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House Intelligence Committee releases Dem rebuttal to GOP FISA memo

Khayembii Communique said:
The memo was shown to Wray. It was not provided to the FBI for them to review the contents in detail and redact sensitive information.
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Huh? Wray is the director of the FBI.

Maybe you need to read the article again, especially this sentence:

The GOP lawmaker told Wray to flag any information in the memo that was incorrect, could lead to national security issues or risk FBI sources, according to Politico.​

Then of course there's the fact that absolutely nothing in the republican memo was incorrect, nothing in it that breached national security, and contained nothing that put FBI sources at risk.

That says it all right there... and it's something that can't be said about that ineffective piece of Schiff memo the democrats tried to slip in under the radar, which had to be redacted to the hilt.

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JasperL said:
I don't have a guess....
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Steele is a foreign national and obviously so were the Russians that fed him their stories to help him and Hillary influence the election.
 
bubbabgone said:
They weren't blocking Schiff's memo. That's the point. Schiff said they were and that was his lie.
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"The motion is on the amendment pursuant to House rule X, clause 11(g), that the minority memo be included with the majority's memo and sent to the President for public disclosure. The clerk will call the roll.

...

THE CLERK: Mr. Chairman, there are 8 ayes, 12 noes, with 1 voting present.
THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Schiff's amendment is not agreed to. Without agreement the previous question is ordered."

Source (PDF p.44)
​
The Nunes memo didn't have any classified info.
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The Nunes memo was classified.



The DOJ openly stated that there was classified information in the memo (see below)

The FBI did review the Nunes memo.
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Republicans on the HPSCI refused to allow the intelligence agencies to review the memos in detail and brief the committee on any redactions they would recommend. From the earlier PDF page 30:

"The question is on the amendment pursuant to committee 14(i)(4) to seek the advice of the executive branch agencies, specifically DOJ and FBI, to review the classified memorandum and to provide a classified briefing to the House and delay the public disclosure of the memo released to the House on January 18, 2018. The clerk will call the roll.

...

THE CLERK: Mr. Chairman, there are 9 ayes and 12 noes.
THE CHAIRMAN: The motion is not agreed to."
​
In the same meeting, they voted to send the memo to the President for declassification. PDF page 44:

"The question is on the motion to disclose publicly the material contained in the classified executive session committee memo made available to the House by the committee on January 18, 2018, pursuant to House rule X, clause 11(g). The clerk will call the roll.

...

THE CLERK: Mr. Chairman, there are 11 ayes and 9 noes.
THE CHAIRMAN: The ayes have it. The motion is adopted, and the committee shall transmit notification to the President of the committee's intent to publicly disclose material contained in the classified executive session memo in accordance with House rule X, clause 11(g)(2)(a) and 11(g)(2)(b)."​

The FBI has stated exactly what I have said in a press release, namely that they were not provided the opportunity to review the memo in any meaningful detail and provide feedback on what should be redacted:

The FBI takes seriously its obligations to the FISA Court and its compliance with procedures overseen by career professionals in the Department of Justice and the FBI. We are committed to working with the appropriate oversight entities to ensure the continuing integrity of the FISA process.

With regard to the House Intelligence Committee’s memorandum, the FBI was provided a limited opportunity to review this memo the day before the committee voted to release it. As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.

Source​

Stephen Boyd, the Assistant Attorney General at the Department of Justice who serves under Jeff Sessions, sent a letter to Chairman Nunes stating thus:

Media reports indicate that the Committee's memorandum contains highly classified material confidentially provided by the Department to the Committee in a secure facility...In addition, we have also heard that HPSCI is considering making the classified memorandum available to the public and the media, an unprecedented action. We believe it would be extraordinarily reckless for the Committee to disclose such information publicly without giving the Department and the FBI the opportunity to review the memorandum and to advise the HPSCI of the risk of harm to national security and to ongoing investigations that could come from public release. Indeed, we do not understand why the Committee would possibly seek to disclose classified and law enforcement sensitive information without first consulting with the relevant members of the Intelligence Community.

Source​
 
Had to split this off into a second post because of character limits.

Trump wasn't sitting on Schiff's memo. Schiff wasn't following the established procedure that the Republicans did. Schiff could have had it out 2 weeks earlier if he was ready.
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The above shows that the Republicans didn't go through any procedure to clear the document with the DOJ or FBI. They sent it to Trump and Trump declassified it immediately, probably without even reading it. When the Democrats tried to do the same thing, Trump sent theirs to the FBI/DOJ for review. Why? Well, it's painfully obvious to anyone that isn't an ideologue why Trump would do that.
 

What claim is that?

Is that the claim you keep saying the republicans never made about the Yahoo article, yet now are saying the democrats debunked?

I'm confused... Did the republican memo say the article was used by the FBI to corroborate the dossier or not? Because you said on post 882:

Nunes never actually claims the Yahoo article was used to corroborate the Steele information.​


So which is it?

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bubbabgone said:
Steele is a foreign national and obviously so were the Russians that fed him their stories to help him and Hillary influence the election.
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You cited a law regarding the illegality of foreign nationals spending money to influence elections. My question was who spent money.

Steele was paid. You appear to have confused being paid money for doing a job with contributing money to a campaign or using it to further a campaign. They are different things. There is no law against a campaign hiring a foreign national to do a job.
 
bubbabgone said:
You meant that you don't have a clue and I applaud your candor.
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I don't have a clue because your arguments are so illogical and nonsensical, it's impossible to figure out what the hell you're talking about.
 

Whose money did Steele spend? On what did he spend it? For what purpose was it spent? For whose benefit was it spent?
You want to make the case that Hillary paying Russians to help her campaign is perfectly acceptable. You can go with that.
But then are you surprised she never admitted that but rather struggled mightily not to admit it?
Why do you think that is?
Why do you think her campaign called it legal services?
 
JasperL said:
I don't have a clue because your arguments are so illogical and nonsensical, it's impossible to figure out what the hell you're talking about.
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TRANSLATION: you're out of talking points.
 
Grim17 said:
What claim is that?

Is that the claim you keep saying the republicans never made about the Yahoo article, yet now are saying the democrats debunked?
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Yes, the person I responded to (among others, like our resident retired spy) claim the FBI falsely corroborated the Steele dossier with the Yahoo article. Schiff says that didn't happen - said the purpose of the Yahoo article, along with another article that appears to be a WaPo article, was to get Page's public and vehement denials of those meetings on the record for the court.

The GOP responded to a lot of what Schiff's memo claimed, but ignored that direct assertion by Schiff, which effectively calls Nunes a liar.


If you're asking me, the GOP (i.e. Nunes and Grassley in the memos released by the committees they head) never made that claim, and the FBI did not use the Yahoo article to corroborate Steele's dossier. Others (the person I was talking with and our resident retired spy) are making the opposite assertion, which is what I'm trying to debunk, by citing the words used in the official releases of the various committees.
 

Ok, good talk.
 
Don't ****ing tell me we to go read and report to you **** that I linked to you and that has no bearing on the house intelligence investigation in the first ****ing place.
If you can't read, too ****ing bad.
 
JasperL said:
Schiff says that didn't happen - said the purpose of the Yahoo article, along with another article that appears to be a WaPo article, was to get Page's public and vehement denials of those meetings on the record for the court.
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Only problem with that theory is, nowhere in that Yahoo article does Carter Page deny those meetings, much less vehemently deny them.

Do you dispute that fact?

If so, then please post the relevant quote from the article... If you don't dispute this, then there is only one conclusion to be drawn.... Mr. Schiff's claim wasn't true.


If you're asking me, the GOP (i.e. Nunes and Grassley in the memos released by the committees they head) never made that claim
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They didn't have to directly make the claim, because what the FBI themselves stated on the FISA application is self explanatory:

"Given that the information contained in the September 23rd news article generally matches the information about Page that [Steele] discovered during his/her research, [two lines redacted.] The FBI does not believe that [Steele] directly provided this information to the press."​


OK... In all seriousness, here's what I think you're missing:

1. We know what Schiff claimed was the articles purpose isn't true, because the Yahoo article does not contain any denials from Page.
2. If Schiff was in fact being honest, he could have easily substantiated that claim by quoting the portion of the FISA application that stated the purpose for the inclusion of that article, but he did not.
3. The quote above from the FISA application from the Grassley memo, is actually 2 different thoughts separated by what is redacted.
a) The first part "Given that the information contained in the September 23rd news article generally matches the information about Page that [Steele] discovered during his/her research," appears to be the FBI using the article to corroborate the dossier, though it's possible, but not likely, it could be something else... What else, I can't even fathom.
b) The last part "The FBI does not believe that [Steele] directly provided this information to the press." appears to be protecting both Steele as a credible FBI source, and validating the information in the article as being derived from a separate and independent corroborating source for the dossier.​

Whether Schiff and the democrats made it up themselves, or that's what the FBI told them, we know for an absolute fact that what's claimed in the democratic memo about the purpose for that Yahoo article being included with the FISA application is false. The claim being made publicly and implied in both republican memos, that the article was used to corroborate the Steele dossier, is not only valid and makes perfect sense, but is thus far the only valid claim that even exists. If you have heard of another valid explanation that's been put forth by someone in-the-know concerning the use of that article, I'd certainly like to hear it.

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Sorry but you're jumping in the middle of some conversations, which is why you're not getting the whole picture. Here's the relevant section of the Schiff memo:


The second article is presumed to be this WaPo article, in which he vehemently denies the meetings alleged in the Yahoo article. The meetings are summarized in the Washington Post article, but not in the same amount of detail provided by the Yahoo story.

And, again, this basic version of events was not challenged by Nunes in the response I cited earlier.


The allegation is not made so, no, it's not self explanatory that I have to imply something that HAS NOT BEEN SAID. That passage never claims the Yahoo article was used to corroborate ANYTHING. Nunes never made that claim. Grassley never made that claim. I'm sorry but the words just are not there.

2. If Schiff was in fact being honest, he could have easily substantiated that claim by quoting the portion of the FISA application that stated the purpose for the inclusion of that article, but he did not.
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First of all, Nunes never made the claim that the Yahoo article was used to corroborate any of Steele's reporting, much less quote the FISA application for a claim he DID NOT MAKE. Schiff attacks Nunes' deception head on with a short but complete summary of how the Yahoo article was used. Nunes ignores this Schiff assertion in the majority response entirely - does not even try to address it.

And in response, you are calling SCHIFF dishonest because he didn't QUOTE from the application? That's not fair, at all.


Notice what you have to do there - imply something that neither Nunes nor Grassley bothered to assert, and that is not asserted in the quoted section of the FISA application.
 

I've addressed that and it got too long so I had to cut the response up, but I'm just going to summarize here:

Neither Nunes nor Grassley asserted or claimed that the Yahoo article was used to corroborate any of the Steele information. It didn't happen. The language you quoted from the FISA application does not make this claim. That claim does not exist in writing in the official releases from either party, or what we have seen of the application. Those are just all FACTS. So you're insisting that a claim NO ONE HAS MADE must be true. That makes no sense to me.

The other fact that I just discovered today (didn't know the document existed) is that in their response to the Schiff memo, the Majority totally ignored Schiff's debunking of the "false corroboration" lie. They did not challenge Schiff's account. I can't quote how Nunes responded - he ignored it! They addressed many points made by Schiff, but for some reason ignored this BIG POINT!


Schiff has read the application (one of two in the House who have), is one of VERY few people actually in the know, he told us and you how it was used, and his account was not challenged by the GOP in their response.

That's your answer.

And I just want to add that IMO, what you should be doing at this point is recognizing Nunes lied to you, and me, and the American public. And the point of his lie was to disparage the FBI, DoJ and the FISC in a craven attempt to defend our POTUS. Nunes is a deeply dishonest man and has no business ON the HSPCI and sure as hell should be drummed out of the Chair's seat.

On another thread, I posted an article indicating the Senate leaked that they know it was Nunes who asked and received texts from the Senate between Warner and the guy trying to arrange a meeting with Steele, then proceeded to leak them to Fox News. The guy is a no-integrity POS IMO.
 
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Do you understand what the highlighted part says?

FACT: The Yahoo article does NOT "inform the Court of Page's public denial of his suspected meetings in Moscow", because nowhere in that article did it say Page denied any such thing.

Since you didn't answer my question, I will ask you again:

Do you dispute that fact?

If so, then please post the relevant quote from the article... If you don't dispute this, then there is only one conclusion to be drawn.... Mr. Schiff's claim wasn't true.

I have never seen such blatant twisting of the facts in my life.


The Washington Post article may contain such denials, but the Yahoo article DOES NOT... Meaning it must have been included in the application for some other reason.

Why is it so difficult for you to accepting this plain, simple and obvious fact?



And, again, this basic version of events was not challenged by Nunes in the response I cited earlier.
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Now your back to playing dumb and pretending that no such allegation even exists. How about you listen to Nunes's own words:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHcoJ77-vdE





Everyone and their brother has made that claim, and you are parsing words to avoid addressing the facts.



And in response, you are calling SCHIFF dishonest because he didn't QUOTE from the application? That's not fair, at all.
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No, I'm calling the claim made in the democratic memo for why the Yahoo article was included dishonest... Because it is... It doesn't matter if the FBI told that information to democrats, or Schiff and the democrats made it up, it's still FALSE as anyone who reads the article can see.

If you disagree, then post the portion of the article that substantiates the claim made in the democratic memo... It's just that simple.



Notice what you have to do there - imply something that neither Nunes nor Grassley bothered to assert, and that is not asserted in the quoted section of the FISA application.
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We understand... You make excuses and parse words so you can avoid addressing the facts that the FBI abused their power and mislead the FISA court to spy on an American citizen.


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JasperL said:
Schiff has read the application (one of two in the House who have), is one of VERY few people actually in the know, he told us and you how it was used, and his account was not challenged by the GOP in their response.

That's your answer.
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That is absolutely false. Nowhere in that article does Carter Page deny those meetings.

Do you know of any other valid explanation for the use of that article, other than the most logical explanation that I already presented and everyone not blinded by partisan politics knows to be true?

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Mach said:
Don't ****ing tell me we to go read and report to you **** that I linked to you and that has no bearing on the house intelligence investigation in the first ****ing place.
If you can't read, too ****ing bad.
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Tsk Tsk...such language. Such anger. Don't like the truth, when it doesn't suit your purposes I guess.
Here...have your pom poms back. I think you need them more than I.
You know...as a calming influence...:roll:
 
Grim17 said:
Do you understand what the highlighted part says?

FACT: The Yahoo article does NOT "inform the Court of Page's public denial of his suspected meetings in Moscow", because nowhere in that article did it say Page denied any such thing.
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I don't know what to tell you. Schiff's memo says the two articles were presented in tandem. You're ignoring what Schiff said, to debunk half the explanation.

Read the Yahoo article, then the WaPo article for yourself in tandem. The former provides the detailed allegations, and the latter contains Pages vehement denials of what was alleged by Yahoo.

And what you can't avoid are a couple of facts:

1) NO ONE has alleged in writing that the Yahoo article was used to corroborate Steele's dossier, and
2) Schiff presented his memo, the Majority (i.e. Nunes) responded to many parts of that memo, but did not challenge Schiff's account of the purpose of the Yahoo article. Schiff basically demolished the "fake corroboration" bull****, and Nunes had nothing to say.

So you're insisting something NO ONE ALLEGED in writing in a document that matters is true, Schiff says this thing Nunes didn't say but dishonestly implied is BS, and in response, Nunes defense is....crickets. So every minute you've spent defending this claim is a minute more time than the GOP majority on the HSPCI spent defending it.

Sorry, but Nunes lied to you and the American public.

Now your back to playing dumb and pretending that no such allegation even exists. How about you listen to Nunes's own words:
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I'm not playing dumb. I'm reading what the memos SAY - the actual words on the page. I know the allegation exists, several people have made it on DP, but no one who has seen the application has alleged it - Nunes didn't, the parts of the FISA application don't, Grassley didn't. If you want to prove me wrong, quote from the memos - I know you cannot.

And I lost 10 minutes of my life listening to Sean Hannity which is 10 minutes more time than he deserves of my limited time on this earth, and I never heard Nunes allege or assert that the Yahoo article was used to corroborate Steele's dossier. He references Yahoo only to point out that Steele lied (apparently) about talking to the press. If you want to claim he made this allegation, can you point to the approximate part of the tape where it's done.


You're doing a lot of things there, but what you're not doing is quoting the words on the page that back up your version of events.

And you keep avoiding that every minute you've spent calling Schiff's version of events untrue, false, lies, is one minute more than the Majority did in response to Schiff's claim. Schiff effectively calls Nunes a damned liar on this issue, and Nunes and the Majority on the HPSCI respond with..........crickets. NOT ONE WORD IN DEFENSE.
 
Grim17 said:
That is absolutely false. Nowhere in that article does Carter Page deny those meetings.
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Again, read the two articles in tandem, which is how Schiff said they were presented.

Do you know of any other valid explanation for the use of that article, other than the most logical explanation that I already presented and everyone not blinded by partisan politics knows to be true?
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I have to admit it's a bit funny to be accused of being blinded by partisan politics when I'm citing the actual memos and simply noting what WAS NOT SAID IN THEM. And you're accusing me of this, and insisting the non-partisan approach is to assume words NOT said, allegations NOT made, facts NOT asserted in the memos must be true.

You're also insisting that I ignore the fact that the majority in its response to Schiff's version of events says NOT A WORD IN DEFENSE of your preferred narrative.
 

view ...
then read ...
House Intelligence Committee votes to release controversial GOP surveillance memo
Ranking member Adam Schiff, D-Calif., told reporters that the Republican majority voted Monday night to make the four-page GOP memo public, but voted against the idea of releasing a counter memo written by the Democratic minority.
“[House Intel] voted to release GOP memo publicly and to release the Dem memo for viewing by Members of House of Representatives,” committee spokesman Jack Langer confirmed with the Washington Examiner.
...
The Department of Justice warned the committee last week against releasing it, as neither its top officials nor those in the FBI had viewed it.
However, it was reported that FBI Director Christopher Wray was allowed to view the memo in the House's safe spaces over the weekend.
Democrats have said the memo is misleading and mischaracterizing — it also reportedly accuses top FBI brass of abusing the surveillance warrant process known as FISA — and said they will put together and vote to release a classified memo of their own to fill in the blanks.
​
The bolded means ... Schiff didn't have a memo yet but the Republicans did.
and then read ...
Adam Schiff's Statements Are Frequently False Or Missing Key Details
Unlike what happened when Republicans on the committee asked Democrats for that vote, Republicans joined with Democrats to unanimously support his memo’s release to the House — the same process used for the majority memo. Here’s his claim: “The ‘release the memo crowd’ apparently doesn’t want to release the memo now. The most they would do is say that at some indeterminate point, a week or so from now, they would consider whether to release the minority memo.”
In other words, following the exact same process used for the majority’s memo.​
 
bubbabgone said:
The bolded means ... Schiff didn't have a memo yet but the Republicans did.
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That's simply not true. In the transcripts I've linked to for the January 29th meeting where the HPSCI voted to send the majority memo to the White House for declassification, and opposed sending the minority memo at the same time, they had possession of the minority memo.

MR. SWALWELL: I would hope that our colleagues, before voting to release this [majority memo] to the public, would read the minority's memo, which goes to painstaking length to paint a full picture of the inaccuracies that were laid out in the majority's memo. And you also get a sense when you read the minority memo that the majority hasn't read almost most of the materials that it is commenting on.

PDF page 29​

Later on a Republican congressperson even mentions the length of the memo. It was very clearly and obviously provided to the HPSCI prior to voting.

In other words, following the exact same process used for the majority’s memo.[/indent]
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Again you're wrong. The majority memo never went to the FBI for detailed review. I've already provided evidence of this. A copy was shown to Wray, that's it. It wasn't provided to the FBI and DOJ for vetting and recommendation of redactions. In the same meeting as above on January 29, the HPSCI voted against allowing time for the DOJ and FBI to review the memo and provide the committee feedback. It's right there in the transcript. Hell, here's a great quote from your own Washington Examiner article:


So there you have it. The DOJ and FBI didn't get a chance to review it. Wray was allowed to view the memo and that's it. Then the HPSCI voted to send it to Trump for declassification.

Additionally, earlier in the thread you made the following claims:

1. Republicans weren't blocking the Schiff memo from being released to the public
2. The Nunes memo didn't have any classified info
3. The FBI did review the Nunes memo

None of these statements are true. They're all 100% wrong as proven by my previous post and this one.
 
haymarket said:
The only way a question like that makes sense is if you believe that nothing done in a campaign effects a voters decision.

Do you believe that?
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In other words, you can't answer the question. It is you who claimed that Hillary lost because of the Russians and hacking and yet you can't even list ONE thing that was in the hacked emails that caused grief for Hillary. So far the best thing you came up with were that the emails showed that Hillary and the DNC colluded to influence the primary election against Bernie. Hell, Bernie said that himself. It wasn't a government secret. Everyone with a half a brain already knew that.
 

Oh but I did answer the question. Your question only makes sense in a world where nothing that happens in a political campaign gets a candidate votes for having done it.

Is that what you believe?

here again was your question to me


So do you believe that nothing done in an election gets a candidate votes?

Or to be SPECIFIC - since that is what you specified - do you believe that Donald Trump invoking wikileaks over 160 times in the last month of his campaign and making it front and center of his daily appearances in rallies had not any effect in getting him even a single vote?
 
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