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The Robert Mueller Investigation

Hugo Stiglitz

By Hugo Stiglitz
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notre dame joe

notre dame joe 195

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12 hours ago, GW Hayduke said:

Totally!!! The only problem is we would also have to pretend both sides are the same and that the Obama campaign publicly asked a foreign country for assistance and then that foreign country actually provided assistance. 

 

17 hours ago, UncleCharlie said:

Type that out again....slowly.  Buy now you're black.

If you can't tell the difference between a fraudulent FISA warrant and "Tell Putin to give me space,"  you ain't white. 

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Goredho
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Just to make sure I have the alternative facts straight...  Our government -- but I'm guessing only the deep state part of it --- is now guilty of torturing a poor, naive Russian exchange student who

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liberals suddenly being terrified of Russia and manic for election integrity is just pure comedy gold.

Chooky
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I don't believe for a moment that any of this is entertaining to you.  I think it gives you a bit of anxiety knowing that your best weapon against a group who you despise is a bumbling fraud as a busi

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Captainant

Captainant 27762

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3 hours ago, notre dame joe said:

 

If you can't tell the difference between a fraudulent FISA warrant and "Tell Putin to give me space,"  you ain't white. 

Are you saying that the trump campaign only asked russia/putin for some space? I don't understand the equivalency you're drawing here

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Anastasis

Anastasis 23484

Posted
Posted (edited)

  

6 hours ago, jimmyjazz said:

I don't know.  I do know there was and is disagreement with your position regarding the sufficiency of the evidence to issue the warrant.

I'm trying to drill down into your repeated and continuous brow-beating of posters on this site as to the breadth of your concerns.  I mean, I can point to a whole bunch of shit that in my mind would warrant an investigation, including (but not limited to) Trump Junior eagerly signing up for a meeting with Russians who offered dirt on Hillary Clinton.  I realize you think the Carter Page warrant should have never been issued, but what I'm not sure of is whether that is the extent of your concerns and how you think that played into Mueller's subsequent work as assigned and carried out.

It is extremely clear cut that the Steele dossier was central and essential to the decision to submit the application, and that the Steele material was essential to meeting the probable cause threshold.  Reference OIG report, Yates testimony, etc. 

You asked me to concisely outline my concerns with what went down with the DNC, Steele, and FISA court, etc. I did that, including I believe addressing your question about the extent of my concerns and impacts to the course of the investigation. But I'll try to put a finer point on it here wrt Mueller specifically.

I think that the Mueller investigation was warranted by the way that Comey was removed, and context that existed at the time.  Comey's removal over Flynn was key to that, but I am not sure that we get there without the coordinated media campaign stoking the public and political fervor over the topic. Of course, a good portion of the public perception had been effectively influenced by the media campaign that Steele/Simpson/PC lawyers orchestrated, ultimately culminating in the publication of the Steele materials, as well as the breadth of other information that was being pushed out, such as the server conspiracy angle. I think that the investigation of Russia's actions takes place to understand what they did and why and with who, but I think it is probably carried out in a different way under different circumstances.  So I do believe that the actions of Steele/Simpson/PC lawyers had a substantive impact on the trajectory and final form of the Russia investigation and all that played out. 

As I said back at the time, I think that Mueller should pull on all the strings related to potential election interference, and provide a full public declassified report. But we know that he didn't pull on all of the strings. We know that he didn't pull on the very string we are discussing here, a dossier of information collected by a former foreign intelligence asset working under a couple layers of contracting to the DNC, with direct connections to a Russian oligarch, using Russian sources and sub sources, and potentially the target of a russian disinformation campaign*. Seems like a pretty big string to totally avoid pulling on. "Not in my purview."

So let me ask you a straightforward question Jimmy.  Given what we know today about the dossier, its credibility, sourcing, funding, and the knowledge that the FBI had reports suggesting that Orbis was being targeted by RIS, do you think that this aspect should have been part of what Mueller probed with his investigation and his report on the various aspects of Russian election interference in 2016?

 

 

*Note:  I didn't remember discussing it here earlier, but in Jan and onward the FBI apparently received a variety of unconfirmed reports suggesting that RIS had targeted Orbis and that certain aspects (info about Cohen to Prague?, as well as the pee pee tapes) were part of a Russian disinformation campaign and that Steele's source network had been infiltrated by RIS (to @Pig Bellmont's query above, apparently the FBI did have information that suggested that some of the information Steele was collecting was tied to state actors; see discussion of footnotes 342 and 350 here if you are interested: https://www.lawfareblog.com/what-and-isnt-new-unredacted-footnotes-inspector-generals-russia-report).

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jimmyjazz

jimmyjazz 46124

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9 hours ago, Anastasis said:

It is extremely clear cut that the Steele dossier was central and essential to the decision to submit the application, and that the Steele material was essential to meeting the probable cause threshold.  Reference OIG report, Yates testimony, etc. 

Even if we accept that as truth, I'm still unclear as to the reach of an ill-advised (perhaps unlawful) surveillance warrant.  The fact that it bore no fruit doesn't excuse the issuance of the warrant itself, but it does move it closer to "nothingburger" with regards to Trump, his campaign, Russian and other foreign agents, and the election.  You seem hyper-focused on this supposedly outrageous action, but around here it feels like you use it as a cudgel to shoot down any discussion beyond that particular set of facts.

 

Quote

As I said back at the time, I think that Mueller should pull on all the strings related to potential election interference, and provide a full public declassified report. But we know that he didn't pull on all of the strings. We know that he didn't pull on the very string we are discussing here, a dossier of information collected by a former foreign intelligence asset working under a couple layers of contracting to the DNC, with direct connections to a Russian oligarch, using Russian sources and sub sources, and potentially the target of a russian disinformation campaign*. Seems like a pretty big string to totally avoid pulling on. "Not in my purview."

I'm not thrilled with the way Mueller went about executing his task, but that's a discussion for another day.  It doesn't directly address the topic at hand.

 

Quote

So let me ask you a straightforward question Jimmy.  Given what we know today about the dossier, its credibility, sourcing, funding, and the knowledge that the FBI had reports suggesting that Orbis was being targeted by RIS, do you think that this aspect should have been part of what Mueller probed with his investigation and his report on the various aspects of Russian election interference in 2016?

Again, Mueller's performance is unrelated to the justification of the investigation and the building blocks used to justify it.

Let me try to wrap this up, no doubt to the relief of all the innocent bystanders:  do think the hiring of Christopher Steele was illegal?  Do you think Clinton/DNC/Fusion/Perkins Coie or US intelligence committed crimes after receipt of the dossier?

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Anastasis

Anastasis 23484

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Posted

You asked me about the extent of my concerns and the impact on the mueller investigation. I answered that by sharing my thoughts on the the impact to the trajectory and final form, as well as the glaring hole in the mueller investigation that relates directly back to what we are discussing here.  I don’t think any of that is unrelated to what you have asked of me. 
 

We started this exchange with you asking me to concisely outline my concerns. I did that In good faith. You said you wanted to go through those points in segments. We made it about as far as “If it stopped there, maybe we could just chalk that up to dirty politics and leave it at that. But it didn't.“  
 

You abandoned that approach and started peeling off others questions, which is totally fine. I have done my best to answer them in detail. In return, I’ve asked you a couple very direct questions that get to some of the core concerns I’ve outlined and should be easy to answer, even if it requires you to make a judgement call or even just offer your opinion based on the information we have at hand. You’ve deflected on both of those.  I am actually trying to highlight some areas where I believe we should be able to find some areas of agreement. I hope that you can understand that from my perspective that doesn’t appear to be a good faith attempt to probe and understand my concerns and perspective. 

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jimmyjazz

jimmyjazz 46124

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It has been in absolute good faith.  I am trying to understand the boundaries of your outrage.  When more information is added, it gets a little difficult to circle back to the original post, and in my mind more productive to continue using the latest points you have made.  This isn't a deposition, and I'm hardly an attorney.

I appreciate that you have attempted to clarify what your thoughts are.  I'd appreciate it more if you could answer those last two questions.

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Anastasis

Anastasis 23484

Posted
Posted
9 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

It has been in absolute good faith.  I am trying to understand the boundaries of your outrage.  When more information is added, it gets a little difficult to circle back to the original post, and in my mind more productive to continue using the latest points you have made.  This isn't a deposition, and I'm hardly an attorney.

I appreciate that you have attempted to clarify what your thoughts are.  I'd appreciate it more if you could answer those last two questions.

I’d be happy to answer those questions. I think that the boundaries of my concerns on the specific things I was asked outline concisely were outlined originally. But like I said I am happy to address your questions if they help clarify. I just think that there needs to be a little good faith reciprocity as I answer your questions and outline the aspects of my concerns in more detail. Will you commit yourself to something other than an “I don’t know” or a deflection on the last two questions I asked you so we can move this forward?

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jimmyjazz

jimmyjazz 46124

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Posted

Well, sure, but I can't say I've completely formed an opinion on those points.  For one thing, I need to go back and refresh on Orbis, etc.  That said, Mueller was tasked with investigating Russian interference in the election (my words) along with anything else he uncovered, and to the extent I've leaned on the latter from day one, I'd be a hypocrite to say that anything was outside his purview, even if he stated otherwise.

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Anastasis

Anastasis 23484

Posted
Posted
11 hours ago, jimmyjazz said:

Well, sure, but I can't say I've completely formed an opinion on those points.  For one thing, I need to go back and refresh on Orbis, etc.  That said, Mueller was tasked with investigating Russian interference in the election (my words) along with anything else he uncovered, and to the extent I've leaned on the latter from day one, I'd be a hypocrite to say that anything was outside his purview, even if he stated otherwise.

Pretty squishy answers to my questions, but I guess we can work with them.

On 8/7/2020 at 4:43 PM, Anastasis said:

Do you agree that the Steele material should not have been used as the central and essential component of establishing probable cause, at a minimum without more rigorous vetting?

I'm still not sure where you stand on this one from the response, or even which way you lean. I find it hard to believed that after reading the OIG report, anybody would be good with the way this went down.  Even Sally Yates (person who signed the first FISA) testified that she was shocked. 

23 hours ago, Anastasis said:

So let me ask you a straightforward question Jimmy.  Given what we know today about the dossier, its credibility, sourcing, funding, and the knowledge that the FBI had reports suggesting that Orbis was being targeted by RIS, do you think that this aspect should have been part of what Mueller probed with his investigation and his report on the various aspects of Russian election interference in 2016?

It appears that your answer to this question is at least a soft yes. It's a hard and easy yes for me. I believe that the issues that have been previously discussed were clearly relevant to the investigation and should have been probed. And if you can land there, ask yourself why it was not pursued by the otherwise aggressive and thorough investigation team. I think that the answer is quite simple. Mueller was a company man. Some of the answers to the obvious questions would bring the FBI's actions central under the microscope. You don't even have to land on any potential political bias to recognize that Mueller appears to be at a minimum shielding the FBI by not probing this one. Took the OIG to go there, but his power, the investigatory tools at his disposal, and ability to compel cooperation was much much much more limited than Mueller's. The OIG is relatively toothless in fact. Yet the findings even with that limited power were pretty shocking.

 

So to your questions, in reciprocity. I will try to be direct with my answers...

14 hours ago, jimmyjazz said:

do think the hiring of Christopher Steele was illegal?

I don't think that there is anything inherently illegal about hiring a UK national as a subcontractor.

14 hours ago, jimmyjazz said:

Do you think Clinton/DNC/Fusion/Perkins Coie or US intelligence committed crimes after receipt of the dossier?

Based on what we know publicly, there do appear to be some crimes committed as this played out and during the aftermath. FBI lawyer, Christopher Steele, Glenn Simpson to name a few. I don't know what criminal charges if any can be applied to violations of FBI policy, but if we wanted to start up that list it could turn into a long cat post. 

 

 

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elguapo

elguapo 4586

Posted
Posted
Lulz. 
I guess [mention=203]jimmyjazz[/mention] lost interest in the exchange. 
 
Oh, and LOL at Natasha Bertrand in general.  

LOL

She’s almost as funny as electing a conman grifter who enjoys peeing on young prostitutes to the most powerful position in the world.

LOL
  • Hook 'Em 1
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Biff Tannen

Biff Tannen 45728

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Posted
5 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Here is the actual filing.  Anything in there you find interesting? 

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/17445533/1/united-states-v-clinesmith/

 

 

Forgive me for not being a legal scholar, but I did read it twice, and it appears on the fourth FISA application (out of 4) that the FBI agent changed some language to keep the FISA warrant going.  Is that right?

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Anastasis

Anastasis 23484

Posted
Posted
6 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

Forgive me for not being a legal scholar, but I did read it twice, and it appears on the fourth FISA application (out of 4) that the FBI agent changed some language to keep the FISA warrant going.  Is that right?

The part that jumped out at me was the part where the CIA told members of the CH hurricane team in August 2016, prior to any of the applications, that CP was an operational contact for the CIA as far back as 2003.  We already knew the timing and extent of the material falsification by Clinesmith. 

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JimmyJames

JimmyJames 12271

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Posted
On 8/14/2020 at 1:02 PM, Anastasis said:

The part that jumped out at me was the part where the CIA told members of the CH hurricane team in August 2016, prior to any of the applications, that CP was an operational contact for the CIA as far back as 2003.  We already knew the timing and extent of the material falsification by Clinesmith. 

Yeah this in the grand scheme of things seems important. I guess. 

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JimmyJames

JimmyJames 12271

Posted
Posted
16 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Can someone please explain the difference between Manafort and a full blown spy? Like, what more could he possibly do to prove it? 

Well for one thing. He could have lived in an age when the Republican Party hadn’t turned full traitor and we were living in normal times where he would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law with the full support of the American people.

The Republican Party over the last 60 years has made sure that reality no longer exists. 

The chickens have come home to roost. 

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