zitothebrave
Connoisseur of Minors
Thanks meta for taking more time that I ever would care to. It will still fall on deaf ears. But it's good to see that you still have some hope that facts can prevail in this world.
Thank you for responding. On the road with the lady headed to a christmas dinner.
Browsed some points and am looking forward to respond.
It will still fall on deaf ears.
1) I don't see that in here. The report explicitly says:
"We concluded that Priestap's exercise of discretion in opening the investigation was in compliance with Department and FBI policies, and we did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced his decision."
"We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the decisions to open the four individual investigations."
"We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the FBI's decision to seek FISA authority on Carter Page."
"Finally, we also found no documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivations influenced the FBI's decision to use CHSs or UCEs to interact with Trump campaign officials in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation."
The existence of "bias" in the abstract is irrelevant. This current admin is obviously "biased" against Obama; I'm sure you would agree that's only relevant if it results in them actually doing something wrong.
2) I definitely don't see that in here. This is true only in the same way that "We found WMDs in Iraq" is true, i.e. only if you redefine "spying on the campaign" to be the thing everyone already knows about (the investigations into Flynn, Manafort, PapaJohns, and Page) and which was not problematic (i.e., these were mostly standard investigations that found real crimes, and Page wasn't even on the campaign in the FISA period). The report says:
After the opening of the investigation, we found no evidence that the FBI placed any CHSs or UCEs within the Trump campaign or tasked any CHSs or UCEs to report on the Trump campaign.
3) I honestly won't be surprised if Barr tries to charge some people with some stuff. Not sure what that proves other than he's kind of a hack. Still waiting on him to bring those Iran-Contra charges.
From reading the executive summary, the IG report essentially boils down to:
they followed the rules for opening and running the investigations, but the rules probably let them do too much without oversight
they later got a warrant without giving all the negative evidence.
they never updated the warrant applications when renewing them
I'm just wondering why 17 mistakes would be made all in one direction if not for bias? Are you saying that 17 honest mistakes were made all of which happened to further the case to spy on the Trump campaign/administration
Do the text messages not have a role to play here?
The key here is the wording of what Horowitz statements: "We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the decisions to open the four individual investigations."
So while Horowitz could not find any documented evidence of extreme bias he left it very open to the Congress to infer that bias was a real impact here. What would that documented evidence look for him to not make this statement? I just don't see how any of you can now say its a stretch to say that bias against Trump existed at the top levels of the FBI. And how would the existence of bias ever be 'irrelevant' in an investigation? We are seeing evidenced being altered and withheld becuase of bias that resulted in a worthless investigation that brought the country to a standstill when the FBI and Mueller knew there was nothing since early 2017.
The whole purpose of getting the FISA on Paige when THEY KNEW HE WAS A CIA source was to get the records while he was in the Trump campaign. We already know that Manaforts phones were tapped in Trump Tower. The NY Times reported on his wires being tapped in early 2017 as well. The only motivation to frame an innocent man, which is exactly what Paige was the whole time, is to get information on others through incidental collection. The Obama administration was DESPERATE to get any dirt on the Trump campaign because they were nervous hew as going to win and then expose a lot of the abuses that were currently taking place.
In addition, saying that there were no FBI informants placed inside the campaign does not mean that spy operations took place to obtain communications/information on the campaign. Paige is inexorably linked to the idea that the Trump campaign was spied on. Its the only reason he got caught up in this whole mess.
I think a case can easily be made for Kleinsmith. That guy is in deep **** for altering that e-mail. I don't see how he avoids jail time.
The charges will then continue to grow as Durhams report...
I don't see how you can liken this case to run of the mill everyday investigations. Just because a lot of cops are crooked and get away with it doesn't mean that the most high profile case in US history should get the same treatment. If we truly want justice reforms then examples need to be made for people declaring they have an 'insurance policy' withholding exculpatory evidence and altering evidence.
Of course there is bias, but it isn't political. Cops looking to get a warrant are trying to paint the rosiest picture possible. All the omission or exaggerations are gonna be in the direction that makes the warrant more likely. That isn't about politics, it's about how we systematically bias in favor cops/prosecutors and essentially train them to act this way.
The report explicitly says they are not relevant, since it obviously had access to those messages and said they found no political bias effect.
You and Congress are free to infer or believe whatever you want based on things outside of the report, but it is manifestly untrue that Horowitz's statement is verifying the effects of political bias on the investigation, which is what you said above.
"Bias" in terms of not liking Trump is not relevant. "Bias" in terms of acting unfair against Trump, would indeed be relevant. Horowitz says he found none of the latter.
None of these conclusions are from the Horowitz report, as far as I see. If I'm wrong, I'd be happy to read that section (again, just read the exec. summary). But otherwise, I'm not seeing how this is all "verified" here.
Maybe. I don't know enough about it. I am not at all opposed to seeing law enforcement officials held accountable for skirting the rules because they think they know best or are too lazy to do it the right way. I would be annoyed, however, if we only care about this one guy for political reasons, when this is a fairly rampant problem.
Again, even if this happens, Horowitz (who had access to all the "bias" evidence you mentioned) found no evidence that any of this was done for political reasons.
I feel exactly the opposite. Nothing cheapens justice more than making it only available for the most powerful man in the world.
As for "withholding exculpatory evidence," I think you have a naive understanding of what is generally required there. It is not required that cops or prosecutors disclose such evidence, even at trial, unless they personally believe that specific evidence will affect the ultimate outcome of the trial (not just whether such a thing is possilbe). Even then, when they themselves believe the evidence is actually important to the outcome, they only have to tell the defense and the court about it before the end of the trial, not actually give it to them in time to use. The definitely don't have to tell a grand jury about it, much less mention anything about it in a request for a warrant. The FBI rules at issue here are operating at a much higher standard than what is usually required for us normies.
If that sounds unjust to you, then your problem is not with the FBI, it is with the conservative stacking of the Supreme Court since Nixon.
just being intellectually dishonest in my opinion.
They found no evidenciary basis for bias which is an almost impossible standard to meet and you are well aware of that.
However, when real people look at the fact these agents clearly despised Trump and that they made 17 egregious errors that all went against Trump they understand that bias is real here. If you don't want to acknowledge that simple train of logic then that is fine but it is not a stretch in any sense of the word to make the claim that there was extreme bias in the FBI leadership and Muellers team.
Back to the evidenciary standards to prove intent which you know is impossible.
In his testimony Horowitz made it very clear that Bias is still a valid explanation as to what happened. You know this very well and you are doing your best to legalese your way out of admitting that.
The difference between the FBI doing things like this and a local beat cop in Chicago is a bit different in terms of potential magnitude. I mean, the only thing the FBI was doing was falsely accusing a president of colluding with a foreign power and using their full investigatory powers, after knowing for over a year it was bull****, to spy on the President of the United States. I mean, no big deal right?
Meta, what would evidence of bias look like to you if you have not already been convinced?
looking forward to an IG report on whether the Durham probe was properly predicated and free of political taint
Speak English young man.