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If They Can Do It to Carter Page, They Can Do It to You
Reading Wednesday’s article by Mollie Hemingway (far and away one of the best writers in Washington) “Criminal Referral Confirms Nunes Memo’s Explosive Claims of FISA Abuse,” then reading the entire Senate Referral memo comes very close to causing one’s head to simply explode. There is ample evidence contained within of the most blatant kind of dishonesty and fraud practiced upon a Federal Court. These are the kind of lies to a court which would – and should — get almost any lawyer whose name is not Clinton or Obama permanently disbarred, or at the very least severely disciplined by a Bar Association.
Which raises a naturally occurring question: has the DC Bar Association completely shut down? Is it no longer a functioning organization with the usual disciplinary enforcement procedures?
But, the question we (my wife and law partner and I) keep coming up with is this one, and to which there is no logical answer we can see, unless there are major facts not yet in the public record: why has the entire Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, en banc, not issued contempt show cause orders to Comey, Rosenstein the Reptile, Yates, McCabe, Strzok, and the whole barrel of twisting, hissing, frighteningly dangerous snakes who lied and lied and lied to the Court, time and time and time again? I simply cannot understand it unless, as one must say to be as fair as possible under these circumstances, there is very strong evidence yet to come outside the Nunes memo and now this Senate Memo.
I only know that if I had done this to a Court, I would be sitting in my newly-hired lawyer’s office getting ready for a contempt hearing, after which would come a disciplinary hearing before the Office of Disciplinary Counsel of the Louisiana State Bar Association.
Don’t think Gestapo tactics could ever happen here in America? Ask Gen. Flynn, Carter Page, Paul Manafort, et al., what they think about that.
Published in General
I read that piece from Mollie this morning. (Yes, she is one of the best — and fairest — writers covering Washington today.)
I look at all this obvious corruption and I wonder why the whole dirty gang isn’t locked up. It’s hard not to imagine that if the party tags were flipped, we would have already seen multiple indictments.
The California Bar is certainly useless. The ABA became a left wing adjunct of the Main stream media.
Disgraceful. I wonder if this is ever fully exposed?
I am liking this post based on its other merits, and because Mollie Hemingway cannot get enough favorable mentions.
Agree fully, with all clauses.
If they can do it to Carter Page, they can do it to you.
First they came for Carter Page ………..
The problem is corporate welfare. We wouldn’t want to do anything to upset that, because if we did that how would Republican congressional candidates finance their campaigns? All the other money is controlled by the left establishment, so what other choice is there? Best not to rock the boat.
because they hold them in contempt secretly? ;-)
I fear this is why we got Trump. I had hopes for Romney but he passed up so many opportunities to make good points in 2012 that I despaired. Only a guy who is rich and a little crazy would take on the Deep State.
I think this is getting a little bit hysterical. The criminal referral says that Steele lied to the FBI when he said he had not previously talked to the press about his dossier. Or, if he did not lie, then the FBI did not disclose to the FISC the fact that Steele had talked to the press. Frankly, I seriously doubt that it is criminal even if Steele did lie to the FBI. Section 1001 makes it a crime to lie to the FBI about a material fact. I can’t see how talking to Yahoo! is material to anything. I also have not seen anything but speculation that the FBI was acting on improper motives in surveilling Carter Page (plausible speculation, but speculation nonetheless), or that Carter Page ever had any material communications with Trump or anyone close to Trump much less that he was in possession of any deep dark campaign secrets or strategies.
What drives me batty is that people on our side get all in a lather about supposed criminal activities without any real evidence or clear explanation of the supposed crime (just like the Democrats have been doing for the last year). But when there is clear and unequivocal proof of criminal activity by the other side, it just gets ignored. An example: Hillary destroyed 30,000 e-mails which she knew were under subpoena or about to be subpoenaed. That is a crime. That is, without a doubt, without conjecture, without speculation, and with no further evidence needed, a serious crime. And yet we spend all this time yakking about a FISA warrant that may have been totally meaningless, and almost ignore Hillary’s despoliation of evidence. I just don’t get it.
Mollie Hemingway did a magnificent job, with her clarity of writing and the sub headlines, in explaining what otherwise could be a rather difficult trail to follow…for someone not paying much attention, in other words, for most folks.
It’s all a nothingburger, designed to divert attention from Trump’s crimes. Just ask @fredcole
And the Moderator will get you if you don’t watch out….
Hillary has an impenetrable Obama-shaped shield. She goes down for the emails, it implicates Obama. Ain’t gonna happen. Everybody knows it.
Maybe. Maybe not. I still say we should focus on what matters, and not on the sideshows.
Nobody is going down. The fix is in. That’s what the available evidence shows. Why did Sztrok and Page feel free to commit their conversations to texts on FBI phones? Because they know it doesn’t matter. Why is the FISA application junk? Because it doesn’t matter and they know it. They are just going through the motions. Why no contempt citations from bamboozled FISA court judges? Because they don’t find it contemptible at all. Anybody from the IRS go to jail? Nope. Benghazi? Nope. Wait… the movie guy who had nothing to do with anything went to the slammer, but except for him, nobody. The Bundy fiasco? Uranium One? Clinton Foundation? Fast and Furious? The Left has finally arrived at the point they’ve been aiming for since FDR wrote “Whither Bound” in, what 1920? They are dug into the bureaucracy like ticks. Electoral politics on the national level are almost moot.
I agree with you. However, in order to do that we fist have to dispense with the nonsense of Russia and collusion. Because, despite HRC and her email imbroglio being 100% known, no one (including Republicans) is pursuing it and instead everyone (including Republicans) is pursuing Russia and Trump despite little to no evidence of anything there.
So, yes, things outta be different but they aren’t for several reasons. As much as Achilles should be triumphant he still must guard against a little dart to the heel before he can complete the victory.
The form that has to take is for the case to be made (not by Trump because the source would taint the conclusions in that case) first that the Russia nonsense is in fact nonsense, second that it was not simply good faith people following credible evidence but that it was intentionally ginned up to cripple/remove Trump and to deflect from the real abuses of power, third only then can we pursue the other already proven crimes and abuses. Because the media and entertainment are in the tank and they won’t go where they don’t want to go unless we make it impossible to ignore or deflect.
Daily I’m amazed at those who will not accept this as fact. Something about ‘there are none so blind as those who will not see.’
Describing the politicized basis of hiring at the FBI, former Navy SEAL and ex-FBI agent Jonathan Gilliam says he was advised to “think like a liberal” while taking the entrance exams, or he wouldn’t be hired.
At the beginning of the Trump administration I thought nobody was going down. As usual bygones were going to be allowed to be bygones (and I was somewhat ok with offenders paying the ultimate political price of loss of power). But then the narrative of Trump the awful treasonous colluder didn’t die down but actually ramped up. And Trump didn’t run from the controversy (good on him). So now we’re too far down the trail for bygones to be bygones. Either the accusations against Trump are true and we resolve that or what’s looking more obvious that the power of the state was weaponized for political purposes (as opposed to political combatants merely slinging untrue mud at one another on their own dime and power).
Help me connect this Carter Page FISA issue to the bigger picture.
If I understand it correctly, Steele’s dossier contained info on Page — one or more meetings with one or more Russians — that was used in a warrant to justify FISA surveillance of Page. Is that right? Page was the primary target in this one instance?
If I understand correctly, surveillance of anyone he talks to is then permitted. Even when he’s not with them. In March 2016, he was described in the DOJ filing about a guilty plea in a spy case as having been a paid informant for the FBI.
From Hugh Hewitt:
He goes into detail about many aspects of FISA in the linked column.
I’ll note in passing that March 2016 is not “the summer of 2016.”
The Deputy Assitant Attorney General who I think would have been the immediate manager of both the Clinton server and the Russian collusion investigations has stepped down “for personal reasons.”
Right, but if Page isn’t integral to the campaign, he wouldn’t be talking to anyone important. Assuming the FBI figured this out during the first period of surveillance, why keep renewing the warrant? Was it just to be able to say that Trump’s Campaign was under investigation? Was there something worth investigating? While I can see the FBI breaking some rules to get prime target under surveillance, even the most politically motivated agents aren’t going to want to waste their time/effort on a dead end, unless it’s just for show.
Well that is a good question @dorrk. Lots of folks are wondering how the FBI was able to continue re-upping the warrant. What additional info were they using for the judge. They are supposed to show the judge some reason. But remember the situation when Admiral Mike Rodgers (CIA) met with Trump and the next day Trump moved his entire staff out of Trump Tower and to a private club he owned? Apparently POTUS was told then that he was being electronically surveilled in that building.
Edit: Adm Rogers…NSA, not CIA.
For an unusually hard-hitting piece from a usually very cautious expert in this insane and blatant abuse of power, see Andrew McCarthy’s article this morning on National Review Online. It is a powerful indictment of the conduct of the entire out of control Obama-Lynch-Comey-McCabe-Yates-etc police state machine.
Sincerely, Jim
As a civilian with no background or experience in law enforcement or the legal profession(s) my views may have little coherence with reality and are probably not worth the the time it took you to read this sentence. However if you’ve read this far here’s my rather cynical take. This whole thing is all B.S. There is little truth being expressed on either side. Those charging collusion and or treason are caught in a contradictory trap of alleging that Trump is a total idiot who is unqualified to be POTUS while simultaneously an evil Machiavellian mastermind. And don’t even try to sell me the notion that they’re only doing this out of duty to protect our national interests and sovereignty. That dog won’t hunt. Meanwhile those defending the president on the basis that he is just a political naif who didn’t realize that he and his team were blundering into sensitive areas of national security while at the same time talking about his genius at reading opponents and crating plans to “drain the swamp” are in a similar dilemma. In my opinion the FBI used dubious “evidence” (i.e. speculation and conjecture) to obtain warrants but this is no different than what thousands of investigators and prosecutors do every day. In light of this the team Trump assertion that this is something new and unprecedented is just spin. The bottom line is that it’s all just an adversarial process by actors with competing agendas with little hope of finding any truth, not the least because no one is actually looking for it. So far the person that I believe the most in this situation is Mueller and that is just because, to my knowledge, he has hasn’t actually said anything yet.
So you believe that when the FBI surveilles a Presidential campaign and then the actual President is something that happens every day? Maybe I’m misunderstanding, but if not, yours is an amazingly casual attitude, imho.
So far, I don’t believe that it is something that happened at all. At least there is no evidence of that yet. A low level “volunteer” who never even spoke to Trump is not the Trump “campaign.” And while I haven’t been able to get clear on the time line, it does seem that Page had already been booted from the Trump campaign before the first FISA warrant on him was issued.
What Java was saying happens every day is that prosecutors and police use questionable evidence when they seek warrants. And he’s right.
Please read both items linked in my post, especially the Senate memo itself, and then read McCarthy’s article of this morning, and also the Eli Lake piece this afternoon on Bloomberg and you will fully understand the warrant and the three renewals were based on no evidence whatsoever – questionable, fake, fraudulent or any other kind. It was not based on any evidence! It was a fraud upon the Court and therefore upon Carter Page and every American citizen.
Sincerely, Jim