Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Smoking Gun: Steele Dossier, Russia Collusion, the Investigation IS the Cover-Up.
These guys were 100% right and I’m not sorry. The election was stolen because that was less risky than allowing a second Trump term to uncover the chain of abuses perpetrated by the Democrat Party.
The top analyst [FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten], assigned to the FBI’s Russia “collusion” case, codenamed Crossfire Hurricane, admitted under oath that neither he nor his team of half a dozen intelligence analysts could confirm any of the allegations in the [Steele] dossier — including ones the FBI nonetheless included in several warrant applications as evidence to establish legal grounds to electronically monitor a former Trump adviser for almost a year.
This guy was supposed to provide validation of at least something in the dossier for it to be presented as evidence for warrants — that’s his job — so that the FBI could begin its domestic spying on the Trump campaign. Without any corroboration, the FBI should never have presented a request to a judge, because there was nothing to stand on.
This doesn’t mean that the FBI was responsible for proving Russian collusion to investigate it, which would be silly. Instead, the FBI has a duty to have at least some basis for wire-tapping a Presidential campaign. An analogy is the way that prosecutors/investigators don’t get warrants signed for hunches — they must present evidence, and that evidence had better stand up to scrutiny. Therefore, the duty is on the prosecuting/investigating side to validate the evidence before they include it in a request for a warrant. No evidence, no warrant!
Former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who personally signed and approved the final application, has testified that without the dossier, the warrants could not have been obtained. — Ibid.
Notably, the campaign thus spied upon was the party not in power, that is, the party not currently giving orders to executive branch bodies such as the DoJ and the FBI. Perhaps I am wrong and this is not the strong case it appears to be, but Gen. Flynn seems to think this is sufficient to tweet-shout at newly-installed House Speaker Johnson, “Do Something!!!”
After years of digging, Auten conceded that the only material in the dossier that he could verify was information that was already publicly available, such as names, entities, and positions held by persons mentioned in the document. — Ibid.
When stated this way, it sounds like it might be something, but this is literally nothing. That’s the information off of people’s office doors. Here’s how the nothing just keeps rolling:
[Auten and his team] could not corroborate any of the allegations of Trump-Russia “collusion” in the dossier, and actually debunked many of them — including the rumor, oft-repeated by the media, that Trump attorney Michael Cohen flew to Prague in the summer of 2016 to secretly huddle with Kremlin agents over an alleged Trump-Russia plot to hack the election. They determined that Cohen had never even been to the Czech Republic. — Ibid.
Oh yeah, there’s more. A lot more. Read the whole thing. Gen Flynn did, and he’s mad as Hell:
It is actions such as that outlined in this breaking news by @paulsperry_ that drives Americans to the conclusion that the FBI can no longer be trusted and, in fact, should be dismantled from top to bottom.
Like a fish, the rot starts at the head. @SpeakerJohnson @GOP
— General Mike Flynn (@GenFlynn) October 30, 2023
.
Published in General
Reserved etc
Wow
That’s the CoC-acceptable version of what I said, too.
Heaven gets mad too. And when Heaven gets really mad, it’s pretty bad for the people on the wrong end of it.
This seems like old news. The new news is that at the same time the FBI spied on Congressional staffers. If the Speaker cannot or will not defend Congress from the Executive branch he should resign.
I had to retype it several times.
Old news is the dude that got shot. New news is we have the smoking gun.
Old news is that the FBI was “unable” to produce validation. New news is the guy who was supposed to do it said that he could not validate a single thing in Steele, and the FBI covered that up too.
This now immensely actionable. There’s no “constructive knowledge” or “duty to have known” any more — this is a beachhead way inside, a stone to grind the rest with.
Did you read the article at RCI?
Mostly. I still don’t see anything I did not know 3 years ago.
Vivek’s solution is necessary.
Right. That’s what I’m thinking. We knew all this. What’s prompting this current go-around?
Because once again I’m left thinking that Nothing Will Be Done About It. Because Nothing Has Ever Been Done About It
We all knew this was crap seven years ago. This, finally, is “the receipts”. It completes the documented chain of fraud, *and* we now have a Speaker who, if he has a hair on his ass, can do something with this and so far, I think he *will*.
I’ll take a backseat to nobody in my willingness to frag our “just over the next hill boys” leadership, and I think this goes somewhere.
Meaning nuke the FBI from orbit? He’s not the first to say it.
w00t
If the applicable FISA judge were a real jurist, there would be sanctions for those involved.
Judge “Rudy” was a friend of the Peter Straok. They hung out at parties together. There are not 3 branches of government, there is a just a cabal of people running the appearance of 3 branches. Our Constitution assumes there will be rivals between the branches and fails when there are colluding chums. This might be fixable by forbidding certain executives from fraternizing with the other branches, but rules and policies are only useful for ethical people. We saw Comey waive off any policy that should have kept him from getting involved in the 2016 election.
When idiot Lefties laugh at, and try to label as conspiracy theory the notion of the “Deep State”(ie: Jaime Raskin, Dan Goldman) now you can provide them a name of a faceless FBI bureaucrat Brian Auten buried in the bowels of FBI DC HQ making the entirely corrupt politicized decision to attempt to destroy a duly elected President and screw with the legal functioning of an Administration …. and one can argue illegally influence both the 2016 and 2020 elections.
Disgusting …. and the MSM continues to drive by step over the dead bodies of the most vast scandal in US history pretending not to see or smell the stench corruption ….. because Trump.
Potemkin Government.
You mean the ones on Ricochet?
A secret court as FISA established is antithetical to our system of justice. Despicable.
just remember, the same FBI
Hell, Conservative Inc and definitely GOPe too. Then again, this too we knew six years ago. I agree with BDB: now we have more specifics to latch on to for anyone interested in latching on. I’m just not optimistic that anyone will latch on effectively; will Republican actions now be more of “the investigation is the coverup”?
I’m likely in the minority on this but I believe that Moving On is the exact wrong move if one is at all interested in draining the swamp, making America great again, breaking the advance of corruption and capture of all of our institutions and values, and having any chance for prosperous liberty. So president Trump or president Ramaswamy would be good, but that’s not nearly enough. We need House leadership, Senate leadership, and the RNC pulling in the same direction too. Do we now have the House on board? Hopefully. Now we need some Flight 93 Senators to force Mitch and the swampers out over there. What will it take to change the RNC? Not sure on that, but it’s needed.
Perhaps Judge Rudy should be impeached or prosecuted for failing in his duty. Shouldn’t the judge have examined the evidence being presented to him to justify the warrant? If he had examined it, wouldn’t he have reached the conclusion that there was no basis?
See the second half of this:
https://ricochet.com/1448264/another-clue-to-the-coup/
Many in GOPe fell for Russian Collusion – Kristol (and most of the Weekly Standard writers), French was another.
No only did they fall for Russian Collusion, they also fell for Hunter’s laptop was Russian Disinformation.
They wanted to. Their positions depended upon believing, and so believe they did.
I’m becoming old and crotchety. The Left won’t believe it and no one will get in trouble. Period.
I realized this when Lois Lerner did not pay for her politization of the IRS.
They didn’t just fall for it, they were pushing it. Likely would have invented it themselves, if the left hadn’t done it for them.
You knit?
Oh, you meant crotchety.
Exactly. Judge Rudy is either corrupt and should go or he was deceived by the FBI and should be jailing folks.