DOJ-NSD FISA spying on Trump campaign...VERY BIG DEAL

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Kpdemello
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Re: DOJ-NSD FISA spying on Trump campaign...VERY BIG DEAL

Post by Kpdemello »

madhatter wrote:my point is you and others are willing to ignore OBVIOUS improprieties...
And my point is that when someone points to a problem with Trump that you can't refute you immediately point to Hillary, Obama, or some other scandalous thing that does not bear on whether Trump, the guy who is actually in office, has done something wrong or improper.

I'm not ignoring any improprieties. I'm willing to allow for the possibility that Obama did initiate a politically motivated witch hunt. But just because Hillary or Obama did bad things does not absolve Trump of the bad things he might have done.
madhatter
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Re: DOJ-NSD FISA spying on Trump campaign...VERY BIG DEAL

Post by madhatter »

Kpdemello wrote:
madhatter wrote:my point is you and others are willing to ignore OBVIOUS improprieties...
And my point is that when someone points to a problem with Trump that you can't refute show me anything besides accusation...you already said you never said there was any evidence...you immediately point to Hillary, Obama, or some other scandalous thing gee no way pointing to teh plethora of evidence that the obama administration was willing to politicize gov agencies and was caught doing so, evidence that the DNC CNN etc conspired to win the primnaries and evidence that suggests both obama and clinton were complicit in teh same vs trump is something I should not mention ? thats the entire case, that teh allegations against trump are fabricated by the obama administration and its corrupted agencies and that none of it has any basis in reality....that IS the case I am making...how is it "off limits"?that does not bear on whether Trump, the guy who is actually in office, has done something wrong or improper.

I'm not ignoring any improprieties. I'm willing to allow for the possibility that Obama did initiate a politically motivated witch hunt. But just because Hillary or Obama did bad things does not absolve Trump of the bad things he might have done.
what evidence is there of ANY "bad things" trump did? there's an investigation based on zero evidence of a crime...zero...not one credible piece of evidence to suggest there may have been a crime has been presented...yet there's still an investigation...

show me the man I'll show you the crime has no place in our country...

I really tire of this roundy round crap with you ( and others) if ya can;t see whats coming down the road by all means stand there and get blindsided by it...
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Kpdemello
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Re: DOJ-NSD FISA spying on Trump campaign...VERY BIG DEAL

Post by Kpdemello »

It's cool man we'll have to agree to disagree.

I agree there's no evidence that's been reported connecting Trump to any crimes right now but the investigation continues, and who knows what they have that hasn't been released. Maybe nothing? We'll have to wait and see. But the investigators should have an opportunity to do their jobs.

I have yet to see any real evidence that this is a politically motivated witch hunt as Trump claims. Your arguments regarding Obama raise suspicions, but don't constitute actual evidence that this thing was politically motivated. Is it possible? Sure. Is it factual? That remains to be seen.
madhatter
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Re: DOJ-NSD FISA spying on Trump campaign...VERY BIG DEAL

Post by madhatter »

Kpdemello wrote:It's cool man we'll have to agree to disagree.

I agree there's no evidence that's been reported connecting Trump to any crimes without actual evidence there is no criminal investigation, none has been presented,,,right now but the investigation continues,that's the problem... and who knows what they have that hasn't been released. Maybe nothing? We'll have to wait and see. But the investigators should have an opportunity to do their jobs.their job is not to investigae people in search of crimes, their job is to investigate crimes in search of perptrators... I have yet to see any real evidence that this is a politically motivated witch hunt as Trump claims.so you are willing to ignore anything that's been presented vs the FBI/DOJ and now state dept?
so you are ok with a gov investigating a "yet to be named" or discovered crime?

that goes against virtually every tenet of our constitution...

so explain to me how we even have an investigation if we have no evidence to indicate a crime may have been committed? and given that lack of evidence necessary to launch an investigation, what specific crime are we investigating? and if we launched an investigation without any evidence to suggest a crime was committed why was that done? what was the motivation for it?

again show me the man and I'll show you the crime has no place in our country....

our system of law says show me the crime and we'll search for the perpetrator....aka...innocent until proven guilty...without legal "probable cause" ( not "this a$$hole must be hiding something") we don't investigate US citizens in search of any wrongdoing they may have comitted at any time during their lives...

yet that's where we are...
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Nikoli
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Re: DOJ-NSD FISA spying on Trump campaign...VERY BIG DEAL

Post by Nikoli »

Russian Meddling in the election. Donald Trump was part of that election. He is fair game. He will probably go down on obstruction but that's a different issue.
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Kpdemello
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Re: DOJ-NSD FISA spying on Trump campaign...VERY BIG DEAL

Post by Kpdemello »

madhatter wrote:so you are ok with a gov investigating a "yet to be named" or discovered crime?
Actually that's how it works in almost every case. You investigate based on suspicions, not evidence. This happens all the time, in fact. Bobby comes to the police and claims that Joey stole his car. Maybe Joey did, maybe he didn't. The police look into it, and maybe they find Bobby is a liar and Joey did nothing wrong - but they should at least investigate and ask some questions, shouldn't they?

In this case there were accusations of Russian meddling in the election, and that Trump's campaign was connected. That's a named crime that merits an investigation.
madhatter wrote:that goes against virtually every tenet of our constitution...
Not really, no. The constitution protects against unreasonable searches and seizures, not against being investigated by police/FBI. The FBI has every right to investigate and start asking questions. Now if they want a warrant, that's when you need some evidence, but even then you just need probable cause, which is not the same thing as evidence of a crime.
madhatter wrote:so explain to me how we even have an investigation if we have no evidence to indicate a crime may have been committed?
The word "may" in your sentence completely changes everything. I think we do have evidence that a crime may have been committed. In fact, we know crimes have been committed now, because two people have plead guilty to crimes.
madhatter wrote:our system of law says show me the crime and we'll search for the perpetrator....aka...innocent until proven guilty...without legal "probable cause" ( not "this a$$hole must be hiding something") we don't investigate US citizens in search of any wrongdoing they may have comitted at any time during their lives...
Again, you don't need probable cause to start an investigation. In this case, all of the intelligence agencies agreed there was Russian meddling in the election, and there was some indication that there was a connection to the Trump campaign (see Papadopoulos). That was enough to start an investigation in my opinion, but on top of that the FBI/DOJ may have had additional information that we are not yet privy to. On top of that, as much as you hate the Steele dossier, it too would be enough to merit at least an investigation. The dossier makes some wild claims, and maybe they are false, but shouldn't the FBI look at them to verify whether they are true or false? It seems to me that they should.
Last edited by Kpdemello on Feb 13th, '18, 13:04, edited 2 times in total.
madhatter
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Re: DOJ-NSD FISA spying on Trump campaign...VERY BIG DEAL

Post by madhatter »

Nikoli wrote:Russian Meddling in the election. Donald Trump was part of that election. He is fair game. He will probably go down on obstruction but that's a different issue.
umm no...you investigate the "meddling" and then whoever becomes implicated in the meddling... what crime did trump obstruct the investigation of?

and that's whats going on here we aren't investigating a crime, we're investigating a person in search of probable cause to indicate there may have been a crime worthy of an investigation...
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Kpdemello
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Re: DOJ-NSD FISA spying on Trump campaign...VERY BIG DEAL

Post by Kpdemello »

madhatter wrote:umm no...you investigate the "meddling" and then whoever becomes implicated in the meddling... what crime did trump obstruct the investigation of?

and that's whats going on here we aren't investigating a crime, we're investigating a person in search of probable cause to indicate there may have been a crime worthy of an investigation...
I would argue that they did investigate the meddling, and that turned up a possible tie to the Trump campaign, which merited the appointment of a special prosecutor to further investigate. None of that requires probable cause under our law.
madhatter
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Re: DOJ-NSD FISA spying on Trump campaign...VERY BIG DEAL

Post by madhatter »

Kpdemello wrote:
madhatter wrote:so you are ok with a gov investigating a "yet to be named" or discovered crime?
Actually that's how it works in almost every case. You investigate based on crediblesuspicions, not evidence. This happens all the time, in fact. Bobby comes to the police and claims that Joey stole his car. Maybe Joey did, maybe he didn't. The police look into it, and maybe they find Bobby is a liar and Joey did nothing wrong - but they should at least investigate and ask some questions, shouldn't they?yep but do they go to bobby;s house every day for 20 months? are they abl;e to get a warrant based on bobby's claim? do they wiretap him? or do they go look, ask a few questions and determine bobby never had a car to begin with?

In this case there were accusations of Russian meddling in the election, and that Trump's campaign was connected. That's a named crime that merits an investigation.cite that crime statute...
madhatter wrote:that goes against virtually every tenet of our constitution...
Not really, no. The constitution protects against unreasonable searches and seizures, not against being investigated by police/FBI. The FBI has every right to investigate and start asking questions. Now if they want a warrant, that's when you need some evidence, but even then you just need probable cause, which is not the same thing as evidence of a crime.
madhatter wrote:so explain to me how we even have an investigation if we have no evidence to indicate a crime may have been committed?
The word "may" in your sentence completely changes everything. I think we do have evidence that a crime may have been committed. In fact, we know crimes have been committed now, because two people have plead guilty to crimes. none of that is connected to trump or the trump campaign in any way other than they also worked for him...manafort occurred years before teh trump campaign existed, and flynn was cahrged w a procedural crime that in no way indicates any other crime... in fact what he lied about wasn;t even criminal...
madhatter wrote:our system of law says show me the crime and we'll search for the perpetrator....aka...innocent until proven guilty...without legal "probable cause" ( not "this a$$hole must be hiding something") we don't investigate US citizens in search of any wrongdoing they may have comitted at any time during their lives...
Again, you don't need probable cause to start an investigation. In this case, all of the intelligence agencies agreed there was Russian meddling in the election, and there was some indication that there was a connection to the Trump campaign (see Papadopoulos). you might wanna look into that,
AFAIK there was nothing there...
That was enough to start an investigation in my opinionbut yer not a judge or legal scholar or anyont but a person with an opinion about a guy you despise...kinda like steele only less..., but on top of that the FBI/DOJ may have had additional information that we are not yet privy to. On top of that, as much as you hate the Steele dossierhate? its prima fcia evidence of a DNC/FBI criminality...
I certainly do not hate it...
, it too would be enough to merit at least an investigation. you really don;t understand how teh FISA court works at all...The dossier makes some wild claims, and maybe they are false, but shouldn't the FBI look at them to verify whether they are true or false? It seems to me that they should.they can should and have you keep confusing two different things, FISA court warrants and an investigation that followed them...
the contention is that teh warrants were illegally obtained via falsification of evidence via omission of factual data...no FISA warrant no FBI investigation...

right now the nunes memo deals strictly w the validity of the FISA warrants and any improprieties connected to them...it has absolutely nothing to do with the mueller investigation at this point....though surely you can see where it will eventually...
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madhatter
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Re: DOJ-NSD FISA spying on Trump campaign...VERY BIG DEAL

Post by madhatter »

Kpdemello wrote:
madhatter wrote:umm no...you investigate the "meddling" and then whoever becomes implicated in the meddling... what crime did trump obstruct the investigation of?

and that's whats going on here we aren't investigating a crime, we're investigating a person in search of probable cause to indicate there may have been a crime worthy of an investigation...
I would argue that they did investigate the meddling, and that turned up a possible tie to the Trump campaign, post factual evidence of this...which merited the appointment of a special prosecutor to further investigate. None of that requires probable cause under our law.
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Kpdemello
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Re: DOJ-NSD FISA spying on Trump campaign...VERY BIG DEAL

Post by Kpdemello »

Okay we're getting into the hair splitting now.

So, to be clear, you don't need probable cause to start an investigation, just a suspicion. A reasonable suspicion? I'd like to think that police/FBI only investigate the reasonable ones, but that's not really a legal requirement, either. You DO need evidence to get a warrant, be it before FISA or another court. But that evidence only has to demonstrate probable cause to believe a crime may have been committed (it's actually a lesser standard at the FISA court but that's a technical matter not worth discussing here). The only way you can get that evidence, though, is by investigating. So it wouldn't even really make sense to require an investigation to be started based on probable cause.

The above are basic facts of our legal system. Here's the opinion part: I contend the FBI/DOJ had reasonable suspicion to investigate the Trump campaign based on, at a minimum, 1) papadopoulos; 2) the Steele dossier. There also might be more evidence that we're just not privy too yet. You can disagree, and that's fair, but I would argue that you're quite wrong.

After the investigation starts, that's when you try to get warrants and wiretaps to gather more information. To get those you need evidence. In Trump's case, the FBI/DOJ claims that they did have sufficient evidence to obtain a FISA warrant. The dueling memos are about some of the evidence that the FBI/DOJ used to get that warrant, but unfortunately the Republican memo was woefully incomplete and did not provide a complete picture of what the FBI/DOJ presented to the FISA court to obtain the warrant. So we still have no idea if that warrant was obtained based on valid grounds.

What we do know is that this investigation has actually yielded results - four indictments and two guilty pleas. Those are facts not subject to dispute.
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Re: DOJ-NSD FISA spying on Trump campaign...VERY BIG DEAL

Post by Kpdemello »

Oh and those guilty pleas are directly related to the subject of the investigation - Flynn for talking to Russians and then lying about it, and Papadopoulos for lying about talking to a guy with substantial connections to the Russian government. That's definitely not unrelated and not nothing in my book. Do they implicate Trump directly? I have yet to see evidence of that. It could all have been done without his knowledge. But it certainly is concerning that two of Trump's campaign staffers lied to the FBI about talking to the Russians.
madhatter
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Re: DOJ-NSD FISA spying on Trump campaign...VERY BIG DEAL

Post by madhatter »

Kpdemello wrote:Okay we're getting into the hair splitting now.

So, to be clear, you don't need probable cause to start an investigation, just a suspicion. A reasonable suspicion? I'd like to think that police/FBI only investigate the reasonable ones, but that's not really a legal requirement, either. You DO need evidence to get a warrant, be it before FISA or another court. But that evidence only has to demonstrate probable cause to believe a crime may have been committed (it's actually a lesser standard at the FISA court but that's a technical matter not worth discussing here). The only way you can get that evidence, though, is by investigating. So it wouldn't even really make sense to require an investigation to be started based on probable cause.

The above are basic facts of our legal system. Here's the opinion part: I contend the FBI/DOJ had reasonable suspicion to investigate the Trump campaign based on, at a minimum, 1) papadopoulos; 2) the Steele dossier. There also might be more evidence that we're just not privy too yet. You can disagree, and that's fair, but I would argue that you're quite wrong. you keep saying papadopoulous, what about him? specifically? as far as teh dosier,
the FBI was caught without question omitting key facts about the dossier that were detrimental to its validity, they also were caught intentionally circular referncing a news article as backup to the dossier despite knowiong that teh article was based on the dossier itself as told by the dossiers author...teh FBI knew this and intentionally hid it from teh FISA warrant application ( that is what we really need to see)


After the investigation starts, that's when you try to get warrants and wiretaps to gather more information. To get those you need evidence. In Trump's case, the FBI/DOJ claims that they did have sufficient evidence to obtain a FISA warrant. The dueling memos are about some of the evidence that the FBI/DOJ used to get that warrant, but unfortunately the Republican memo was woefully incomplete and did not provide a complete picture of what the FBI/DOJ presented to the FISA court to obtain the warrant. actually it's is very much complete enoughto warrant an investigation into it, especially basedon your previously stated "criteria" however those accused contend that it's "incomplete" and you take their word for it...So we still have no idea if that warrant was obtained based on valid grounds.

What we do know is that this investigation has actually yielded results - four indictments and two guilty pleas. Those are facts not subject to dispute.none of em have any thing to do with russian collusion or actions taken by or on behalf of the trump campaign...you keep acting as if procedural crimes are evidence of this other as yet un-named crime...
done w this roundy roundy ya gotta investigate to have evidence to start an investigation...you know that's not how it works...and you'd be rightfully outraged if it happened to you...
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Re: DOJ-NSD FISA spying on Trump campaign...VERY BIG DEAL

Post by Kpdemello »

mh wrote:you keep saying papadopoulous, what about him? specifically?
He apparently tried to arrange a meet between the Russians and Trump to facilitate obtaining information from the Russians that Trump could use against Hillary.
mh wrote:as far as teh dosier, the FBI was caught without question omitting key facts about the dossier that were detrimental to its validity,
I disagree that these omitted facts were "detrimental to its validity" or that putting them in would have changed the result. Just because a report was compiled based on the request/order of a rival does not make the results of that report invalid. The facts in the report could still be quite true. In fact, why would Hillary want a report that contained false information? That wouldn't be very useful to her, would it?
mh wrote:they also were caught intentionally circular referncing a news article as backup to the dossier despite knowiong that teh article was based on the dossier itself as told by the dossiers author...teh FBI knew this and intentionally hid it from teh FISA warrant application ( that is what we really need to see)
Yeah this is embarrassing for the FBI if it's true, but is it? I don't really trust the Republican memo at this point. Also, would it have changed the result of the FISA application if that yahoo article were left out? We don't know because we don't know what else was in the application.
mh wrote:actually it's is very much complete enoughto warrant an investigation into it, especially basedon your previously stated "criteria" however those accused contend that it's "incomplete" and you take their word for it
I agree that there's enough to warrant an investigation into the application process that the FBI/DOJ used in this case. I am on record in this thread as saying that it should be investigated. But an investigation does not mean that anyone did anything wrong - maybe they did, maybe they didn't. The investigation is supposed to look into it to see whether there was any wrongdoing.

I am not taking anyone's word for it. I read the Republican memo myself and found that it did not comprehensively discuss all of the evidence that was presented in the application. In fact, it raised only a couple of points, and it was completely silent on whether there was additional evidence in the application besides the Steele dossier. It did indicate that the investigation began before the Steele dossier came to light, which suggests that there was additional evidence that was not discussed. So I don't really need to take anyone's word for it, it is pretty clear just from reading the memo itself.
mh wrote:none of em have any thing to do with russian collusion or actions taken by or on behalf of the trump campaign...you keep acting as if procedural crimes are evidence of this other as yet un-named crime...
Both Flynn and Papadopoulous plead guilty to lying about their conversations with Russians during the campaign. How is that unrelated to allegations of Russian collusion? It seems directly on point to me.
Last edited by Kpdemello on Feb 13th, '18, 14:16, edited 1 time in total.
Kpdemello
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Re: DOJ-NSD FISA spying on Trump campaign...VERY BIG DEAL

Post by Kpdemello »

madhatter wrote:done w this roundy roundy ya gotta investigate to have evidence to start an investigation...you know that's not how it works...and you'd be rightfully outraged if it happened to you...
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here. Police investigate based on suspicions all the time. Sometimes they're reasonable, sometimes not at all. But that is definitely how it works. There's a big difference between investigating and obtaining a warrant. Maybe that's the disconnect? You don't need evidence to investigate somebody. You do need evidence to obtain a warrant.
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