Why the surveillance memo matters

[dvdjs]

Gowdy was silent about whether he thinks Mueller’s investigation should continue in the tweets you cited.

He was repudiated any thinking that the memo taints the investigation or provides a grounds for discontinuing it. He said:

As I have said repeatedly I also remain 100 percent confident in Special Counsels Robert Mueller. The contents of this memo do not - in any way - discredit his investigation.

 

[Road-Worrier]

I just raised $2K in 5 hrs for St. Vincent de Paul by reminding parishioners entering church that they could hardly cheer for the Patriots while there are hungry people in our town.

Really? Guilting people over enjoying a football game? This is an example of why church attendance is falling.

 

[Road-Worrier]

As I have said repeatedly I also remain 100 percent confident in Special Counsels Robert Mueller. The contents of this memo do not - in any way - discredit his investigation.

Which says nothing about whether the investigation should continue or not.

 

[dvdjs]

Which says nothing about whether the investigation should continue or not.

It says that the memo does not provide a basis for discontinuing or discrediting it.

 

[MonteRCMS]

Worth reviewing.

Well stated.

 

[angel12]

How could I have specific proof since it is a secret court? But the proof is every other secret court and their rubber stamping of warrants.

OR, the warrant applications (not all of which are approved) are done to the court’s specifications in the first place.
You place a very serious charge against the FISA court judges. Most people would want some proof, not just assumptions. But, if you don’t need proof of anything, then you shouldn’t mind any accusations, by anyone, against anyone. They can just make assumptions based on their personal opinions, like you.

 

[Road-Worrier]

It says that the memo does not provide a basis for discontinuing or discrediting it.

The tweet says nothing about discontinuing the investigation. It’s actually pretty standard political speech that doesn’t say much definitive at all.

 

[Inisfallen]

“Judge” Jeanine is a joke. We here in New York have been familiar with her for decades.

No citation to her can be taken seriously.

 

[dvdjs]

nothing about discontinuing the investigation

Of course, because he is not calling for it to be discontinued, and indicates that the memo has no bearing on it.

 

[josie_L]

https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/feb/4/trey-gowdy-says-fbi-concealed-clinton-role-steele-/

From Gowdy’s own mouth:

The House’s top investigator on Sunday said the FBI failed to notify a surveillance court it was relying on material funded by Democrats and the Hillary Clinton campaign when it asked to snoop on an adviser tied to the Trump campaign.

Rep. Trey Gowdy, South Carolina Republican and chairman of the House Oversight Committee, also said judges wouldn’t have authorized and repeatedly renewed a warrant to spy on the former Trump aide, Carter Page, if it hadn’t been for that very material, compiled by investigator Christopher Steele in a controversial dossier.

"They could have easily said it was the DNC and Hillary Clinton. That would have been really easy,” Mr. Gowdy told CBS’s Face the Nation, referring to footnotes in the agents’ request to the court. “It took longer to explain it the way they did, than if they just come right out and said, ‘Hillary Clinton for America and DNC paid for it.’ But they didn’t do that.”

And they say it doesn’t reflect all of the material that went into the government snooping application.

That drew a rebuke from Mr. Gowdy.

“I wish that they were equally concerned about not in the FISA application, which is a lot of really important information about the source, and its sub-sources, and the fact that he was hired by the DNC and the Clinton campaign, and the fact that he was biased against President Trump,” said Mr. Gowdy, who last week said he will return to the legal field instead of seeking re-election.

“ I would argue it’s also somewhat unprecedented to rely on political opposition research to instruct and inform an application, and it’s really bad precedent and unprecedented to not tell a court that a source has this level of bias,” he said.

 

[dvdjs]

From Gowdy’s own mouth:

Let’s stay on point about Gowdy.

MARGARET BRENNAN: The memo has no impact on the Russia probe?

REP. GOWDY: No-- not to me, it doesn’t – and I was pretty integrally involved in the drafting of it. There is a Russia investigation without a dossier. So to the extent the memo deals with the dossier and the FISA process, the dossier has nothing to do with the meeting at Trump Tower. The dossier has nothing to do with an email sent by Cambridge Analytica. The dossier really has nothing to do with George Papadopoulos’ meeting in Great Britain. It also doesn’t have anything to do with obstruction of justice. So there’s going to be a Russia probe, even without a dossier.

ALSO:

REP. GOWDY: I think two of them would be. People can quibble about Andy McCabe. I spent, I guess, close to 15 hours with Andy McCabe in two different interview sections. I found him to be a professional witness even though I disagree with some of the decisions he made. And I think we’ve got to get to some point in life where you can disagree with the decision-making process that someone engaged in, without believing that they are corrupt or somehow part of the “deep state,” whatever that means.

 

[josie_L]

josie_L:

From Gowdy’s own mouth:

Let’s stay on point about Gowdy.

MARGARET BRENNAN: The memo has no impact on the Russia probe?

REP. GOWDY: No-- not to me, it doesn’t – and I was pretty integrally involved in the drafting of it. There is a Russia investigation without a dossier. So to the extent the memo deals with the dossier and the FISA process, the dossier has nothing to do with the meeting at Trump Tower. The dossier has nothing to do with an email sent by Cambridge Analytica. The dossier really has nothing to do with George Papadopoulos’ meeting in Great Britain. It also doesn’t have anything to do with obstruction of justice. So there’s going to be a Russia probe, even without a dossier.

ALSO:

REP. GOWDY: I think two of them would be. People can quibble about Andy McCabe. I spent, I guess, close to 15 hours with Andy McCabe in two different interview sections. I found him to be a professional witness even though I disagree with some of the decisions he made. And I think we’ve got to get to some point in life where you can disagree with the decision-making process that someone engaged in, without believing that they are corrupt or somehow part of the “deep state,” whatever that means.

You mean I proved you wrong and now you want to redirect, i.e., I don’t care if the memo doesn’t end or directly impact the Russian investigation as that was not the point of my reply. It was an attempt for you and others to realize what a nonsensical position you are taking when you pit Gowdy against a memo he himself helped formulate.

Nowhere as he stated that the memo was factually inaccurate, but he has shown concern over why the FBI chose not to disclose the identities of those who endorsed and promulgated an unveried Kremlin-sourced dossier.

 

[dvdjs]

From Gowdy’s own mouth:

On your point:

MARGARET BRENNAN: But short of that disclosure, you still would have believed this FISA surveillance warrant was justified? I mean, it-- your-- your problem is in the disclosure within the application, but the surveillance itself of this American, Carter Page – was named in your memo, who was at one point a Trump campaign associate – was that justified, that surveillance?

REP. GOWDY: Um, we’ll never know, because the application contained three parts: it – it included the dossier, it included reference to a newspaper article which by the way no court in America considers a newspaper article to be evidence, and it included other information they had on Carter Page. So what I would say to the FBI and DOJ is if you had enough on Carter Page with just him, why did you include something that the National Enquirer might not run? And why did you cite a newspaper article when there’s no court in America that allows a newspaper article to be considered as evidence? If you had enough without it, why did you use it? That would be my question to them.

I love the elliptical “other information they had on Carter Page”. So the FISA warrant was not predicated on the dossier material. The dossier material was included and designated, from other accounts today, as being of political origin - without specifically identifying Democrats or HRC (who in fact came into contact with Fusion GPS on this matter after Republicans). Gowdy is speculates that the dossier material was necessary for the original application. Who knows? But he fails to note that in reapplications the fruitfulness of the warrant must also be shown.

So the situation is that Trump hired as his foreign affairs campaign advisor, a Russian agent and self-described Kremlin advisor of long-standing interest to the FBI. The FISA warrant was not executed in a manner that could affect the outcome of the campaign. And not just Gowdy, but multiple Republicans today indicated that the Russian probe will continue - that this report doesn’t change that in the least.

Trump, of course is an outlier in his tweets. But then again, he most always is.

PS full transcripts are better than WT version.

Transcript: Rep. Trey Gowdy on "Face the Nation," Feb. 4, 2018

Gowdy, one of the key authors of the so-called Nunes memo, joined us to discuss the Russia investigation, FISA and the Justice Department

www.cbsnews.com

 

[dvdjs]

You mean I proved you wrong and now you want to redirect,

About what? McCabe? The relevance of the memo for the Mueller investigation? Fail and Fail.
That the FISA warrant was predicated on the dossier? Fail.

Gowdy does suggest that the judge would not have granted the warrant without some of the dossier material, or would have backed off it were known that the political source was HRC. But that is just speculation on his part, not informed in this telling by any special knowledge. Fail.

What a joke this has been after all the hype, which apparently involved a lot of bot traffic.
And on the key elements of Trump’s messaging on this, Gowdy just threw Trump under the bus.
I have a much more respect for Gowdy after this interview.

 

[dvdjs]

Stay tuned; there are a lot more revelations/documents to come. Brace yourself; there is a much bigger plan in all of this.

Yes. Build up the hype. Call the bots.
In the meantime, from the current memo maven:

MARGARET BRENNAN: Now, your committee, the House Intelligence Committee, has said they have a second memo planned for release – this time about the State Department. What can you tell us about that?

REP. GOWDY: That that’s news to me.

MARGARET BRENNAN: You didn’t have a role in creating this memo?

REP. GOWDY: I don’t think there is a memo about the State Department. The way I –

MARGARET BRENNAN: But Chairman Nunes has said that publicly.

REP. GOWDY: I think what-- I think what Devin said is there’s a phase two of the investigation. And there is-- we do have concerns with a certain aspect of State Department involvement and have serious concerns about it. It’s not been public yet. So I-- I-- I think what Chairman Nunes meant is there’s–there’s another aspect to the investigation. But if there’s a second memo, I don’t know about it.

 

[josie_L]

josie_L:

You mean I proved you wrong and now you want to redirect,

About what? McCabe? The relevance of the memo for the Mueller investigation? Fail and Fail.
That the FISA warrant was predicated on the dossier? Fail.

Gowdy does suggest that the judge would not have granted the warrant without some of the dossier material, or would have backed off it were known that the political source was HRC. But that is just speculation on his part, not informed in this telling by any special knowledge. Fail.

What a joke this has been after all the hype, which apparently involved a lot of bot traffic.

Before I even attempt to answer anything else, let me remind you that IT WAS THE DEMOCRATS ALONGSIDE THE MEDIA, who were stating that the release of the memo was risking your national security, but now we are told by those two “shining” entities of “truthsayers” that there is nothing to the memo, nothing at all.

What a load of schiff!

 

[josie_L]

Stay tuned; there are a lot more revelations/documents to come. Brace yourself; there is a much bigger plan in all of this.

That is my belief as well, and so there are asking for it, i.e., Trump holds the keys to the kingdom so to speak.

 

[dvdjs]

You mean I proved you wrong and now you want to redirect,

You mean I proved you wrong and now you want to redirect.
LOL.

 

[dvdjs]

That is my belief as well,

It is news to Gowdy.

 

[josie_L]

No, you didn’t. You were trying to use Gowdy to prop your argument in a manner that belied his qualms about the FBI’s actions vis a vis the memo, i.e., he never proposed that they could do no wrong!!!

He helped to write a goodly portion of the memo for goodness sake.