Seems you already decided on some answers in advance, though. 
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- Edit 1Before modification by Legolas at 03/02/2018 02:02:34 AM
View original postThat as you mentioned, we may never get the answer to...but there it is.
View original post Well, it is on the record that without that dossier, they wouldn't have pursued getting a FISA approval. That tells me that if there was anything else, it was not substantial enough to warrant the paperwork.
Do you have a link/source on that? I haven't seen that, but if so, yes, it makes these questions more pressing.
View original post One of those things that we probably would never know. Especially, since the best way to know that would be a compare/contrast study against other FISA documents completely unrelated (but in a similar vein).
Indeed. Sadly. People concerned with privacy and government overreach have been making noise about FISA for years, so if this incident could help to make the process less shady, that would be nice.
View original postWell, the first thing that comes to mind is that either someone had an ax to grind (regardless of who nominated them to the job), or they just signed it. I work in a GMP job, and I am constantly telling my team to read what they are signing. Don't just sign it because someone else signed it. Don't just assume that "everything was caught". I would suspect that there is at least a decent chance of this being the case here. I'm sure that there's at least some thought in the office that "It was approved before. This whole 90day renewal thing is a waste of time. It will stop when they find something." Given the media coverage of (what is already assumed is) collusion and obstruction of justice...
Yeah, I wouldn't buy that they did this by accident.
It does show that the ongoing FBI investigation had enough substance that they didn't find it worth the risk/internal fuss to put an end to the surveillance. Of course, keep in mind that not only did Carter Page not join the Trump administration, but in fact he had left the campaign even before the FISA application (only just realized this myself - see my post below in the subthread with RT and AA). And you know how it goes in Trumpworld - once you're out of the team, Trump acts as if you were never really in his team and you never actually mattered. View original postI don't know what to say man. Clueless? Lazy? Corrupt? Who knows. Either way, it demonstrates that there is something wrong with the entire way that this was handled, and the fact that there was so much pressure to keep it quiet is another symptom of the same disease.
It doesn't demonstrate that at all as far as I can see - like I said, it raises questions, sure, but it doesn't answer them.
View original postWhether the DNC or Clinton Campaign told him to submit it or not is neither here nor there. They paid him to do opposition research. That "research" is completely uncorroborated. It's not research. It's gossip. They paid a rumormonger to come up with something. It was taken as fact, and used to get secret surveillance of a US citizen. Next thing you know, it is taken as fact and broadcast the American Public as fact. It still serves the DNC & Clinton Campaign. It just pretty much cements Trump's whole "Drain the Swamp" platform...wouldn't you say?
I can't exactly claim to be an expert on intelligence gathering, but I know enough to realize that the process involves different categories of information with different degrees of reliability. The Trump partisans like to pretend that the dossier is about nothing but the scandalous sex stuff, but obviously there was a lot more to it, some parts more corroborated than others. When Steele decided to start sharing his information with the FBI, it was up to the FBI to corroborate and verify further. And yes, it definitely does matter whether he himself, having already a history as an accepted source of the FBI, made that decision or whether Clinton/the DNC ordered him to. If he made the decision himself without instructions from his client, then it matters a lot less who his client actually is - as in, the client paid him to gather the information, but he decided what to do with that information.
View original post The problem (as I stated before) that this isn't opposition research. It's gossip construction. It was taken as fact, and used to get something.
I'm not entirely sure who/what you refer to with the 'it was taken as fact', but if it refers to the FISA court, I'm pretty sure that those judges are aware that intelligence gathering or criminal investigations inevitably include degrees of certainty and uncertainty. Approving a wiretap on Carter Page doesn't mean at all that the judge believed every single thing said about him was a fact - just that the things said about him raised enough questions to make it worth the wiretap.
View original postYou are right. It brings up more questions then it answers. This entire memo goes to show that there is something going on...and one party in particular is fighting tooth and nail to not have it come out. That says something don't you think? This isn't about "protecting Trump". This is about hamstringing the Russia investigation (which is already tainted from the core). This is about the fact that rumors and gossip were taken as fact and used to spy on a US Citizen. There was no corroboration. The checks and balances built into the system didn't work. The motivations behind the entire issue were left out of the application, even though they are very much pertinent to the entire situation.
I'm not too sure how many checks and balances the FISA process ever actually had, so I'm not particularly shocked if it turns out that it wrongly violated the rights of an American citizen in this case as well. It's just that usually it's not this convenient for conservative partisans to be so critical about that process.