Another Memo . . . sigh

OK. The long awaited Democratic rebuttal to the Nunes/GOP memo and, presumably, the Graham-Grassley letter and memo has finally come out, slightly redacted (full text here).

There's not a lot I can say about it; you, of course, should read it and decide for yourselves. I criticized the Nunes memo for being too short; the Schiff/Dem memo is too long--and, as you will see, has timeline problems. It is padded with lots of verbiage that does not deal with the core issue, i.e., did the FBI/DOJ/Obama abuse the government's tremendous surveillance powers by getting the FISC to issue warrants on the flimsiest of evidence? The Schiff memo has to acknowledge that the FBI relied in its request to the court principally upon the now widely discredited "Steele Dossier." The "other" evidence mentioned, it seems, turns out to be press reports on Trump-Russian collusion which relied upon--Surprise!--Steele as the source for verifying the information on collusion in the Steele dossier. Steele claimed that Steele was reliable. Nice journalism, there.

The Schiff memo, as you will see, goes through great verbal gymnastics to avoid acknowledging that the Steele Dossier was commissioned, bought, and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC--something the FBI/DOJ knew at the time. It also has difficulty with the-then FBI Director's admission that the Dossier was "salacious" and "unverified," but that the FBI used it anyhow.  You can read all sorts of take-downs of the Schiff memo (here is an excellent one)--including by Nunes's staff. I just don't have the energy to go through it all, again.

Clearly, we need ALL the info released. What was the FISC presented by the FBI? What evidence was collected over months of surveillance? Come clean.

All of this "Russian-Trump collusion" is nonsense. It is the biggest political hoax in the history of the Republic.

Just keep asking yourself, as this little blog has repeatedly, why, why, why would Putin want Trump to win?

The Russians, Putin no exception, are not fools. A Trump presidency means problems for Russia, e.g., revived US economy, a drive for US energy independence, revamped US nuclear and conventional forces. Why would Putin even think Trump was going to win? All indications were the opposite. Putin and his cronies had invested millions in catering to the Clinton Crime Family, not in Trump.

The story makes no sense, except as sabotage.