Parnas document release details Giuliani-arranged surveillance, possible threat to Amb. Yovanovitch (4 Viewers)

superchuck500 · Jan 15, 2020

This thread of the Parnas documents seems to deserve its own discussion apart from the impeachment thread. Yovanovitch has called on the State Department to investigate, and Secretary Pompeo has yet to address the disturbing matter.

In the document trove released yesterday, it appears that Giuliani's Ukraine activities included arranging surveillance of U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch through Lev Parnas and Robert F. Hyde, a Trump donor and now Republican candidate for Congress in Connecticut. The documents reveal the detail to which Yovanovitch was under surveillance and the exchanges (mostly from WhatsApp) suggest that actors were prepared to harm Yovanovitch.

In November, Yovanovitch testified that shortly after these exchanges, she was urged to immediately return to the United States for her own physical safety - advice that she heeded an returned the next day.

superchuck500 · Jan 16, 2020

BobE said:
But it felt like 4 months

I dunno, I was busy with Christmas and New Years.

UncleTrvlingJim · Jan 16, 2020

SaintForLife said:
It's definitely shady that the Ambassador was being surveilled and it should be investigated. It's ridiculous to try to compare the Government using opposition research and fabrications on FISA warrants to spy on a Presidential campaign to two private citizens spying on an Ambassador. Thats about as weak as a comparison as it gets, but I understand you are grasping at straws to try find a comparable situation.

Also please stop with the strawman that if any of us defend anything that Trump does or says that it amounts to us defending everything.

Carter Paige was not part of the presidential campaign when the FISA warrant was issued. So, no spying on a Presidential campaign, right?

And to pretend these two individuals are not connected to Trump is disingenuous.

if you don’t like straw men, don’t erect then yourself.

First Time Poster · Jan 16, 2020

SaintForLife said:
It's definitely shady that the Ambassador was being surveilled and it should be investigated. It's ridiculous to try to compare the Government using opposition research and fabrications on FISA warrants to spy on a Presidential campaign to two private citizens spying on an Ambassador. Thats about as weak as a comparison as it gets, but I understand you are grasping at straws to try find a comparable situation.

Also please stop with the strawman that if any of us defend anything that Trump does or says that it amounts to us defending everything.

Except, that whole line of reasoning, "two private citizens" completely falls apart when it is considered that they were spying on her with the endorsement of Giuliani, whom by his own admission, was working at the behest of the POTUS, in a personal capacity. So, in a lot of ways, it is worse. You have the power, weight and authority of the Chief Executive conducting operations outside the normal channels of government, where there can be some checks and balances, some oversight, even if it is the semblance of such. It is essentially two goons running surveillance for the attorney of the POTUS. How can we oversee foreign policy via WhatsApp?

As for the second bold, your post essentially makes my point. You admit the operation was shady but employ enough cognitive dissonance to water it down to "two private citizens" when all of the information we have to date shows a direct link to the "two private citizens" to Giuliani and Giuliani to POTUS. It makes your admission docile. There's no teeth to it. No bite. Because it is disingenuous. I've yet to see any supporter of his, on these boards, break rank with him, even tacitly, on things that are even proven to be wrong, without employing some sort of whataboutism to diminish its err. Even his bad Twitter behavior, that is unbecoming of the office, is hand waived away as Liberals being too sensitive, unhinged, obsessed or lacking a sense of humor. I stand by my statement.

samiam5211 · Jan 16, 2020

UncleTrvlingJim said:
Carter Paige was not part of the presidential campaign when the FISA warrant was issued. So, no spying on a Presidential campaign, right?

And to pretend these two individuals are not connected to Trump is disingenuous.

if you don’t like straw men, don’t erect then yourself.

Not to mention that they seem to ignore the wider investigation into Russian interference that the Trump campaign investigation was just a part of.

SaintForLife · Jan 16, 2020

UncleTrvlingJim said:
Carter Paige was not part of the presidential campaign when the FISA warrant was issued. So, no spying on a Presidential campaign, right?

And to pretend these two individuals are not connected to Trump is disingenuous.

if you don’t like straw men, don’t erect then yourself.

I said they were private citizens to differentiate between them spying on someone and the federal government spying on someone. Don't you think there's a big difference between the two? Please show me where I said they weren't connected to Trump through Guiliani.

Reposting this:

The 2 hop or 3 hop rule means that it's very likely that the FBI surveilled other members of the Trump campaign.

These documents also tell us the FISC routinely includes authorization in their warrants for the government to surveil people in contact with their target, and people in contact with the contact; in a scheme referred to as “chaining,” these authorizations will include 2 or 3 “hops.” While the text of the Carter Page warrant application, and court approval, remain a secret, one shudders to think this authority was used to spy upon other members of the Trump campaign team who were in contact with Page. (The memo of the House intelligence committee’s Democrats about the warrant suggests that some unknown number of Trump campaign advisors were the subject of FBI “sub-inquiries.”)

The FBI's secret warrant to surveil Carter Page should scare all Americans and spur reform

A secret, non-adversarial system of judicial review is an insufficient check to our intelligence agencies and law enforcement.

www-nbcnews-com.cdn.ampproject.org

dtc · Jan 16, 2020

SaintForLife said:
Claiming executive privilege is not obstruction of Congress. When there is a dispute between the executive and legislature the remedy is to let the courts decide right? The Democrats didn't go to the courts because they said it would take too long...and then they proceeded to wait 4 months before delivering impeachment articles to the Senate. The Democrats could have subpoenaed Bolton and whoever else they wanted to testify and let the courts compell their testimonies. Why do you think the Democrats skipped that crucial step?

They didn't wait 4 months and Trump has no legal argument for executive privilege for folks who are no longer employed by him.

Your argument is not based in objective fact. It's what you're needing to say in order to support your side in the argument.

Congress is congressionally charged with oversight. THere are legitimate executive privilege claims to be made, but not 100% refusal.

SaintForLife said:
I said they were private citizens to differentiate between them spying on someone and the federal government spying on someone. Don't you think there's a big difference between the two? Please show me where I said they weren't connected to Trump through Guiliani.

Reposting this:

The 2 hop or 3 hop rule means that it's very likely that the FBI surveilled other members of the Trump campaign.

These documents also tell us the FISC routinely includes authorization in their warrants for the government to surveil people in contact with their target, and people in contact with the contact; in a scheme referred to as “chaining,” these authorizations will include 2 or 3 “hops.” While the text of the Carter Page warrant application, and court approval, remain a secret, one shudders to think this authority was used to spy upon other members of the Trump campaign team who were in contact with Page. (The memo of the House intelligence committee’s Democrats about the warrant suggests that some unknown number of Trump campaign advisors were the subject of FBI “sub-inquiries.”)

The FBI's secret warrant to surveil Carter Page should scare all Americans and spur reform
A secret, non-adversarial system of judicial review is an insufficient check to our intelligence agencies and law enforcement.
www-nbcnews-com.cdn.ampproject.org

I don't shudder to think that Page and his associates were under surveillance by the FBI because of what Carter Page said and nobody disputes.

HIs plea satisfies any doubt I might have had.

SaintForLife · Jan 16, 2020

superchuck500 said:
I think you meant four weeks.

It's been roughly 4 months since the whistleblower complaint was made public correct? They could have subpoenaed Bolton and anyone else and had plenty of time for the courts to rule on it. Didn't it take 3 months for the courts to rule on the issues in Nixon's impeachment?

SaintForLife · Jan 16, 2020

First Time Poster said:
Except, that whole line of reasoning, "two private citizens" completely falls apart when it is considered that they were spying on her with the endorsement of Giuliani, whom by his own admission, was working at the behest of the POTUS, in a personal capacity. So, in a lot of ways, it is worse. You have the power, weight and authority of the Chief Executive conducting operations outside the normal channels of government, where there can be some checks and balances, some oversight, even if it is the semblance of such. It is essentially two goons running surveillance for the attorney of the POTUS. How can we oversee foreign policy via WhatsApp?

As for the second bold, your post essentially makes my point. You admit the operation was shady but employ enough cognitive dissonance to water it down to "two private citizens" when all of the information we have to date shows a direct link to the "two private citizens" to Giuliani and Giuliani to POTUS. It makes your admission docile. There's no teeth to it. No bite. Because it is disingenuous. I've yet to see any supporter of his, on these boards, break rank with him, even tacitly, on things that are even proven to be wrong, without employing some sort of whataboutism to diminish its err. Even his bad Twitter behavior, that is unbecoming of the office, is hand waived away as Liberals being too sensitive, unhinged, obsessed or lacking a sense of humor. I stand by my statement.

Your first paragraph has a lot of assumptions that have yet to be proven true. If evidence comes out that shows Trump was directing the two goons to spy on the Ambassador then you are right. But until then your assumptions are nothing more than assumptions. I mean we all know Trump is a horrible person so he had to have told his attorney to spy on the Ambassador amirite?

In one of my recent posts I said Trump was wrong for withholding the aid. Does that not meet your standard for Trump supporters posts? Maybe you could type out a set of rules for us so we know how often we should criticize Trump so it's up to your lofty standards.

samiam5211 · Jan 16, 2020

SaintForLife said:
Your first paragraph has a lot of assumptions that have yet to be proven true. If evidence comes out that shows Trump was directing the two goons to spy on the Ambassador then you are right. But until then your assumptions are nothing more than assumptions. I mean we all know Trump is a horrible person so he had to have told his attorney to spy on the Ambassador amirite?

In one of my recent posts I said Trump was wrong for withholding the aid. Does that not meet your standard for Trump supporters posts? Maybe you could type out a set of rules for us so we know how often we should criticize Trump so it's up to your lofty standards.

What if he directed Rudy to get dirt on the Biden’s, and Rudy had two goons tailing the ambassador?

How much of that would you put on Trump?

dtc · Jan 16, 2020

samiam5211 said:
What if he directed Rudy to get dirt on the Biden’s, and Rudy had two goons tailing the ambassador?

How much of that would you put on Trump?

Yes, let's say this is all true and proven by way of a real Senate trial.

Are you going to agree that it was illegal - a high crime and/or misdemeanor and that Trump should be punished? Or, are you going to ignore outright and undeniable corruption?

SaintForLife · Jan 16, 2020

samiam5211 said:
What if he directed Rudy to get dirt on the Biden’s, and Rudy had two goons tailing the ambassador?

How much of that would you put on Trump?

How much? Do you want a percentage? 70%

SaintForLife · Jan 16, 2020

When Jake Tapper is tapping the breaks then you know there are some serious credibility problems.

UncleTrvlingJim · Jan 16, 2020

SaintForLife said:
I said they were private citizens to differentiate between them spying on someone and the federal government spying on someone. Don't you think there's a big difference between the two? Please show me where I said they weren't connected to Trump through Guiliani.

Reposting this:

The 2 hop or 3 hop rule means that it's very likely that the FBI surveilled other members of the Trump campaign.

These documents also tell us the FISC routinely includes authorization in their warrants for the government to surveil people in contact with their target, and people in contact with the contact; in a scheme referred to as “chaining,” these authorizations will include 2 or 3 “hops.” While the text of the Carter Page warrant application, and court approval, remain a secret, one shudders to think this authority was used to spy upon other members of the Trump campaign team who were in contact with Page. (The memo of the House intelligence committee’s Democrats about the warrant suggests that some unknown number of Trump campaign advisors were the subject of FBI “sub-inquiries.”)

The FBI's secret warrant to surveil Carter Page should scare all Americans and spur reform
A secret, non-adversarial system of judicial review is an insufficient check to our intelligence agencies and law enforcement.
www-nbcnews-com.cdn.ampproject.org

So, you're taking a lot of posts from a lot of people and I don't want to pile on b/c it gets really convoluted, and I appreciate your participation in this. So, if you want to table this line of thought, no worries from me. I'll just post my thoughts below and you can respond or not.

The reason why I think your characterization of this as being just private citizens acting inappropriately is wrong is because it seems that they were acting on Trump's behalf as a part of either an effort outside of normal government processes to achieve his goals (that's the generous interpretation), or as part of an effort to smear his political opponents for personal gain. The accusation is Trump used his presidential powers to further this goal - so taken in whole, this isn't just private citizens doing something maybe shady. It's people working on behalf of the President who was using his power as President to do things for his personal benefit, including attempting to cause harm to people he believed were political adversaries (by harm I don't mean assassination attempts).

You don't think that's as serious as law enforcement playing fast and loose with procedures to nab someone they believe is guilty? Note, I'm not saying the FISA application irregularities are not serious. They are. I think Carter Paige has a legitimate civil rights complaint.

But using the power of the presidency to cause harm to political opponents because he wants to damage them politically is also serious, right?

JimEverett · Jan 16, 2020

UncleTrvlingJim said:
So, you're taking a lot of posts from a lot of people and I don't want to pile on b/c it gets really convoluted, and I appreciate your participation in this. So, if you want to table this line of thought, no worries from me. I'll just post my thoughts below and you can respond or not.

The reason why I think your characterization of this as being just private citizens acting inappropriately is wrong is because it seems that they were acting on Trump's behalf as a part of either an effort outside of normal government processes to achieve his goals (that's the generous interpretation), or as part of an effort to smear his political opponents for personal gain. The accusation is Trump used his presidential powers to further this goal - so taken in whole, this isn't just private citizens doing something maybe shady. It's people working on behalf of the President who was using his power as President to do things for his personal benefit, including attempting to cause harm to people he believed were political adversaries (by harm I don't mean assassination attempts).

You don't think that's as serious as law enforcement playing fast and loose with procedures to nab someone they believe is guilty? Note, I'm not saying the FISA application irregularities are not serious. They are. I think Carter Paige has a legitimate civil rights complaint.

But using the power of the presidency to cause harm to political opponents because he wants to damage them politically is also serious, right?

Two things:

1. This is all speculation as to what Parnas and Hyde and anyone else were doing. Pure speculation. Becuase we have not had anything like an IG investigation into the matter. Even though the House has brought up impeachment articles on issues surrounding and perhaps connected to what is being reported as to Parnas - the House never called PArnas to testify even though he made it clear he would back in November.

2. Again - speculating about what was going on - but staking out someone, following them around is in no way equivalent to using a secret court to allow U.S. intelligence to spy on American citizens, much more so spying on people closely connected to a Presidential campaign in an opposing party from the Presidential Administration. The idea of a comparison seems incredibly silly.

UncleTrvlingJim · Jan 16, 2020

JimEverett said:
Two things:

1. This is all speculation as to what Parnas and Hyde and anyone else were doing. Pure speculation. Becuase we have not had anything like an IG investigation into the matter. Even though the House has brought up impeachment articles on issues surrounding and perhaps connected to what is being reported as to Parnas - the House never called PArnas to testify even though he made it clear he would back in November.

2. Again - speculating about what was going on - but staking out someone, following them around is in no way equivalent to using a secret court to allow U.S. intelligence to spy on American citizens, much more so spying on people closely connected to a Presidential campaign in an opposing party from the Presidential Administration. The idea of a comparison seems incredibly silly.

Well, yes, it is speculation, but it isn't "pure speculation". We know that Parnas and Hyde were working for Giuliani. We know that Giuliani claimed that Trump was 100% on board with whatever they were doing. We know that Yavonovitch was viewed as Trump's enemy by Hyde. We know that Hyde told Parnas that he was tracking Yavonovitch's movements and her security detail as part of the work that Giuliani hired them to do. Now, he could have just been bragging or exaggerating or whatever. But it isn't "pure speculation" because we know Yavonovitch was pulled from Kiev because of perceived threat on her safety. We don't have evidence that she was pulled because of anything Hyde was doing on Trump's behalf - but there is a proximity between his texts and her being pulled, which takes this a bit beyond "pure speculation".

I'm confused on why you think the House not calling Parnas to testify during their hearings has any bearings on whether he has value in testifying in the actual trial. Clearly the House felt they had enough evidence to proceed. That is not saying they don't think they could continue to use more information in the actual trial, right?

And I'm sorry, I don't think the comparison is silly. The FBI being loose with the rules to pursue someone they think has intelligence value in an ongoing criminal investigation is not good, and should be cleaned up and punishment should be dealt in an appropriate manner. However, I'm not sure hiring people to act on your behalf outside the normal investigative process while using Congressional funding to pressure a foreign government to fabricate an investigation in order to politically damage your opponent is not actually worse.

Archies Ghost · Jan 16, 2020

UncleTrvlingJim said:
However, I'm not sure hiring people to act on your behalf outside the normal investigative process while using Congressional funding to pressure a foreign government to fabricate an investigation in order to politically damage your opponent is not actually worse.

It is enlightening that you consider the FBI violating basic civil rights the lesser.

Anything to get Trump.

SaintForLife · Jan 16, 2020

UncleTrvlingJim said:
So, you're taking a lot of posts from a lot of people and I don't want to pile on b/c it gets really convoluted, and I appreciate your participation in this. So, if you want to table this line of thought, no worries from me. I'll just post my thoughts below and you can respond or not.

The reason why I think your characterization of this as being just private citizens acting inappropriately is wrong is because it seems that they were acting on Trump's behalf as a part of either an effort outside of normal government processes to achieve his goals (that's the generous interpretation), or as part of an effort to smear his political opponents for personal gain. The accusation is Trump used his presidential powers to further this goal - so taken in whole, this isn't just private citizens doing something maybe shady. It's people working on behalf of the President who was using his power as President to do things for his personal benefit, including attempting to cause harm to people he believed were political adversaries (by harm I don't mean assassination attempts).

You don't think that's as serious as law enforcement playing fast and loose with procedures to nab someone they believe is guilty? Note, I'm not saying the FISA application irregularities are not serious. They are. I think Carter Paige has a legitimate civil rights complaint.

But using the power of the presidency to cause harm to political opponents because he wants to damage them politically is also serious, right?

We also know from the indictment of Parnas also says that he made illegal campaign contributions in order to remove Yovanovitch for a Ukrainian official and to advance his personal and business interests.

Lev Parnas And Igor Fruman Charged With Conspiring To Violate Straw And Foreign Donor Bans

www.justice.gov

Do you think it's possible that whatever Guiliani had him doing overlapped with what the indictment said he was doing for himself? The accusation, it seems are qualifiers from you that show a lot of assumptions are being made and some of it is based off someone with HUGE credibility problems.

A woman who accuses Parnas of scamming her family out of $500,000 -- one of several allegations of fraud -- said: "Mr. Parnas is a con man, he is a crook."

‘He conned us from day one’: Giuliani’s Ukraine ally leaves trail of South Florida debts

Over the summer, Dianne and Michael Pues got an ominous phone call from the business partner of a Ukrainian-American entrepreneur who owes the couple more than $500,000 over a movie deal gone bad.

amp.miamiherald.com

It's also curious that you label the FBI fabricating evidence, gaming the FISA court by using opposition research from Hillary that is most likely Russian disinformation on a FISA warrant that didn't even support what they claimed and was never corroborated as just playing fast and loose with procedures and irregularities.

samiam5211 · Jan 16, 2020

SaintForLife said:
We also know from the indictment of Parnas also says that he made illegal campaign contributions in order to remove Yovanovitch for a Ukrainian official and to advance his personal and business interests.

Lev Parnas And Igor Fruman Charged With Conspiring To Violate Straw And Foreign Donor Bans
www.justice.gov

You’re right, he is a crook.

How did he get involved with Rudy?

Do you know?
Do you think it's possible that whatever Guiliani had him doing overlapped with what the indictment said he was doing for himself? The accusation, it seems are qualifiers from you that show a lot of assumptions are being made and some of it is based off someone with HUGE credibility problems.

A woman who accuses Parnas of scamming her family out of $500,000 -- one of several allegations of fraud -- said: "Mr. Parnas is a con man, he is a crook."

‘He conned us from day one’: Giuliani’s Ukraine ally leaves trail of South Florida debts
Over the summer, Dianne and Michael Pues got an ominous phone call from the business partner of a Ukrainian-American entrepreneur who owes the couple more than $500,000 over a movie deal gone bad.
amp.miamiherald.com

Parnas document release details Giuliani-arranged surveillance, possible threat to Amb. Yovanovitch (4 Viewers)

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