Quote from: TECSHARE on March 24, 2019, 08:24:01 PM

The warrant they used to start investigating Trump was based on "The Steele Dossier" which was paid for by HRC and the DNC. They did not of course disclose that to the FISA warrant judge (he was not happy). In effect this entire investigation was illegal, and now those responsible get their turn being hunted.

There was a footnote that said:

Quote from: https://www.investors.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/D1Release.pdf

(on page 23)[Steele] was hired by [GPS Fusion] to conduct research into [Tump's] ties to Russia. [Steele] provided the results of his research to [GPS Fusion], and the FBI asses that [GPS Fusion] likely provided this information to [Perkins Cole] that hired [GPS Fusion] in the first place. [Steel] told the FBI that he only provided this information to [GPS Fusion] and the FBI.[Redacted]The FBI does not believe that [Steele] directly provided this information to the press."

This in fact does not mention either Clinton, nor the DNC being the ultimate client. Nor does it disclose Steele's anti-Trump bias.

Interestingly, it also cited the Director of National intelligence, but instead of getting a sworn statement from him, they used statements he made on TV, obviously not under oath, nor in an interview with law enforcement, making any lies he said not a crime. There were also lines marked "(U)" (unclassified, I believe) that were redacted.

The FISA laws need to be reformed, but that is off topic here....

Quote from: theymos on March 24, 2019, 09:09:01 PM

The letter makes the final report sound more positive toward Trump than I expected. I'll be interested to see the final report, especially the obstruction-of-justice part which seems less conclusive and which the AG's letter only briefly summarizes.

The obstruction of justice piece is based on things Tump did in the public eye.

An obstruction case against Trump could have been derived from one of two things, his firing of Comey, or his criticism of the Special Counsel investigation.

As President, Tump has the constitutional right to fire Comey, as Trump is politically accountable to anything Comey does as FBI director. As a US Citizen, Trump has the right to protest any government action he does not like, and to petition the government to change its policies and/or laws.

If the special counsel tried to prosecute the President based on either of the above actions, any conviction would likely be overturned by the Supreme Court on constitutional grounds.

I am also interested to see the final report, but I am going to speculate it contains a lot of innuendo regarding the effect of Russia's election interference. It will likely contain incomplete information, as I believe it was only investigating collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, not Russian election interference in general, so Russia may have also helped Clinton, and this would not be in the report. One could also argue that Russia was intentionally inefficient in their efforts, and made their efforts easy to uncover in order to hurt Trump in the event he ended up winning.

Quote from: Spendulus on March 24, 2019, 09:23:20 PM

And he entrapped very unfairly, Flynn.

Flynn deserves a Pardon, as does Rodger Stone. Even though Manafort is not a good guy, the only reason he is being persecuted is because of his ties to Trump, and as such I think he should be pardoned too.