RangerDave wrote:
Xequecal wrote:
The FBI used the Steele Dossier to apply for a FISA warrant on Flynn, despite knowing that it was comissioned by the DNC, and did not disclose this to the court.
The Nunes and Grassley memos do claim that the FBI didn't disclose to the FISC that the Steele Dossier was ultimately paid for by the Clinton Campaign and the DNC. However, that's a suspiciously narrow statement that doesn't actually tell us anything about what the FBI
did disclose. For all we know, the FBI may have disclosed that the Dossier was funded by individuals and groups associated with a rival political campaign, which would have been more than sufficient specificity in most cases, as warrant applications often refer to sources descriptively rather than expressly naming them. Indeed, the Grassley memo itself acknowledges that the FBI's application "noted to a vaguely limited extent the political origins of the dossier", so even the Republicans complaining about this admit that the political nature of the source wasn't hidden from the FISC. At that point, if the FISC felt more disclosure was needed, it could have asked, so unless we're not assuming that the Republican-appointed judges on the FISC were also colluding with the (originally) Republican-appointed FBI officials in order to help a Democratic candidate illegally spy on a Republican candidate, I don't think there's much "there" there.
Now, that said, I have a lot of concerns with the secrecy and scope of the FISA process in general and with the permissive approach that the FISC has historically taken to FISA surveillance applications - something like 99% of applications are granted - but that's a very different issue than the deliberate malfeasance that Trump's defenders are alleging here.
The idea is very much that Republicans and Democrats were colluding against Trump. It's not ALL Republicans and Democrats, just the longstanding veterans with extensive donor lists and global interests. If Rubio or Cruz had gotten the nomination, they'd just have had a fair election and the FISA stuff would have stayed secret and not pursued. The Republicans made no secret of how much they hated Trump during the campaign, after all. Trump is the one who was seriously proposing things like, "pull out of NATO" and "40% tariff on China" and "reduce immigration to 10% of current level with RAISE Act." It's Trump that was planning to drain the swamp. These kinds of things are catastrophic to the global interests of both Republicans and Democrats, (and their donors) it's not surprising they both wanted Trump gone.
Trump is in a pretty dominant position now where he can basically strongarm everyone in the world into doing what he wants because the world depends on the US Navy to keep the trade lanes open. I mean he literally just went to Palestine and told them he either gets everything he wants or he'll withdraw all money and they can all starve to death.
Mattis had to talk him out of totally cutting them off. One-sided tariffs and him essentially extracting tribute from everyone else is very bad news for people that have worldwide financial interests.