The House of Representatives has voted to release a 4-pg memo delineating various misbehaviors of the FBI during its “investigation” of Trump campaign behaviors during the 2016 election campaign. The FBI publicly demurs.
…the FBI [has] “grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.”
This is rich, coming from an FBI that had to be threatened with contempt of Congress before it would end its year-long stonewall and turn over material (some of which is summarized in the memo) that had been long subpoenaed. As House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R, CA) said in response to this particular ludicrosity,
The FBI is intimately familiar with “material omissions” with respect to their presentations to both Congress and the courts….
Nunes added
they are welcome to make public, to the greatest extent possible, all the information they have on these abuses[.]
The FBI also is claiming concerns about giving up methods and sources with the memo’s exposure. They conveniently forget that the memo has been vetted for that sort of thing by the Intelligence Committee and is being so vetted by the White House, where the memo now sits being checked by the National Security Advisor. Both of these agencies are fully capable of such vetting, and no less so than the FBI.
Hence my question.
Update: The memo was released, and the evidence is damning. We hear from the hysteria in the Progressive-Democrats and the NLMSM their desperation after they failed to block the memo’s release. And this bit of emphasis and clarification from Nunes on FoxNews‘ Special Report Friday afternoon after the memo’s release (via Richard Fernandez and a commenter):
(excerpt) “Just step back for a moment,” Nunes explained. “This is not trying to go after some terrorist. This is about — they opened, the FBI opened a counter-intelligence investigation into the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016. That’s what happened.”
He continued: “And then they got a warrant on someone in the Trump campaign using opposition research paid for by the Democratic Party and the Hillary Clinton campaign. That’s what this is about. And it’s wrong and it should never be done.” (end excerpt)
Why is that important?
The significance of the warrant against Carter Page, was made October 21st, 2016, under Title I of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. [Meaning the surveillance application was specifically stating, to the court, the U.S. individual was likely an actual agent of a foreign government, ie. “a spy.”] (by sundance, Conservative Tree House) And renewed every 90 day period three times.
Why is it significant?
(1) as explained, designating Carter Page as foreign agent (spy), intelligence committee can spy on ANYBODY in contact with Page, even after he’s no longer part of the Trump team;(2) the FISA warrant continued well into the first year of Trump presidency. Let both points sink in for a bit.
The Obama administration manufactured an espionage beef against Page instead of getting an “ordinary” FISA warrant that would have limited the scope and duration of its own spying. Keep in mind, too, that no evidence has been turned up to indicate Page really is, or was, a Russian spy. He was approached, certainly. Nearly any American with even the most minimal set of connections is going to be approached by an apparatus of the Russian government. That’s who the Russians are. The available evidence, though, indicates he either ignored the approach or rebuffed it.