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The COMMENTARY Podcast hosts dissect the Justice Department’s disclosure of the FISA warrant that was used to surveil Carter Page; or, at least, the parts of the warrant that aren’t entirely redacted. They debate the pro- and anti-Trump camps’ claims, both of which are citing the warrant to claim victory. Also, the hosts explore the phenomenon of “owning the libs” and the joy it produces for its practitioners.
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Hard to know what happened. But I know 2 things: Trump was stupid and the Democrats are corrupt.
As a a born and raised Wauwatosa, Wisconsin-ite it was surreal to suddenly hear my hometown mentioned in this podcast. I don’t know about any duck jackets (Wauwatosa is a near west suburb of Milwaukee, not a rural town), LL Bean or otherwise, but I do know that Walters on North Avenue has some great fried cheese curds.
As I’ve heard Mark Steyn say, “Twitter exists for one reason – to destroy the careers of celebrities.”
Noah’s huge revelation that the Carter Page FISA warrant laid out the fact that the FBI did reveal that the Steele dossier was produced by a political campaign to discredit Candidate#1(Trump) has always been a known fact.
The issue is that this “fact” should not be footnote material, it is a classic case of burying the lede. Why would the FBI never mention that the political opposition in question is the effing opposition candidate and the national opposition party …. kind of an important omission to bury in a long footnote.
But this misses the larger point of why the Carter Page FISA warrant was such a FBI/DOJ/Intel community clusterschtoop …. The allegations laid out in the Steele dossier are all second and third hand hearsay and have never been verified, and if it turns out that the Steele dossier was the primary evidence of probable cause for the FISA warrant many very large heads will role.
I hope so. Much as I think Trump is a fool and way too much in the thrall of Vladimir Putin, I also think the FBI and Justice Dept. were completely corrupt in their handling of the Russia/Trump and Hillary/criminally negligent cases.
Indeed- Noah holds that view for exactly one reason- he hates Trump with a white hot passion (my own distaste for Trump is more normal day-glow orange- I deplore the bad stuff, e.g. Helsinki news conference, and appreciate good stuff- Pompeo), therefore because it is about Trump, Rosenstein/Comey/FISA are correct regardless of context or fact- all based on Noah’s boundless expertise regarding how FISA warrants normally are laid out; unlike, say, some pretender to expertise like Andy McCarthy. As Byron York addressed this it makes sense, I think:
Nunes Claim: a) Neither the initial application in October 2016, nor any of the renewals, disclose or reference the role of the DNC, Clinton campaign, or any party/campaign in funding Steele’s efforts, even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior DOJ and FBI officials.
That is accurate. Readers will search the FISA application in vain for any specific mention of the DNC, Clinton campaign, or any party/campaign funding of the dossier. For the most part, names were not used in the application, but Donald Trump was referred to as “Candidate #1,” Hillary Clinton was referred to as “Candidate #2,” and the Republican Party was referred to as “Political Party #1.” Thus, the FISA application could easily have explained that the dossier research was paid for by “Candidate #2” and “Political Party #2,” meaning the Democrats. And yet the FBI chose to describe the situation this way, in a footnote: “Source #1…was approached by an identified U.S. person, who indicated to Source #1 that a U.S.-based law firm had hired the identified U.S. person to conduct research regarding Candidate #1’s ties to Russia…The identified U.S. person hired Source #1 to conduct this research. The identified U.S. 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 U.S. person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit Candidate #1’s campaign.”
Democrats argue that the FISA Court judges should have been able to figure out, from that obscure description, that the DNC and Clinton campaign paid for the dossier. ……in any case, the Nunes memo’s statement that the FISA application did not disclose or reference the role of the DNC and the Clinton campaign is undeniably true.
Byron addresses this again here:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/why-didnt-fbi-tell-court-about-christopher-steele-bias