The important questions, however, are:
- First, did the F.B.I. have solid reasons to suspect that people in Donald Trump’s campaign had unusual, dangerous and possibly criminal ties to Moscow?
- Second, did this suspicion warrant surveillance and investigation by the F.B.I.?
.. Paul Manafort, the Trump campaign chairman until August 2016, is credibly alleged to have received $12.7 million in “undisclosed cash payments” from then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, a Russian stooge.
.. Had Manafort not been exposed, he might have gone on to occupy a position of trust in the Trump administration
.. George Papadopoulos, the young adviser who pleaded guilty last year to lying to the F.B.I., spent his time on the campaign trying to make overtures to Russia. In May 2016 he blabbed to an Australian diplomat that Moscow had political dirt on Hillary Clinton — information that proved true and was passed on to U.S. intelligence. This was the genesis of an F.B.I. counterintelligence investigation, as the Nunes memo itself admits.
.. Page happens also to be highly sympathetic to the Putin regime. The Russian phrase for such characters is polezni durak — useful idiot.
No wonder he was invited to give a commencement speech at a Russian university in the summer of 2016. That’s how assets are cultivated in the world of intelligence.
.. Given the profile and his relative proximity to team Trump, it would have been professionally negligent of the F.B.I. not to keep tabs on him.
.. Yet the bureau only obtained a surveillance warrant after Page had left the campaign and shortly before the election, and it insisted throughout the campaign that Trump was not a target of investigation. How that represents an affront to American democracy is anyone’s guess.
.. The memo does seem to have uncovered conflicts of interest at the Justice Department, most seriously by then-Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, whose wife was working for Fusion GPS (and thus, by extension, the Clinton campaign) on opposition research on Trump. The memo also claims this relationship was not disclosed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court when the Justice Department applied for a surveillance warrant on Page.
.. Nor does the Nunes memo claim that the information provided by the F.B.I. to the foreign intelligence court was, in fact, false. The closest it gets is a quote from ex-F.B.I. Director James Comey saying the Steele dossier was “salacious and unverified,”
.. The Stormy Daniels story is also salacious and almost certainly accurate. “Unverified” is not a synonym for “untrue.” And since when do pundits who make a living from their opinions automatically equate “bias” with dishonesty?
.. The larger inanity here is the notion that the F.B.I. tried to throw the election to Clinton, when it was the Democrats who complained bitterly at the time that the opposite was true.
“It has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisers and the Russian government,” then Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid angrily wrote James Comey in late October 2016. “The public has a right to know this information.”
.. Maybe so. But the G-Men kept quiet about their investigations, and Trump won the election. How that represents evidence of a sinister deep-state conspiracy is a question for morons to ponder.
We’ve Got the Memo. Now What About Trump’s Tax Returns?
what other evidence did the intelligence court rely on in finding probable cause to issue the warrant? The memo doesn’t say. What about the court’s rationale for issuing three separate extensions, each of which required investigators to present new evidence beyond the dossier?
.. Was any significant piece of information in the dossier found to be inaccurate? The memo doesn’t say.
.. You know what would help to answer questions like these? Even more transparency. It would be useful, for instance, if we could see all of the supporting evidence in the warrant application — with necessary redactions, of course, to protect sources and methods.
.. Also helpful would be the 10-page response memo prepared by Representative Adam Schiff, the committee’s ranking Democrat, who, unlike Mr. Nunes, has actually seen the intelligence underlying the application.
.. investigators did in fact tell the court that the dossier was politically motivated.
.. Since the Republicans are now on board with greater transparency, they will no doubt push President Trump to release his tax returns
.. How about the White House visitor logs
.. Or, say, the names of all foreign governments and officials who have stayed — at their own or at American taxpayers’ expense — at Mr. Trump’s Washington hotel, at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida or at his golf courses and his other businesses
.. Or the names of every foreign business with which the Trump Organization has a financial relationship, especially in countries where America has sensitive foreign policy interests, like China, India, Russia, Turkey or Saudi Arabia?
CDC Director Quits After Report She Bought Tobacco Stocks
Brenda Fitzgerald already had prompted concern that her investments compromised her ability to discuss some issues handled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Dr. Fitzgerald’s resignation came less than a day after Politico reported she had bought shares in Japan Tobacco Inc. shortly after she became director of an agency whose leading priorities include preventing smoking and tobacco use. Dr. Fitzgerald had also owned stock in five other tobacco companies before she became CDC director, Politico said.
Trump Ordered Mueller Fired, but Backed Off When White House Counsel Threatened to Quit
President Trump ordered the firing last June of Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel overseeing the Russia investigation, according to four people told of the matter, but ultimately backed down after the White House counsel threatened to resign rather than carry out the directive.
.. the president began to argue that Mr. Mueller had three conflicts of interest that disqualified him from overseeing the investigation, two of the people said.
First, he claimed that a dispute years ago over fees at Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Va., had prompted Mr. Mueller, the F.B.I. director at the time, to resign his membership. The president also said Mr. Mueller could not be impartial because he had most recently worked for the law firm that previously represented the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Finally, the president said, Mr. Mueller had been interviewed to return as the F.B.I. director the day before he was appointed special counsel in May.
After receiving the president’s order to fire Mr. Mueller, the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, refused to ask the Justice Department to dismiss the special counsel, saying he would quit instead, the people said.
.. Mr. McGahn disagreed with the president’s case and told senior White House officials that firing Mr. Mueller would have a catastrophic effect on Mr. Trump’s presidency.
.. Mr. McGahn, a longtime Republican campaign finance lawyer in Washington who served on the Federal Election Commission, was the top lawyer on Mr. Trump’s campaign. He has been involved in nearly every key decision Mr. Trump has made — like the firing of the former F.B.I. director
.. Around the time Mr. Trump wanted to fire Mr. Mueller, the president’s legal team, led then by his longtime personal lawyer in New York, Marc E. Kasowitz, was taking an adversarial approach to the Russia investigation. The president’s lawyers were digging into potential conflict-of-interest issues for Mr. Mueller and his team
.. Another option that Mr. Trump considered in discussions with his advisers was dismissing the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, and elevating the department’s No. 3 official, Rachel Brand
.. Nonetheless, Mr. Trump has wavered for months about whether he wants to fire Mr. Mueller, whose job security is an omnipresent concern among the president’s legal team and close aides. The president’s lawyers, including Mr. Cobb, have tried to keep Mr. Trump calm by assuring him for months, amid new revelations about the inquiry, that it is close to ending.
.. In March, after Mr. McGahn failed to persuade Attorney General Jeff Sessions not to recuse himself from the inquiry, Mr. Trump complained that he needed someone loyal to oversee the Justice Department.
.. in July, the president pointedly kept open the option of firing Mr. Mueller, saying that the special counsel would be passing a “red line” if his investigation expanded to look at Mr. Trump’s finances.