Carter Page FISA Warrant Perfectly Legal

[Uncensored2008]

hey dufuss the FISA just issued a very public rebuke of the fbi
care to comment/???

Did they said it was "illegal"?

That's like saying if a cop catches me stealing and sez I stole a dime when I really stole a nickel the cops wrong.

Just quote where the IG said the Carter Page FISA warrants were "illegal".

The IG said there was serious misconduct, he made one criminal referral and said he would leave it to the DOJ for further determination. You didn't watch his testimony, did ya?

.

Even though mistakes were made - where did the IG say the FISA warrants were "illegal".

Secret court judge orders FBI to reform FISA process

 

[westwall]

hey dufuss the FISA just issued a very public rebuke of the fbi
care to comment/???

Did they said it was "illegal"?

That's like saying if a cop catches me stealing and sez I stole a dime when I really stole a nickel the cops wrong.

Just quote where the IG said the Carter Page FISA warrants were "illegal".

17 instances of lies or failures to provide exculpatory evidence.

In other words, time for you to lay off the firewater....chief.

Just quote where the IG said the Carter Page FISA warrants were "illegal".

That's what those irregularities mean. Illegal.

I know you suffered several drops on your head, but truly, try to not be so stupid.

 

[OKTexas]

hey dufuss the FISA just issued a very public rebuke of the fbi
care to comment/???

Did they said it was "illegal"?

That's like saying if a cop catches me stealing and sez I stole a dime when I really stole a nickel the cops wrong.

Just quote where the IG said the Carter Page FISA warrants were "illegal".

The IG said there was serious misconduct, he made one criminal referral and said he would leave it to the DOJ for further determination. You didn't watch his testimony, did ya?

.

Even though mistakes were made - where did the IG say the FISA warrants were "illegal".

Intentional perjury is not a mistake. Falsifying documents is not a mistake. Intentional omission of exculpatory evidence is not a mistake. All are criminal and all are documented in the DOJ IG report. The very first warrant contained 10 serious instances of willful misconduct, no simple mistakes. All of the misconduct made the warrant, and it's renewals, illegal and a serious violation of Pages civil rights. The DOJ will determine who gets charged for this illegal activity and you can bet Page will be a very wealthy man when it's all over.

You can keep lying that the warrant was legal, it wasn't. So carry on commie you're a waste of good oxygen.

.

 

[westwall]

I see lackey, the village idiot, has no response. Typical progressive retard.

 

[lennypartiv]

Nor do we care

Yes you do.

 

[easyt65]

One of the most popular arguments on the right to excuse President Donald Trump from wrongdoing ahead of any findings from the Russia investigation is to claim that the investigation itself is corrupt — and these arguments typically center on the idea, with no evidence whatsoever, that the FBI lied to the judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court when pursuing a warrant to probe Trump’s presidential campaign.

Trump himself has made this claim on Twitter, saying that “the Trump Campaign for President was illegally being spied upon” for “the political gain of Crooked Hillary Clinton and the DNC,” and that “the DOJ, FBI and Obama Gang need to be held to account” because they “Misled the Court to provide a pretext to SPY on the Trump Team.” And he even recklessly moved to declassify sensitive documents surrounding the surveillance of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page, in the attempt to try to prove this misconduct.

But Trump is wrong. And in fact, he is so stunningly wrong that his own lawyers with the Department of Justice had to take the extraordinary step of saying, in a filing to the D.C. District Court for a Freedom of Information Act case, that Trump essentially has no idea what he’s talking about on FISA classification, and that what he says on Twitter cannot be presumed to be evidence of anything:

The idea that the FBI misled FISA judges to get a warrant against the Trump campaign has been debunked by the release of the FISA applications, revealing that there was a perfectly solid legal basis to investigate Carter Page amid his suspicious travel to Russia.

But this narrative persists among Trump’s political allies, and in the right-wing echo chamber. Outgoing House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) released a flimsy, partisan memo that claimed to prove FISA wrongdoing. Meanwhile, right-wing commentators like Sean Hannity have enthusiastically called for heads to roll at the FBI over the supposed lies in FISA court.

Thus, it would seem the short form of the DOJ’s argument in this filing is: Mr. President, lay off the Fox News.

More: The US Justice Department just filed court documents arguing that Trump has no idea what he's talking about

Well, that settles that. I agree that Trump (and his base) should lay off the Fox News.

hey dufuss the FISA just issued a very public rebuke of the fbi
care to comment/???

Did they said it was "illegal"?

That's like saying if a cop catches me stealing and sez I stole a dime when I really stole a nickel the cops wrong.

Just quote where the IG said the Carter Page FISA warrants were "illegal".

The IG said there was serious misconduct, he made one criminal referral and said he would leave it to the DOJ for further determination. You didn't watch his testimony, did ya?

.

17 significant violations...and Horowitz knows Durham's criminal investigation is bringing the 'thunder'.

 

[easyt65]

Even though mistakes were made - where did the IG say the FISA warrants were "illegal".

You truly are the 'village idiot' and obviously love to show it again and again, over and over.

What part of 'altering official documents', manufacturing false evidence, withholding evidence do you NOT understand. What part of FISA Court ABUSE through crimes committed do you NOT understand?


What part of the FISA Court's unprecedented rebuke of Rosenstein & Comey & the FBI, stating,

"The frequency with which representations made by FBI personnel turned out to be unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession, and with which they withheld information detrimental to their case, calls into question whether information contained in other FBI applications is reliable,”

Do you NOT understand, snowflake?

It really is true - you can't fix 'STUPID'.

.

 

[Zorro!]

One of the most popular arguments on the right to excuse President Donald Trump from wrongdoing ahead of any findings from the Russia investigation...

They found ZERO evidence that Trump or his campaign was in a criminal conspiracy with the Russians.

... is to claim that the investigation itself is corrupt — and these arguments typically center on the idea, with no evidence whatsoever, that the FBI lied to the judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court when pursuing a warrant to probe Trump’s presidential campaign...

They did lie, forged an exculpatory document to make it appear incriminating and they concealed information from the Court that exonerated Page and showed that the FBI's sources were nowhere near as reliable as the FBI claimed.

...Trump himself has made this claim on Twitter, saying that “the Trump Campaign for President was illegally being spied upon” for “the political gain of Crooked Hillary Clinton and the DNC,” and that “the DOJ, FBI and Obama Gang need to be held to account” because they “Misled the Court to provide a pretext to SPY on the Trump Team.”...

And he's right.

... The idea that the FBI misled FISA judges to get a warrant against the Trump campaign has been debunked by the release of the FISA applications, revealing that there was a perfectly solid legal basis to investigate Carter Page amid his suspicious travel to Russia...

No. John Brennan informed the FBI repeatedly and in writing, and he has the paper trail to back it up, and Horowitz has confirmed that he does, that Carter Page was a very reliable and productive CIA source, and as their source he traveled to Russia and interacted with Russian Intelligence. The FBI took one of the emails explaining this and added "NOT A" next to source, a forgery that reversed the meaning of the sentence and submitted it as evidence that Carter Page was a spy in a criminal conspiracy with the Russian Government to harm the interests of The American People. When you lie to, conceal from and forge documents to submit to the FISA Court, the spying that results is ILLEGAL.

... But this narrative persists among Trump’s political allies, and in the right-wing echo chamber. Outgoing House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) released a flimsy, partisan memo that claimed to prove FISA wrongdoing...

Nunes was correct as was his memo and the popular question now is WHY THE FISA COURT repeatedly blew him off, when 18 months ago he reported the FBI misdeeds to the FISA Court. Now this week the FISA Court came out with a CYA rebuke of the FBI, but where the hell were they when the warrants were be submitted and where have they been for 18 months?

FISA court's rebuke of the FBI: It broke or ignored the rules and our rights

The presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) has issued a stinging rebuke to the FBI in the wake of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the bureau’s serial abuses in the surveillance of Carter Page.

She's the same one that blew off Devin Nunes, twice, when he informed her of all this 18 months ago.​

In the FISC’s assessment, the derelictions in the Page surveillance warrants are so serious, the court’s judges cannot be confident that any warrant applications the FBI has submitted are accurate and complete — i.e., that the bureau’s assertions have been true and, even if true, were not misleading because of the omission of relevant information.

Given how many different ways they lied to the Court on the Carter Page Warrants used to spy on The Trump Campaign, Transition and Administration, they are concerned that the FBI may habitually lie to them, about everything, on every warrant,​

Consequently, in an extraordinary public order on Tuesday, the secret court’s presiding judge, Rosemary Collyer, directed the Justice Department and the FBI to conduct a thorough review of all submissions the bureau has made to the FISC. They have about three weeks (until Jan. 10, 2020) to explain what steps have been taken to assure the candor of each submission.

Given that there have been many submissions, this seems like a great burden in such a crunched time frame. The FISC, however, is simply demanding to be satisfied that the FBI has done what it has led the court to believe it has been doing all along. Justice Department and FBI procedures, along with FISC rules, require that every factual assertion in an application to the FISC be verified and accurate. The bureau is supposed to go through this process of validating every fact alleged in every foreign intelligence surveillance case as a matter of routine.

The Page surveillance warrants demonstrate that the process either is broken or has been ignored.

It is obviously vital that the court take curative action. The inspector general’s (IG) report outlines shocking deception of the FISC and violations of Page’s civil rights. The court has supervisory responsibility over the orders it has issued, and it must evaluate the credibility of future government submissions. The IG report’s revelations, moreover, come on the heels of Obama-era surveillance abuses. In 2016, for example, the court observed that, in administering FISA programs, the intelligence community was guilty of an “institutional lack of candor” — engaging in and concealing the unauthorized interception of communications. The same intelligence community, on the watch of CIA Director John Brennan, was caught hacking the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The most palpable problem with FISA involves what Judge Collyer describes as the heightened duty of candor.

It is not unusual for investigators to meet secretly with judges to obtain highly intrusive warrants. But there’s a big difference between criminal investigations and counterintelligence: When FBI criminal investigators and federal prosecutors secretly apply to a judge for an eavesdropping, search, or arrest warrant, they know their work is going to be checked. In the criminal justice system, the operating assumption is that there eventually will be an indictment, which will trigger due process requirements of discovery. If government officials have made false or misleading statements to the court, if they have withheld critical exculpatory information, that will become known. There will be serious consequences.

In stark contrast, counterintelligence is classified. The goal is to collect information for national security purposes, not build criminal prosecutions. The vast majority of the time, there will be no indictment — and certainly no discovery. The system has no internal check to keep people honest.

In FISA proceedings, the only due process an American can ever get occurs in that secret meeting between the judge and officials from the Justice Department and FBI. If the FISC cannot ensure that intelligence officials honor the codified standards of integrity and transparency, the system fails. And unlike defense counsel in a criminal case (many of whom are former prosecutors), the court is not staffed with experienced investigators. It has neither the capability nor the institutional competence to pore over government submissions, spot the weaknesses, locate witnesses, examine documentary proof and dismantle a weak government presentation. That is not the judges’ fault. What we are talking about is simply not their job. Thus, the court has no choice but to rely on the government’s candor.

Judge Collyer is right to be outraged at the FBI’s malfeasance here. She has nothing to say, though, about the uncomfortable fact that the FISC did a poor job here, too. The version of the Page warrants made available publicly is heavily redacted, but what has been revealed shows the probable cause showing was rife with problems — uncorroborated sources; the FBI permitted to “speculate” and offer its “beliefs” about its main informant, rather than being pressed by the court to question him; news media stories offered as evidence, and relied on for 11 months even though the FBI had plenty of time to do independent investigation.

And even after it had become apparent, based on congressional investigations, that significant abuses had occurred, former FISC Chief Judge John Bates made this astonishing public statement: “I will note, and note with some force, that I have seen nothing that indicates that the court was misled, that the Department of Justice or the intelligence community made misrepresentations to the court.” Really?

FISA court's rebuke of the FBI: It broke or ignored the rules and our rights

 

[Lakhota]

One of the most popular arguments on the right to excuse President Donald Trump from wrongdoing ahead of any findings from the Russia investigation...

They found ZERO evidence that Trump or his campaign was in a criminal conspiracy with the Russians.

... is to claim that the investigation itself is corrupt — and these arguments typically center on the idea, with no evidence whatsoever, that the FBI lied to the judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court when pursuing a warrant to probe Trump’s presidential campaign...

They did lie, forged an exculpatory document to make it appear incriminating and they concealed information from the Court that exonerated Page and showed that the FBI's sources were nowhere near as reliable as the FBI claimed.

...Trump himself has made this claim on Twitter, saying that “the Trump Campaign for President was illegally being spied upon” for “the political gain of Crooked Hillary Clinton and the DNC,” and that “the DOJ, FBI and Obama Gang need to be held to account” because they “Misled the Court to provide a pretext to SPY on the Trump Team.”...

And he's right.

... The idea that the FBI misled FISA judges to get a warrant against the Trump campaign has been debunked by the release of the FISA applications, revealing that there was a perfectly solid legal basis to investigate Carter Page amid his suspicious travel to Russia...

No. John Brennan informed the FBI repeatedly and in writing, and he has the paper trail to back it up, and Horowitz has confirmed that he does, that Carter Page was a very reliable and productive CIA source, and as their source he traveled to Russia and interacted with Russian Intelligence. The FBI took one of the emails explaining this and added "NOT A" next to source, a forgery that reversed the meaning of the sentence and submitted it as evidence that Carter Page was a spy in a criminal conspiracy with the Russian Government to harm the interests of The American People. When you lie to, conceal from and forge documents to submit to the FISA Court, the spying that results is ILLEGAL.

... But this narrative persists among Trump’s political allies, and in the right-wing echo chamber. Outgoing House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) released a flimsy, partisan memo that claimed to prove FISA wrongdoing...

Nunes was correct as was his memo and the popular question now is WHY THE FISA COURT repeatedly blew him off, when 18 months ago he reported the FBI misdeeds to the FISA Court. Now this week the FISA Court came out with a CYA rebuke of the FBI, but where the hell were they when the warrants were be submitted and where have they been for 18 months?

FISA court's rebuke of the FBI: It broke or ignored the rules and our rights

The presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) has issued a stinging rebuke to the FBI in the wake of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the bureau’s serial abuses in the surveillance of Carter Page.

She's the same one that blew off Devin Nunes, twice, when he informed her of all this 18 months ago.​

In the FISC’s assessment, the derelictions in the Page surveillance warrants are so serious, the court’s judges cannot be confident that any warrant applications the FBI has submitted are accurate and complete — i.e., that the bureau’s assertions have been true and, even if true, were not misleading because of the omission of relevant information.

Given how many different ways they lied to the Court on the Carter Page Warrants used to spy on The Trump Campaign, Transition and Administration, they are concerned that the FBI may habitually lie to them, about everything, on every warrant,​

Consequently, in an extraordinary public order on Tuesday, the secret court’s presiding judge, Rosemary Collyer, directed the Justice Department and the FBI to conduct a thorough review of all submissions the bureau has made to the FISC. They have about three weeks (until Jan. 10, 2020) to explain what steps have been taken to assure the candor of each submission.

Given that there have been many submissions, this seems like a great burden in such a crunched time frame. The FISC, however, is simply demanding to be satisfied that the FBI has done what it has led the court to believe it has been doing all along. Justice Department and FBI procedures, along with FISC rules, require that every factual assertion in an application to the FISC be verified and accurate. The bureau is supposed to go through this process of validating every fact alleged in every foreign intelligence surveillance case as a matter of routine.

The Page surveillance warrants demonstrate that the process either is broken or has been ignored.

It is obviously vital that the court take curative action. The inspector general’s (IG) report outlines shocking deception of the FISC and violations of Page’s civil rights. The court has supervisory responsibility over the orders it has issued, and it must evaluate the credibility of future government submissions. The IG report’s revelations, moreover, come on the heels of Obama-era surveillance abuses. In 2016, for example, the court observed that, in administering FISA programs, the intelligence community was guilty of an “institutional lack of candor” — engaging in and concealing the unauthorized interception of communications. The same intelligence community, on the watch of CIA Director John Brennan, was caught hacking the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The most palpable problem with FISA involves what Judge Collyer describes as the heightened duty of candor.

It is not unusual for investigators to meet secretly with judges to obtain highly intrusive warrants. But there’s a big difference between criminal investigations and counterintelligence: When FBI criminal investigators and federal prosecutors secretly apply to a judge for an eavesdropping, search, or arrest warrant, they know their work is going to be checked. In the criminal justice system, the operating assumption is that there eventually will be an indictment, which will trigger due process requirements of discovery. If government officials have made false or misleading statements to the court, if they have withheld critical exculpatory information, that will become known. There will be serious consequences.

In stark contrast, counterintelligence is classified. The goal is to collect information for national security purposes, not build criminal prosecutions. The vast majority of the time, there will be no indictment — and certainly no discovery. The system has no internal check to keep people honest.

In FISA proceedings, the only due process an American can ever get occurs in that secret meeting between the judge and officials from the Justice Department and FBI. If the FISC cannot ensure that intelligence officials honor the codified standards of integrity and transparency, the system fails. And unlike defense counsel in a criminal case (many of whom are former prosecutors), the court is not staffed with experienced investigators. It has neither the capability nor the institutional competence to pore over government submissions, spot the weaknesses, locate witnesses, examine documentary proof and dismantle a weak government presentation. That is not the judges’ fault. What we are talking about is simply not their job. Thus, the court has no choice but to rely on the government’s candor.

Judge Collyer is right to be outraged at the FBI’s malfeasance here. She has nothing to say, though, about the uncomfortable fact that the FISC did a poor job here, too. The version of the Page warrants made available publicly is heavily redacted, but what has been revealed shows the probable cause showing was rife with problems — uncorroborated sources; the FBI permitted to “speculate” and offer its “beliefs” about its main informant, rather than being pressed by the court to question him; news media stories offered as evidence, and relied on for 11 months even though the FBI had plenty of time to do independent investigation.

And even after it had become apparent, based on congressional investigations, that significant abuses had occurred, former FISC Chief Judge John Bates made this astonishing public statement: “I will note, and note with some force, that I have seen nothing that indicates that the court was misled, that the Department of Justice or the intelligence community made misrepresentations to the court.” Really?

FISA court's rebuke of the FBI: It broke or ignored the rules and our rights

Did the IG say the FISA warrants were illegal? If so - please provide a "credible" source.

Regardless, the whole Carter Page saga is irrelevant to Trump's impeachment. His Ukraine bribery/extortion for personal political gain got him impeached.

 

[eagle1462010]

One of the most popular arguments on the right to excuse President Donald Trump from wrongdoing ahead of any findings from the Russia investigation...

They found ZERO evidence that Trump or his campaign was in a criminal conspiracy with the Russians.

... is to claim that the investigation itself is corrupt — and these arguments typically center on the idea, with no evidence whatsoever, that the FBI lied to the judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court when pursuing a warrant to probe Trump’s presidential campaign...

They did lie, forged an exculpatory document to make it appear incriminating and they concealed information from the Court that exonerated Page and showed that the FBI's sources were nowhere near as reliable as the FBI claimed.

...Trump himself has made this claim on Twitter, saying that “the Trump Campaign for President was illegally being spied upon” for “the political gain of Crooked Hillary Clinton and the DNC,” and that “the DOJ, FBI and Obama Gang need to be held to account” because they “Misled the Court to provide a pretext to SPY on the Trump Team.”...

And he's right.

... The idea that the FBI misled FISA judges to get a warrant against the Trump campaign has been debunked by the release of the FISA applications, revealing that there was a perfectly solid legal basis to investigate Carter Page amid his suspicious travel to Russia...

No. John Brennan informed the FBI repeatedly and in writing, and he has the paper trail to back it up, and Horowitz has confirmed that he does, that Carter Page was a very reliable and productive CIA source, and as their source he traveled to Russia and interacted with Russian Intelligence. The FBI took one of the emails explaining this and added "NOT A" next to source, a forgery that reversed the meaning of the sentence and submitted it as evidence that Carter Page was a spy in a criminal conspiracy with the Russian Government to harm the interests of The American People. When you lie to, conceal from and forge documents to submit to the FISA Court, the spying that results is ILLEGAL.

... But this narrative persists among Trump’s political allies, and in the right-wing echo chamber. Outgoing House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) released a flimsy, partisan memo that claimed to prove FISA wrongdoing...

Nunes was correct as was his memo and the popular question now is WHY THE FISA COURT repeatedly blew him off, when 18 months ago he reported the FBI misdeeds to the FISA Court. Now this week the FISA Court came out with a CYA rebuke of the FBI, but where the hell were they when the warrants were be submitted and where have they been for 18 months?

FISA court's rebuke of the FBI: It broke or ignored the rules and our rights

The presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) has issued a stinging rebuke to the FBI in the wake of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the bureau’s serial abuses in the surveillance of Carter Page.

She's the same one that blew off Devin Nunes, twice, when he informed her of all this 18 months ago.​

In the FISC’s assessment, the derelictions in the Page surveillance warrants are so serious, the court’s judges cannot be confident that any warrant applications the FBI has submitted are accurate and complete — i.e., that the bureau’s assertions have been true and, even if true, were not misleading because of the omission of relevant information.

Given how many different ways they lied to the Court on the Carter Page Warrants used to spy on The Trump Campaign, Transition and Administration, they are concerned that the FBI may habitually lie to them, about everything, on every warrant,​

Consequently, in an extraordinary public order on Tuesday, the secret court’s presiding judge, Rosemary Collyer, directed the Justice Department and the FBI to conduct a thorough review of all submissions the bureau has made to the FISC. They have about three weeks (until Jan. 10, 2020) to explain what steps have been taken to assure the candor of each submission.

Given that there have been many submissions, this seems like a great burden in such a crunched time frame. The FISC, however, is simply demanding to be satisfied that the FBI has done what it has led the court to believe it has been doing all along. Justice Department and FBI procedures, along with FISC rules, require that every factual assertion in an application to the FISC be verified and accurate. The bureau is supposed to go through this process of validating every fact alleged in every foreign intelligence surveillance case as a matter of routine.

The Page surveillance warrants demonstrate that the process either is broken or has been ignored.

It is obviously vital that the court take curative action. The inspector general’s (IG) report outlines shocking deception of the FISC and violations of Page’s civil rights. The court has supervisory responsibility over the orders it has issued, and it must evaluate the credibility of future government submissions. The IG report’s revelations, moreover, come on the heels of Obama-era surveillance abuses. In 2016, for example, the court observed that, in administering FISA programs, the intelligence community was guilty of an “institutional lack of candor” — engaging in and concealing the unauthorized interception of communications. The same intelligence community, on the watch of CIA Director John Brennan, was caught hacking the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The most palpable problem with FISA involves what Judge Collyer describes as the heightened duty of candor.

It is not unusual for investigators to meet secretly with judges to obtain highly intrusive warrants. But there’s a big difference between criminal investigations and counterintelligence: When FBI criminal investigators and federal prosecutors secretly apply to a judge for an eavesdropping, search, or arrest warrant, they know their work is going to be checked. In the criminal justice system, the operating assumption is that there eventually will be an indictment, which will trigger due process requirements of discovery. If government officials have made false or misleading statements to the court, if they have withheld critical exculpatory information, that will become known. There will be serious consequences.

In stark contrast, counterintelligence is classified. The goal is to collect information for national security purposes, not build criminal prosecutions. The vast majority of the time, there will be no indictment — and certainly no discovery. The system has no internal check to keep people honest.

In FISA proceedings, the only due process an American can ever get occurs in that secret meeting between the judge and officials from the Justice Department and FBI. If the FISC cannot ensure that intelligence officials honor the codified standards of integrity and transparency, the system fails. And unlike defense counsel in a criminal case (many of whom are former prosecutors), the court is not staffed with experienced investigators. It has neither the capability nor the institutional competence to pore over government submissions, spot the weaknesses, locate witnesses, examine documentary proof and dismantle a weak government presentation. That is not the judges’ fault. What we are talking about is simply not their job. Thus, the court has no choice but to rely on the government’s candor.

Judge Collyer is right to be outraged at the FBI’s malfeasance here. She has nothing to say, though, about the uncomfortable fact that the FISC did a poor job here, too. The version of the Page warrants made available publicly is heavily redacted, but what has been revealed shows the probable cause showing was rife with problems — uncorroborated sources; the FBI permitted to “speculate” and offer its “beliefs” about its main informant, rather than being pressed by the court to question him; news media stories offered as evidence, and relied on for 11 months even though the FBI had plenty of time to do independent investigation.

And even after it had become apparent, based on congressional investigations, that significant abuses had occurred, former FISC Chief Judge John Bates made this astonishing public statement: “I will note, and note with some force, that I have seen nothing that indicates that the court was misled, that the Department of Justice or the intelligence community made misrepresentations to the court.” Really?

FISA court's rebuke of the FBI: It broke or ignored the rules and our rights

Did the IG say the FISA warrants were illegal? If so - please provide a "credible" source.

Regardless, the whole Carter Page saga is irrelevant to Trump's impeachment. His Ukraine bribery/extortion for personal political gain got him impeached.

Is it............LOL

You better hope for a short trial.......

 

[Zorro!]

One of the most popular arguments on the right to excuse President Donald Trump from wrongdoing ahead of any findings from the Russia investigation...

They found ZERO evidence that Trump or his campaign was in a criminal conspiracy with the Russians.

... is to claim that the investigation itself is corrupt — and these arguments typically center on the idea, with no evidence whatsoever, that the FBI lied to the judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court when pursuing a warrant to probe Trump’s presidential campaign...

They did lie, forged an exculpatory document to make it appear incriminating and they concealed information from the Court that exonerated Page and showed that the FBI's sources were nowhere near as reliable as the FBI claimed.

...Trump himself has made this claim on Twitter, saying that “the Trump Campaign for President was illegally being spied upon” for “the political gain of Crooked Hillary Clinton and the DNC,” and that “the DOJ, FBI and Obama Gang need to be held to account” because they “Misled the Court to provide a pretext to SPY on the Trump Team.”...

And he's right.

... The idea that the FBI misled FISA judges to get a warrant against the Trump campaign has been debunked by the release of the FISA applications, revealing that there was a perfectly solid legal basis to investigate Carter Page amid his suspicious travel to Russia...

No. John Brennan informed the FBI repeatedly and in writing, and he has the paper trail to back it up, and Horowitz has confirmed that he does, that Carter Page was a very reliable and productive CIA source, and as their source he traveled to Russia and interacted with Russian Intelligence. The FBI took one of the emails explaining this and added "NOT A" next to source, a forgery that reversed the meaning of the sentence and submitted it as evidence that Carter Page was a spy in a criminal conspiracy with the Russian Government to harm the interests of The American People. When you lie to, conceal from and forge documents to submit to the FISA Court, the spying that results is ILLEGAL.

... But this narrative persists among Trump’s political allies, and in the right-wing echo chamber. Outgoing House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) released a flimsy, partisan memo that claimed to prove FISA wrongdoing...

Nunes was correct as was his memo and the popular question now is WHY THE FISA COURT repeatedly blew him off, when 18 months ago he reported the FBI misdeeds to the FISA Court. Now this week the FISA Court came out with a CYA rebuke of the FBI, but where the hell were they when the warrants were be submitted and where have they been for 18 months?

FISA court's rebuke of the FBI: It broke or ignored the rules and our rights

The presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) has issued a stinging rebuke to the FBI in the wake of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the bureau’s serial abuses in the surveillance of Carter Page.

She's the same one that blew off Devin Nunes, twice, when he informed her of all this 18 months ago.​

In the FISC’s assessment, the derelictions in the Page surveillance warrants are so serious, the court’s judges cannot be confident that any warrant applications the FBI has submitted are accurate and complete — i.e., that the bureau’s assertions have been true and, even if true, were not misleading because of the omission of relevant information.

Given how many different ways they lied to the Court on the Carter Page Warrants used to spy on The Trump Campaign, Transition and Administration, they are concerned that the FBI may habitually lie to them, about everything, on every warrant,​

Consequently, in an extraordinary public order on Tuesday, the secret court’s presiding judge, Rosemary Collyer, directed the Justice Department and the FBI to conduct a thorough review of all submissions the bureau has made to the FISC. They have about three weeks (until Jan. 10, 2020) to explain what steps have been taken to assure the candor of each submission.

Given that there have been many submissions, this seems like a great burden in such a crunched time frame. The FISC, however, is simply demanding to be satisfied that the FBI has done what it has led the court to believe it has been doing all along. Justice Department and FBI procedures, along with FISC rules, require that every factual assertion in an application to the FISC be verified and accurate. The bureau is supposed to go through this process of validating every fact alleged in every foreign intelligence surveillance case as a matter of routine.

The Page surveillance warrants demonstrate that the process either is broken or has been ignored.

It is obviously vital that the court take curative action. The inspector general’s (IG) report outlines shocking deception of the FISC and violations of Page’s civil rights. The court has supervisory responsibility over the orders it has issued, and it must evaluate the credibility of future government submissions. The IG report’s revelations, moreover, come on the heels of Obama-era surveillance abuses. In 2016, for example, the court observed that, in administering FISA programs, the intelligence community was guilty of an “institutional lack of candor” — engaging in and concealing the unauthorized interception of communications. The same intelligence community, on the watch of CIA Director John Brennan, was caught hacking the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The most palpable problem with FISA involves what Judge Collyer describes as the heightened duty of candor.

It is not unusual for investigators to meet secretly with judges to obtain highly intrusive warrants. But there’s a big difference between criminal investigations and counterintelligence: When FBI criminal investigators and federal prosecutors secretly apply to a judge for an eavesdropping, search, or arrest warrant, they know their work is going to be checked. In the criminal justice system, the operating assumption is that there eventually will be an indictment, which will trigger due process requirements of discovery. If government officials have made false or misleading statements to the court, if they have withheld critical exculpatory information, that will become known. There will be serious consequences.

In stark contrast, counterintelligence is classified. The goal is to collect information for national security purposes, not build criminal prosecutions. The vast majority of the time, there will be no indictment — and certainly no discovery. The system has no internal check to keep people honest.

In FISA proceedings, the only due process an American can ever get occurs in that secret meeting between the judge and officials from the Justice Department and FBI. If the FISC cannot ensure that intelligence officials honor the codified standards of integrity and transparency, the system fails. And unlike defense counsel in a criminal case (many of whom are former prosecutors), the court is not staffed with experienced investigators. It has neither the capability nor the institutional competence to pore over government submissions, spot the weaknesses, locate witnesses, examine documentary proof and dismantle a weak government presentation. That is not the judges’ fault. What we are talking about is simply not their job. Thus, the court has no choice but to rely on the government’s candor.

Judge Collyer is right to be outraged at the FBI’s malfeasance here. She has nothing to say, though, about the uncomfortable fact that the FISC did a poor job here, too. The version of the Page warrants made available publicly is heavily redacted, but what has been revealed shows the probable cause showing was rife with problems — uncorroborated sources; the FBI permitted to “speculate” and offer its “beliefs” about its main informant, rather than being pressed by the court to question him; news media stories offered as evidence, and relied on for 11 months even though the FBI had plenty of time to do independent investigation.

And even after it had become apparent, based on congressional investigations, that significant abuses had occurred, former FISC Chief Judge John Bates made this astonishing public statement: “I will note, and note with some force, that I have seen nothing that indicates that the court was misled, that the Department of Justice or the intelligence community made misrepresentations to the court.” Really?

FISA court's rebuke of the FBI: It broke or ignored the rules and our rights

Did the IG say the FISA warrants were illegal? ...

Who on earth thinks it's legal for the FBI to forge documents and then submit them to the Court in a FISA submission. Are you questioning that Horowitz found that the FBI deliberately forged a document to reverse the meaning of an exculpatory statement about Carter Page into an incriminating one?

IG Horowitz Says FISA Surveillance Without Legal Foundation Is ‘Illegal Surveillance’
.

.
Horowitz was asked by Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) about whether there was a point when surveilling Page became unlawful. Horowitz first said that his report was sent to the courts to make a decision on whether charges should be filed against anyone at the FBI.

“If you don’t have a legal foundation to surveil somebody and you keep doing it, is that bad?” Graham asked Horowitz.​

“Absolutely,” he replied, adding that “it’s illegal surveillance.”​

I'm not sure why you are attempting to argue this point, it's plainly and painfully obvious. Everyone with a brain knows that lies and forgeries are not suddenly transformed into truth just because you trick a Judge into approving it!

The point of remaining under the color of lie, is that this ensures that Justice is being done, rights are being secured and a rush to judgment, a lynching, or a witch hunt is not occurring. It's acting with integrity that assures this, not tricking a judge into stamping a request APPROVED.

Are you clear on why all this is important?

 

[mikegriffith1]

I guess you have not read the IG report yet. You might wanna read the part where it talks about the fact that the FISA submission contained claims that the FBI already knew were false. But you don't care about facts anyway.

 

[Zorro!]

I guess you have not read the IG report yet. You might wanna read the part where it talks about the fact that the FISA submission contained claims that the FBI already knew were false. But you don't care about facts anyway.

Horowitz did an excellent job telling some very hard truths in the kindest, most mature and evenhanded manner possible. He did a great service for our country and my goodness, we have to get the FBI back under control. They went completely rogue, and as the FISA Court points out, we don't know if this was restricted to their desire to illegally spy on the Trump Campaign, Transition and Administration or if they habitually lie, all the time, about everything, on every FISA warrant application.

 

[Dragonlady]

...The idea that the FBI misled FISA judges to get a warrant against the Trump campaign has been debunked by the release of the FISA applications...

Yeah, this claim isn't aging well.

FISA COURT ISSUES RARE PUBLIC ORDER CONDEMNING FBI FOR RUSSIA PROBE ABUSES AND DEMANDING REFORMS.

In a rare public order issued Tuesday, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court condemned the Thoroughly Corrupt FBI for the errors and omissions in its application to surveil Trump-campaign adviser Carter Page and gave the bureau until January 10th to propose reforms to prevent future abuses.

The order follows the release of Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report, which detailed 17 “significant errors and omissions” in the warrant application to surveil Page.

“The frequency with which representations made by FBI personnel turned out to be unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession, and with which they withheld information detrimental to their case, calls into question whether information contained in other FBI applications is reliable,” wrote the FISA court.​

And that's a big problem. With the shoulder shrugging coming from Comey, all this lying and forgery of FISA applications, the deliberate concealing of exculpatory evidence and intentional misleading of the court appears to be regarded as "routine" by Comey, and that's a Big Big problem.

“Therefore, the Court orders that the government shall, no later than January 10, 2020, inform the Court in a sworn written submission of what it has done, and plans to do, to ensure that the statement of facts in each FBI application accurately and completely reflects information possessed by the FBI that is material to any issue presented by the application,” the order continues.
​

The Woods procedures already require all that. And the completely despicable FBI just lied, concealed and forged anyway.

The publication of the IG report caused Senate Republicans to call for reform of the FISA application process, and several publicly acknowledged Utah Senator and FISA-skeptic Mike Lee as a leader on the issue.

“I wish Mike Lee weren’t sitting here two people from me right now, because as a national security hawk, I’ve argued with Mike Lee in the four-and-a-half or five years that I’ve been in the Senate that stuff just like this couldn’t possibly happen at the FBI and at the Department of Justice,” Senator Ben Sasse (R., Neb.) said during a Senate hearing on the IG report.
​

Many of us were similarly naive, Senator Sasse.

“Because we’ve now seen the abuses we were warned about, you can smirk again, you were right,” Senator Thom Tillis (R., N.C.) told Lee.​

Senator Mike Lee wishes he was wrong and that the FBI really was the agency of honor and integrity that we all believed it to be, but believing a lie is very dangerous and this truth must be squarely and unflinchingly faced: the FBI is a completely rogue law enforcement agency, which is a terrible situation to consider at the very heart of our Justice System.

So absolutely no charges, no personal reprimands, no penalties, no firings, just a "clean up your act and don't do it again". Well that was really harsh!

Meanwhile, Rick Gates is on his way to jail, Mike Flynn's about to go to jail for a good long time, as is Roger Stone.

But keep telling us how corrupt the Democrats are and how any day now, Hillary and the Dems will be doing the old perp walk. My money is on Guliani, Pompeo and Sondland doing the old perp walk before any of Comey, Clapper, or Brennan.

 

[Zorro!]

...The idea that the FBI misled FISA judges to get a warrant against the Trump campaign has been debunked by the release of the FISA applications...

Yeah, this claim isn't aging well.

FISA COURT ISSUES RARE PUBLIC ORDER CONDEMNING FBI FOR RUSSIA PROBE ABUSES AND DEMANDING REFORMS.

In a rare public order issued Tuesday, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court condemned the Thoroughly Corrupt FBI for the errors and omissions in its application to surveil Trump-campaign adviser Carter Page and gave the bureau until January 10th to propose reforms to prevent future abuses.

The order follows the release of Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report, which detailed 17 “significant errors and omissions” in the warrant application to surveil Page.

“The frequency with which representations made by FBI personnel turned out to be unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession, and with which they withheld information detrimental to their case, calls into question whether information contained in other FBI applications is reliable,” wrote the FISA court.​

And that's a big problem. With the shoulder shrugging coming from Comey, all this lying and forgery of FISA applications, the deliberate concealing of exculpatory evidence and intentional misleading of the court appears to be regarded as "routine" by Comey, and that's a Big Big problem.

“Therefore, the Court orders that the government shall, no later than January 10, 2020, inform the Court in a sworn written submission of what it has done, and plans to do, to ensure that the statement of facts in each FBI application accurately and completely reflects information possessed by the FBI that is material to any issue presented by the application,” the order continues.
​

The Woods procedures already require all that. And the completely despicable FBI just lied, concealed and forged anyway.

The publication of the IG report caused Senate Republicans to call for reform of the FISA application process, and several publicly acknowledged Utah Senator and FISA-skeptic Mike Lee as a leader on the issue.

“I wish Mike Lee weren’t sitting here two people from me right now, because as a national security hawk, I’ve argued with Mike Lee in the four-and-a-half or five years that I’ve been in the Senate that stuff just like this couldn’t possibly happen at the FBI and at the Department of Justice,” Senator Ben Sasse (R., Neb.) said during a Senate hearing on the IG report.
​

Many of us were similarly naive, Senator Sasse.

“Because we’ve now seen the abuses we were warned about, you can smirk again, you were right,” Senator Thom Tillis (R., N.C.) told Lee.​

Senator Mike Lee wishes he was wrong and that the FBI really was the agency of honor and integrity that we all believed it to be, but believing a lie is very dangerous and this truth must be squarely and unflinchingly faced: the FBI is a completely rogue law enforcement agency, which is a terrible situation to consider at the very heart of our Justice System.

So absolutely no charges, no personal reprimands, no penalties, no firings, just a "clean up your act and don't do it again". Well that was really harsh! ...

I found that disappointing as well. These FISA judges should at a minimum be recommending that the lawyers involved in these false FISA applications be sanctioned by their Bar Associations.

And the FISA Court's sudden outrage seems a bit feigned, where the hell were they when it counted, or 18 months ago when Nunes repeatedly informed them that the FBI had conducted multiple frauds in the FISA applications on Carter Page. They were quite dismissive then,

And how on earth do they let the Dossier be "corroborated" 11 months later by nothing more than a news article, rather than asking the FBI "well, it's been almost a year since we approved your first warrant, based on corroboration of a news article, is that still all you have or has your investigation independently confirmed what News story said?"

"And why, a year later, are you still telling us how trustworthy Steele is (which the FBI was lying about) rather than telling us what these sources that he gave you actually said (and the FBI was hiding that some of the sources directly contradicted and undercut Steele's claims about what they said)?"

It's like this FISA judges are "reviewing" these warrants while doing Stevie Wonder imitations and stamping them "APPROVED" as fast as they could apply the stamp.

... Mike Flynn's about to go to jail for a good long time...

I doubt that. Senator Grassley has repeatedly demanded:

1. A copy of the transcript that contains the statement Flynn supposedly lied about.
2. A copy of the original 302 and the agent's notes
3. The physical presence before him of the 2nd agent for questioning.

The point is to find out just what Mueller's Witch Hunters called a lie, because Comey testified that the interviewing agents did not judge Flynn to have been untruthful in their ambush interview.

I think Grassley will at some point get his wish, and if this looks iffy, that Trump will either pardon or commute his sentence, depending on what is found.

Flynn served in this nation's uniform, with great distinction, at times under enemy fire, for 33 years.

... how corrupt the Democrats are ...

I don't know the Party of the folks involved in these fraudulent FISA submissions, Comey is a Republican, but regardless of Party, there needs to be consequences for frauds on the Court.

... My money is on Guliani, Pompeo and Sondland doing the old perp walk...

Ridiculous

 

[lennypartiv]

IG Horowitz Says FISA Surveillance Without Legal Foundation Is ‘Illegal Surveillance’

Democrats don't understand that.

 

[Zorro!]

IG Horowitz Says FISA Surveillance Without Legal Foundation Is ‘Illegal Surveillance’

Democrats don't understand that.

It doesn't matter if they refuse to accept plain and obvious facts. Petulance does not alter reality.

 

[jc456]

One of the most popular arguments on the right to excuse President Donald Trump from wrongdoing ahead of any findings from the Russia investigation is to claim that the investigation itself is corrupt — and these arguments typically center on the idea, with no evidence whatsoever, that the FBI lied to the judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court when pursuing a warrant to probe Trump’s presidential campaign.

Trump himself has made this claim on Twitter, saying that “the Trump Campaign for President was illegally being spied upon” for “the political gain of Crooked Hillary Clinton and the DNC,” and that “the DOJ, FBI and Obama Gang need to be held to account” because they “Misled the Court to provide a pretext to SPY on the Trump Team.” And he even recklessly moved to declassify sensitive documents surrounding the surveillance of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page, in the attempt to try to prove this misconduct.

But Trump is wrong. And in fact, he is so stunningly wrong that his own lawyers with the Department of Justice had to take the extraordinary step of saying, in a filing to the D.C. District Court for a Freedom of Information Act case, that Trump essentially has no idea what he’s talking about on FISA classification, and that what he says on Twitter cannot be presumed to be evidence of anything:

The idea that the FBI misled FISA judges to get a warrant against the Trump campaign has been debunked by the release of the FISA applications, revealing that there was a perfectly solid legal basis to investigate Carter Page amid his suspicious travel to Russia.

But this narrative persists among Trump’s political allies, and in the right-wing echo chamber. Outgoing House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) released a flimsy, partisan memo that claimed to prove FISA wrongdoing. Meanwhile, right-wing commentators like Sean Hannity have enthusiastically called for heads to roll at the FBI over the supposed lies in FISA court.

Thus, it would seem the short form of the DOJ’s argument in this filing is: Mr. President, lay off the Fox News.

More: The US Justice Department just filed court documents arguing that Trump has no idea what he's talking about

Well, that settles that. I agree that Trump (and his base) should lay off the Fox News.

The titanic didn’t hit an iceberg either

 

[CrusaderFrank]

One of the most popular arguments on the right to excuse President Donald Trump from wrongdoing ahead of any findings from the Russia investigation is to claim that the investigation itself is corrupt — and these arguments typically center on the idea, with no evidence whatsoever, that the FBI lied to the judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court when pursuing a warrant to probe Trump’s presidential campaign.

Trump himself has made this claim on Twitter, saying that “the Trump Campaign for President was illegally being spied upon” for “the political gain of Crooked Hillary Clinton and the DNC,” and that “the DOJ, FBI and Obama Gang need to be held to account” because they “Misled the Court to provide a pretext to SPY on the Trump Team.” And he even recklessly moved to declassify sensitive documents surrounding the surveillance of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page, in the attempt to try to prove this misconduct.

But Trump is wrong. And in fact, he is so stunningly wrong that his own lawyers with the Department of Justice had to take the extraordinary step of saying, in a filing to the D.C. District Court for a Freedom of Information Act case, that Trump essentially has no idea what he’s talking about on FISA classification, and that what he says on Twitter cannot be presumed to be evidence of anything:

The idea that the FBI misled FISA judges to get a warrant against the Trump campaign has been debunked by the release of the FISA applications, revealing that there was a perfectly solid legal basis to investigate Carter Page amid his suspicious travel to Russia.

But this narrative persists among Trump’s political allies, and in the right-wing echo chamber. Outgoing House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) released a flimsy, partisan memo that claimed to prove FISA wrongdoing. Meanwhile, right-wing commentators like Sean Hannity have enthusiastically called for heads to roll at the FBI over the supposed lies in FISA court.

Thus, it would seem the short form of the DOJ’s argument in this filing is: Mr. President, lay off the Fox News.

More: The US Justice Department just filed court documents arguing that Trump has no idea what he's talking about

Well, that settles that. I agree that Trump (and his base) should lay off the Fox News.

Trump can get a FISA warrant on the Biden money laundering operation

 

[lennypartiv]

Just quote where the IG said the Carter Page FISA warrants were "illegal".

Barr is still working on this.