It's unique in that a FISA court application has never been made public before, even in a redacted form, so it's worth looking at carefully. Since this audience leans right, I thought I would link to some opposing views. Lawfare hosts David Kris' view, in which he holds that the release confirms his earlier view that the Nunes memo was deceptive and wrong. Meanwhile, here is a courteous but sharp dispute between Andy McCarthy and Bradley Moss over the propriety of the release and the quality of the information it provides.
UPDATE: McCarthy's column today: "The crazies were right, and I was wrong."
Meanwhile, an argument from evidence is made that Ali Watkins -- the disgraced NYT reporter who slept with her sources for access -- was given an unredacted version of this application, complete with Top Secret information, by one of her sources. If so, that's a serious violation of classification laws.
5 comments:
Kris is part of the problem. He's an Obama creature. Anything he says is obfuscation of what went on here.
The other two guys are arguing over semantics, and it has become painfully obvious that the prior administration up to the top, knew what what was going on and ordered it.
The problem is how this will all be prosecuted.
Byron York's rebuttal to claims Nunnes was deceptive.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/fisa-warrant-application-supports-nunes-memo
A thought I had after reading Andrew McCarthy's column.
McCarthy is very big on the fact that the FBI vouching for Steele's past credibility is not the same thing as proving the evidence that Steele provided is credible, as the FBI should have in order to present the dossier information as evidence to obtain the warrant.
A lot of the 'Nunes was deceptive' claim hinges on the assertion in his memo that the Hillary campaign was not identified as the source of funding for the dossier. The relevant footnote in the FISA application reads in part "...was approached by an identified U.S. person, who indicated to Source #1 that a U.S.-based law firm had hired the identified U.S. person to conduct research regarding Candidate #1's ties to Russia ... The identified U.S. person hired Source #1 to conduct this research. The identified U.S. person never advised Source #1 as to the motivation behind the research into Candidate #1's ties to Russia. The FBI speculates that the identified U.S. person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit Candidate #1's campaign".
Democrats contend that this was sufficient disclosure that the dossier information was collected to earn a paycheck that ultimately came from Hillary's campaign. I think it falls into a gap similar to the one McCarthy exposes in terms of the FBI attempting to sidestep the need to directly verify the credibility of the dossier information, not Steele's trustworthiness. The credibility of the dossier information does not depend on whether Glenn Simpson disclosed to Steele the source of the funding but whether the FBI was able to ascertain it, and it appears to be clear from the wording that they did know the funding came from the Hillary campaign but deliberately chose to obscure the knowledge.
It's a huge issue if the court did not understand that "Candidate #1" was a candidate for President of the United States, and that his opponent was the other one.
I can imagine the judges thinking this was some city council race, or at most some Congressional thing the FBI was investigating. "We're asking for permissions that will entail spying on one of the major party Presidential campaigns" really should have been spelled out.
It is always funny and ironic when the crazies turn out to be right. And not just in a dead clock sense.
McCarthy thought his status, success, education, and intelligence would save the day. The mortals often think like that and are often wrong when they contest the Will of the Heavens.
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