A Sandbag Attempt

House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Adam Schiff (D, CA), in response to the Committee’s Republican members’ four-page memo—the Nunes Memo—regarding the FBI’s abuse of FISA court-approved surveillance of Americans, produced a ten-page Progressive-Democrat member response, which the committee voted unanimously to release to the House with an eye to getting the memo released to the public via the White House’s security vetting.  The House approved the release and sent it to President Donald Trump, who had five days to disapprove the document, or it would be released.

Concerns that the Progressive-Democrat members had larded their memo with information that, if released, would jeopardize intelligence and FBI methods and sources in order to make political hay over their redactions have been justified.

The White House on Friday told Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee to redraft their rebuttal to a controversial GOP memo alleging government surveillance abuse during the 2016 campaign, saying sensitive details need to be stripped out before the document can be made public.

It isn’t simply a refusal to release the memo with its cynically included classified information, though, nor is the White House playing guessing games with the Progressive-Democrats about what would be releasable.  In a letter advising the committee that the Progressive-Democrat memo could not be released in its current form, White House Counsel Don McGahn wrote,

However, given the public interest in transparency in these unprecedented circumstances, the President has directed that Justice Department personnel be available to give technical assistance to the Committee, should the Committee wish to revise the February 5th Memorandum [the Schiff Memo] to mitigate the risks identified by the Department.  The President encourages the Committee to undertake these efforts.

Notice that.  It’s not a refusal to release at all, as the committee’s Progressive-Democrat members had voted to do with the Nunes memo.  It’s a refusal to release with the deliberately included classified material and a willingness to release with those data removed by the Progressive-Democrats in coordination with DoJ.

And the Progressive-Democrats are busy growing their political hay.

Progressive-Democrats and Free Speech

The DoJ and several States are moving to protect free speech on college campuses, with three States moving to pass legislation explicitly for the purpose, and ten others with legislation already pending.

Liberals and their Progressive-Democrats object.

Many Democrats say the Constitution already protects free speech, and that states have no need to micromanage how colleges handle student demonstrations and speakers.

This is just cynical, though.  Or, 8th-grade Civics wasn’t a safe space for them, and they were triggered into not listening.  These Progressive-Democrats are ignoring the fact that the mere existence of our Constitution is no protection at all; it must be actively enforced.

And:

Many also object to the penalties some measures are calling for, such as fining or firing—in the case of professors and other college employees—those who are deemed to have deprived the free speech rights of a person or group.

No, we can’t hold Liberal professors or others favored by Progressive-Democrats accountable—those folks are special.

A Hong Kong Trial

Some of you may recall the umbrella protests in Hong Kong a few short years ago concerning the rapid erosion of freedoms there as the People’s Republic of China accelerated its walk away from its promise to Great Britain to respect Hong Kong liberties after the island city was surrendered to the PRC.

Joshua Wong, one of those protesters, sentenced to jail for participating and speaking his mind, is out of jail pending his appeal.  Hong Kong Commissioner Clement Leung had a Letter to the Editor of The Wall Street Journal earlier this week objecting to a WSJ piece decrying the whole sorry charade that is the current Hong Kong judiciary.

Surprise: I have my own response to Leung.

Joshua Wong was convicted because he was resisting the enforcement of a court injunction to reopen the roads in a blocked protest site.

No, Wong was convicted for continuing to exercise his free speech rights in the face of a court ruling that erroneously subverted those rights.

Mr Wong and others were also convicted and sentenced in another case, not for exercising their freedom of expression, but for their disorderly and intimidating behavior….

The use of the “disorderly and intimidating behavior” charge was simply a Communist Party of China-directed cynical euphemism for “speaking too freely.” The only ones who saw disorder or who were “intimidated” were those unused to being disobeyed in their diktats and others unused to the rollicking noise of democracy.

As an experienced Commissioner, Mr Leung should know better.

What Are They Trying to Hide?

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 FoxNewsSpecial 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.

 

Yet Another Mueller Leak

As usual, it’s carefully crafted and timed (it came out Wednesday morning) to cast President Donald Trump and his administration in a bad light and to try to steal the headlines from Tuesday night’s State of the Union address.

Special counsel Robert Mueller is seeking an interview with Mark Corallo, the former spokesman for President Donald Trump’s legal team, according to a person with knowledge of the matter….

As usual, too, Mueller is carefully silent on the leak and refuses to do anything to halt further leaks.

Aren’t these investigations supposed to be secret until they’re dropped or charges revealed?  Hah. Naïve me.