#16

I can post volumes of communications from FBI agents disparaging Hillary and expressing pro-Trump bias ON THE JOB!

It's this simple: Russians paid Parnas; Parnas paid Rudy with Russian money; and Rudy is attempting to influence the 2020 election through the work he's doing on behalf on his non-paying client Donald Trump, ergo, Trump is the intended beneficiary of the Russian money.

Trump is currently and openly doing exactly what he is being impeached for - using foreign sources to affect our domestic electoral politics.

Game, set, match.

If the Republican members of Congress do not consider this arrangement impeachable conduct they themselves should be investigated for sedition on behalf of a foreign enemy.

If an FBI employee can alter an email to change the meaning...
then they are either, unsupervised, a monumental problem considering the number of FBI employees that could do this type of thing.....

We agree. But that doesn't make the person's motivations political unless there is an evidentiary basis that politics was involved. Case in point:

For 3yrs he has had people in his party not commit to his agenda and policies, because it might have been true.

This charade stole time from a term limited Presidency.

Get a life Mattress. For 8 years Obama dealt with made-up controversies which became the public basis for the GOP to thwart his agenda.

After the election is over, it's simply domestic politics, not a crime.

Ukraine is the victim of Russian aggression, and Russia's continuing incursions into Ukrainian territory is the muscle that gave Trump's threats leverage. Trump's domestic interests are one intended beneficiary of his scheme. The other is Vladimir Putin.

Lev Parnas met repeatedly with Trump and his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. Rudy has worked as Trump's lawyer for "free," but Parnas paid him half a million dollars for his work. If Parnas himself was being paid by Russian sources, this means the Russians were essentially subsidizing Trump, paying for the work themselves so he didn't have to lay out a dime of his own money.

On his trip to Ukraine, Giuliani huddled with a number of notoriously corrupt pro-Russian officials, including veterans of the Party of Regions. (Philip Bump has a good rundown of the rogues' gallery of Giuliani partners.) He is openly working to promote the cast of characters Russia wants to run Ukraine.

Trump, incredibly, continues to tout Giuliani as his Ukraine agent. "He's going to make a report, I think to the attorney general and to Congress," Trump told reporters Saturday. "I hear he has found plenty."

Wonder if any Republicans have a problem with Russians financing Rudy's attempts to influence next year's election for the express benefit of Trump?

The funniest part here is the same people who claim that Trump didn't commit a quid pro quo because the Ukraine money was released AFTER the whistleblower's complaint about the situation became public are now claiming that it's one of the worst political hit-jobs of all time that FBI attorneys thumbed secret FISA warrants that no one ever found out about and later were dropped without any public acknowledgement that the suspect or surveillance ever happened and is an intentional politically-based scandal to harm Trump.

How was he harmed? The election is long passed. How was he harmed?

You have zero demonstrable facts that the errors harmed Trump and we have indisputable evidence that illegally withholding money and strong arming Zelensky has weakened both his country and his bargaining power vis-a-vis negotiating with Putin.

One is not like the other.

it's quite clearly a political bias to the point of being a criminal conspiracy.

How was the conspiracy actuated to the point of having a measurable impact as any conspiracy is designed to do?

When FBI officials in NY illegally leaked information to Rudy and Rudy went on tv and blurted out false information that Hillary was going to be implicated in a criminal matter (which violates DOJ policy, especially that close to the election), THAT should have led to criminal charges and it DID have an impact on the public.

Nothing that happened regarding Page's FISA warrants EVER became public knowledge, nor was Page or any information gleaned of his private, personal matters ever publicly exposed. While it's an egregious violation, it had no impact on Trump, the campaign, anyone's perception of Trump, Page or his campaign, yet you claim the errors were done for a political purpose?

They were done because of LEO confirmation bias, like most overreaches of LEO when they believe they can make their case if they only tie up a few loose ends or find a few more pieces of evidence. It happens every day.

What doesn't happen every day is a conspiracy targeting a person so far removed from the Trump campaign during the time of the warrant issues, even if the FBI had dredged up something questionable, Page would have been publicly tossed aside just like Papadop and Manafort causing Trump no damage whatsoever.

It's just stupid to think the FBI - the house of Hillary Haters - had a 5th column of bureaucratic attorneys that thought illicitly goosing warrants on Page would keep Trump from becoming President. Reread that sentence out loud and when you stop laughing, you should understand the most probable truth.

And to put it as simply and bluntly as possible using simple everyday documented indisputed common knowledge, confirmation bias is nothing more than a creeping, internal norm that has come to skew a real non-biased view of evidence or a set of circumstances where the actor's preconceived notion of or past experiences project into an anticipation that what happened then is harbinger for what is or will happen with the newer, similar case.

Confirmation bias is the LEO belief that young black males are a much greater threat to their safety than other respective groups so they are openly treated by LEO more wearily - and often times subjected to quick-trigger escalations of police force - due to individual or institutional bias.

In the realm of LEO and especially in a shop working in secret to protect this country's national security from foreign attacks and incursions, a coordinated attack from a handful of careerist, internal, paperwork-pushing attorney-agents being a functional part of an ad-hoc cabal deciding to expressly put their hands on the scales in the attempt to harm a presidential candidate through an unknown functionary attached to the campaign just doesn't pass the smell test.

And perhaps the most telling evidence of why it doesn't make sense is that nothing came from the endeavor. If there were true political bias at play it's much more likely we would have seen much more of a push to extend the same political bias into other aspects, elevating the case beyond just simple secret surveillance. It never was. Even the wrongly fertilized investigation fizzled, and everyone moved on, and nothing else of politically motivated misbehavior was anyplace else to be found as it regards the entirety of the FBI Russia investigation.

Should be ...institutional confirmation bias....

Omissions matter because FISA applications typically remain secret forever"indeed, the Page application is the first to ever become public even in part. That means not only does the FISA Court rely on the government to present it with a complete picture, including facts that might call the reliability of government sources into question (something that's true of every wiretap application) but there's typically little risk that an agent who submits a tendentious affidavit supported by cherry-picked evidence will have to defend their work in the harsh light of an adversarial proceeding, such as a criminal trial. If the government isn't forthright about presenting evidence that cuts against a finding of "probable cause," as well as the evidence for it, they're unlikely to be held to account.

It's worth emphasizing, though, that the picture Horowitz paints remains fundamentally at odds with claims that FBI or DOJ leadership conspired to mislead the FISA Court, plotting to use surveillance of a peripheral campaign advisor as the linchpin of some Rube Goldbergian scheme to undermine the Trump Administration. Each of these gaps represents information that lower-level case agents failed to recognize as material to the application"and in at least one case, an agent providing an erroneous response when a DOJ attorney asked for clarification about precisely when Page had been a source of information for CIA.

What they do show, however, is that the much-ballyhooed Woods Procedures, designed to ensure that representations to the FISA Court match the information in the FBI's case files, are no guarantee that the Court is getting a complete picture. If the Horowitz report reflects what we find when we start turning over rocks under those conditions, what kind of errors and omissions might we expect to uncover in the case files of FISA targets less likely to inspire congressional hearings? It's past time to find out.

Sometimes what looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, really is a duck... not a mongoose.

"I've never seen anyone", meaning the people in this conversation, not everyone on the planet.

And please understand, I'm not saying that your interpretation of what I wrote is technically wrong, it isn't. But your understanding wasn't what I meant.

A person can use the same words, and based on the context and the other things helping to define those words (the forest), there can be an entirely different meaning (tree) and neither of us is intentionally trying to trick the other person.

I answered your questions honestly and I made no contradiction in the way I meant the words to be read and understood as my only intent to convey what I believe.

Then you need to have a debate from your dumber, less honest alter-ego from #44 that stated: "but I've never seen anyone say that the economy would crash just because Trump was elected."

I just showed you that you have severe comprehension problems. Your question was DID I think that. I answered no for myself. The rest of my quote is in reference to agreeing with the other posters. "I've never seen anyone", meaning the people in this conversation, not everyone on the planet.

Gawd, today's education system sucks.

And I will take you at your word on that, but I still think you are likely lying. But without archived posts, it is a moot point so we can move on.

Change the law she's a congress person ...

That's what they talked about Karnac.

As Attorney General William P. Barr was reducing the Justice Department to a legal defense and public relations firm, Trump himself (who pretends to be law enforcement's greatest friend) was attacking the FBI in terms that authoritarians use to prepare the way for persecuting their political enemies.

"Look how they've hurt people," Trump told his supporters Tuesday night in Hershey, Pa.. "They've destroyed the lives of people that were great people, that are still great people. Their lives have been destroyed by scum. Okay, by scum."

Please pause here. "Scum" was the word used twice by the president of the United States about those who dedicate their lives to battling wrongdoing and lawlessness. And because he is Trump, the response involved mostly shrugs and head shaking.

When this presidency began, it was commonplace to write off fears that our political and journalistic systems would eventually "normalize" the president's abuses. The worry was that however strong our system might have been in the past, we would come to accept behavior that had never been acceptable before.

This is exactly what has happened.

Putin told us what he wanted to do, and now that Trump is doing it, half the people act oblivious to Putin's handiwork in all these coincidences. Congratulations, thanks to Trump's constant volume of lies and turned-to-11 insults and degradations of citizens daring to cross his path, his followers feel justified in going for his opponent's throats.

We're not trying to bushwack Trump, we're trying to use the Constitution's remedy for a Congress that believes the President is out of control in some respect to his oath of office. That isn't illegal, unless manufactured evidence and false testimony was the basis of the charges against him and that isn't the case. In fact, it's just the opposite. He's withholding evidence of his guilt (who would keep exculpatory evidence hidden if it exonerated you?) and saying that a co-equal branch of government has no right to question how he interprets the law, not them or the courts. This is tyrannical and underscores the reason he should be held accountable and fairly judged for what's he's done, not because of what anyone thinks of him outside of what the facts and evidence prove of him.

And lastly, before I go to sleep, the point here is that the OG posters who are answering you might answer simple questions with short answers. But we all expect you to understand that there are centuries of collective thought behind each one and very little of that thought is attached to whatever political/partisan bent of the day that may be applied to the answer. We don't knee jerk. Our knees are shot at this age. ;^)

We amble with a purpose.

Hope you can understand that.

And I don't make general market opinions unless they're tied to a specific economic policy being instituted that has enough probability of changing the economy's current trajectory. Trump announced he was cutting taxes. When has that announcement immediately crashed the US economy since Reagan made it a GOP orthodoxy 40 years ago?

So, Tony'Cut&Paste'Roma - do you believe this to be an honest statement: "I've never seen anyone say that the economy would crash just because Trump was elected."

You keep proving my point without ever realizing it. And that wasn't the same question you asked above, or do I need to show you what question we responded to? Okay, let's do both. First, this question.

Of course I've seen people say that the economy would crash just because Trump was elected. I've also seen people say that the world would end if Trump was elected. I've also seen people say that they'd leave the country if Trump was elected. I could go on forever.

There is a difference between a reasoned response based on an evidentiary basis for the answer and ungrounded, emotionally driven hyperbole or hysteria. I know the difference because I think, not emote, through my feelings based on the logic and intellect I've been given and have used for 60 years of life experience.

Your other question was did I think that the election of Trump would crash the economy and I printed over a hundred words telling you based on statistical realities why I didn't. What factual basis would I have had that just the specter of Trump would crash the economy regardless of how I might feel about him? Trump stewarding the economy was far down on my list of things he might screw up because the economy was already doing great before he was elected and actually bumped up after his election and before he was inaugurated, telling me that the market liked his election.

Anything else junior?

Just another example of Mattress' lack of awareness. Kamala Harris used her time asking questions about Barr to Horowitz today related to the fact that currently the IG is not allowed by law to investigate HIM as it relates to violating any statute or law.

So yet again, the only way for the Democrats have to express their disgust in through the legislative process in the House or by impeachment.

Here's the problem with Ira, right here:

Did you predict an economic collapse when Trump was elected? Be honest now, there are long timers that will remember.

Why would anyone who was watching the economy. It was taking the same upward arc then as it continued under Trump, at a slightly lower pace than Obama's. Now, before you froth out of your mouth, of course the economy is higher now than it was under Obama because it has never stopped climbing since 2010.

Honestly, I think Trump has done some things that might have retarded even higher, more broad-based growth, but I've never seen anyone say that the economy would crash just because Trump was elected. His policies were bound to help rich people get richer and up is their prefered position when property and prices are involved.

She suing because the government illegally publicized her information which has to come with her consent under the law. She has not been charged with any violation that would allow her actions to be disclosed as you intimate, which is why she's suing. Otherwise the suit would have been dismissed. The personal information she's suing over had nothing to do with watching porn on her computer, it was about details of her personal life with no relevance to any statutory violation.

Unless it is directly connected to the above excepted reasons where the government can do so without her permission, said disclosures violate the letter of the Privacy Act.

Are you going to keep posting things that don't touch on the Privacy Act violation itself?

#21

I guess you didn't read the intro paragraph either.

Lisa Page, the former FBI lawyer who was dragged into the Russia investigation over accusations of a bias against President Trump, is suing the FBI and the Justice Department for violating her privacy. In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, Page alleges that the FBI and the Justice Department made "unlawful disclosure[s]" about her to the media "in violation of the Privacy Act."

#19

BS. I posted the link to the law above but I guess you're too ignorant to read it.

The Privacy Act prohibits the disclosure of a record about an individual from a system of records absent the written consent of the individual, unless the disclosure is pursuant to one of twelve statutory exceptions.

Conditions of Disclosure to Third Parties

A. The "No Disclosure Without Consent" Rule

B. Twelve Exceptions to the "No Disclosure Without Consent" Rule

5 U.S.C. 552a(b)(1) ("need to know" within agency)
5 U.S.C. 552a(b)(2) (required FOIA disclosure)
5 U.S.C. 552a(b)(3) (routine uses)
5 U.S.C. 552a(b)(4) (Bureau of the Census)
5 U.S.C. 552a(b)(5) (statistical research)
5 U.S.C. 552a(b)(6) (National Archives)
5 U.S.C. 552a(b)(7) (law enforcement request)
"to another agency or to an instrumentality of any governmental jurisdiction within or under the control of the United States for a civil or criminal law enforcement activity if the activity is authorized by law, and if the head of the agency or instrumentality has made a written request to the agency which maintains the record specifying the particular portion desired and the law enforcement activity for which the record is sought."

5 U.S.C. 552a(b)(8) (health or safety of an individual)
5 U.S.C. 552a(b)(9) (Congress)
5 U.S.C. 552a(b)(10) (General Accounting Office)
5 U.S.C. 552a(b)(11) (court order)
5 U.S.C. 552a(b)(12) (Debt Collection Act)