US Politics Mega-thread - Page 9847

On February 04 2018 09:22 ChristianS wrote:
Incidentally, regarding the claim that Democrats aren't disputing the memo's central claims:

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/03/politics/memo-dossier-christopher-steele-carter-page/index.html



Care to revise your analysis, Danglars or xDaunt?

On February 05 2018 00:44 Danglars wrote:

It’s said that ChristianS’s name was withheld from the warrant application for his ex-girlfriend, but that judges were advised there were personal motivations behind the dossier. Same thing?

On February 05 2018 00:44 Danglars wrote:

It’s said that ChristianS’s name was withheld from the warrant application for his ex-girlfriend, but that judges were advised there were personal motivations behind the dossier. Same thing?

On February 05 2018 00:44 Danglars wrote:

It’s said that ChristianS’s name was withheld from the warrant application for his ex-girlfriend, but that judges were advised there were personal motivations behind the dossier. Same thing?

On February 05 2018 00:44 Danglars wrote:

It’s said that ChristianS’s name was withheld from the warrant application for his ex-girlfriend, but that judges were advised there were personal motivations behind the dossier. Same thing?

On February 05 2018 03:39 WolfintheSheep wrote:

Please stop pretending you understand law. Or even bother to read up on law.

On February 05 2018 03:07 Doodsmack wrote:


Sounds like a crisis of American civil liberties, especially if we were talking about a guy who's been tracked by the FBI for 3 years for his interactions with Russian intelligence.

On February 05 2018 04:11 Danglars wrote:

Then stop claiming “Clinton/DNC” is the same as “political” to the extent where saying the first wasn’t mentioned is a lie. It’s downright simple if you take your mind off partisanship ends ... if that’s possible in the Trump era.

On February 05 2018 04:11 Danglars wrote:

Then stop claiming “Clinton/DNC” is the same as “political” to the extent where saying the first wasn’t mentioned is a lie. It’s downright simple if you take your mind off partisanship ends ... if that’s possible in the Trump era.

On February 05 2018 04:11 Danglars wrote:

Then stop claiming “Clinton/DNC” is the same as “political” to the extent where saying the first wasn’t mentioned is a lie. It’s downright simple if you take your mind off partisanship ends ... if that’s possible in the Trump era.

On February 05 2018 04:20 Danglars wrote:

An African American man is being tracked for drug offenses. Therefore, justice officials are justified in withholding material evidence from the judge to obtain a search warrant.

The fourth amendment is going the way of the first and tenth among Democrats. Sad, really.

On February 05 2018 04:34 WolfintheSheep wrote:

As I said on the very first day this memo came out: bias does not invalidate evidence.

Getting the FISA warrant thrown out is going to take a lot more than "the FBI didn't say Clinton/DNC paid for the research". Both in court when/if Carter Page is charged, and especially while investigations are still ongoing.

And if you actually cared about any kind of legal processes other than repeating whatever partisan hacks you follow, you would know this.

First, you need to know all of the facts claimed in the Carter Page FISA affidavit to know if disclosing the funding source of the Steele's research was even remotely relevant. My understanding is that FISA applications like this are rarely close calls. DOJ usually gives the FISC way more than probable cause. (At least that's my understanding: I was at DOJ and applied for warrants and a Title III order way back when, but I haven't done any FISC work.) If that's right, it means that Steele's research may have been included in the affidavit amidst a ton of other evidence. And if so, the Steele research itself may have been wholly irrelevant to the application. It's hard to see any significance to whether the funding source of irrelevant research was included. If that's right, the omission was not material, in the language of Smith v. Edwards; including it would not have negated probable cause. And you would need to assess that based on reading the entire affidavit, not just whatever is alleged in the four-page Nunes memo.

Second, even if the Steele research was a major part of the affidavit, whether the funding source would need to be disclosed depends on whether it critically altered the case for probable cause. Some of that would depend on whether the Steele research was corroborated. If the government looked into the Steele memorandum and corroborated some of its claims, it undercuts the need to disclose the funding source.

And some of that depends on identifying just what the narrative is for why the funding source was critical to establishing probable cause. I think that point is really important and too easily ignored. In #ReleaseTheMemo circles, any possible link between the Steele dossier and the Clinton campaign is like an atomic bomb. It completely annihilates any possible credibility the Steele dossier may have, leaving the exposed words of the dossier behind like the haunting shadows of the Hiroshima blast.

But that's not how actual law works. In the world of actual law, there needs to be a good reason for the judge to think, once informed of the claim of bias, that the informant was just totally making it up. As United States v. Strifler shows, that isn't necessarily the case even if the government paid the informant to talk and guaranteed that they would get out of jail if they did. Nor is it necessarily the case just because the informant is in personal feud with the suspect. What matters is whether, based on the totality of the circumstances, the information came from a credible source.

That's a problem for #ReleaseTheMemo, I think. To my knowledge, Steele was not some random person motivated by an ongoing personal feud against Trump or Carter Page. To my knowledge, he was not a drug dealer facing criminal charges who was promised freedom if he could come up with something for the government's FISA application. Instead, Steele was a former MI6 intelligence officer and Russia expert. He was hired to do opposition research because of his professional reputation, expertise and contacts. And his work was apparently taken pretty seriously by United States intelligence agencies. Of course, that doesn't mean that what's in the dossier is true. Maybe the key allegations are totally wrong. But if you're trying to argue that Steele's funding sources ruin the credibility of his research, his professional training and background make that an uphill battle.

On February 05 2018 04:20 Danglars wrote:

An African American man is being tracked for drug offenses. Therefore, justice officials are justified in withholding material evidence from the judge to obtain a search warrant.

The fourth amendment is going the way of the first and tenth among Democrats. Sad, really.

On February 05 2018 05:14 Tachion wrote:

This opinion piece was posted today by the Washington Post, and links to this, which describes multiple situations and precedents in law where bias is and is not appropriate for acquiring a warrant.

The author's conclusion in the article can be summarized below.

Carter Page himself has, through his testimony to the house intelligence committee, verified sections of the Steele dossier to be accurate. So the information used in the FISA application wasn't just made up, and it came from a reliable source. I don't see where the abuse takes place here.

On February 05 2018 05:42 TheTenthDoc wrote:


While it is a good idea to reiterate that this "biased" source was demonstrably correct in hindsight with respect to the individual in question, since that raises the probability the FBI already had reliable corroboration (in fact, the Nunes memo itself says there was some corroboration, even if "minimal" by the author's standards), the post-facto nature of that doesn't seem like it'd hold much water at least in a legal sense.

I just hope that we get to see the actual wording in either the Dem memo or the surveillance materials themselves, but I'm not holding my breath (I expect much clutching of pearls at the notion of violating Page's civil liberties further by unveiling any more information).