Congress releases Democrats’ memo defending FBI surveillance of ex-Trump campaign aide
February 25, 2018 by admin
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The House Intelligence Committee released on Saturday a redacted memo authored by Democrats and intended to rebut GOP allegations that federal law enforcement agencies had political motivations for wiretapping one of President Donald Trump’s former campaign aides.
In their retort, Democrats charge that the GOP unfairly maligned the FBI and the Justice Department for citing in their surveillance application information from the author of a controversial dossier alleging that Trump had ties to Russian officials, research that was paid for by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
“Our extensive review … failed to uncover any evidence of illegal, unethical, or unprofessional behavior by law enforcement,” said Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the Intelligence Committee’s ranking Democrat.
Republican leaders have argued that the former campaign aide, Carter Page, was unfairly targeted, saying the surveillance court that approved the warrant was never told that information from the dossier’s author, former British spy Christopher Steele, was financed by the Democrats.
According to the Democrats’ memo, Page had been of interest to the FBI for years. It asserts that the bureau had interviewed him multiple times about his contacts with Russian intelligence, including in March 2016 – the same month he was named a Trump campaign adviser, and months before Steele was hired to conduct research on Trump and before he made contact with the FBI.
The court was told that Steele had been approached by a “U.S. person” who had been hired “to conduct research regarding Candidate #1′s ties to Russia,” according to a portion of the surveillance applications contained in the Democrats’ memo. Candidate #1 is a reference to Trump.
“The FBI speculates that the U.S. person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit candidate #1′s campaign,” the application says.
The memo’s content is the product of negotiations among the committee’s Democratic members, as well as with the FBI and the Justice Department.
According to Schiff, Democrats submitted their proposed redactions more than a week ago. At first, they were told the memo would be released Friday, then on Monday, he said. They learned of its release Saturday only shortly before the Intelligence Committee’s chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., announced that the document had been put online for public perusal, Schiff said.
“I think the White House tried to bury it as long as they could,” he told The Washington Post in an interview. The Republicans’ decision to release the memo without warning, on a Saturday, is “not what you do when you think you’re vindicated,” he added. “It’s what you do when you think the facts don’t reflect well on you.”
The president nonetheless claimed a victory on Twitter, calling the Democrats’ memo “a total political and legal BUST. Just confirms all of the terrible things that were done. SO ILLEGAL!”
Speaking Saturday evening on Fox News, the president characterized the memo as “a very bad document for their side” and, once more, attacked Schiff personally, calling him “a bad guy.” He also sought to depict the Democrats as sore losers.
“I don’t want to sound braggadocios,” Trump told host Jeanine Pirro. “I was a far better candidate. She was not a good candidate. She went to the wrong states.”
Initially, Trump would not agree to release the 10-page document without significant redactions, arguing that making it available to the public would risk revealing intelligence-gathering sources and methods. Democrats accused the president of applying a double standard, as he had promised to release the Republican memo before he had even read it, according to White House officials and the timing of his public comments.
No new information was declassified in the Democrats’ redacted memo, according to a senior Democratic committee official. Schiff had pledged to heed recommendations from the FBI and Justice Department regarding sensitive information.
But on Saturday, Nunes accused Democrats of colluding with the government in a “coverup.”
“We actually wanted this out,” he told an audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington. “It’s clear evidence that the Democrats are not only covering this up, but they’re also colluding with parts of the government to cover this up.”
Nunes’s accusations were directed not only at the Democrats who authored the memo, but also at the Obama administration.
“This was money from the Hillary campaign and the Democratic Party making its [way into the hands of] an agent who was paying Russian agents,” Nunes said. “Is it fair to ask, what did President Obama know?”
Surveillance applications and reports routinely obscure the identities of individuals and entities who are not the intended targets of wiretaps. The application to conduct surveillance on Page, and three extensions, were approved by four separate judges, all appointed by Republican presidents, the Democrats’ memo says.
Page has acknowledged that an FBI wiretap detected suspected Russian spies discussing their attempts to recruit him in 2013. He has told congressional investigators that he was interviewed by the FBI and cooperated as they investigated the men, who were ultimately charged with acting as unregistered foreign agents. Page continued to have extensive contacts with Russians, including making trips to Moscow in July and December 2016.
The Democrats said on Saturday that the FBI had several other reasons to suspect the Trump campaign of questionable connections to Russia – including evidence that foreign agents approached another former campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos – before Steele approached the FBI and produced his dossier.
“DOJ told the Court the truth,” the Democrats’ memo reads. “Christopher Steele’s reporting … played no role in launching the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into Russian interference and links to the Trump campaign.”
The memo states that by the time Steele’s information reached the FBI’s Russia team in mid-September 2016, the bureau had already opened “sub-inquiries” into other “individuals linked to the Trump campaign.” The identities of those individuals are redacted in the memo.
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It’ll be hard to feel bad for Arizona’s Sean Miller if he loses job in FBI wiretap scandal
February 25, 2018 by admin
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Part of me feels awful for Sean Miller. The full story of the fallout from the FBI investigation into college hoops is far from being written, but it feels like Miller’s chapter in this story will end with him never coaching another game for Arizona.
Perhaps he’ll never even coach another game in college basketball. That’s what you’d think could happen to a man who has according to recent reports caught in a wiretapped phone call directing a $100,000 payment to secure star freshman DeAndre Ayton.
And that’s a huge bummer. Because I believed Miller to be a coach who’d someday end up in the Hall of Fame. The man lives and breathes this sport. He’s a basketball savant. I know this is where you are going to say, “But he’s never made a Final Four!” Sure – but he is bound to make a Final Four at Arizona. Plenty of Final Fours. He’s been at the door so many times already; at some point, he was going to break through.
Or he was bound to make a Final Four at Arizona. On Saturday, his school announced he was wasn’t coaching Arizona’s game at Oregon. We may never see him on the collegiate sidelines again. I’m imagining him stewing alone in a hotel room in Eugene, Oregon, wondering if this will be the end of his career, and yeah, I do feel bad for him. It’s how I’d feel if a teenager got arrested for underage drinking but the friends he was drinking with got away with it. (Yes, I understand Miller is a grown man. An imperfect analogy.)
It appears clear from the slow release of leaks from this FBI investigation (and as also appears clear from anyone who has followed the shady sideshow of shoe companies and agents in youth basketball and college basketball), Miller was not the only one cheating. He’s just the most recent one to get caught.
But my sympathy can only extend so far for Miller. If he never works again, he’ll be set for life. He was making $2.9 million a year at Arizona, ostensibly with the job of coaching “amateur” basketball players. A quirk in his contract indicates he’ll be given $10 million if he’s fired for cause and $5 million if he’s fired for no reason. There’s no crying in the mansion.
Ultimately, the coaches who lose their careers over breaking the rules were corrupt actors in a corrupt system. I don’t care what you think about the NCAA — I certainly think amateurism is an antiquated system, and that players should be getting a fair share of their market value in this capitalist country. The one good thing that could come out of this sordid mess is for college basketball (indeed, all of college sports) to start over from scratch on how amateurism should work in the 21st century. The system is certainly broken. But these millionaire coaches have long benefited from this broken and corrupt system. So if they have been breaking the rules of this broken system, they should be punished for it. Period.
I feel completely different about the players.
I don’t care whether we’re talking about a $100,000 payment to a star player or a lunch with an agent that a star player may or may not have paid for. We should all feel a little dirty when a player like, say, USC‘s DeAnthony Melton is held out of his entire sophomore season of college basketball (and eventually declares that he’s going pro) for his part in this FBI investigation. We should all feel a little dirty that the names of some of these collegiate stars – Miles Bridges at Michigan State, Kevin Knox at Kentucky, Wendell Carter at Duke – are now getting dirtied for being named in this scandal whether they did or did not accept money or meals from an agent. You can argue that these young men knew they were breaking the rules. You can argue that they are grown men, and should be punished for breaking the rules just like the coaches should be punished for breaking the rules. And you can argue that they’re going to be just fine no matter what; Deandre Ayton is going to be a multimillionaire even if he never plays another college game. So are most of these young men.
And you know what? You’re probably right. Rules are rules, even when the rules are antiquated and dumb. Break the rules, and you should be punished.
But I feel awful for every player named in these FBI reports. These are talented young men who were sucked into this system as teenagers. They certainly knew, at least generally, the cavorting with the shady characters around college basketball was against college basketball’s rules. And yet they certainly intuited that those rules weren’t really enforced. If it seemed like everyone else was doing something that was against the rules, and if it seemed like there wouldn’t be any punishment for taking, say, $100,000, and it if didn’t seem like breaking those rules would hurt anybody, wouldn’t you break those rules?
I certainly would consider it.
Things are changing rapidly in college basketball. If a player takes $100,000 from an agent this summer, I’m not going to feel sorry for him one bit. That’s just dumb. The rules might be the same in the future as they are in the past, but this FBI investigation shows us those rules are actually going to matter – actually be enforced – in a way they have never been enforced before.
But the players who got sucked into this corrupt system as teenagers and now, months later, are being publicly excoriated for their role? Sorry, everybody. Yes, these players may have broken rules. But if you don’t feel awful about their names being dragged in the mud, you’re just heartless.