Forgive me cammac. I didn't get a chance to rebut this. You understand that it's just me and SD20 against about 10 of you, so sometimes it's hard to address everything.
1. The Republican Memo Is Solely About Alleged FISA Abuses Against Carter Page- True. But as I just pointed out in a post this morning, the Title 1 FISA warrant against Page is the key to all of this. It allows virtually unlimited spying on the entire Trump team, going backward and forward in time.
2. Why Do Republicans Suddenly Care About Nobody Carter Page?- See above
3. Republicans are Attacking our own FBI over Alleged FISA Abuses against a Long Suspected Russian Agent- The evidence that Page was actually a Russian agent is pretty scant. He certainly is a guy who is very interested in developing financial relationships with Russian energy people, but that's pretty much what you would expect if you're looking for someone to advise you about Russia. You would add people who have had either diplomatic or economic relationships with Russian (preferably both). His statements that he sympathizes with Russia over the U.S, in some of the more recent Ukraine issues is not a crime. Indeed, many conservatives, libertarians and old-style leftists would agree. And I think the fact that he has been under surveillance for almost a decade without being caught in a criminal act is pretty good evidence that he is not a spy.
4. Republicans Approved the FISA Warrant & The Investigation- Comey is nominally a Republican, but covered for Clinton on the email scandal so you'll forgive me if I'm not sold on his loyalty. Rosenstein is also a nominal Republican, but Trump wasn't really at liberty to put "his guys" there because there was already so much scrutiny and a clamor to impeach him for obstruction of justice. I'll note that it was Rosenstein who allegedly advised him to fire Comey, and then Rosenstein appointed Mueller as special counsel to investigate Trump. The fact that the FISA judges are Republicans is irrelevant. They weren't corrupt. They had insufficient information due to the corruption of others.
5. Trump’s Own Republican Appointees Said that the Republican House Memo Was False and Misleading- That's not exactly what he said. He didn't say false. He said there were omissions that were misleading. I'm open-minded to hearing what those omissions are.
6. Republicans Have Created a False Narrative that FISA Judges Were Not Told of the Possible Political Bias Behind the Steele Dossier- It's not a false narrative. Beacon free press started the opposition research, but Steele didn't get involved until the DNC had taken over funding the project. It was clearly a political operation that was clearly funded by the DNC. The FBI new this and didn't tell the FISA court.
7. The FISA Warrant Was Not Granted Until After Carter Page Left the Trump Campaign- Refer to #1 above. The timing is irrelevant because the Title 1 FISA warrant allows them to look back at old communications.
8. Republican Claims of “Bias” Against Trump Are Circular Reasoning- This is a pretty weak argument. Dailykos wants you to believe that the bias against Trump was specifically related to the secret stuff they knew about Trump. When I read those texts, I see a much stronger bias than that. Ultimately it's subjective.
9. Republicans Forget Their Own Special Prosecutor Bias- As liberals are so prone to say, that sounds like "whataboutism" to me.
10. If Republicans Really Want Transparency, Why Not Release Texts Related to the Benghazi Investigation and the Trump Campaigns Emails?- This is irrelevant to the matter. The article is grasping at straws at this point
11. Remember When Trump Surrogates Talked About the “Bias” in the FBI Against Hillary?- See #10 above
12. Yes, Someone Was Investigated By the FBI Based on a Salacious, Unverified Partisan Hit-Piece...Hillary- Where are those 33,000 emails, by the way?
