digs into the cause for the Russian investigation shows that it was pretty much just made up by people who wanted to let Hillary get dirt on Trump by getting the FBI to spy on him and people in his campaign as well as tried to entrap him into doing something he shouldn't.
This article shows the seven times that the FBI tried to entrap people in his campaign.
Seven Mysterious Preludes to the FBI's Trump-Russia Probe
Kudos to site members who are doing a great job in debunking the Russia Gate nonsense. I'm happy to see that some of the GOP didn't just ignore what the democrats were doing.
Nicely done, Pluto.
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?
Imagine if Manfort is found innocent.
When federal prosecutors face experienced defense lawyers, they don't do so well. I suspect that one of the reasons for indicting Russians in Russia is that Mueller's team faces no determined legal opposition. They are struggling after the troll farm in Russia decided to mount a surprise defense.
Imagine that
Mueller never thought that someone from one of the Russian companies would show up to defend their clients from Mueller's dubious claims and when one did he wanted to hide his evidence behind 'national security.' The judge would have nothing to do with that bull crap Mueller tried to pull.
And then when Trump met with Putin Vlad offered to make the recently charged Russians available for Mueller to talk to if Mueller would allow Russian lawyers access to Browder who he said had taken money out of Russia and hadn't paid taxes on it. Browder is someone else to learn more about. Heh. Vlad also said that Browder had given millions to Hillary's campaign. Nobody followed up on that.
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?
breakiing news, it said:
via RT: 'Judge declares mistrial on 10 counts & guilty verdict on eight in Manafort trial', aug. 21
" The Virginia jury deliberating the 18 federal charges against former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort could only reach consensus on 8 counts, finding him guilty. The judge has declared a mistrial on the 10 remaining counts.
Manafort was found guilty on five counts of tax fraud, one count of hiding foreign bank accounts, and two counts of bank fraud.
The veteran political operative was charged with a laundry list offenses related to his income from lobbying for the government of Ukraine prior to 2014. If convicted on all counts, he would have faced over 300 years in prison.
None of the charges are in any way connected to President Donald Trump’s campaign, which Manafort managed between March and August 2016, or allegations of “Russian collusion” that Special Counsel Robert Mueller was tasked with investigating.
The jury began deliberating on Thursday, after Manafort’s defense rested without calling any witnesses or putting Manafort himself to the stand.
DETAILS TO FOLLOW"
on edit: as night follows day: ‘Author of Trump-Russia dossier wins libel case in US court;
Suit against Christopher Steele by three Russian oligarchs thrown out by judge’ by none other than luke harding, who can tell russian emails by the number of emojis they usethe guardian, aug. 21
I wonder why there was a mistrial on the 10 counts
I read stories about the judge having to go into a protection program because he was getting death threats. Why does Trump associate with such scum and put them in charge?
Beware the bullshit factories.
@wendy davis Uh, seriously?
Uh, seriously?
Manafort was found guilty on five counts of tax fraud, one count of hiding foreign bank accounts, and two counts of bank fraud.
We're considering these things punishable crimes now?
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
No trickery needed
Somewhere on this site, Snoopydawg (I think) posted at least a link that stated the judge(s?) doesn't bother to read anything -- just stamps his/her approval. At least I think it was here.
You didn't mention those [20] redacted pages
You didn't mention those [20] redacted pages from the FISA Application.
It has been suggested that those 20 pages implicate Rosenstein in conspiring to frame Trump, which would cause him to be immediately removed and the Mueller SC immediately shut down... and that is when the dems will truly loose it... just in time for the mid-terms.
Not many days left in the month.
Just sayin'.