Carter Page adds a few more million dollars to his expected lawsuit windfall. FISA should not be renewed, period.
2
@Susan the patriot act needs to go as well. The abuses there are very likely much worse.
“botched”. I don’t think these agents botched anything. I believe they knew exactly what they were lying about and excluding from the warrant application.
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@John Gilday
the assumption of innocence
@John Gilday
It's GOP SOP has been for decades. They are only complaining because one of "their guys" got caught up in it.
4
@John Gilday
I’m not sure Trump knows he is lying, but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
It’s incredible that lawyers who often were great heroes of the Democrats now frequently object to the actions of the Democrats, the actions/”errors” of the FBI and FISA Court, etc. against Trump, Carter Page, etc. It’s also incredible that the “errors” always were in one direction.
The best-known lawyer perhaps is Professor Alan Dershowitz, who taught at Harvard Law for 50 years.
The reaction of the Democrats is no surprise. They lie and deceive about Dershowitz and the other lawyers. This is often led by Chuck Schumer, the worst member of a Congress that has few members who are credible.
If the article is going to characterize Republican claims about the FISA warrants as "conspiracy theories," it could at least mention the fact that when Nunes and Schiff released their dueling memos about what had happened, it turns out that Nunes's memo was the accurate one. The media does not like admitting that.
1
Thank you Mr Horowitz for the great service you have done for your country in dealing with irregularities and abuses you exposed in your report.
Two relatively buried stories here—this one and the story about Schumer’s unprecedented attack on sitting Justices, would have been headlines if Obama was the President the deep state were lying to the FISA court about and if Schumer was a Republican. Twentieth Century Democrats are pretty scary.
2
"There was no problem, but we've fixed the problem."
"We did nothing wrong, but we won't do it again."
7
What ? Trump hasn’t had these people fired? He must be slipping!
@LouGiglio
Because the FBI agent who made the mistake is a lifelong Republican and firing him would ruin the false narrative that there was a "plot" to get Trump by wiretapping the guy who Trump himself said had nothing to do with his campaign until Trump realized he could politicize the errors on the Page FISA application and the gullible reporters at this newspaper would dutifully legitimize the propaganda.
Trump attracts people who are habitually graceless in their behaviors, like Carter Page and Paul Manafort and Roger Stone. They are all preposterously silly people who are rather prone to behaving like crooks and nefarious operators. Page from the start sought to promote relations between the U.S. and Russia. although he was a private person not a representative of the U.S. When advised that he was in contact with Russians involved with intelligence agencies, he ignored the warnings. So he became a person of interest to counter intelligence in the U.S. Still while suspicious it apparently was not probable cause to justify a wiretap.
2
@Casual Observer
There was no probable cause to for FISA on Page.
An FBI lawyer committed fraud when he altered an email when Page was in fact a CIA informant to claim that he wasn't. That person is one of those under criminal investigation over FISA fraud on the courts.
All those who signed off on the FISA warrants also lied to the courts when they claimed there was confirmation and verification of information when there was not.
2
If Comey, McCabe or Page were still in the FBI, they'd all be barred from working on FISA matters under the court's order. It's a good thing they were all fired or forced to resign!
6
The Deep State is becoming more exposed.
Not just a Right-Wing conspiracy, but real bias in law enforcement.
11
@RP
Deep state is a rather silly concept. It is not representative of anything real.
The fact is that civil servants can become overly concerned about behavior which could represent criminal activities or national intelligence threats but which may not be, and this motivates them to exceed their legal authority.
3
@Casual Observer
The Deep State is the term for the Justice Department Resistance. This is real and has had a real and major impact.
You may think this is "silly," but I assure you many of us, especially those who were attacked and ruined by this, do not think this is "silly."
2
Why did the FBI suspect Carter Page?
Because the CIA found his activities to be suspicious they approached him to ask what he was doing. They asked him to keep them apprised of what he was doing. That is why Page had to keep them informed of what he was doing.
And I can't believe I still have to point this out but it is in one of the links; The Steel report was not 'funded by the Democrats'.
It was funded independently by Fusion GPS who then offered the product of their effort to the democrats who never used it. Saying it was 'funded by democrats' implies they had a hand in its preparation and conclusions. They did not. They, the HRC campaign, had no idea Steele had created the thing until Fusion GPS offered it to them.
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@magicisnotreal Page was a CIA informant and it was not the CIA who was suspicious of Page. It was an FBI lawyer who falsified an email to say Page was not a CIA informant when he was. That information was used in the application for the FISA warrant.
@magicisnotreal
Steele was hired by Fusion GPS after the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign hired Fusion GPS to seek oppositional research on Trump. So, in fact, it was funded by both the DNC & Clinton campaign. Of course they did not have a direct hand in preparing it, but it was their money that funded it.
2
FISA is a very problematic process in that it tries to serve two supposedly mutually exclusive public services, criminal investigation and counter international espionage efforts. The criminal investigations are constrained by rules about evidence while counter intelligence is about assessing risks. The former is about certainty, the admissibility of evidence, while the later is about probabilities and planning in consideration of them.
In fact, people like Carter Page, who play little ego games to feel important, and behave like foreign assets should be handled apart from FISA, the laws should allow counter intelligence to investigate them, only, until probable cause of criminal violations have been established.
It has been long established that the FBI activities were criticized in what the NYT calls "a damning report".
I am very disappointed that the internal review of who is to blame, who did what, and who knew what has taken so long to conclude. It gives the conspiracy theory believers new cause for alarm.
8
@Tony The Mueller team should have wrapped up before
the mid term elections.
2
If no one is held accountable for past inappropriate behavior then this will happen to future Americans. If this can happen to the President then it can happen to anyone.
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@kodac
What is it that you imagine happened to the president?
You should get this clear in your mind. The article is about the FBI doing to Carter page what they have been doing for decades to all of us. It is ironic that republican are objecting to the self same behaviors they operate by.
It was not a conspiracy. The fact is the FBI suspected Carter Page because the CIA suspected him and even approached him to see what he had to say for himself. Page was "requested" to keep the CIA informed of what he was doing.
Oh and Trump is a Russian agent.
5
@kodac
Nothing happened to the president. What did happen...happened to Carter Page.
1
@kodac the irony of your post is palpable. The “inappropriate behavior” was Trump’s obstruction of justice, detailed at length in the Mueller Report.
4
Attorney General William P. Barr? Huh?
"The order comes as Attorney General William P. Barr has discussed administratively imposing even greater — but as yet unspecified — restrictions on F.B.I. spying conducted under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, and lawmakers are debating legislation that would add more safeguards as federal law."
I understand there are other headline grabbers today. But this is an important decision because Americans, who thought they were protected from U.S. government surveillance unless all the i's were dotted and t's crossed, have learned they were not. Those of us who followed Kimberly Strassel of the WSJ learned a lot about the FISA issue/Steel Dossier/Fusion GPS/Bruce Ohr etc. before the Horowitz report. You, the NYTimes, did a pretty good job of ignoring key pieces of info. as they were revealed. And today ..... this is not getting top billing.
15
@Catherine
It was already done administratively weeks ago.
1
So will these FBI agents and managment that swore to the truthfulness and validity of the documents be indicted and go to jail anytime soon? Didn't think so.
13
@PanchoVilla
The evidence presented was essentially truthful. It was just incomplete.
2
@PanchoVilla When are Trump and his sycophants going to jail for their numerous breaches of their oaths ? Yeah, didn’t think so either.
1
@Jasr Since they swore it was complete, that meant they lied.
3