Invite Schumer and Pelosi in to discuss golf and grandkids. Putin probably knows little about either.

But he’s not the first president to foolishly place his trust in the Russian despot.

National Review
Andrew McCarthy


President Trump did get one thing right on Monday in Helsinki: Vladimir Putin did make an “incredible offer.”

The two leaders had discussed the dozen Russian intelligence officers indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller just three days earlier. As we’ve related, the indictment reveals nothing of importance about the Kremlin’s election meddling that hasn’t long been known. Naturally, then, its issuance prompted dark suggestions about its timing: Had a renegade Justice Department, without warning and on the eve of the summit, dropped a highly unusual indictment — one that charges officials of the foreign power whose leader the president was about to meet — in order to tie the president’s hands?

Fortunately, this conspiracy theory was quickly dashed. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had briefed the president on the indictment well in advance. Before leaving for NATO talks, Trump had been given the opportunity to direct that announcement of the charges be delayed until after his meeting with Putin.

After some deliberation, Trump’s national-security team gave the Justice Department the green light to proceed. Obviously, Putin was certain to deny Russia’s cyber-espionage operation against the 2016 campaign; having the indictment, they must have calculated, would strengthen Trump’s hand in the confrontation. Perhaps they hoped that, despite all his tirades about Mueller’s “witch hunt” for domestic political consumption, the president’s reliance on the special counsel’s indictment would project an administration in lockstep against Russia’s provocations.

Yet, whatever prep work went into this issue, President Trump was unprepared for Putin’s crafty response: the offer that was indeed “incredible” in the literal sense of that word . . . which, alas, was not the sense in which the president used it.

Trump crowed that Putin had “offered to have the people working on the case come and work with [Russia’s] investigators, with respect to the 12 people” (i.e., the dozen indicted officers in Russia’s military-intelligence service).

I bet he did.

Of all the president’s mind-boggling utterances at the press conference, I found this the most stunning.

Some would counter that the low point was the president’s placing equal blame on the United States for the problematic state of Russian–American relations, but I’m beyond being stunned by that. One hoped that Trump’s election would end Obama’s hallmark depictions of moral equivalence between America and thug countries. Yet here’s how the president, at the start of his term, defended Putin when Bill O’Reilly called him a “killer”: “There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What, you think our country is so innocent?”

Other critics of Trump’s summit performance would point to his refusal to side with his own intelligence appointees, rather than Putin, on the matter of Russia’s cyberespionage; or to Trump’s choice of Helsinki as the right time and place for a rant against Mueller, Hillary Clinton, and the DNC — while standing beside an American foe whose chief objective is to sow destabilizing strife in our body politic. Sadly, though, who hasn’t heard all of this before, and when has this president ever been restrained by a presidential norm?

No, the most alarming part of the presser was the palpable satisfaction the president took in describing Putin’s “incredible” proposal. Trump is desperate to show that his entreaties to the Russian despot — amid the “collusion” controversy and against the better judgment of his skeptical advisers and supporters — could bear real fruit. It made him ripe to get rolled.

The proposal to invite Mueller to Moscow brought to mind others who’ve tried to investigate Putin’s regime on Russian soil. There is, of course, Sergei Magnitsky, who exposed the regime’s $230 million fraud only to be clubbed to death with rubber batons in a Russian prison — Putin said he must have had a heart attack. Then there is Nikolai Gorokhov, a lawyer for the Magnitsky family who has been investigating regime involvement in the fraud. He was slated to testify in a U.S. Justice Department lawsuit against Prevezon, a company controlled by Putin cronies that is implicated in the fraud. But then, somehow, Gorokhov “accidentally” fell from the fourth-floor balcony of a Moscow apartment building. (Miraculously, he survived, but the case — which I wrote about here — settled without any admission of wrongdoing by Prevezon.)

Can’t you just hear the Mueller Team firing up “Back in the U.S.S.R.” in anticipation of their big road trip?

Didn’t think so.

Truth be told, the prospect of hosting Mueller’s investigators in his accident-prone country interests Putin less than the “reciprocity” he has in mind.

As a “condition” of so generously helping Mueller, Putin expects that our government would “reciprocate” by making available for questioning by Russian investigators “officers of law enforcement and intelligence services of the United States, whom we believe have something to do with illegal actions on the territory of Russia.”

This is classic Putin. The former KGB agent takes every Western misstep as a precedent, to be contorted and pushed to maximum advantage. As we’ve observed over the years, for example, the Kremlin has rationalized its territorial aggression against former Soviet satellites by relying on U.S. spearheading — over Russian objections — of Kosovo’s secession from Serbia. While positing lip-service denials that he meddled in our 2016 election, Putin implies that we had it coming after what he claims was Obama-administration interference in Russia’s 2011 parliamentary elections — to say nothing of the extensive American history of intelligence operations to influence foreign elections. (See Scott Shane’s comprehensive New York Times report.) As I pointed out when Mueller’s indictment was filed, if our government does not see how Russia (like other rogue nations) is certain to exploit the precedent the Justice Department has set by indicting foreign officials for actions taken on their government’s behalf, we are in for a rude awakening — particularly given that ours is the most active government in the world.

Naturally, Putin expects us to help him investigate Bill Browder. If you think the word “collusion” makes Trump crazy, try uttering the word “Browder” around Putin. Browder (who is British, though American born and educated) was the force behind both Magnitsky’s investigation and the sanctions legislation enacted in the U.S. and elsewhere in retaliation for Magnitsky’s murder — legislation that has cost Putin’s cronies lots of money, and the regime lots of embarrassment.

In Helsinki, the Russian dictator repeated his standing allegation that Browder and his associates have evaded taxes on over a billion dollars in Russian income. He further claimed that “they sent a huge amount — $400 million — as a contribution to the campaign of Hillary Clinton.” While this is outlandish, it reminds us of the purported dirt on Mrs. Clinton that Putin’s operatives sought to peddle to the Trump campaign in June 2016. This was the infamous Trump Tower meeting, where Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya reportedly told Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort that Browder was involved in a tax-evasion scheme that implicated Clinton donors. This, she urged, was information that could be used to damage the Clinton campaign. Ms. Veselnitskaya also rehearsed the Kremlin’s rant against the Magnitsky legislation.

The information appears to have been useless, but the incident should have taught the president and his underlings that there is risk in merely taking a meeting with Putin’s emissaries, let alone with Putin himself. To date, at least as far as what is publicly known, the Trump Tower meeting remains the closest brush that Trump has had with “collusion” — the narrative (indeed, the investigation) that has dogged his presidency. It is astonishing that the president would allow Putin to manipulate him into reviving that storyline.

Putin was not done. Two days after Helsinki, the Russian prosecutor general issued a list of Americans the Kremlin wants interrogated for “illegal activities.” The list includes Michael McFaul, the Obama administration’s ambassador to Russia, and at least one former intelligence official. Memo to DOJ: Expect Russia to issue indictments and international arrest warrants soon — as Putin said, it’s all about “reciprocity.”

Yes, it is outrageous for Russia to demand investigative access to our diplomats and officials. But what did we expect was going to happen? After the president seemed to gush at Putin’s “incredible offer” that we assist each other’s investigations, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders was in no position to dismiss Russia’s proposal out of hand. Only when senior administration officials and Congress erupted in protest (with the Republican-controlled Senate quickly passing a 98–0 resolution in opposition) did the White House beat its retreat. First, though, the president made sure to invite Putin to come to Washington for another meeting in the fall. What could go wrong?

To say that President Trump has made a hash of this is undeniable. To pretend that he is alone in this is the worst kind of revisionist history.

The “incredible offer” that Putin hit Trump with — and that Trump was palpably thrown by — was not woven out of whole cloth. Did you know that the United States and the Russian Federation have a bilateral mutual-legal-assistance treaty? Yeah, it was negotiated by the Clinton administration and ratified by the Bush administration. The MLAT calls for us cooperate when the Putin regime seeks to obtain testimony, interview subjects of investigations, locate and identify suspects, transfer persons held in custody, freeze assets — you name it.

It’s part of our government’s commitment to the notion that the law-enforcement processes of a constitutional, representative republic dedicated to the rule of law can seamlessly mesh with those of a gangster dictatorship whose idea of due process is deciding which nerve agent — polonium or novichok — is the punishment that fits the “crime.” What . . . you thought there could be nothing nuttier than promoting “sharia democracy”?

As you’d imagine, the MLAT has a number of loopholes that enable us to avoid complicity in the Kremlin’s atrocious “investigations.” But it remains on the books. It enables Putin to pose as the leader of a normal, law-abiding regime that just wants to help Bob Mueller out and maybe ask Bill Browder a couple of questions — preferably out on the balcony.

Clinton joined with Russia in an agreement to . . . wait for it . . . protect Ukraine. Bush looked Putin in the eye, got a “sense of his soul,” and found him “straightforward and trustworthy” — so much so that his State Department regarded Russia as a “strategic partner” that was going to help us with Iran (by helping it develop nuclear power!) . . . while Russia annexed parts of Georgia. Then came Obama’s “Russia Reset” — more “partnering” on Iran, ushering Moscow into the World Trade Organization, signing off on the Uranium One deal (and let’s not forget that cool $500,000 Russian payday for Bill Clinton and all those millions flowing into the Clinton Foundation) . . . while Russia backed Assad and the Iranian mullahs, annexed Crimea, stoked civil war in eastern Ukraine, and conducted cyber attacks on our election system.

You think the president of the United States ill-served our nation this week in a delusional quest for bromance with Vladimir Putin? You’ll get no argument from me, but there’s been a lot of that going around.

Link

Caroline Glick: Trump Won Big in Helsinki

quote:

Trump won big at Helsinki


On a substantive level, it is impossible to understand the outcry against President Donald Trump following his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki on Monday.

Trump met with Putin because as president, he is required to meet with the leader of Russia just as every U.S. president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt had to meet with his counterpart at the Kremlin.

U.S. national security and indeed, international security are dependent on the leaders of the two powerful nations developing cooperative relations. The ability of U.S. and Russian leaders to work together plays a key role in preventing another world war. It would have been a dereliction of duty if Trump had not met with Putin.

This brings us to the substance of the meeting, which was exceedingly positive and constructive.

Since Putin ascended to power as Russian President in 2000, there has been an ongoing debate over what type of leader he is. Many commentators and area experts have argued that Putin is an ideologue, whose ambition is to spread Russian influence worldwide at America’s expense. Certainly there are people in Putin’s inner circles who harbor such ambitions.

Many other commentators and experts have argued that to the contrary, Putin is interested in power for power’s sake. He is not moved by a grand vision of Russian global dominance. Rather, he is moved by the twin forces of financial interests and nationalism. He seeks to empower Russia, but is capable of cutting deals with whoever makes him the best offer. In this interpretation of Putin, he is someone who is willing to work with the U.S. or Israel against Iran, if they make him a better deal than Tehran. By the same token, he is willing to attenuate Russian ties with China in favor of stronger relations with the U.S. is he believes that his interests are better served by Washington than Beijing.

In his opening remarks, Putin put an official end to the debate over his intentions. “The Cold War is a thing of the past,” he declared.

“The era of acute ideological confrontation of the two countries is a thing of the remote past – it’s a vestige of the past.”

If Putin’s statement of his intentions and his outlook were the only thing to have come out of the summit, it would have more than justified the meeting. But that was only the beginning.

Two critical issues, Iran’s presence in Syria and North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, were the subject of a significant amount of attention from Trump and Putin during the press conference. Their remarks on both subjects made clear just how critical the meeting was for U.S. national security interests and for global stability in the short and long-term.

Before they met in Helsinki, the prospect of war between Israel and Iran/Hezbollah in Syria was all but certain. On Monday, Syrian regime forces — which are dominated by Iran through its Revolutionary Guard Corps officers, Hezbollah units, and Iranian-controlled Shiite militia forces — began their press to seize control over the Quneitra region on the Syrian side of the border with Israel.

If Iran is able to entrench its own forces, or Hezbollah forces, in Syria generally, and along the border with Israel specifically, Israel will have to go to war to eject Iran by force. Israel simply cannot accept a strategic environment that involves a permanent Iranian presence in Syria, particularly given that Iran controls Lebanon through Hezbollah.

In their remarks, both Putin and Trump said that they are committed to Israel’s security. Putin said that he accepts Israel’s position that the 1974 disengagement of forces agreement between Israel and Syria must be implemented. The agreement bars Syrian military forces from deploying to the border with Israel and limits their deployment in the area adjacent to it. Trump stated outright that the U.S. supports Israel’s efforts to prevent Iran from entrenching its forces in Syria.

Both leaders also expressed their admiration and respect for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

These remarks were significant on two levels. First, they reduced the prospect of war by communicating key messages to Iran and Hezbollah.

Trump’s statement that,“the United States will not allow Iran to benefit from our successful campaign against ISIS” dovetailed a statement by National Security Advisor John Bolton ahead of the summit. Speaking Sunday with ABC News, Bolton said, “I think the president has made it clear that we are there [in Syria] until the ISIS territorial caliphate is removed and as long as the Iranian menace continues throughout the Middle East.”

Iran will understand the remarks of both men to mean that the U.S. will fight with Israel in any war with Iranian-controlled forces in Syria to ensure their withdrawal, just as they fought with their allies in Syria to defeat ISIS.Then there is Putin. Putin’s statement of support for Israel’s security and peaceful relations between Syria and Israel also sent a signal to Iran. Whereas Putin has worked with Iran to enable Assad to survive and restore his control over territory previously controlled by rebel forces, Putin will not cooperate with Iran if it chooses to remain in Syria and face Israeli and perhaps U.S. forces in battle.
Putin may or may not help Israel in such a war. He may or may not work with the U.S. But he will not fight on Iran’s side.

While it is unlikely that these statements will suffice to convince Iran and Hezbollah to withdraw their forces from Syria, it is clear enough that the summit reduced the prospects of war in the immediate term.

And again, if that was the only thing accomplished at the summit, its importance would be incontestable.

The second reason that the Trump-Putin meeting was significant in the Iranian context is that it called into question the long-term viability of the Russian-Iranian partnership.

Days before the Helsinki summit, Ali Akbar Velayati, the top international affairs advisor to Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, landed in Moscow for a meeting with Putin. In a press statement before the meeting, Velayati praised ties Iranian-Russian ties, referring to them as “a strategic relationship.”

Speaking of Iran’s cooperation with Russia in Syria, Velayati said, “Only a strategic and long-term relationship with Russia can continue this cooperation.”

So if Putin indicated a willingness to cut a deal with the U.S. and Israel in Syria, then the implication is that he is willing to attenuate Russian-Iranian ties in favor of Russian-American and Russian-Israeli ties. The minimal price for those ties is Israeli-U.S. acceptance of the survival of Assad’s regime in Syria. Netanyahu indicated last week that he is willing to accept Putin’s position.

Here, too, if this were the only positive result of the summit, its undertaking would have been more than justified.

To understand just how significant Trump’s achievements in relation to Russia’s relations with Iran and its position in Syria are, it is important to notice where the U.S. stood in relation to both issues when Trump entered office.

During the Obama administration, the U.S. accepted Russia’s alliance with Iran in Syria and beyond. When Russia deployed its forces to Syria on behalf of Assad and Iran in 2015, then-President Barack Obama did not seek to constrain Russia’s actions. He did not try to limit Iran’s deployment in Syria. To the contrary, he presented Iran as an U.S. ally in the campaign to defeat ISIS in Syria and Iraq, even though Iran used that campaign to entrench its military presence and control in both countries.

More broadly speaking, Obama joined with Russia in enabling Iran to become a nuclear-armed state by concluding the nuclear deal with Iran in July 2015. The fact that Trump was able to convince Putin to support Israel’s efforts against Iran in Syria after abandoning the nuclear deal in May, despite Putin’s continued support for the nuclear deal, was a major achievement.

The second area where Trump achieved a major breakthrough in Helsinki is North Korea. It is far from clear that Trump’s effort to cut a deal with North Korea can survive Pyongyang’s latest anti-American diatribes and the evidence of its continued nuclear operations. But what is clear is that none of North Korea’s efforts could continue without Chinese support. Nuclear armed North Korea is China’s most powerful – and dangerous – proxy.

During the previous three administrations, Russia has consistently partnered with China in relation to U.S. multiparty talks regarding North Korea’s nuclear program. But during the Helsinki summit, Putin expressed strong support for America’s goal of denuclearizing North Korea.

It is certainly possible that Putin’s statement had little substance behind it. His actions in the coming weeks and months will make clear if that is the case.

But if Putin is serious about supporting U.S. efforts to coerce North Korea to denuclearize, his position could signal a weakening of Russia’s ties with China in favor of Russian-U.S. relations. It would be a sound strategic move for Putin. China represents a massive threat to Russia, and using ties with the U.S. as a means to check Chinese power would be a reasonable position for Putin to adopt. If Trump has in any way convinced Putin to even consider such a move, it would mark a massive geopolitical development on multiple levels. It would also mark Trump as one of the greatest American statesmen in history.

Again, while only time will tell just how significant Putin’s statement on North Korea actually was, but its potential significance is massive.

And again, if this statement by Putin were the only substantive accomplishment of the summit, the summit would still have been a highly positive, significant event.

This, then brings, us to the hysterical condemnations that Trump has been inundated with since Monday by the U.S. media, by former senior Obama administration national security officials, and by Democrats.

The very notion that a U.S. president commits treason by seeking a cooperative relationship with the head of Russia is absurd. Given the stakes of the two leaders’ relationship, it is also dangerous.

Statements accusing Trump of treason and calling for the military to overthrow him are terrifying. They demonstrate that Trump’s opponents are so obsessed with delegitimizing his presidency, and presumably with impeaching him that they are willing to risk a world war to achieve their domestic political goals.

When we consider the hysteria of Trump’s critics on the one hand, and Trump’s extraordinary accomplishments in Helsinki on the other, we need to be thankful that Trump was willing as he said, “to take a political risk in pursuit of peace,” rather than “risk peace in pursuit of politics.”

The U.S. and the world benefited greatly from his courage.

Link

412 mostly blacked out pages protecting who?

Carter Page FISA Documents Are Released by Justice Department

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration disclosed on Saturday a previously top-secret set of documents related to the wiretapping of Carter Page, the onetime Trump campaign adviser who was at the center of highly contentious accusations by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee that the F.B.I. had abused its surveillance powers.

Democrats in February rejected the Republican claims that law enforcement officials had improperly obtained a warrant to monitor Mr. Page, accusing them of putting out misinformation to defend President Trump and sow doubts about the origin of the Russia investigation. But even as Republicans and Democrats issued dueling memos characterizing the materials underlying the surveillance of Mr. Page, the public had no access to the records.

On Saturday evening, those materials — an October 2016 application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to wiretap Mr. Page, along with several renewal applications — were released to The New York Times and other news organizations that had filed Freedom of Information Act lawsuits to obtain them. Mr. Trump had declassified their existence earlier this year.

“This application targets Carter Page,” the document said. “The F.B.I. believes Page has been the subject of targeted recruitment by the Russian government.” A line was then redacted, and then it picked up with “undermine and influence the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election in violation of U.S. criminal law. Mr. Page is a former foreign policy adviser to a candidate for U.S. president.”

Mr. Page has denied being a Russian agent and has not been charged with a crime in the nearly two years since the initial wiretap application was filed. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday.

The spectacle of the release was itself noteworthy, given that wiretapping under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, is normally one of the government’s closest-guarded secrets. No such application materials had apparently become public in the 40 years since Congress enacted that law to regulate the interception of phone calls and other communications on domestic soil in search of spies and terrorists, as opposed to wiretapping for ordinary criminal investigations.

The documents made public on Saturday were heavily redacted in places, and some of the substance of the applications had already become public in February, via the Republican and Democratic Intelligence Committee memos.

Visible portions showed that the F.B.I. in stark terms had told the intelligence court that Mr. Page “has established relationships with Russian government officials, including Russian intelligence officers”; that the bureau believed “the Russian government’s efforts are being coordinated with Page and perhaps other individuals associated with” Mr. Trump’s campaign; and that Mr. Page “has been collaborating and conspiring with the Russian government.”

The fight over the surveillance of Mr. Page centered on the fact that the F.B.I., in making the case to judges that he might be a Russian agent, had used some claims drawn from a notorious Democratic-funded dossier compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent.

The application cited claims from the dossier that Mr. Page, while on a trip to Moscow in July 2016, had met with two senior Russian representatives and discussed matters like lifting sanctions imposed on Russia for its intervention in Ukraine and a purported file of compromising information about Mr. Trump that the Russian government had. (Mr. Page has denied those allegations, although he later contradicted his claims that he had not met any Russian government officials on that trip.)

Republicans portrayed the Steele dossier — which also contained salacious claims about Mr. Trump apparently not included in the wiretap application — as dubious, and blasted the F.B.I. for using material from it while not telling the court that the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign had funded the research.

But Democrats noted that the application also contained evidence against Mr. Page unrelated to the dossier, and an unredacted portion of the application discussed efforts by Russian agents in 2013 to recruit Americans as assets. It has previously been reported that Mr. Page was one of their targets, although any discussion of Mr. Page’s interactions with them in the application is still censored.

Democrats argued in February that the F.B.I. had told the court that the research’s sponsor had the political motive of wanting to discredit Mr. Trump’s campaign. They argued that it was normal not to specifically name Americans and American organizations in such materials. The released documents show that portion of the filings, which the previously released Democratic memo had quoted.

The application shows that the F.B.I. told the court it believed that the person who hired Mr. Steele was looking for dirt to discredit Mr. Trump. But it added that based on Mr. Steele’s previous reporting history with the F.B.I., in which he had “provided reliable information,” the bureau believed his information cited in the application “to be credible.”

The applications largely avoided using names; renewal materials noted that they would continue to refer to “Candidate #1” by that description, for example, even though he “is now the president.”

The renewal applications from 2017 told the court in boldface print that the F.B.I. had severed its relationship with Mr. Steele because he had shared some of his claims with a news organization in October 2016, contrary to the F.B.I.’s “admonishment” to speak only to law enforcement officials about the matter. But they said the bureau continued to assess his prior reporting as “reliable.”

The final two renewal applications also contained two additional pages describing a letter Mr. Page sent to the Justice Department in February 2017 accusing the Clinton campaign of spreading false information about him.

The unredacted portions of the original application and the three renewal applications are otherwise largely identical, so it is not visible whether the F.B.I. told the court that it was gaining useful intelligence from the wiretap of Mr. Page as it asked for extensions. But the length of the applications grew significantly each time, indicating that new information was being added: They were 66 pages, 79 pages, 91 pages and 101 pages, respectively.

The materials also revealed which Federal District Court judges signed off on the wiretapping of Mr. Page: Judges Rosemary Collyer, Michael Mosman, Anne C. Conway and Raymond J. Dearie. All were appointed by Republican presidents.

As has been publicly known from the February congressional fight, the application also contained a description of a Yahoo News article from September 2016 that discussed the investigation into Mr. Page’s Russia ties. It is now known that Mr. Steele was a source for that article, but the application and renewals state that the F.B.I. did not believe he “directly” provided information to Yahoo News.

Republicans at the time claimed that the F.B.I. had misleadingly used the article as corroboration for Mr. Steele’s claims, while Democrats said that was false and that it was instead included to inform the court that Mr. Page had denied the allegations.

The section of the application that describes the Yahoo News article is titled “Page’s Denial of Cooperation With the Russian Government to Influence the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election.”

Since February, even as Mr. Trump and his allies have continued to portray the Russia investigation as a “witch hunt,” it has produced indictments of two dozen Russians and Russian government officials for efforts to covertly manipulate American social media and for hacking and releasing Democratic emails during the campaign.

Noting that the original application and its three renewals were approved by senior law enforcement officials in two administrations and by federal judges, for example, Representative Jerrold Nadler, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, portrayed the threat from Russia that the F.B.I. was investigating as real and severe.

“Anyone aware of these facts would recognize that these applications were necessary and appropriate,” Mr. Nadler said. “Those who say otherwise are trying desperately to protect President Trump from a broader investigation that must be allowed to take its course without interference.”

While applications for criminal wiretap orders often become public, showing what the government’s basis was for seeking it, the government until now has refused to disclose FISA materials even when using evidence gathered through such wiretaps to prosecute people.

But in February, Mr. Trump — over the objections of law enforcement professionals — took the unprecedented step of lowering the walls of secrecy around such materials to enable House Intelligence Committee Republicans, led by Representative Devin Nunes of California, to disclose their three-and-a-half-page memo, which sought to portray the surveillance of Mr. Page as scandalous.

In addition to invoking Mr. Trump’s declassification to seek disclosure of the underlying materials by filing a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Justice Department, The Times also petitioned the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to unseal the materials itself. The court has not responded to that request.

I guess it's back to the drawing board for the media and the Democrats.

https://www.breitbart.com/big-...-republican-support/

quote:

Despite a week of constant criticism by the media, Democrats, and certain members of the Republican party for his meeting with Vladamir Putin in Helsinki, Donald Trump’s approval ratings increased to the highest level of his presidency according to a Wall Street Journal/ NBC poll.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: lbj,

as long as we're now going after people meddling in our elections, I supposed the full weight of the justice department will now focus on George Soros...

oops, my bad

Soros is immune because he isn't a conservative republican

quote:

The materials also revealed which Federal District Court judges signed off on the wiretapping of Mr. Page: Judges Rosemary Collyer, Michael Mosman, Anne C. Conway and Raymond J. Dearie. All were appointed by Republican presidents.

I think it is possible to put too much reliance on this, that the judges were all Republican appointees.

I doubt that these judges look at these assignments through partisan glasses. In Federal Courts, they are there for life, so they are in no way beholden to one party or the other.

Judges have an enormous workload usually. One way to irritate your fellow judges is to get yourself in a position where you are challenged often, or in a class of cases. In San Diego in the state courts, the DA occasionally threatens to blanket challenge a judge who is perceived by the DA to be too strictly reviewing warrant applications. This results in that judge being precluded from all criminal cases, so that other judges have to be assigned. In a large court like San Diego, with 128 judges and 18 commissioners, it isn’t so harmful, but in the Federal Courts, with far fewer judges and all kinds of cases, if DOJ papers you, it can wreak havoc with caseloads.

Many of these warrant applications are not close calls, of course, clearly proper to grant, not depending on political views or social philosophy. Moreover, the judge has the implied, and express, assurance of likely merit from very high ranking experienced officials. “The Deputy Attorney General had looked at this and says it is meritorious.” At the least this tends to lull one into a confirmation bias.

If you are fairly flexible, you end up approving warrants erroneously, but if you too strictly scrutinize the applications, not only do some get rejected which ought to be approved but the law enforcement community feels like you have no confidence in them and they either challenge you or devise better ways to get around you, judge shopping, etc. It isn’t easy!

17 July 2018




5 days later

Comey,Brennan,and Clapper are the real traitors.

I generally like the job Trump's doing, but then he goes and does stuff like this...

quote:

To Iranian President Rouhani: NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!

Funny how you don't hear much about SCOTUS nominations or illegals this week.

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:
17 July 2018

[Comey speaks]

5 days later

[Comey speaks]

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:
I generally like the job Trump's doing, but then he goes and does stuff like this...

quote:

To Iranian President Rouhani: NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!

What, you don't like a President with a set of balls to speak the truth?

It also puts a Russian ally (to some degree) on notice, which dampens the narrative that he's a Russian hack.

Either way, #WINNING.

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:
I generally like the job Trump's doing, but then he goes and does stuff like this...

quote:

To Iranian President Rouhani: NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!

What is wrong with that? The only thing that Iran (and the rest of the world for that matter) respects is strength. Few, if any of us, have ever really experienced real hatred. There is a genuine hatred for America, Israel, and the West in general coming from Iran. How else do you deal with that other than speaking plainly and backing it up? These people aren't playing games. No sane person wants to go to war or obliterate a country, but we need to be prepared to do whatever it takes to keep Iran in check. I'm glad our President has the courage to stand up to this kind of hatred and evil. It would seem that we Americans are collectively losing our stomach to stand strong in the face of ugly reality. This will not go well for us. Bravo to President Trump for showing us what real leadership and guts looks like.

Iran is the Worlds Largest State Sponsor of Terrorism in the World. What President Trump said is Appropriate.

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:
I generally like the job Trump's doing, but then he goes and does stuff like this...

quote:

To Iranian President Rouhani: NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!

What would you like him to do? Send them a few hundred $million in cash on pallets?

quote:

Originally posted by Bigboreshooter:

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:
I generally like the job Trump's doing, but then he goes and does stuff like this...

quote:

To Iranian President Rouhani: NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!

What would you like him to do? Send them a few hundred $million in cash on pallets?

Then the MSM would accuse him of being cheap since Obama-lama-ding-dong sent them a couple pallets worth billions.

I wonder whether the 'all caps' format is actually a significant part of the message.