FBI obtained FISA warrant to monitor Trump adviser Carter Page

There's still the issue of who leaked all this to the media. (Paging Ms. Rice.) The leaks were & are illegal. Until and unless Page is charged with some kind of crime, this information should not be known to the public, precisely because morons will assume that he's a spy, even if there's never any reason to believe he did anything wrong.

originally posted by: AndyFromMichigan
There's still the issue of who leaked all this to the media. (Paging Ms. Rice.) The leaks were & are illegal. Until and unless Page is charged with some kind of crime, this information should not be known to the public, precisely because morons will assume that he's a spy, even if there's never any reason to believe he did anything wrong.

Yeah because the FBI just gets FISA warrants Willy nilly for nothing. And Carter Page also met with kislyac in Cleveland during the RNC convention.

originally posted by: AndyFromMichigan
There's still the issue of who leaked all this to the media. (Paging Ms. Rice.) The leaks were & are illegal. Until and unless Page is charged with some kind of crime, this information should not be known to the public, precisely because morons will assume that he's a spy, even if there's never any reason to believe he did anything wrong.

There is ZERO evidence that Susan Rice leaked anything or that there was any wrongful unmasking.

Devin Nunes, on the other hand, has been clearly revealed as nothing more than a White House stooge.

a reply to: Sillyolme

Irrelevant. Leaking the names was still illegal. And just now, Nunes confirmed that Congress is conducting a full investigation into who leaked the names, and why. Records at the NSA and White House will be scoured to determine who who told who what.

#, meet fan.

originally posted by: AndyFromMichigan
a reply to: Sillyolme

Irrelevant. Leaking the names was still illegal. And just now, Nunes confirmed that Congress is conducting a full investigation into who leaked the names, and why. Records at the NSA and White House will be scoured to determine who who told who what.

#, meet fan.

Nunes, the same Nunes that has been disgraced and revealed to be complicit with the White House carnival show?

Pffft.

He's been removed from the investigation. Something about an ethics charge ...

a reply to: Phage

A Couple of items here..

(1) The FISA warrant was issued in June..AFTER the Trump Campaign said Carter Page was no longer working for them.

SO...Technically the FBI was/is not spying on Trump Campaign people.

(2) Both GOP and Dems on the intelligence committees have gotten a full look at the "evidence" shared with Nunes and all are saying there is NOTHING there...It's a WTF moment. Nothing unusual in the docs.

So Nunes stepping down was likely to head off that embarrassing lie.

dp

originally posted by: AndyFromMichigan
a reply to: Sillyolme

Records at the NSA and White House will be scoured to determine who who told who what.

#, meet fan.

I still find that thinking amusing...

I don't believe having a large examination of the Intelligence that was apparently so damning that FISA courts signed off gathering it and teams of lawyers at CIA/NSA signed off on unmasking Americans..will be helpful to Team Trump.

Yes...lets take a careful and public look at all the intelligence and WHY those names had to be unmasked.

Cuz I don't think that story ends the way you think it will end..

a reply to: deckdel

The basis for surveillance of Page is least to say weak ... He met a Russian business man, and this puts him under watch? If this were a qualifying factor, then a whole bunch of Democrats should be under deep review by now!

That's what happened? Hmmm. First off, Carter Page claims to have been a deal maker for Gazprom while at Merill Lynch and it was association with Ukranian oligarch Viktor Pinchuk that got him that position with ML. So from at least 2004 on, he's been in contact with all sorts of Russian businessmen. That's not illegal and not even necessarily reason for suspicion.

What put him on the radar in the first place is that he was being recruited as an asset by the SVR. He ended up getting pulled in for questioning by the FBI in regards to their investigation into SVR spy, Victor Podobnyy, when in 2013 when Podobnyy's recruitment efforts were exposed. Now it seems that he didn't do anything inappropriate. He did provide documents relating to the energy sector to Podobnyy but it sounds like it was nothing sensitive, so as far as anyone knows, he didn't do anything improper.

In regards to the FISA warrant, what likely triggered that was that during his visit to Moscow while a foreign policy advisor for the Trump campaign, he met with a number of important, influential politicians. For instance, at that event he's known to have spoken with Arkady Dvorkovich, Dmitry Medvedev's deputy, and it was alleged at the time that he met privately with the sanctioned official, Igor Sechin, President of Rosneft, and from 1994 on, a constant fixture in Putin administrations, starting with being Putin's chief of staff when he was deputy mayor.

It doesn't get any closer to Putin than Sechin.

Then he showed up in the Steele dossier where it was alleged that at this meeting, he and his cohorts were offered a 19% stake in Rosneft for the lifting of sanctions.

Later in July, he was one of three Trump-connected people to meet with Russian Ambassador Kislyak, the week of the Republican National Convention (Jeff Sessions was another).

Excluding whatever other unknown contacts he had, that's a whole lot more contact than "met with a businessman." Does it mean he's guilty of anything? No but let's not pretend like there wasn't cause to investigate him.

a reply to: Phage

Turns out FISA warrants have a lesser burden of proof and are almost always granted without even reading them.

originally posted by: theantediluvian


Then he showed up in the Steele dossier where it was alleged that at this meeting, he and his cohorts were offered a 19% stake in Rosneft for the lifting of sanctions.

Good Lord, that 19% sure has been passed around a lot. You folks with the pitchforks have claimed Trump was getting it, then Flyyn, and now Page. I may not be a smart man, but to follow where that 19% actually went might be worth looking into rather than just using is as a fake talking point when you really have to point to begin with. But I suppose if you required a valid pint to speak, you would be a very quite person.

a reply to: Indigo5

It was a simple fishing expedition. thats it. nothing out of the ordinary.

a reply to: Sillyolme

You realize only a handful of requests for fisa warrants have been turned down?

So this makes the former potus equal or worse tham Nixon? He would have briefings that included info about the investigation and the fisa warrents, unless he was just incompetent.

a reply to: Gryphon66

from moveon.org.....

a reply to: Indigo5

either way the former admin spied on the current admin
nixons photo negative?

a reply to: theantediluvian

... you and your darned facts.

Pfft.

originally posted by: shooterbrody
a reply to: Indigo5

either way the former admin spied on the current admin
nixons photo negative?

How?

No doubt the "former admin" ...as in FBI Anti-Espionage Division, NSA and CIA legally spied on Foreign intelligence agents that they felt were an immediate threat...

If THAT somehow caught Trump people...Then there are bigger questions that are going to be answered than why the CIA/NSA/FBI felt the immediate necessity to unmasked names (not the HW).

originally posted by: UKTruth

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: UKTruth

Sort of. Page was a foreign policy advisor to Trump, not so much part of the campaign. Who was known to have been in close contact with a Russian spy. At least.

Well, not really 'sort of' Phage. The DoJ sought and obtained the warrant to spy directly on a Trump campaign advisor.
Given the initial attacks on Trump's tweets included the premature 'conclusion' that there was not even a FISA warrant and then fell back to 'incidental' collection it seems to me that Trump is owed an apology from a lot of people in the media.

It would appear somewhat disingenuous to now say that Paige was not part of Trump's campaign and try to distinguish him differently, given all the references to Paige as being part of the campaign in the past.

Trump is owed no apology and these developments do NOT vindicate Trump's words on the matter.

a reply to: theantediluvian

Not to mention Carter Page admitted passing documents to a now convicted Russian Agent in 2013?

Trump adviser Carter Page 'passed documents' to Russian operative in 2013
www.dailykos.com...

The details aside for a moment...Trump really knows how to pick his advisors!

originally posted by: UKTruth

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: UKTruth

Sort of. Page was a foreign policy advisor to Trump, not so much part of the campaign. Who was known to have been in close contact with a Russian spy. At least.

Well, not really 'sort of' Phage. The DoJ sought and obtained the warrant to spy directly on a Trump campaign advisor.

Wait...I thought by June when the FISA warrant was issued, the Trump Campaign was shouting that Carter Page WASN'T an "Advisor"??

Just some guy on some list and they no longer associated with him? Carter Page who and all of that nonsense?

Which is it? Can you clear that up for me?