
House Intelligence Committee Report on FISA Abuses - koolba
https://www.scribd.com/document/370598711/House-Intelligence-Committee-Report-On-FISA-Abuses
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koolba
Found a link to a copy on scribd. The original is at:
[http://docs.house.gov/meetings/IG/IG00/20180129/106822/HMTG-...](http://docs.house.gov/meetings/IG/IG00/20180129/106822/HMTG-115-IG00-20180129-SD001.pdf)
though it's being "hugged to death" at the moment, hence the scribd link.

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anthony_romeo
> “Steele admitted to Ohr his feelings against then-candidate Trump when
> Steele said he 'was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was
> passionate about him not being president.’”

So is his sense of 'desperation' a result of political differences, or as a
result of his findings?

~~~
tomohawk
It shows his bias, which is a clear conflict of interest, and something that
at the very least should have been disclosed to the FISC for their
consideration for the warrant.

The fact that it was not disclosed shows that either the leadership of the FBI
was overzealous or also very biased.

Legally, if there is even an apparent conflict of interest, an FBI officer is
supposed to recuse.

~~~
DannyBee
"It shows his bias, which is a clear conflict of interest, and something that
at the very least should have been disclosed to the FISC for their
consideration for the warrant. " Actually no, legally, it has no impact or
relevance.

The same way that whether a prosecutor likes or hates you doesn't matter to a
warrant application.

It matters whether they have probable cause or not.

If they have probable cause, there is no malicious prosecution claim you can
make.

Judge is supposed to look at the evidence, see if there is evidence of
probable cause, and if so, approve it. Otherwise, deny it.

Either that happened or it didn't. Either all the relevant (and again, bias is
not relevant) evidence supporting the warrant were provided or it wasn't.

The judge is the neutral adjudicator, not the investigator.

There is a _lot_ of caselaw on this because bias of informants is always
challenged (and pretty much always loses):

[http://reason.com/volokh/2018/01/31/the-dubious-legal-
claim-...](http://reason.com/volokh/2018/01/31/the-dubious-legal-claim-behind-
releaseth/print)

"Legally, if there is even an apparent conflict of interest, an FBI officer is
supposed to recuse."

This is not correct AFAIK. There is no legal statute or local court rules i'm
aware of saying any such thing. If you know one, please cite it. (I used to be
very heavily into this area when i interned at the Center for Democracy and
Technology many years ago).

The FBI is only driven by the attorney general's guidelines, which are _not_
overseen or approved by anyone else, and carry no force of law.

~~~
tomohawk
In this case, the judges were not shown the evidence. This is the weakness of
courts - they can only rule on what is presented to them.

Again, an FBI officer is supposed to recuse if there is even the appearance of
a conflict of interest. That's the legal standard. So, obviously biased FBI
officials should not have been involved in preparing or approving the FISA
warrant application.

~~~
DannyBee
"In this case, the judges were not shown the evidence. "

What evidence, precisely, do you think? As all the caselaw i cited says, bias
is not evidence. The standard for probable cause is not very high.

Fun fact: it's also not legally actionable, even if _evidence_ was hidden, if
it's likely the warrant would have been approved anyway.

"Again, an FBI officer is supposed to recuse if there is even the appearance
of a conflict of interest. That's the legal standard. "

Please cite actual caselaw instead of bare assertions. I'm aware of no caselaw
that says this, and i'm a lawyer with a significant amount of knowledge about
FISA warrants and FBI guidelines/rules.

The only regulations here are internal to the FBI (though published in the CFR
i believe), which are not "a legal standard" and are 100% irrelevant to what
they need to do in front of a court.

(also note that there is a separate set of FBI guidelines that are classified
that cover certain types of investigations. I do not remember if they cover
the investigation type that occurred here)

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dragonwriter
So, what I've learned from this nothingburger is that Devin Nunes (and,
presumably, he Trump White House, who he's been fairly openly acting as a
shield for from day one) is really, _really_ worried about the Carter Page
piece of the investigation.

I don't see this release doing all that much politically other than raising
the stakes; even assuming people miss that it's political spin, there's no new
smoking gun even alleged here that is likely to change minds. I suppose it
might shore up support among people whose reflexive support for Trump competes
with reflexive support for law enforcwment, which is politically significant
if the concern is the collapse of support in the Republican base, but I don't
see it having resonance beyond that.

~~~
insickness
This is the furthest thing from a nothingburger. Comey testified under oath
that the dossier was salacious and unverified. The FBI knew the document was
opposition research created by Clinton and the DNC. Yet Comey approved
surveillance on the Trump team based on that document. So in effect, the FBI
worked with the democrats to falsify documents to go after a political
opponent. This is a pretty big scandal.

~~~
gumby
> Yet Comey approved surveillance on the Trump team based on that document.

The surveillance started long before that dossier was put together. So it
couldn't be based on the not-yet-compiled document regardless of what this
document claims.

~~~
dragonwriter
> The surveillance started long before that dossier was put together.

The FISA surveillance targeting Page did not. Information _about_ Page, and
implicating him as a Russian asset, was captured on surveillance of Russian
nationals suspected of being spies in 2013, and was no doubt key to the FISA
application (apparently, one of the points on which Democratic rebuttal
challenges the Nunes memo’s characterization is on the centrality of the
dossier info to the FISA application.)

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JustAnotherPat
Disgraceful!

Trump should seize control of the FBI and restore some order. We need to get a
grasp on what's going on here.

