House Intel Committee Votes To Release Democratic Response To Nunes' Memo

The House Intelligence Committee voted unanimously on Monday to approve the release of the Democratic minority rebuttal to the GOP authored memo alleging surveillance abuses by the FBI and DOJ during the 2016 campaign.

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Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Devin Nunes (R-CA)

"Republicans have endeavored to put the FBI on trial, put the Department of Justice on trial, impeach and impugn the hard work of these dedicated public servants at the FBI and the Department of Justice," California Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the panel, told reporters after Monday's committee vote. "We think this very ill-serves the public and we hope that they will stop."

The vote follows the Friday release of the "FISA memo" created by staffers from the office of House Intel Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA), which claims that the FBI and DOJ used the infamous "Trump-Russia" dossier in order to spy on one-time Trump campaign advisor Carter Page. 

The White House responded to the release by saying that the memo "raises serious concerns about the integrity of decisions made at the highest levels of the Department of Justice and the FBI to use the government’s most intrusive surveillance tools against American citizens.”

President Trump has five days to consider whether or not to block the release of the Democrat authored response over reasons of national security. White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders suggested on Friday that President Trump would not oppose its release.

“The administration stands ready to work with Congress to accommodate oversight requests consistent with applicable standards, including the need to protect intelligence sources and methods,” said Sanders of the Democrat response. 

President Trump tweeted over the weekend that the GOP authored memo "totally vindicates" him in the Russia probe.

House Intel Committee Minority leader Adam Schiff (D-CA) disagreed:

The 10-page Democrat response is said to correct "mischaracterizations" contained within the Republican memo, adding "crucial context" to actions by the FBI and DOJ regarding the application for a FISA court order to wiretap Mr. Page in October, 2016.

Talking points circulated last week by top House Judiciary Committee Democrat Jerry Nadler (D-NY) call the GOP-authored memo "deeply misleading," according to Bloomberg, and claims that Republicans are now "part and parcel to an organized effort to obstruct" Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. 

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Maxine Waters (D-CA), Jerry Nadler (D-NY)

Until now, we could only really accuse House Republicans of ignoring the President’s open attempts to block the Russia investigation,” Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee said in the four-page letter released on Saturday. The document provided a point-by-point rebuttal to the Republican memo alleging bias in Mueller’s probe of possible links between Russia and Trump’s campaign, according to Bloomberg's summary.

“With the release of the Nunes memo -- a backhanded attempt to cast doubt on the origins of the Special Counsel’s investigation -- we can only conclude that House Republicans are complicit in the effort to help the President avoid accountability for his actions and for the actions of his campaign,” reads the talking points.

The "Nunes memo," as Democrats call it, claims that the FBI obtained a FISA warrant against one-time low-level Trump advisor, Carter Page.

Carter Page was, more likely than not, an agent of a foreign power. The Department of Justice thought so. A federal judge agreed. The consensus, supported by the facts, forms the basis of the warrant issued,” Nadler writes in the rebuttal. 

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As we wrote last week: 

According to the New York Times, the FBI investigation into Russian collusion began after drunken Trump campaign volunteer, George Papadopoulos, reportedly told Australian diplomat Alexander Downer at a London bar in May, 2016 that “Russia had political dirt on Hillary Clinton.” When DNC emails began to leak, Australia apparently contacted US intelligence to report the drunken admission by Papadopoulos – igniting the Russia probe.

WASHINGTON — During a night of heavy drinking at an upscale London bar in May 2016, George Papadopoulos, a young foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, made a startling revelation to Australia’s top diplomat in Britain: Russia had political dirt on Hillary Clinton.

About three weeks earlier, Mr. Papadopoulos had been told that Moscow had thousands of emails that would embarrass Mrs. Clinton, apparently stolen in an effort to try to damage her campaign.

Exactly how much Mr. Papadopoulos said that night at the Kensington Wine Rooms with the Australian, Alexander Downer, is unclear. But two months later, when leaked Democratic emails began appearing online, Australian officials passed the information about Mr. Papadopoulos to their American counterparts, according to four current and former American and foreign officials with direct knowledge of the Australians’ role. -NYT

This is in stark contrast to GOP leaders who say that the salacious and unverified 34-page opposition research dossier triggered the probe. 

For the New York Times – much like CNN’s botched "Bombshell" report from a few weeks ago that Donald Trump Jr. was told about the WikiLeaks emails before their release, only to issue a major correction because Trump Jr. was told after they were made public (by a random person), this “startling revelation” by the NYT that Papadopoulos spilled the beans about Russia having dirt on Clinton was already public information.

The Washington Examiner's Byron York tore into the NYT report:

With both the House and Senate now setting their sights on the State Department's alleged involvement with distributing anti-Trump intelligence, and new memos on tap according to House Intel Committee Chair Devin Nunes (R-CA), it will be interesting to see how deep into "memogate" we will get before something resembling a second special counsel is appointed.

Comments

Boeing Boy knukles Feb 5, 2018 7:04 PM Permalink

Will it say anything about Obama appointee Brennan?

However, according to Mr. Guandolo — a former SWAT team leader at the FBI, counterterrorism and Muslim Brotherhood specialist and Marine platoon commander — what should be an issue was the Saudis’ targeted recruitment of Mr. Brennan to the ideology of Islam while he was serving as the CIA station chief in Riyadh. This was not just a conversion but a political act by a foreign intelligence service.

If verified, this would indicate Mr. Brennan’s susceptibility, whether witting or unwitting, to manipulation by a foreign intelligence entity. It’s interesting that no counterintelligence alarm was triggered at the time that this alleged conversion was occurring. Most likely, that’s because at that time the sophisticated Islamic objectives driving the global jihad movement by the Muslim Brotherhood were not understood by those who witnessed his “conversion.”

As Clare Lopez, from the Center for Security Policy, has pointed out, our counterintelligence defense system is broken. The Muslim Brotherhood’s core threat doctrine — the ideology of Islamic jihad and Shariah law — is seen as benign. Mr. Brennan’s activities as the president’s top counterterrorism adviser have been at the forefront in the Muslim Brotherhood effort in the United States. The Brotherhood has succeeded in convincing the U.S. government to remove from official documents and training curricula all references to Islamic doctrine, Shariah law and scriptures that relate them to terrorism. Further, scheduled lectures on the true threat from Islam have been canceled, and instructors have been barred from future presentations.

Mr. Brennan’s track record of empowering the Muslim Brotherhood both domestically and abroad allowed the jihadist enemy access to the highest level of government under the stealth guise of “nonviolent outreach partners.” For example, terrorists like Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations who has been linked to 

 

 

In reply to by knukles

thefinn Feb 5, 2018 6:49 PM Permalink

How stupid do you have to be to believe these people - this is what always gets me.

I mean you've got to be seriously braindead to put up with the constant hypocrisy and lies right?

Ms No Feb 5, 2018 6:50 PM Permalink

How the hell do we investigate the entire House intel committee?  I hope Trump throws everything at them and calls their bluff with this market stunt (highly unlikely).  Lets see how far they are willing to take this market down right now.  Let the game of chicken begin.  They were planning on bringing us to our knees down the road anyway.  Lets see how they like trying to get approval for their wars when we have been at a state of war for nearly 20 years, the internet has more people aware than ever and everybody is broke with the market collapsing.  Do it, do it, do it!

The next time these bankers have everybody starving in the street here they are done.  It wont go down the way it did last time.  They have problems coming from ten other directions already.  They are the vulnerable ones.

Dilluminati Feb 5, 2018 6:53 PM Permalink

I have no interest in these peoples lies.

The demoncrats have to answer to these accusations below.  No more fake news from the Demoncrats and CNN.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/02/02/rep_matt_gaetz_react…

 

REP. MATT GAETZ: Here's what we know now as a consequence of this memo: The Democratic National Committee gave money to the Perkins Law Firm, the Perkins Law Firm then paid the company Fusion GPS. Fusion GPS then hired Nellie Ohr, the wife of Bruce Ohr, who is a senior official at the Justice Dept, and they hired Christopher Steele, who went and wrote this fake dossier. Then Bruce Ohr, the spouse of Nellie Ohr, who has a background in anti-narcotics and the anti-drug agenda at the Dept. of Justice, he all of a sudden starts meeting with Glenn Simpson and Christopher Steele, and he valets this fake dossier, paid for by the DNC, into the Dept. of Justice. 

The Dept. of Justice and the FBI then use the fake dossier as a basis for a FISA warrant to spy on American citizens. And the reason you know that is because of Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director of the FBI, the same Andrew McCabe whose wife got $700,000 from the closest allies of the Clinton family. Andrew McCabe testifies that there never would have been a FISA warrant, but for the dossier.

The dossier is the cause of the FISA warrant, that is from Andrew McCabe, no friend of Donald Trump. 

Then the FISA warrant is in process, it is being sought. To validate the fake dossier, the Dept. of Justice and FBI use an article written by Mr. Isikoff of Yahoo News to be the validating information for the dossier. What's the problem with that? Christopher Steele is the very person who planted the article at Yahoo News. So you've got a fake dossier, paid for by the Democratic Party, served into the process by the spouse of someone hired, functionally, by the Democratic Party, and then validated by a news article planted by the very author of the dossier. It is outrageous, but it gets worse from there. 

The FBI the learns that Mr. Steele has been leaking information to the media. so despite the fact that the FBI has authorized payments to Mr. Steele, they then don't render payment to Christopher Steele. now, do they go on and alert the court that that has happened? Absolutely not. The FISA warrant has to be reauthorized every 90 days, and it is reauthorized multiple times with the signatures on it of the senior officials of the Dept. of Justice all based on a lie. All based on completely false information that has to be validated by the authors of the originally false information. 

That's what is so outrageous about this. Not only the original lies and the original application for the FISA warrant, but the reauthorizations and the proof that this entire narrative is built on a rotten foundation. 

So in the coming days and weeks, we're going to be seeking to excersize our oversight authority, and Democrats will continue to do what they've always done, attack Chairman Devin Nunes, attack me, attack those of us who are trying to get information in front of the American people about the basis of these claims.

We're going to keep telling the truth, because this is rotten, and this can never happen again in the U.S.A.

You'll be hearing from me soon, thanks for tuning in. 

Cassander Feb 5, 2018 7:00 PM Permalink

Why can't these fuckheads just release the information upon which their partisan 'memos' are based and let the people read what actually happened without the spin.

NoPension Feb 5, 2018 7:03 PM Permalink

HOLY SHIT!!!!!!!!!

 

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/02/05/in-march-2016-carter-pa…

 

Carter Page was working as an undercover agent of the FBI !!!!!!!

Remember...He is the guy the FBI gained the FISA warrant on...that the " Memo " references!!!! 

The fucking FBI lied through their teeth to the Fisa court...to get a warrant on Carter Page....and Page was working for the FBI!!!!

No wonder Schiff and the rest of the deep state are so torqued up!!! It's THIS!

Ms No Feb 5, 2018 7:05 PM Permalink

I am expecting that Trump has completely rolled over on his back and pissed himself right here and this will become a big nothing burger.  If not, then I have to like him again.