Liberal Forum

Misty » 02 Feb 2018 12:29 am » wrote:James Comey, blah, blah

the FBI said American citizen Carter Page was a “foreign agent of a hostile foreign government”; the FBI was calling Carter Page a spy.

“Title I” FISA surveillance of U.S. citizens is the most intrusive, exhaustive and far reaching type of search, seizure and surveillance authority, permitting the FBI to look at every scintilla of Mr. Page’s life. All communication, travel and contact can be opened and reviewed. All aspects of any of Mr. Page’s engagements are subject to being secretly monitored. This is an entirely different level of surveillance authority, the highest possible, and has nothing to do with FISA-702 search queries (Title VII) of U.S. persons.

To present a methaphor, under Title I FISA authority, Carter Page was essentially ‘patient zero’ in an Ebola pandemic. Labeling him as a foreign agent allowed the FBI to look at every single person he came in contact with; and every single aspect of their lives and their activities in growing and concentric circles; without limits to current time or historic review.


The “Title I” designation as a foreign agent applied retroactively to any action taken by Mr. Page, and auto-generates an exponential list of other people he came in contact with. Each of those people, groups or organizations could now have their communication reviewed, unmasked and analyzed by the DOJ/FBI with the same surveillance authority granted upon the target, Mr. Page.

The point is: There are strict rules requiring that each and every fact presented in an FBI request to electronically spy on a U.S. citizen be extreme-vetted for accuracy — and presented to the court only if verified.


There’s no dispute that at least some, if not a great deal, of information in the anti-Trump “Steele dossier” was unverified or false. Former FBI director James Comey testified as much himself before a Senate committee in June 2017. Comey repeatedly referred to “salacious” and “unverified” material in the dossier, which turned out to be paid political opposition research against Donald Trump funded first by Republicans, then by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Presentation of any such unverified material to the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court to justify a wiretap would appear to violate crucial procedural rules, called “Woods Procedures,” designed to protect U.S. citizens.

Yet Comey allegedly signed three of the FISA applications on behalf of the FBI. Deputy Director Andrew McCabe reportedly signed one and former Attorney General Sally Yates, then-Acting Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein each reportedly signed one or more.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/20 ... ore-145461

Misty » 01 Feb 2018 6:30 pm » wrote:I would ask my buddy Clem.....

For at least two weeks the TV networks on the left praised to the hiltMichael Wolff’s book “Fire and Fury.” They obsessed over the charge of whether Mr. Trump was mentally competent to hold office, and even called for his ouster under the 25th Amendment based purely on unsubstantiated charges in a book that has now been exposed as mostly a work of fiction, not fact.

Almost all honest scholars are admitting that the book has zero credibility and is packed with false and made-up accusations with no sources.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/20 ... -us-and-d/

Carter Page Touted Kremlin Contacts in 2013 Letter

Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page bragged that he was an adviser to the Kremlin in a letter obtained by TIME that raises new questions about the extent of Page’s contacts with the Russian government over the years.

The letter, dated Aug. 25, 2013, was sent by Page to an academic press during a dispute over edits to an unpublished manuscript he had submitted for publication, according to an editor who worked with Page.

“Over the past half year, I have had the privilege to serve as an informal advisor to the staff of the Kremlin in preparation for their Presidency of the G-20 Summit next month, where energy issues will be a prominent point on the agenda,” the letter reads.

Page is at the center of a controversial memo from Republican Congressman Devin Nunes, released this week.

The Nunes memo claims that in Oct. 2016 the FBI improperly received court permission to spy on Page, whom Trump had named as an adviser to his campaign in March 2016.

The Nunes memo says the FBI based its request for eavesdropping permission on information provided by former British spy Christopher Steele while Steele was working for Democrats.

House Democrats, the FBI and the Justice Department have all raised questions about what they say are omissions and misleading analysis in the Nunes memo.

They argue the FBI presented multiple pieces of evidence, beyond the Steele dossier, in their request for a warrant against Page from the secretive FISA court.

But President Donald Trump argued after declassifying the memo that it showed that “a lot of people should be ashamed of themselves.”

At the heart of the debate is the question of who, exactly, is Carter Page.

Trump’s defenders argue that he was simply a low-level consultant to the campaign who has overstated his role as an adviser as well as his Russian contacts.

The Steele dossier claims that during a trip to Moscow in July 2016, Page held secret meetings with a senior Kremlin official and a senior Putin ally that included conversations about helping Trump and hurting Hillary Clinton in the presidential campaign.

The Steele dossier does not identify its sources and Page has denied any wrongdoing.

In interviews with reporters over the past year, Page has given inconsistent accounts about his contacts with the Russians.

Misty » 05 Feb 2018 11:34 am » wrote:Carter Page Touted Kremlin Contacts in 2013 Letter

Misty » 05 Feb 2018 11:43 am » wrote:Wow!
Someone must be having a meltdown.


Not interested in reading your anti-American pro-Trump propaganda.

45 is operating straight from the dictator/authoritarian handbook.
First, appoint your family members to be part of the administration.
Second, attack the free press.
And third, attack government institutions.

And you are complicit in that.

Misty » 05 Feb 2018 11:43 am » wrote:Not interested in reading your anti-American pro-Trump propaganda.

45 is operating straight from the dictator/authoritarian handbook.
First, appoint your family members to be part of the administration.
Second, attack the free press.
And third, attack government institutions.

And you are complicit in that.

Misty » 05 Feb 2018 11:49 am » wrote:The Terror of Twitter is having a tantrum again.

Misty » 05 Feb 2018 11:43 am » wrote:Not interested in reading your anti-American pro-Trump propaganda.

45 is operating straight from the dictator/authoritarian handbook.
First, appoint your family members to be part of the administration.
Second, attack the free press.
And third, attack government institutions.

And you are complicit in that.

Misty » 05 Feb 2018 11:43 am » wrote:Not interested in reading your anti-American pro-Trump propaganda.

45 is operating straight from the dictator/authoritarian handbook.
First, appoint your family members to be part of the administration.
Second, attack the free press.
And third, attack government institutions.

And you are complicit in that.

House GOP: More memos to come
"The memo" — which pitted the Justice Department against the White House and brought ugly partisan sniping into stark relief — is only the beginning. Republican sources close to Devin Nunes tell me he's assured them there's much more to come.

The House Intelligence chair and his team have told members and associates they've found other examples of politically motivated "wrongdoing" across various agencies, including the FBI, the broader Justice Department, and the State Department.

What we're hearing: Republicans close to Nunes say there could be as many as five additional memos or reports of "wrongdoing." But a source on the House Intelligence Committee tells me there's no current plan to use the same extraordinary and highly controversial process they just went through, with a vote and ultimately a presidential approval to declassify sensitive information.

A Republican member briefed on Nunes' investigations told me: "There are several areas of concern where federal agencies used government resources to try to create a narrative and influence the election. Some have suggested coordination with Hillary Clinton operatives, [Sidney] Blumenthal and [Cody] Shearer, to back up the false narrative."
https://www.axios.com/devin-nunes-relea ... gn=organic

Misty » 05 Feb 2018 11:43 am » wrote:Not interested in reading your anti-American pro-Trump propaganda.

45 is operating straight from the dictator/authoritarian handbook.
First, appoint your family members to be part of the administration.
Second, attack the free press.
And third, attack government institutions.

And you are complicit in that.

REPUBLICAN ELECTORAL PROSPECTS BRIGHTEN
In December, the Democrats held a 15 point lead in a Monmouth poll that asked the “generic” question of whether respondents are more likely to vote for a Democratic or Republican candidate in their own district. That’s the stuff of a wave election, maybe even a tidal wave.

But the latest Monmouth generic poll finds that Democrats have only a 2 point lead.
Given current districting, that’s the stuff of the GOP retaining control of the House, perhaps fairly comfortably. ( Other surveys taken in about the same time period put the Dems advantage at 5-6 points).


Not surprisingly, Monmouth’s latest polling also shows a big jump in President Trump’s popularity. His approval rating has improved by 10 points in one month.


It’s not difficult to explain why Trump and his party fare so much better in recent polling. It’s the economy and especially the tax cut.


According to The Hill, a poll by Reuters/Ipsos poll shows voters think Republicans have a better plan for jobs and employment than Democrats. The margin was 37.6 percent to 27.8 percent.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2 ... ighten.php

The U.S. government is set to borrow nearly $1 trillion this year, an 84 percent jump from last year.

It was another crazy news week, so it's understandable if you missed a small but important announcement from the Treasury Department: The federal government is on track to borrow nearly $1 trillion this fiscal year — Trump's first full year in charge of the budget.

That's almost double what the government borrowed in fiscal year 2017.

Here are the exact figures: The U.S. Treasury expects to borrow $955 billion this fiscal year, according to a documents released Wednesday.

It's the highest amount of borrowing in six years, and a big jump from the $519 billion the federal government borrowed last year.

Treasury mainly attributed the increase to the “fiscal outlook.” The Congressional Budget Office was more blunt.

In a report this week, the CBO said tax receipts are going to be lower because of the new tax law.

The uptick in borrowing is yet another complication in the heated debates in Congress over whether to spend more money on infrastructure, the military, disaster relief and other domestic programs.

The deficit is already up significantly, even before Congress allots more money to any of these areas.

Misty » 05 Feb 2018 12:18 pm » wrote:

The U.S. government is set to borrow nearly $1 trillion this year, an 84 percent jump from last year.
Treasury mainly attributed the increase to the “fiscal outlook.” The Congressional Budget Office was more blunt.

Must be that Trump boom we keep hearing about.

isn't the economy, which is booming.

Misty » 05 Feb 2018 11:43 am » wrote:Not interested in reading your anti-American pro-Trump propaganda.

45 is operating straight from the dictator/authoritarian handbook.
First, appoint your family members to be part of the administration.
Second, attack the free press.
And third, attack government institutions.

And you are complicit in that.

Dossier author Steele wrote another anti-Trump memo; was fed info by Clinton-connected contact, Obama State Department
by Byron York
A newly released document from the Senate Judiciary Committee says Christopher Steele, the former British spy who compiled the Trump dossier, wrote an additional memo on the subject of Donald Trump and Russia that was not among those published by BuzzFeed in January 2017.

The newly released document is an unclassified and heavily redacted version of the criminal referral targeting Steele filed on Jan. 4 by Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. It appears to confirm some level of coordination between the extended Clinton circle and the Obama administration in the effort to seek damaging information about then-candidate Trump.

According to the referral, Steele wrote the additional memo based on anti-Trump information that originated with a foreign source. In a convoluted scheme outlined in the referral, the foreign source gave the information to an unnamed associate of Hillary and Bill Clinton, who then gave the information to an unnamed official in the Obama State Department, who then gave the information to Steele. Steele wrote a report based on the information, but the redacted version of the referral does not say what Steele did with the report after that.

Published accounts in the Guardian and the Washington Post have indicated that Clinton associate Cody Shearer was in contact with Steele about anti-Trump research, and Obama State Department official Jonathan Winer was a connection between Steele and the State Department during the 2016 campaign.

When Grassley and Graham filed the referral with the Justice Department on Jan. 4, the document was classified (although the two senators released an unclassified cover letter announcing the referral). What followed was a month of haggling with the Justice Department over what material in the referral could be made public. The result is the version of the referral released this morning. It has whole paragraphs and keywords blacked out, making it hard to discern its full meaning.

For example, a press release accompanying the referral said the referral "contains verbatim quotes from the [Carter Page surveillance] application that are not included in the [House Intelligence Committee] memo. Specifically, the referral quotes the application's descriptions of Steele's statements to the FBI about his contacts with the media." Lest anyone get too excited, the press release went on to say that the quotes "remain redacted" in the version of the referral released Monday.

Also redacted is information related to the key allegation of the Grassley-Graham referral: that Steele was untruthful with the FBI and Justice Department over the issue of his many contacts with the press. If Steele was acting as a trusted source for the FBI on the highly confidential Trump-Russia investigation, it would have been improper for him to share his information with the press at the same time.

Some of the redacted passages also relate to the question of statements about Steele's press contacts that the FBI made to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in applying for the Page surveillance warrant that was the subject of the House Intelligence Committee memo released Friday.
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http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/dossi ... le/2648099

Misty » 05 Feb 2018 11:43 am » wrote:Not interested in reading your anti-American pro-Trump propaganda.

45 is operating straight from the dictator/authoritarian handbook.
First, appoint your family members to be part of the administration.
Second, attack the free press.
And third, attack government institutions.

And you are complicit in that.

The Memo and the Mueller Probe
By Michael B. Mukasey
....In order to obtain the (FISA) warrant, the government had to show probable cause that Mr. Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power AND that in doing so he had committed a crime.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-memo-a ... 1517777842

Misty » 22 Jan 2018 8:35 pm » wrote:

Pennsylvania court orders new congressional map due to gerrymandering.

Pennsylvania’s top court on Monday threw out the state’s congressional map, ruling that Republican legislators unlawfully sought partisan advantage, and gave them three weeks to rework it in a decision that could boost Democratic chances of retaking the U.S. House of Representatives.

In a 5-2 decision, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled the electoral map violated the state’s Constitution by manipulating the district boundaries to marginalize Democratic voters, a practice called partisan gerrymandering.

Democrats, who hold only five of the state’s 18 congressional districts despite Pennsylvania’s status as an electoral swing state, hope to regain control of the House in the November mid-term elections by flipping 24 seats now held by Republicans nationwide.

A new map could give Democratic candidates a chance to capture as many as half a dozen Republican seats in Pennsylvania alone, with national polls showing voters strongly favoring Democrats in 2018.

Supreme Court allows revamp of Pennsylvania electoral map.

Feb 5 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to block a lower court ruling requiring Republican-drawn congressional districts in Pennsylvania to be reworked immediately, boosting Democratic hopes of winning control this year of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Justice Samuel Alito denied an emergency application filed by Republicans to stop the immediate reworking of the electoral district boundaries, preserving a ruling by the state's top court that they had unlawfully sought partisan advantage over the Democrats in drawing the maps.

Misty » 05 Feb 2018 2:58 pm » wrote:Pennsylvania court orders new congressional map due to gerrymandering.

Misty » 05 Feb 2018 11:43 am » wrote:Not interested in reading your anti-American pro-Trump propaganda.

45 is operating straight from the dictator/authoritarian handbook.
First, appoint your family members to be part of the administration.
Second, attack the free press.
And third, attack government institutions.

And you are complicit in that.