FBI official under investigation after allegedly altering document in 2016 Russia probe (DOJ IG Report thread) (4 Viewers)

SaintForLife said:

What parts of the dossier are true and been verified. I see that as a very common talking point on the left, but I've never seen anyone point out the parts that are true or verified. The only parts of the dossier that I've read were true are the ones that were already publicly known. The CIA said the dossier was an internet rumor according to the IG report.

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Here’s a pretty good compilation if you care to read it. It goes over what was wrong, what was true, what is unverified and what was common knowledge. There’s a little bit of every category in there.

MT15 said:

Here’s a pretty good compilation if you care to read it. It goes over what was wrong, what was true, what is unverified and what was common knowledge. There’s a little bit of every category in there.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/24/what-steele-dossier-said-vs-what-mueller-report-said/

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I tried to but I'm not a Washington Post subscriber so it didn't let me read it. That article was from April so I doubt it's accurate since we learned a lot about the dossier from the IG report. What do you think about the CIA calling it an internet rumor?

Well, there were certainly parts that were rumors, of course. I just think it’s a highly partisan POV to summarily dismiss the entirety of the documents.

Let me give you a couple pieces of the article, it’s a shame you can’t read it. I know there is a way to fool the paywall, but I’m not super good at doing stuff like that.

SaintForLife said:

I tried to but I'm not a Washington Post subscriber so it didn't let me read it. That article was from April so I doubt it's accurate since we learned a lot about the dossier from the IG report. What do you think about the CIA calling it an internet rumor?

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MT15 said:

Well, there were certainly parts that were rumors, of course. I just think it’s a highly partisan POV to summarily dismiss the entirety of the documents.

Let me give you a couple pieces of the article, it’s a shame you can’t read it. I know there is a way to fool the paywall, but I’m not super good at doing stuff like that.

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I've got y'all covered.

Right click on the link and select the option "Open in new Incognito Window" or something to that effect. Incognito or private window.

MT15 said:

Well, there were certainly parts that were rumors, of course. I just think it’s a highly partisan POV to summarily dismiss the entirety of the documents.

Let me give you a couple pieces of the article, it’s a shame you can’t read it. I know there is a way to fool the paywall, but I’m not super good at doing stuff like that.

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The entirety of the Steele Dossier that the CIA said was an internet rumor?

cuddlemonkey said:

I've got y'all covered.

Right click on the link and select the option "Open in new Incognito Window" or something to that effect. Incognito or private window.

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Thanks, I'll check it out when I get home.

Excerpts, I have concentrated on the parts that turned out to be true, since that is what is being questioned. The article does detail the parts that are wrong, or unverified.

“The “dossier” consists of more than a dozen memos, based on conversations with Russian sources, that were written between June and December 2016 by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele under a contract with the research firm Fusion GPS. The company had been hired by a law firm connected to the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee to look into Trump’s ties with Russia.”

“Top level Russian official confirms current closeness of Alpha Group-PUTIN relationship. Significant favors continue to be done in both directions... and [Petr] AVEN still giving informal advice to PUTIN, especially on US.”
— Memo 112, Sept. 14, 2016
This memo gets the essence of the relationship between Putin and Russia’s largest commercial bank correct. (The Cyrillic name can be translated as Alfa or Alpha in Latin script; the bank itself prefers Alfa.)
“Aven told the Office that he is one of approximately 50 wealthy Russian businessmen who regularly meet with Putin in the Kremlin; these 50 men are often referred to as ‘oligarchs,’ ” the Mueller report said. “Aven told the Office that he met on a quarterly basis with Putin, including in the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2016, shortly after the U.S. presidential election.” The report recounts how, at Putin’s direction, Aven sought to make contacts with the Trump transition team.

“TRUMP associate admits Kremlin behind recent appearance of DNC e-mails on WikiLeaks, as means of maintaining plausible deniability.”
This is correct. Mueller concluded that Russia distributed hacked material through WikiLeaks, as well as fictitious online personas “DCLeaks” and “Guccifer 2.0.” The report noted: “The presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump showed interest in WikiLeaks’s releases of documents and welcomed their potential to damage candidate Clinton.” Large sections of the WikiLeaks discussion are redacted in the public version of the report, citing an ongoing investigation.”

The Kremlin had more intelligence on CLINTON and her campaign but he did not know the details or when or if it would be released.”
— Memo 96, dated July 30, 2016
“Russians do have further kompromat on CLINTON (e-mails) and considering disseminating it after Duma (legislative elections) in late September.”
— Memo 111, dated Sept. 14, 2016
These two memos accurately reported more Russian-obtained dirt on Clinton was coming.
On Oct. 7, The Post disclosed the “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump had a lewd conversation about women, in what was considered a major setback for his campaign. “Less than an hour after the video’s publication, WikiLeaks released the first set of emails stolen by the GRU [Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Army] from the account of Clinton Campaign chairman John Podesta,” the Mueller report said. Mueller noted that thousands of Podesta emails had been stolen in late March. That means the Russians had held on to the material for nearly six months.

I don’t know how much more I can copy/paste without getting the site in trouble so I will stop there. But the dossier is a rather large, sprawling document. It is raw intelligence, so there is a mixture of good, bad and ugly. It’s simply not accurate to lump it all together and say it was either good or bad.

samiam5211 said:

Since you didn’t post any of you own words, I can’t be sure what point you’re trying to make, but I read that article.

There were several misleading (intentionally or not) characterizations in it.

The article said that FBI spreadsheet showed that 90% of the dossier’s claims were either unverified, wrong, or available in open sources. Those are three unrelated groupings.

What percent of that 90 were wrong v/s available in open sources v/s unverifiable? It is an important distinction unless your intent is to discredit the dossier.

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I’m glad you pointed this out. As I read this piece, I had issue with that exact language and another that was again very misleading. I was going to post it as an example of media bias in the other thread to see if anyone else caught why.

The other that is misleading and biased is “His dossier alleging a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Moscow ultimately was disproven.” No, again — it was not and the report clearly states that it was not.

Former FBI Director James Comey was interviewed by Chris Wallace on FoxNews Sunday.

I am confident that the entire investigation was predicated on bogus, dare I say "trumped-up," evidence to obtain the FISA warrants. If we knew then what we know now, the Russia Collusion investigation would have been still-born and FBI agents who falsified documents would have gone to jail.

Asked by Wallace about comments Comey made last year that he was sure officials at the FBI were "responsible" when they prepared surveillance warrants applications for Carter Page under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the former FBI chief said he "was wrong."
"I was overconfident in the procedures that the FBI and (Department of) Justice have built over 20 year years. I thought they were robust enough," he said.

Comey admits ‘I was wrong’ on FISA conduct, remains defiant on dossier in tense interview

Former FBI Director James Comey admitted on "Fox News Sunday" that the recently released Justice Department Inspector General’s report on the launch of the FBI’s Russia investigation and their use of the surveillance process showed that he was "overconfident" when he defended his former agency's...

www.foxnews.com

Once again, people cannot seem to separate the FISA warrants issued on Carter Page from the FBI Russia investigation into the Trump campaign. The errors on the one didn’t impact the other.

The investigation was opened in July and the first FISA warrant for Page was issued in October. So I am not exactly sure how investigation overreach in October could have stopped an investigation that was opened in July. And that the IG found that the investigation was opened properly, BTW.


The only quibble I have with the list below, which is from the article linked above, is that Carte Page was no longer associated with the Trump campaign when the FISA was issued. Nobody on the Trump campaign was ever subject to a FISA warrant.

Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court [FISC] presiding judge Rosemary M. Collyer has issued an order that was nothing short of dryly succinct, though it was short on specific remedies.

"The FBI's handling of the Carter Page applications, as portrayed in the [Office of Inspector General] report, was antithetical to the heightened duty of candor described above," Collyer said. "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."

"The [FISA court] expects the government to provide complete and accurate information in every filing with the court," Collyer wrote. "Without it, the [FISA court] cannot properly ensure that the government conducts electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes only when there is a sufficient factual basis."

Link to Collier's order: https://www.fisc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/MIsc 19 02 191217.pdf

Dadsdream said:

Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court [FISC] presiding judge Rosemary M. Collyer has issued an order that was nothing short of dryly succinct, though it was short on specific remedies.

"The FBI's handling of the Carter Page applications, as portrayed in the [Office of Inspector General] report, was antithetical to the heightened duty of candor described above," Collyer said. "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."

"The [FISA court] expects the government to provide complete and accurate information in every filing with the court," Collyer wrote. "Without it, the [FISA court] cannot properly ensure that the government conducts electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes only when there is a sufficient factual basis."

Link to Collier's order: https://www.fisc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/MIsc 19 02 191217.pdf

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Good.


I hope the courts require the FBI to review every past FISA warrant and acknowledge any other failures and then propose reform to address the issues.

I hope Carter Page sues the government if he feels his rights were violated.

I also hope that the House holds hearings Bengazi style to make sure the FBI is held accountable and legislates reform if the FBI fails to do it themselves.

There is no evidence any of this impacted the findings of the Russia investigation.

samiam5211 said:

There is no evidence any of this impacted the findings of the Russia investigation.

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Yet. Give it a decade or two of FOIA requests.

Dadsdream said:

Yet. Give it a decade or two of FOIA requests.

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So I guess you don’t trust the Republicans in the Senate to do oversight?

samiam5211 said:

So I guess you don’t trust the Republicans in the Senate to do oversight?

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It's not a matter of trust.
It's a matter of what gets withheld from the American public due to issues of national security and for how long.
We should never be so naive as to think we've been given all the information.

Dadsdream said:

It's not a matter of trust.
It's a matter of what gets withheld from the American public due to issues of national security and for how long.
We should never be so naive as to think we've been given all the information.

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Yea, but it’s weird to assume that this is something that would be withheld considering that it would be in the interest of the Republicans to make such information public and they are in control of the release of it.

samiam5211 said:

Yea, but it’s weird to assume that this is something that would be withheld considering that it would be in the interest of the Republicans to make such information public and they are in control of the release of it.

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Insufficient data to make that call.