The Right Side of the News

The warrant was for Carter Page, and the judge found that there was legal justification for the surveillance. That's what the FISA courts do. Then you agree that presidential candidates can be investigated. Remember that. Steele was the source of the dossier, and the circumstances of his hiring was revealed. You would have to show that Steele was politically motivated, which I have yet to see. Democrats and Fusion GPS weren't paying for made up stories, they were paying for legitimate dirt. If they wanted made up stories they would have sat around in a room and made them up instead of paying millions of dollars for someone else to do an investigation. Yes. Investigators put together their initial evidence and ask a judge for a warrant. That's how it has worked for the entire history of our country. If the Steele dossier turned out be completely false then their further investigation would not turn up any wrongdoing. As it turns out, FBI agents aren't omniscient so they need to investigate to find the facts.

The board keeps discarding the end of my message, so:What specific actions were criminal? I suspect you know the same number as your lots of Republican Trump haters. 0.Hillary was not named as the source of the dossier because she was not the source of the dossier. Her campaign was the proximate (not the only) source, and was named.It's sad to see you drop the pretense of waiting for evidence and return to regurgitating right-wing propaganda. What is the point of investigating when you know the answers already?

Prove it. What are you claiming she did that was criminal?One thing I know with absolute certainty, you cannot state a single law she violated.Prove me wrong.

If the court was deprived of necessary information they would have falsely determined that there was legal justification for the surveillance.Hillary paid for the dossier. That would prove political motivation I would think. If the court didn't know that, it might be regarded as getting the warrant under false pretenses.So I ask again, was Hillary named? From what you said I gather not, but I figure I should ask anyway.The dossier came from Russia which gives it a certain feel of legitimacy I suppose.I believe there is evidence that it was known to be a fraud before the FISA warrants were acquired that may be made public soon. We'll have to wait and see about that.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

She had classified information on her personal server. That is against the law, i.e. criminal.She went to great pains to erase her emails and wreck the computer to destroy the evidence. That is obstruction of justice.I think this may all be aired publicly pretty soon. Wait and see.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Wrong!
You might want to know a little about the subjects you are discussing.

I keep hearing it was from Russia. If not I'll find out soon enough.

I AM still waiting for evidence. Meanwhile I'm answering questions according to what I've heard. The evidence will either confirm or deny when it is forthcoming.I don't know if Hillary should be regarded as a source as far as the FISA warrant goes, but not naming her as having purchased it would seem to deprive the FISA court of some important information in their decision about granting it. Again, I think all this is coming out soon. Whatever the conclusions it should be interesting.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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I AM still waiting for evidence. Meanwhile I'm answering questions according to what I've heard. The evidence will either confirm or deny when it is forthcoming.

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What you claim to have heard seems to be rather inaccurate.

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I don't know if Hillary should be regarded as a source as far as the FISA warrant goes, but not naming her as having purchased it would seem to deprive the FISA court of some important information in their decision about granting it.

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Odd then that you assumed that she should be named as a source - for no reason. Since she didn’t create the dossier or provide it to the FBI (the FBI claimed that they got it from Steele) she wasn’t a source.It WAS known that the dossier was created for a rival candidate as you can see from Percy’s post.

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Again, I think all this is coming out soon. Whatever the conclusions it should be interesting.

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it looks like you trust Barr to be a partisan Trump supporter with no regard for truth or justice. And to be fair there is evidence for that. But it isn’t what you should want in an investigation.

Where is the misinformation about the Carter Page FISA warrant coming from? The Washington Examiner is one source. Here's an example from today's edition, Democrat claims four Trump campaign officials targeted by FISA investigations:

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The dossier, packed with salacious and unverified claims about Trump's ties to Russia, was written by British ex-spy Christopher Steele and formed a key part of the FBI's FISA applications used to justify surveillance warrants against Page.

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But this is untrue. There is no information from the Steele dossier in the Carter Page FISA warrant. It doesn't even call it a dossier. This is all the initial FISA warrant (there were three renewals) has to say about it (Searchable Carter Page FISA Warrant). It says just about the same thing in two different places:

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Source #1, who now owns a foreign business/financial intelligence firm, was approached by an identified US. person, who indicated to Source #1 that a U.S.-based law firm had hired the identified US. 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 US. person hired Source #1 to conduct this research. The identified US. 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 US. person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit Candidate #1's campaign.

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Source #1 tasked his sub-source(s) to collect the requisite information. After Source #1 received information from the sub-source(s) described herein, Source #1 provided the information to the identified US. person who had hired Source #1 and to the FBI. [redacted]

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Notwithstanding Source #1's reason for conducting the research into Candidate #1's ties to Russia, based on Source #1's previous reporting history with the FBI, whereby Source #1 provided reliable information to the FBI, the FBI believes Source #1's reporting herein to be credible. [redacted]
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¹⁶As discussed above, Source #1 was hired by a business associate to conduct research into Candidate #1's ties to Russia. Source #1 provided the results of his research to the business associate, and the FBI assesses that the business associate likely provided this information to the law firm that hired the business associate in the first place. Source #1 told the FBI that he/she only provided this information to the business associate and the FBI. [redacted] The FBI does not believe that Source #1 directly provided this information to the press.

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That's it. That's all it says. It does not describe, as claimed by the Washington Examiner, any information gathered by Steele. It only says that Steele received information from his sub-sources. Nowhere does the FISA warrant say what that information was.Any claim made here (or anywhere) that the Carter Page FISA warrant justified surveillance using information from the Steele dossier is just plain wrong. Anyone who thinks otherwise should go to the searchable link to the FISA warrant that appears above, or to the link to all four FISA warrants (the original and the three renewals): Carter Page FISA WarrantIn a related matter, it is possible that there were three other FISA warrants in addition to the one on Carter Page. The Washington Examiner article quotes Representative Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) saying, "One thing that all of these persons had in common was that each was the subject of a FISA Court investigation,..." The persons she's referring to are George Papadopoulos, Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn.It is possible that Representative Lee's information is incorrect. These persons may only have been the subject of FBI investigations rather than of FISA warrants. Lee was questioning Loretta Lynch, who was the Attorney General under the Obama administration in 2016 when these investigations were conducted.Constructive questioning stopped at this point as Lynch's lawyer stepped in to advise that the names of subjects of FISA warrants are confidential and possibly classified in this case. The exchange took place back on December 19th but only recently came to light when the transcript was released yesterday.--Percy

Yes in some circumstances, no in other circumstances. Gosh, your sources didn't explain that? Could they be lying by omission?There are two statutes that cold apply in this case. 18 U.S. Code ”1924. Unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material:

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(a) Whoever, being an officer, employee, contractor, or consultant of the United States, and, by virtue of his office, employment, position, or contract, becomes possessed of documents or materials containing classified information of the United States, knowingly removes such documents or materials without authority and with the intent to retain such documents or materials at an unauthorized location shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than five years, or both.

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Note the word "knowingly". That's important. 18 U.S. Code ”798. Disclosure of classified information:

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(a) Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits, or otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person, or publishes, or uses in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United States or for the benefit of any foreign government to the detriment of the United States any classified information”
(1) concerning the nature, preparation, or use of any code, cipher, or cryptographic system of the United States or any foreign government; or
(2) concerning the design, construction, use, maintenance, or repair of any device, apparatus, or appliance used or prepared or planned for use by the United States or any foreign government for cryptographic or communication intelligence purposes; or
(3) concerning the communication intelligence activities of the United States or any foreign government; or
(4) obtained by the processes of communication intelligence from the communications of any foreign government, knowing the same to have been obtained by such processes”
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

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"Knowingly and willfully". Notice a pattern?Hillary had three classified emails on her server.Emails containing classified information must start with a header stating so. That header, for whatever reason, was not on those three emails.Classified information in emails must be marked with, for example, (c) for confidential information. The classified information in those emails wa so marked, but it was way down in the chain of replies and forwards. I don't know if you have any relevant experience, but it is very rarer for anyone to go down through that chain instead of just reading the top message. Since the required header was not present to alert her and Hillary was a very busy person, it's virtually certain she did not see that (c).So. not knowingly and willfully, unless you can prove otherwise, which ain't gonna happen. Not a crime.Continued on next rock...

The gist of the information I heard was that whatever she was doing it's illegal, and that it wasn't just three classified emails, but they even now have four as evidence that didn't get destroyed. Hey, I don't want to argue all this here, the details and legalities are too hard to keep track of. Again, although I may report the general gist of what I hear I'd rather wait until the qualified authorities have come to a conclusion about it all and I hope they don't take as long as Mueller took.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

As I understand it the ONLY justification for any surveillance of the Trump campaign was the Steele dossier. Without that there would have been no justification at all, and the dossier is a fraud anyway. Where it enters into the discussion, whether it is in this FISA warrant or not, I don't want to try to figure out all the legalities myself, I'd rather leave that to the authorities who are working on it.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

they did, Hillary was not charged with anything.

Not particularly great pains.In early 2014 Hillary turned over approximately 30,000 emails her staff had determined to be work-related, retaining the ones they determined to be personal.In December 2014 she decided she did not need any private emails older than 60 days, and instructed the server company to re-set her retention period to 60 days and delete older emails. Nobody ever checked to see if this was done. It wasn't. Couldn't have been that important, right?On March 4, 2105 her emails were subpoenaed.About three weeks later a technician at the server provider realized that the December order had not been carried out. He re-set the retention period and deleted the older emails. He ran a software program called BleachBit intending to prevent recovery of any of the deleted emails. Nobody dd any physical damage to the server.In the ensuing few months the FBI recovered all or most of the deleted emails from the undamaged server; it's not clear exactly how many. No evidence of criminal activity was found. A few work-related emails were found.Three elements are required to prove obstruction of justice:

• There was a pending federal judicial proceeding;
• The defendant knew of the proceeding; and
• The defendant had corrupt intent to interfere with or attempted to interfere with the proceeding.

Do you really think that anyone can prove Hillary had corrupt intent? Your opinion doesn't count.Anything else?