XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, law.court.federal, alt.politics.liberalism   
   XPost: alt.politics.bush, alt.politics.usa.republican, talk.politics.guns   
   From: remailer@domain.invalid   
      
   GOP members of  the House Intelligence Committee, led by Chairman   
   Devin Nunes, released the declassified memo Friday, but only after   
   President Trump's approval and after both DOJ and FBI protested   
   release of the document, which served as the backbone of the   
   government's investigation into alleged collusion in the 2016   
   presidential campaign between the Trump campaign and the Russian   
   government.   
      
      
   The memo's findings are, at minimum, disturbing and, at worst,   
   suggest the law was broken. Assuming the memo's factual accuracy, it   
   paints an unflattering picture of the Obama-era FBI and Justice   
   Department and their conduct in investigating the Trump campaign. To   
   wit:   
      
      
   Steele was paid $160,000 to create the Trump dossier for Fusion GPS.   
   The Hillary Clinton presidential campaign and Democratic National   
   Committee financed the work. So the FBI and Justice Department used   
   opposition research from a presidential campaign to launch an   
   investigation into that campaign's political opponent — a likely   
   illegal use of federal government surveillance for political   
   purposes.   
      
   The FBI also agreed to pay Steele for his dossier and other   
   research, but rescinded the offer in October of 2016, shortly before   
   the presidential election, after discovering that Steele had shared   
   the dossier's contents with journalists in a number of briefings, a   
   violation of FBI rules. But neither the FBI nor Justice informed   
   FISC that the information had in fact been paid for by the   
   Democrats, which would have immediately raised doubts about the   
   surveillance request's legitimacy.   
      
   Steele, the memo claims, continued to talk to the Justice Department   
   even after he was cut loose by the FBI through then-Associate Deputy   
   Attorney General Bruce Ohr. Ohr is key, since he worked closely with   
   both Yates and Rosenstein and was a potential conduit into then-   
   Attorney General Loretta Lynch's office. More importantly, perhaps,   
   Ohr's wife, Nellie, is a former CIA researcher who was hired by   
   Fusion GPS to collect anti-Trump material.   
      
   According to the memo, Steele relayed to Ohr that he was "desperate   
   that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not   
   being president." None of that, apparently, was told to FISC when   
   Justice and the FBI made their requests to spy on the Trump   
   campaign.   
      
   The supposed justification for the application to FISC was a   
   September 23, 2016 Yahoo News article by journalist Michael Isikoff   
   purportedly detailing ties between Trump campaign representatives   
   and Russian officials. The only problem is, Isikoff got all of his   
   information from Steele's so-called Trump dossier.   
      
   Let us stipulate that this memo is itself a partisan product of a   
   Republican-dominated committee of Congress. Democrats, for their   
   side of the matter, have their own memo and claim that essential   
   facts have been omitted from the GOP's. But none of the central   
   facts of the memo, so far, have been disproved.   
      
   Being charitable, it's possible to conclude that, during an   
   intensely contentious presidential campaign, Obama administration   
   Justice and FBI officials innocently sought FISA warrants against a   
   peripheral Trump campaign volunteer based on a document they knew —   
   or should have known — was paid for by Hillary Clinton and the DNC.   
   And that their decisions later to withhold information from the   
   Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court were equally innocent of any   
   malicious political intent.   
      
   Even if you grant that very generous reading of the facts laid out   
   in the memo, it's clear there was at minimum a conflict of interest   
   and, possibly, a violation of the 1939 Hatch Act, which forbids   
   federal employees from political activities while on the job. If   
   that weren't the case, why would a spate of Justice and FBI   
   officials — including McCabe and Ohr — be either demoted, reassigned   
   or let go in recent weeks?   
      
      
   Well, Comey's disingenuous "That's it?" includes the FBI colluding   
   with a political party against another, while withholding material   
   information from a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court about the   
   source of its information and how it was paid for. Ethically   
   questionable, certainly; illegal, quite possibly.   
      
      
   Claims that release of this memo was inappropriate or dangerous are   
   absurd. No intelligence methods were revealed. No big secrets, just   
   the facts of an investigation that has gone on too long and has been   
   used by political opponents and their Deep State allies to weaken a   
   presidency. And it certainly calls into question the tortuous, now   
   year-and-a-half long investigation into alleged Trump-Russia   
   collusion during the 2016 election, spearheaded by former FBI chief   
   Robert Mueller.   
      
      
   We would be told the nation was in grave danger. They would call it   
   a silent coup. The liberal media would jump in. They would call it   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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