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Ex-top FBI lawyer: 'Gratuitous' to name Dems who funded Steele dossier in Carter Page FISA
washingtonexaminer.com ^ | 5/10/19 | Jerry Dunleavy & Daniel Chaitin

Posted on 05/10/2019 2:10:44 PM PDT by ransomnote

Full Title: Ex-top FBI lawyer: 'Gratuitous' to name Dems who funded Steele dossier in Carter Page FISA applications

The FBI's former top lawyer defended the bureau's controversial surveillance warrant applications against a member of President Trump's 2016 campaign.

As general counsel, James Baker said he "wanted the burden on me to a significant degree" in preparing the paperwork to obtain Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants to wiretap one-time Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

In front of a packed room at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., Baker was prompted to discuss the Trump dossier compiled by ex-British spy Christopher Steele. The research was cited in the warrant applications, despite being largely unverified, and has become a flashpoint with GOP investigators who allege the FBI misled the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

At issue are the applications' lack of information about the Democrats who paid for the creation of the dossier and Steele's anti-Trump bias when the bureau applied to spy on Page, who was investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller over his interactions with Russians but was never charged.

“You don’t want to put into a document like this gratuitous information about U.S. persons," Baker said moderator Benjamin Wittes. "You want to try to minimize it, to some extent. If it's important. If the assessment is that the identity is critically important and you need it to either follow the flow of the information ... then you might put the person's name in."

Baker noted that FBI lawyers are tasked with these kinds of questions and might find another reason to put identifying information in the applications.

The first warrant application was submitted in October 2016, after which there were three renewals at three-month intervals, including in January, April, and June 2017. The FBI's use of the dossier, contains claims about Trump's ties to Russia, has rankled Republican investigators on Capitol Hill, who are investigating possible bias in the upper echelons of the Justice Department and FBI.

A memo from the House Intelligence Committee in February 2018 alleged Steele was paid over $160,000 by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign through the Perkins Coie law firm and opposition research group Fusion GPS to "obtain derogatory information about on Donald Trump's ties to Russia." The memo also said the FBI never informed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of the dossier's Democratic benefactors or Steele's anti-Trump bias when it applied to spy on Page, who was investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller over his interactions with Russians but was never charged.


TOPICS: Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: fbi; fisa; jamesabaker; jamesbaker; jamesbakerinterview; spygate; steeledossier; trumpdossier
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It's hard to tell satire and "journalism" apart anymore.
1 posted on 05/10/2019 2:10:44 PM PDT by ransomnote
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To: ransomnote

I was just following orders said the Nazi prison guard...


2 posted on 05/10/2019 2:13:31 PM PDT by glorgau
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To: ransomnote

” ‘Gratuitous’ to name Dems who funded Steele dossier in Carter Page FISA applications”

No, it is accuracy.

.


3 posted on 05/10/2019 2:14:04 PM PDT by TLI ( ITINERIS IMPENDEO VALHALLA)
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To: ransomnote

So in the end, baker is saying that no one is accountable for using false evidence to obtain a FISA warrant? Wow, why even have a FISA court then?


4 posted on 05/10/2019 2:15:42 PM PDT by JoSixChip (Trump stands alone.)
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To: TLI

Baker is very close to being in the grand jury room . He wont like it.


5 posted on 05/10/2019 2:24:30 PM PDT by bingoplayer (MAGA)
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To: ransomnote

Yeah, it’s such a minor detail that another campaign paid for the evidence


6 posted on 05/10/2019 2:25:19 PM PDT by McGavin999 (Border security without a wall is like having a Ring doorbell without a doorw)
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To: ransomnote

The backpedaling and weaelwording goes into high gear


7 posted on 05/10/2019 2:25:55 PM PDT by Regulator
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To: ransomnote

Hi.

Mr. Baker knows that Carter Page is/was an FBI asset.

Don’t believe me? Ask the GRU.

Dirty cops, failed coup.

Gallows.

5.56mm


8 posted on 05/10/2019 2:31:25 PM PDT by M Kehoe (DRAIN THE SWAMP! BUILD THE WALL!)
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To: ransomnote

Your Honor, to sentence and send my client to prison for a fraudulent FISA application would be gratuitous.

Why? Well, I just said so.


9 posted on 05/10/2019 2:35:21 PM PDT by romanesq (For George Soros so loved the world, he gave us Obama.)
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To: ransomnote

Mr. Baker either thinks the rest of us are fools or he is a real half-**sed, shi***** of a lawyer. Of course it doesn’t matter that government spies and criminal investigations were set in motion entirely on the advice of a political campaign, relying on consultants and foreign nationals paid by that campaign to infiltrate the opposing campaign, directed by the FBI and CIA with the use of taxpayer dollars, to favor a candidate for President they wanted by destroying FBI interview meeting notes, allowing the withholding of 30,000 emails self-reviewed by that candidate, not caring about the destruction of hard drives essential to evidence, the taking of testimony not under oath notes of which the vaunted FBI has “lost”. And on the other hand, doing everything they can at the bidding of one political campaign AND AT THE STINKING COSTS TO TAXPAYERS to disfavor the opponent these wretched bureaucrats hated. Was “senator” Burr ever an FBI agent?


10 posted on 05/10/2019 2:39:29 PM PDT by laconic
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To: ransomnote
“You don’t want to put into a document like this gratuitous information about U.S. persons," Baker said moderator Benjamin Wittes. "You want to try to minimize it, to some extent. If it's important. If the assessment is that the identity is critically important and you need it to either follow the flow of the information ... then you might put the person's name in."

But, hey, it's okay to submit patently false scurrilous hearsay. No big deal

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Constitutional Crisis?

11 posted on 05/10/2019 2:42:41 PM PDT by ALPAPilot
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To: ransomnote

Arkancide to name the Dems ( Hillary & pals ) who funded the fake Steele dossier in Carter Page FISA applications.. and would result in more Arkancides.


12 posted on 05/10/2019 2:45:03 PM PDT by george76 (Ward Churchill : Fake Indian, Fake Scholarship, and Fake Art)
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To: ransomnote

So, they not only paid for it, they left a tip!


13 posted on 05/10/2019 2:57:40 PM PDT by outofsalt (If history teaches us anything, it's that history rarely teaches us anything.)
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To: ransomnote

Eff the FBI.
Faking Bogus Investigations.
American Stasi.


14 posted on 05/10/2019 2:58:21 PM PDT by Travis McGee (EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com)
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To: M Kehoe

Eff the FBI.
American Stasi.


15 posted on 05/10/2019 2:58:51 PM PDT by Travis McGee (EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com)
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To: ransomnote

Baker might be right. It would have been gratuitous to name them in the dossier.

But it will be right on point to name them in the indictments
for perpetrating this fraud on the FISA courts and the American people.


16 posted on 05/10/2019 3:00:16 PM PDT by TigersEye (This is the age of the death of reason.)
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To: ransomnote

” “You want to try to minimize it, to some extent. If it’s important. If the assessment is that the identity is critically important and you need it to either follow the flow of the information ... then you might put the person’s name in.”

How can the fact that HRC funded the dossier not be, “critically important?”


17 posted on 05/10/2019 3:02:00 PM PDT by ModelBreaker
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To: ransomnote
James Baker said he "wanted the burden on me to a significant degree"

Fine, then send him to prison. Pour encourager les autres.

18 posted on 05/10/2019 3:07:32 PM PDT by Meet the New Boss
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To: Travis McGee

Think about this my FRiend.

Most Americans reading the word, “Stasi” has no idea about what that means or that there was a country called East Germany at one time.

I hope that this whole political thing doesn’t go hot. Like I have said before, CWII will make CWI look like a walk in the park on a warm spring day.

Lord help us.

5.56mm


19 posted on 05/10/2019 3:10:21 PM PDT by M Kehoe (DRAIN THE SWAMP! BUILD THE WALL!)
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To: ModelBreaker

It sure is important.


20 posted on 05/10/2019 3:10:53 PM PDT by Dante3
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