DAILY WIRE and DAILY CALLER h-t:
GOP Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina dismissed Democrats’ criticisms of the recently released Republican memo detailing surveillance abuse within the FBI and Department of Justice, during an interview Sunday on “Face The Nation.”
“I get that Adam Schiff and others are worried about what’s not in my memo,” Gowdy said on “Face The Nation.” “I wish that they were equally concerned about what’s not in the FISA application”
HOT AIR pulls out an excellent point/quote by Jonathan Turley:
….However, he points out another problem which isn’t getting nearly as much attention. What happened to the dire threats to national security we were told were contained in this memo?
My greatest concern is what is not in the [memo]: classified information “jeopardizing national security.” Leaders like Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) declared that the committee had moved beyond “dangerous irresponsibility and disregard for our national security” and “disregarded the warnings of the Justice Department and the FBI.”
Now we can read the memo. There is a sharp and alarming disconnect between the descriptions of Pelosi and the House Intelligence Committee’s Ranking Minority Member Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and the actual document. It clearly does not contain information that would reveal sources or methods.
The memo reaffirms concerns over the lower standards that apply to FISA applications as well as the misuse of classification authority. Most of this memo references what was already known about the use of the dossier. What was added was testimonial evidence and details to the publicly known information. Yet, the FBI vehemently objected to the release of the memo as threatening “grave” consequences to national security…
The FBI opposition to declassification of this memo should be a focus of both Congress and the public. The memo is clearly designed to avoid revealing classified information. For civil libertarians, this is a rare opportunity to show how classified rules are misused for strategic purposes by these agencies. The same concern can be directed toward members who read this memo and represented to the public that the release would clearly damage national security.
In that first paragraph above, Turley is quoting the statement Pelosi put out about the memo on Tuesday. However, she made a similar claim on CNN during that contentious interview with Chris Cuomo. “Putting this aside in terms of tit for tat, which you seem to—well, with all due respect to you—trying to make it look like Democrats vs. [Republicans]. It isn’t about that,” Pelosi said. She added, “It’s about our national security.” In the same interview, she said, “We’re not talking about some issue that we’re having a fight about, we’re talking about our national security.”
The point is, this was raised many times this week by Democrats eager to prevent the release of the memo. In retrospect, it’s difficult to see how anyone could have thought it represented a grave threat to national security. Maybe the subsequent release of the Democrats’ own memo will shed some additional light on whatever threat they see in it, but at the moment it looks as if those warnings were overblown. As Turley puts it, “it proved to be an empty ‘grave’ after weeks of overheated hyperbole.”
Brian Mudd fills in for Mark Levin, on the day of the Nunes’ memo release. Brian goes through the incontrovertible facts… which have not (and will not) be shown to be false. Here is Mudd’s TWITTER:
READ THE MEMO (Via Powerline)
Hannity interviews Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch and Greg Jarrett of Fox News regarding the legalities and criminal activity involved in the Nunes Memo revelations. KEY PLAYERS are named!
✦ Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch | Twitter
✦ Greg Jarrett of Fox News | Twitter
READ THE MEMO (Via Powerline)
GATEWAY PUNDIT says of the following report:
A Report was released in April of 2017 that received no publicity until recently.
The report was a ruling on the results of an investigation or audit into FISA searches made by Obama’s FBI and DOJ during Obama’s time in office.
The report shows Obama’s FBI and DOJ participated in widespread criminal searches and criminal sharing of data with non authorized entities outside of government.
On April 26, 2017, an unsealed FISA Court Ruling unveiled a number of criminal activities that Barack Obama’s FBI and DOJ participated in during his time in office. The report to date received little attention. Now interest is brewing due to the recent actions of Congress and the report that is expected to be released in the upcoming weeks….
Here is the report referenced in GP’s post:
FISA searches can be conducted on any foreign person without issue. All non-U.S. citizens on the entire planet can be searched 24/7/365 no issues. FISA searches on foreign people have no restrictions at all.
However, when the FISA search returns data identifying a U.S. citizen, everything changes. Those changes are under the identifying term “702”. A “702” is an American person.
All U.S. citizens are protected by the fourth amendment against unlawful search and seizure. All searches of U.S. people must have a valid reason. Title III says any search for a potential criminal investigation must have a judicial warrant. Additionally, any criminal search of the FISA database must also have a warrant (technically, ‘approval’).
Any FISA searches of foreign subjects, might need FISA Court approval if the returned data includes a U.S. subject (“702”).
[…..]A non-compliance rate of 85% raises substantial questions about the propriety of using of [Redacted – likely “About”] query FISA data.
(SEE ALL the pertinent released FISA/FBI documents at THE MARKETS WORK)
To wit, Democrat Representative Adam Schiff — leading on the “Russia Collusion” and impeachment thingies — says the public should not view the memo because the American public would not understand its talking points without the accompaniment reports to which the memo refers (GP h-t):
CABRERA: “Why not allow peel to look at it and let Americans make the decision for themselves about whether it’s useful information or not?”
SCHIFF: “Well, because the American people unfortunately don’t have the underlying materials and therefore they can’t see how distorted and misleading this document is. The Republicans are not saying make the underlying materials available to the public. They just want to make this spin available to the public. I think that spin, which is a attack on the FBI, is just designed to attack the FBI and Bob Mueller to circle the wagons for the White House. And that’s a terrible disservice to the people, hard working people at the bureau, but more than that, it’s a disservice to the country.”
Lo-and-behold… Schiff’s wish is gonna be granted — although I doubt that is what he wanted. Ooops.
Again, GATEWAY PUNDIT:
According to the Washington Examiner‘s Byron York, Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-SC) and Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) huddled together Saturday to discuss a “never-before-used procedure” for releasing the “shocking” FISA abuse memo.
Washington Examiner reports:
There’s no doubt Republicans want the public to see the classified memo. To get it out, they are studying a never-before-used procedure whereby House Intelligence Committee members would vote to make the memo public, after which the president would have five days to object.
If the president had no objection, the memo would become public after those five days. If the president did object, the matter would go to the full House, which could vote to overrule the president’s objections and release the memo anyway.
In addition to the procedure, the three lawmakers are plotting how to go about releasing additional intelligence in support of the FISA memo. In a statement to CNN, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) said he is in favor of the move.
CNN reports:
Republicans appear to be charging ahead with their plan to publicly release the document and potentially some of the underlying intelligence so long as sources and methods are not disclosed. “If we’re going to go through the process anyway of declassifying the memo, are there some of the supporting documents that might not reveal sources and methods but might answer key questions that the memo does raise?” said Rep. Matt Gaetz […] “Chairman Goodlate and Chairman Gowdy and Chairman Nunes each sort of have jurisdiction over elements, and they are meeting and discussing a process now that I think will lead to greater transparency.”
[…..]While one may not think these are related…. they are. We are uncovering a massive cover up of illegal activity meant to sway an election:
Hannity brings on Reps. Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz to discuss FISA (1-18-18)
Sean Hannity (1-19-18) — will start at the 8:25 mark:
The news that was revealing to me was that Christopher Steele didn’t write the dossier much at all. It was turned over to Russian sources who wrote most of it. WOW! Hillary and the DNC literally paid for Kremlin propaganda to use against another campaign/sitting President.It is worse than Watergate because it is using U.S. resources and intelligence agencies to overthrow another political figure. Rush Limbaugh touches on the Intelligence Committee (FBI/FISA) memo that all of Congress has seen now.
The revealing it to all of Congress was a party line vote by-the-way… the Democrats who originally saw it did not want others to see it. And the reason Democrats haven’t leaked the information therein so far is because they KNOW it will harm their efforts against Trump… nor is the anti-Trump media wanting the information, as, they want to protect Democrat efforts. The plot has thickened a while back as well.
RELATED!
On Thursday evening, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras, was recused from former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s criminal case. Emmet G. Sullivan will now oversee over the trial. […ᖴOᖇ YOᑌᖇ IᑎᖴOᖇᗰᗩTIOᑎ…] “Every single judge on the FISA Court as of today was appointed during Obama’s Presidency! (March 2017)”
[….]
So was Judge Contreras also the FISA Judge who signed off on the application to spy on the Donald Trump campaign — including General Flynn?
ALSO!
…POLITICO reports:
President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, will face a different judge to be sentenced than the one who took Flynn’s guilty plea to a felony false statement charge last week, court records show.
Judge Emmet Sullivan was randomly assigned to take over the case after Judge Rudolph Contreras recused himself.
[…] Sullivan is an appointee of President Bill Clinton, while Contreras was appointed by President Barack Obama.
The news come amid questions surrounding the circumstances of Flynn’s interview with the FBI….
I see the justice supporting Flynn. Except he is broke now… maybe he will sue?
I wonder if anyone at Microsoft said, “you know, the only thing that could derail our new XBOX-ONE from sales is that by being connected to the internet ALL-THE-TIME if there were a huge government collection of data and access to machines online from your home.” I can imagine the other employee saying, “let’s lean forward with this project, Obama says we can trust the government.”
(Via, Black & Right) Take note as well that he said people shouldn’t be “tracked” who “protest a misguided war.” How times have changed… the Tea Party and other groups (pro-Israeli and religious) WERE tracked, and actively censored by threat of the full weight of the U.S. government.