it_is_the_light wrote on May 2^nd, 2018 at 10:12am:




Well its amazing that just about every other analysis of this I see seems to suggest it was the Trump lawyers who leaked this, because the questions look like a wishlist of what they would like Trump asked.

BuzzFeed’s motion asserts that the D.N.C., citing privacy concerns, has been unwilling to comply with a subpoena for that information. As BuzzFeed’s lawyers argue: “The material requested from the D.N.C.—which amounts only to the digital remnants left by the Russian state operatives who hacked their systems—is highly relevant to Defendants’ ability to establish the truth of the allegedly defamatory claims about them in the Dossier. And the D.N.C. has identified neither privilege nor burden that would prevent them from complying with the Subpoena.” In legal papers, the D.N.C. has argued that disclosing the digital signatures, supposedly left by the Russia-directed hacking organizations known as Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear, would inevitably expose details of the D.N.C.’s information systems, possibly making them more vulnerable to another hack. (A D.N.C. spokeswoman did not immediately have a comment late Tuesday afternoon.)


BuzzFeed maintains that its decision to publish the dossier was justified because a number of the document’s claims have subsequently been corroborated. And since that’s the bedrock of its defense, the publication is committed to trying to collect as much evidence as possible in support of that argument. Back in September, as I reported at the time, BuzzFeed filed a motion against the F.B.I. to depose former F.B.I. Director James Comey and former director of national intelligence James Clapper—the idea being that if Comey or Clapper were to testify, it would confirm under oath that the dossier was being discussed at the highest levels of government, and was therefore of interest to the public. BuzzFeed will be in court in Washington on Thursday for a hearing related to that matter.

https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/memo-fbi-used-tainted-steele-dossi...

Memo: FBI Used Tainted Steele Dossier, Paid For By Hillary Clinton, As Reason To Spy On Trump

FBI Scandal: The controversial congressional memo that alleges abuse of the government's surveillance program has now been released to the public. A close reading of the four-page document reveals potentially damning evidence that the FBI and Department of Justice used an anti-Trump dossier funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign as the basis for spying on the Trump campaign.

GOP members of  the House Intelligence Committee, led by Chairman Devin Nunes, released the declassified memo Friday, but only after President Trump's approval and after both DOJ and FBI protested release of the document, which served as the backbone of the government's investigation into alleged collusion in the 2016 presidential campaign between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

Not surprisingly, President Trump had an immediate hot take for his Twitter feed: "The top Leadership and Investigators of the FBI and the Justice Department have politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats and against Republicans — something which would have been unthinkable just a short time ago. Rank & File are great people!"

The memo's findings are, at minimum, disturbing and, at worst, suggest the law was broken. Assuming the memo's factual accuracy, it paints an unflattering picture of the Obama-era FBI and Justice Department and their conduct in investigating the Trump campaign. To wit:

The DOJ and FBI asked for and received approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to spy on Carter Page, a fringe volunteer adviser to the Trump campaign on energy and foreign policy. The basis for the approval was the now-famous "dossier" on Donald Trump compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, who was working for the Fusion GPS political research firm. The dossier's contents were used multiple times as grounds for surveilling Page, with then-FBI Director James Comey signing his name to three, and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe signing off on one. It was a group effort: Then-acting Deputy Attorney Generals Sally Yates and Dana Boente, along with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, all signed off on one or more of the requests.
Steele was paid $160,000 to create the Trump dossier for Fusion GPS. The Hillary Clinton presidential campaign and Democratic National Committee financed the work. So the FBI and Justice Department used opposition research from a presidential campaign to launch an investigation into that campaign's political opponent — a likely illegal use of federal government surveillance for political purposes.
The FBI also agreed to pay Steele for his dossier and other research, but rescinded the offer in October of 2016, shortly before the presidential election, after discovering that Steele had shared the dossier's contents with journalists in a number of briefings, a violation of FBI rules. But neither the FBI nor Justice informed FISC that the information had in fact been paid for by the Democrats, which would have immediately raised doubts about the surveillance request's legitimacy.
Steele, the memo claims, continued to talk to the Justice Department even after he was cut loose by the FBI through then-Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr. Ohr is key, since he worked closely with both Yates and Rosenstein and was a potential conduit into then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch's office. More importantly, perhaps, Ohr's wife, Nellie, is a former CIA researcher who was hired by Fusion GPS to collect anti-Trump material.
According to the memo, Steele relayed to Ohr that he was "desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president." None of that, apparently, was told to FISC when Justice and the FBI made their requests to spy on the Trump campaign.
The supposed justification for the application to FISC was a September 23, 2016 Yahoo News article by journalist Michael Isikoff purportedly detailing ties between Trump campaign representatives and Russian officials. The only problem is, Isikoff got all of his information from Steele's so-called Trump dossier.
Let us stipulate that this memo is itself a partisan product of a Republican-dominated committee of Congress. Democrats, for their side of the matter, have their own memo and claim that essential facts have been omitted from the GOP's. But none of the central facts of the memo, so far, have been disproved.

Being charitable, it's possible to conclude that, during an intensely contentious presidential campaign, Obama administration Justice and FBI officials innocently sought FISA warrants against a peripheral Trump campaign volunteer based on a document they knew — or should have known — was paid for by Hillary Clinton and the DNC. And that their decisions later to withhold information from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court were equally innocent of any malicious political intent.

Even if you grant that very generous reading of the facts laid out in the memo, it's clear there was at minimum a conflict of interest and, possibly, a violation of the 1939 Hatch Act, which forbids federal employees from political activities while on the job.

BREAKING: CLINTON FOUNDATION INVESTIGATED BY HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/385723-house-gop-chair-calls-for-investigation...

House GOP chair calls for investigation into FBI’s Clinton Foundation probe

BY MELANIE ZANONA - 05/01/18 04:19 PM EDT



A top House Republican is calling for a Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation into allegations that the FBI was pressured by the Obama administration to shut down a probe into the Clinton Foundation during the 2016 presidential election.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, wrote a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Tuesday raising issues related to some of the claims laid out by a scathing inspector general report on Andrew McCabe, the fired FBI deputy director.

“I have serious concerns that the Department, during the Obama Administration, attempted to obstruct justice by attempting to inappropriately terminate an FBI investigation on the Clinton Foundation,” Goodlatte wrote. “Under the facts laid out by the DOJ Inspector General (IG), it is shocking to hear that the Obama Department of Justice may have allowed politics to dictate what cases should or should not be pursued.”

The IG report, released last month, concluded that McCabe made leaks to the media that were designed to combat the perception that he had a conflict of interest in overseeing dual FBI investigations related to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, including one related to the Clinton Foundation and another related to her use of a private email server.

McCabe’s disclosure recounted his version of a conversation with a DOJ official about the investigation, in which McCabe says he pushed back on concerns about FBI agents taking “overt steps” during the presidential campaign.

The Wall Street Journal reported that “a senior Justice Department official called Mr. McCabe to voice his displeasure at finding that New York FBI agents were still openly pursuing the Clinton Foundation probe during the election season. ... The Justice Department official was ‘very pissed off,’ according to one person close to McCabe, and pressed him to explain why the FBI was still chasing a matter the department considered dormant.”

Goodlatte and other Republicans have seized on the findings in the report, saying it shows that the Obama-era DOJ, led by then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch, may have been putting pressure on the bureau to end the Clinton probes.

“It appears that the [Justice official] was at the very least inquiring into why the FBI was pursuing a case against the Clinton Foundation during the election, and at worst, attempting to improperly and illegally influence the status of an ongoing investigation for purely partisan purposes,” Goodlatte wrote. “Both options are unseemly and should be investigated.”

Meanwhile, House conservatives, who have been calling for a second special to investigate allegations of bias at the FBI, have begun drafting a resolution that calls for the impeachment of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, the top DOJ official overseeing special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

Rosenstein has increasingly become a popular target among hard-line conservatives over the last year.

The articles include allegations that Rosenstein violated federal law by refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena that was part of Congress’s efforts to obtain documents about FBI surveillance during the election, intentionally stalling document production for congressional investigations into possible government misconduct and failing to enforce key laws and protocols.

"They can't even resist leaking their own drafts," Rosenstein said during a Tuesday discussion at the Newseum to commemorate Law Day.

If the claims of the Trump Team leaking these questions are true, then they need to watch their backs for charges of obstruction of justice.

President Elect, The Mechanic wrote on May 2^nd, 2018 at 11:19am:


If there was any evidence to back up your claims, they would be.

The problem is, that there isn't, no matter how much favourable opinion you post as fact.

The real danger is that there are so many people as gullible as you, so if Trump is in fact guilty, and found to be so and any action taken to hold him to account, they like you will never believe it and continue to claim he's innocent and this is nothing but  a witch hunt.

This is when people will stop being angry on the internet and real people will get hurt.

Before it gets to that I'd suggest they, like you, pull their head of out their arse and seek the truth, not just what they want to hear.

I take it you didn't bother to watch the video I posted then?

BREAKING: MUELLER WANTS TRUMP SUBPOENA WITHOUT EVIDENCE LINKING PRESIDENT TO A CRIME

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mueller-raised-possibility-of-presidenti...

Mueller raised possibility of presidential subpoena in meeting with Trump’s legal team

Rod Rosenstein IN VERY HOT SOUP, HE IS ABOUT TO BE IMPEACHED