(02-02-2018, 06:15 PM)rfc17 Wrote:

(02-02-2018, 03:43 PM)TJBender Wrote: I'm highly skeptical of both sides. The Republicans released this memo over the screaming objections of Democrats and the FBI, which suggests one or more of three things:

1. The Democrats know it makes them look bad
2. The FBI knows it makes them look bad
3. National security is compromised

After seeing the memo, it's pretty obvious that 1 and 2 carry some measure of truth, but I don't see the damage to national security here at all. Which kind of makes 1 and 2 more plausible yet.

Yea, pretty apparent in hindsight they were overly hysterical for no reason.  National security is not endangered.  Just a CYA move.  But saying that, it's still possible what Nunes wrote is false.  Or extremely misleading.  As has been suggested by Schiff and members of the FBI.  Now admittedly, based on their exaggeration regarding national security, makes you think they are over exaggerating just how misleading this is as well.  But we'll never know until we read Schiff's rebuttal, the FISA application, and other relevant materials.  All that needs to come out before we'll really have an idea what the truth is.

There seems to be some back and forth on whether McCabe actually said under oath that without the dossier there would be no warrant.  Supposedly there is a transcript proving he said this at his testimony.  Which would back up the memo.  Assuming that is true and lets assume for a moment the Nunes memo is always true, if they really believed Trump was compromised via Page's Russian contacts, I'm surprised the FBI would need to intentionally mislead the FISA court about the dossier to get the warrant approved on Page.  How weak must their other evidence have been if they had to rely on something "salacious and unverified"?  I keep reading about how 3 or 4 years prior to all this the FBI had been looking into Page but I'm assuming all that evidence dried up or else they wouldnt have needed the dossier at all.  And were willing to cut corners to go after him.  You keep waiting around for this smoking gun to prove collusion but it hasn't revealed itself.  At least not publicly.

I disagree that national security isn't endangered by this.  The FISA courts were put in place to deal with bad actors looking to do harm to the US.  This calls into question their credibility along with that of the FBI and the Justice Department.  It creates an opportunity for those who have been investigated using warrants obtained through FISA courts grounds to challenge the legitimacy of even valid efforts.

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