If you're a believer in rights you shouldn't even play their game.
There shouldn't even be secret courts. Debating their integrity almost glosses over the real, more fundamental, problem.
Secret courts themselves, their very existence, are abuses. That's just my opinion, but I really do think you start down a dark path when you create this type of judicial organ.
When I learned about history in school I learned about how bad the past was, how there were so many abuses of power. One thing that stood out to me was that what enabled many of these abuses of power was the ability for the rulers to keep things secret.
I naively thought that in our day and age we, or at least the West, had done away with secret courts. The time around Snowden was quite shocking to me. I fully agree that secret courts are a bad idea and that a free society has no place for them.
Not only that, a secret court setup specifically for foreign surveillance was used to spy domestically.
It’s why you don’t give governments secret toys and extra judicial powers, the people that run it are worst than toddlers, and more abusive and dishonest.
The court was set up to spy on foreigners and Americans. To get a FISA warrant on a US citizen you have to show probable cause that the person is an agent of a foreign government engaging in intelligence activities.
In practice the bar is so incredibly low. Carter Page was wiretapped based on nothing but the word of a foreign intelligence agent. Page had previously aided the US government in an investigation of a Russian asset. There was no other corroborating evidence. Suggesting that Page was committing or contemplating the commission of a crime.
When hearsay from foreigners is sufficient 'probable cause' for a FISA warrant, there is no barrier to obtaining one.
I read in a recent article that, out of more than a thousand FISA applications, ONE was rejected.
FISA courts are a rubber stamp for wonton state surveillance.
Love or hate Trump, doesn’t matter. Americans have been able to peek behind the curtain if you will, and see how these secret courts are operating, and it doesn’t inspire an incredible amount of confidence.
Seeing as they knew what buttons to push and strings to pull to obtain these warrants, one has to wonder how many other times this script has been played.
Don't worry, I'm sure Biden will publicly be held to account for this during the next Democratic debate, and then Trump in the later Presidential debates.. Just kidding, this is going to disappear from public discourse just like the recent revelations that the government consistently lied to us about the Afghanistan war.
If the FBI can’t follow protocol for actions at the highest levels and engage in amateur tactics, just imagine how they conduct themselves with ordinary citizens.
Now, I was under the impression FISA courts has an aversion to allowing spying if there was a possibility of one of the targets being a US national.
Witness Martha Stewart. Now, she’s not your average citizen, but you can see how they railroaded her. Yup, they didn’t get her on FTC violations, nope, they got her for “lying”. If she’s not guilty of a crime how the hell do you get people for “lying”.
It is a crime to lie to federal agents in the course of a criminal investigation. You can avoid committing that crime by not lying to agents.
Note that this is not the same as the "if you're honest, you have nothing to hide anyway" argument in favor of mass surveillance. This is about answering a specific set of questions from a member of law enforcement in the course of a specific investigation. You always have the right to decline to answer questions under the Fifth Amendment in that situation as well (another way to avoid telling a lie). Obviously that's not true under a regime of mass surveillance, which is one of the many reasons I think mass surveillance is a bad idea and unconstitutional.
You don't have to lie, but a judge and /or jury need to be convinced that, when you said something that conflicted with some other evidence, you were lying. What you actually believe to be true doesn't matter.
For those who know, this is a standard fed tactic, and yes you absolutely can lie accidentally! Heres how it works:
Interview the person multiple times, grilling them hard, using all the classic techniques. Repeat the exact same questions in each interview, interspersed with variations.
When you don't get any confession or evidence from them, comb through the transcripts to find a place where the "exact same" questions have different answers. All it takes is a slight change, a slip of the memory, a slip of the tongue...
Boom, now you can get them on "lying to the feds", and use that threat to leverage a plea deal or some other information.
It is an abusive tactic used all the time. If I hear someone is getting caught on "lying to the feds" I assume it means the evidentiary case is extremely weak and thats all they can get.
It is a crime to lie to federal agents in the course of a criminal investigation
I understand that that's how the system works today. I object to it.
1) It doesn't account for fallibility of human memory, and our propensity to make mistakes. I believe that it's easy to badger a person to the point where they're intellectually disoriented, and "lies" become likely even without the suspect have bad intentions.
2) The asymmetry is a problem. Law enforcement routinely lies to suspects. Why is it okay for them morally?
3) We're told that these laws are necessary to prevent obstruction of justice, but it appears that these charges are frequently (maybe usually) when there was no obstruction at all: the police knew exactly what the truth was. They were setting a trap for the suspect, trying to get them to incriminate themselves in a different way.
> It is a crime to lie to federal agents in the course of a criminal investigation. You can avoid committing that crime by not lying to agents.
Just because something is illegal does not mean it should be illegal - and as far as dumb ass things to be illegal goes I think lying to the FBI is high up on that list.
There is already obstruction of justice which is significantly more reasonable a crime to charge someone with and if your lying was not obstruction of justice I don't see why the FBI should get to jail you for it.
Lying to an investigator actually isn't obstruction of justice, according to the statute. Obstruction of justice is a blanket term for crimes falling under 18 U.S. Code Chapter 73. The only one that comes close is § 1510: Obstruction of criminal investigations. From the name it sure sounds like lying to investigators would fall under it, but if you read the text it only covers certain specific acts of obstruction like bribery. Making false statements to law enforcement falls user 18 U.S. Code Chapter 47, which covers fraud and false statements. In this case it would be § 1001. So yeah, kind of confusing, but that's why there's a separate term for making false statements.
> Witness Martha Stewart. Now, she’s not your average citizen, but you can see how they railroaded her. Yup, they didn’t get her on FTC violations, nope, they got her for “lying”. If she’s not guilty of a crime how the hell do you get people for “lying”.
The Martha Stewart case is a prime example of why you should never talk to investigators. Never help any investigator. Ever. I'm pretty sure you can find something to hang me by if you let me ramble for hours.
> You always have the right to decline to answer questions under the Fifth Amendment in that situation as well (another way to avoid telling a lie).
I've read criminal defense lawyers advise people that they first contact a good lawyer before contacting the police (and have them present during any communication) if their spouse is missing.
What we have to remember is it is just a job for law enforcement and prosecutors. It is best to think of them as machines that act on some kind of feedback loop (incentives). We cannot directly make improvements to the machines. We have to try to change the incentive structure if we want any change in how the machines work.
So the question is: what are the incentives and what needs changing?
>I've read criminal defense lawyers advise people that they first contact a good lawyer before contacting the police (and have them present during any communication) if their spouse is missing.
This is pretty poor advice. A prosecutor will absolutely subpoena your phone records and use the fact that you called a lawyer first to convince a jury you're guilty.
But you're right - in most cases, talk to investigators as little as possible. The classic YoutTube video [1] on this topic is worth a watch if people haven't seen it.
No, it isn't, it is the only sane advice you will get. We are turning into a country where your first action should always be, stay quiet and call a lawyer first.
1. Police and prosecutor will pull your records anyway, they generally look at spouse and people close to you first regardless of your innocence.
2. If this is the only evidence they have on your guilt, then you're likely to win on appeal if the jury is insane enough to find your guilt based on zero evidence.
While it may be beneficial if the police decide you’re a suspect, on the other hand it would also seem to ensure that they will view you as a suspect and investigate the hell out of you. Perhaps they do this with spouses anyway, but it still seems like you’d be drawing extra suspicion. It’s a tough one.
I also imagine it’s very difficult to make a decision like this when distraught. I‘m pretty sure I’d (perhaps
foolishly) only be thinking about finding my spouse, not the legal implications for myself. It seems like this would be the case for the vast majority of people in that situation.
If the police are actively investigating anything that involves them speaking to you, you need a lawyer, as you're well past the point of being concerned about "drawing extra attention".
I'm not saying be that guy at the DUI checkpoint screaming about being a sovereign citizen (Although I do have a fair bit of sympathy for them) but you can talk yourself into way more trouble than you're going to be able to talk yourself out of.
If I’m understanding correctly, we’re just talking about the initial call to the police when your spouse is missing. I totally agree with you if they ask to interview you after that point, but making the first call (when time may be critical) to a lawyer seems extreme. That’s not to say it’s necessarily wrong of course, but I think the average person would likely see that as strange/suspicious (including cops and jury members).
Does the video also bring examples, where it was bad to talk to the police, when you were in fact innocent?
I only watched till the first example, where he brings the example of a stupid lawer who talked to the police .. when his problem was lying to the police and giving contradicting accounts of what happened. Yeah, this is stupid.
But I do really not like the idea of mandatory lawers as it cements the class justice system, with good outcome for people who can afford good lawers and people qho cannot.
When I have done nothing wrong I don't want to need a lawer by design. But it makes sense, that lawers think different about that.
I haven't watched it in a while, so I may get some specifics wrong, but it goes through various hypotheticals, until finally getting to the point where you are innocent, and you only tell the truth, but talking to the police gets you convicted. IIRC the example was you saying "I was out of town visiting my mom when the crime happened" but they have a (mistaken) witness putting you near the scene. The fact that you (supposedly) lied about where you were combined with other circumstantial evidence may be enough to convict you.
Note also that even an innocent person will almost always give contradicting accounts of a situation if interrogated for long enough.
[edit]
There were several such examples, including the one I remembered from 14-23 minutes.
> Does the video also bring examples, where it was bad to talk to the police, when you were in fact innocent?
Yes. It's much closer to the end of his talk where there is an erroneous contradicting witness and you can wind up convicted of lying to the police.
He also points to things like "Possession of a lobster can be a felony". You simply can't know all the laws, so getting a lawyer forces the police to narrow the scope immediately. At that point you can address the actual charges rather than letting the police fish through hours of your babbling hunting for something to hang you with.
> When I have done nothing wrong I don't want to need a lawer by design.
That's fine. But "Shut the hell up" remains good advice. The only benefit to "cooperating" with the police is at SENTENCING. And, if I'm actually innocent, that's a bit of a problem, no?
>That's fine. But "Shut the hell up" remains good advice. The only benefit to "cooperating" with the police is at SENTENCING. And, if I'm actually innocent, that's a bit of a problem, no?
I agree with the basic advice. That being said, if a cop knocks on my door and says the neighbor's kid is missing, I'm still willing to take the minute personal risk of being implicated in order to help the police in their search.
Yes, technically I could have been the last one to see the kid alive and this could make me a suspect, but I also couldn't live with myself if I knew something but withheld it and something bad happened.
Yes, this is what I mean. Of course in that case I would speak as well. And probably most would, without lawer as time matters.
One idea of the police was to be servants of the people and not a power tool of the elite.
The "never speak to the police" paradigm would mean to me that police is all evil intended.
And that would be the case, I dont think the solution is just more lawers.
Roger Stone as well - the only charges brought against him were for lying during interrogations. His ego and boisterous storytelling habit did him in. Being in and out of the White House over the decades and friends with various DC lifers probably made him overconfident.
To a lesser extent this happened to General Flynn when he was charged, however in his case the Feds made a rare show of pseudo-apology and abandoned the case.
Richard Jewell is a famous example of naive talking (not even lying) being used against him - there's a Clint Eastwood releasing this weekend about his case.
Regardless of which political side you prefer, these tools of circular prosecution have and will be used against anyone when anything ranging from a media frenzy, to executive pressure, to a couple ambitious agents deems it warranted.
> however in his case the Feds made a rare show of pseudo-apology and abandoned the case.
Not yet, they haven't abandoned the case yet. It was put on hold when Sidney Powell, Flynn's lawyer showed that FBI manipulated his 302 transcripts and the FBI replied that they would like to put the case on hold until the IG report is out.
In General Flynn’s case, his lawyer’s latest submission (3 weeks ago) also shows that he didn’t actually lie. FBI attorney Lisa Page edited his testimony and overnight, the testimony went from one thing to something he never said. Then FBI used that manipulates testimony to make him plead guilty because he had to sell his house and he went bankrupt from his past lawyer fees. The judge will most likely throw his case out now after this IG report is out which shows gross misconduct from FBI.
One problem with that line of thought is that law is so complex that just about anybody could easily be tripped up by an agent educated on the nuances of the law. While most agents are honest, truth-seeking individuals, clearly some harbor political bias and/or are being used for ideological ends.
“Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime” - Lavrentiy Beria, Chief of Police under Stalin
A system that is highly secretive and whose only accountability is to pretend to investigate itself inevitably will be abused more than an open one with transparent checks and balances. One has only to see that FISA has only turned down 85 out of 40k requests to understand this is a rubber-stamp process. (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig...)
> One has only to see that FISA has only turned down 85 out of 40k requests to understand this is a rubber-stamp process.
I don't think that logic follows? That statistic could just mean that they're actually doing most things legally and properly, which is the outcome you'd want, right? I'd be worried if a significant percentage of their requests were turned down.
Also, as a comparison point: apparently several federal judicial districts have a 100% conviction rate, and overall, federal conviction rates are pretty high. Do you see these statistics as implying the whole thing is just a rubber-stamp process altogether? [1]
> Do you see these statistics as implying the whole thing is just a rubber-stamp process altogether?
That's overstating my (not the GP) view, but I do believe the operational mechanisms in federal law enforcement push heavily towards conviction once accused.
Let me ask you a question: Do you believe there have been zero false convictions in those districts?
> That's overstating my (not the GP) view, but I do believe the operational mechanisms in federal law enforcement push heavily towards conviction once accused.
Possibly, but that's a separate point from the one I'm making.
> Do you believe there have been zero false convictions in those districts?
And just to be sure I understand, you're judging mechanisms designed to come to factual conclusions by evaluating how many of their decisions lean one way, without reference to or concern with their factual basis?
By common sense. The only way to get zero error in the absence of perfect information is to avoid convictions entirely. I'm not saying I like this trade-off; I'm just saying this is reality.
> And just to be sure I understand, you're judging mechanisms designed to come to factual conclusions by evaluating how many of their decisions lean one way, without reference to or concern with their factual basis?
No, that's the complete opposite of what I was saying, which was that you have to look a the factual bases and can't just judge by the statistics. Hence my reply earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21773010
>I don't think that logic follows? That statistic could just mean that they're actually doing most things legally and properly, which is the outcome you'd want, right? I'd be worried if a significant percentage of their requests were turned down.
I think you're correct that the logic employed doesn't follow. It is useless to look at the statistics alone and conclude one way or the other that FISA is or is not a rubber stamp. However, I think you are doing a category error: Criminal court proceedings are adversarial, FISA court is not.
Because there is no defense, public oversight, or judicial review. FISA cases are sealed, and secret. There is no risk of jury nullification or new caselaw because these cases are not argued by an adversary. Outside entities subpoenad in this fashion are barred from speaking of it (Under 99% conviction federal criminal statutes) Nobody is risking re-election here and the judges are appointed. The adversary is a strawman in FISA. The public is functionally shut out as well. It was designed for this purpose, the lack of accountability is a critical feature.
In order to employ the statistics properly you require context. In my high school sociology class the instructor posed this statistical fallacy: Drownings and grass growth rates are positively correlated. A naive observer born and living on Mars might ban grass to prevent drownings. This missing the mark because correlation != causation, and the true correlation is more people swim in the summer when grass grows faster. There is not swimming on mars.
>Also, as a comparison point: apparently several federal judicial districts have a 100% conviction rate [...] Do you see these statistics as implying the whole thing is just a rubber-stamp process altogether?
Comparing to high criminal conviction rates (often in the high 90%), the prosecutors and attornies general use the conviction statistics for their re-election campaigns. Cases which would result in "Jury Nullification" or some other modification of caselaw or jurisprudence are abandoned, keeping the rates artificially high. Refer to "Stingray" caselaw. This effect is partially caused by the adversarial court system being helmed by elected officials.
This is to say, that the regular criminal courts are an adversarial public system in which the accused get lawyers. Those lawyers sometimes win in court, other times the AG or prosecutor drops the charges when it looks like they will lose due to the legal arguments employed by the adversary. Dropped or unajudicated charges aren't counted in the statistics. Losing cases are not tried.
In order to maintain your claim here, there is some missing data:
1: Who is the adversary in FISA?
2: When does the public review the court proceedings?
Given the answers to 1 and 2 being "Nobody" and "Never", the statistics tell a much different tale than the criminal conviction statistics. Now the logic may follow.
> I think you are doing a category error: Criminal court proceedings are adversarial, FISA court is not.
That's not my argument—I think you read more into it than I intended! I wasn't trying to compare criminal courts to FISA courts; that was just an (unfortunate) coincidence in the analogy. The only reason I cited conviction rate as an example here was to illustrate why you can't just look at the statistics and draw a conclusion; that's all. It wasn't meant to serve as an argument for or against FISA courts.
Why would anyone talk to the FBI? They don't record interrogations, but rather rely upon the memory of the investigator who has up to 3 months to record what was said. And if his memory doesn't match what you claim you said, you are automatically lying and guilty. It's such an obvious route of official abuse of power, I'm not for getting rid of the FBI and starting over. How could you trust anyone who was willing to work in that environment?
It doesn't matter if agents record your conversation. At trial, the recording will only be trusted to the extent that the agent's testimony as to its provenance is trusted.
If your testimony is important to the trial, you'll be asked to deliver it again in person, or in a deposition; either way you will have an opportunity to prep with your counsel.
In theory, a recording could be detrimental to you, as either the prosecution or defense would have a chance to play up tiny inconsistencies between your first recording and your live testimony/deposition. Without the recording, the best they can do is have the agent testify "that's not what he/she said the first time." Which doesn't really matter.
If you get prosecuted for lying to the agent, again, you would have a chance to testify at trial, and for your counsel to try to impeach the agent in front of the jury.
"If you get prosecuted for lying to the agent, again, you would have a chance to testify at trial, and for your counsel to try to impeach the agent in front of the jury."
Lol, your word against a federal agent's. How well did that work out for Martha Stewart and her literal army of top end lawyers?
You can't avoid lying to them if you speak to them, even if you're completely innocent. This should be required viewing for just about everyone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
They will use any unconscious fib about any detail, no matter how irrelevant, to impeach you in court. The simplest thing to do is not speak to LEOs at all when they approach you.
It's important to know that the lying thing is specifically about federal law enforcement. Lying a local PO is not (necessarily) a crime, however it's possible that your state has a statute making it a crime. So at the local and state level, lying law enforcement is possibly, but not certainly, a crime. Lying (even unintentionally!) to a federal LEO is a crime in every jurisdiction.
No, no, no. It doesn't matter whether lying to an LEO is a crime or not!! The mere act of lying to them will be used in court to impeach your story, and your testimony should you testify (which is one reason you wouldn't).
You almost certainly won't be allowed to impeach the LEO's testimony based on their lies to you or other subterfuge: it's essentially a given that they can do that as part of their investigations, and the court and jury will be very deferential to them and not to the defendant.
>It's important to know that the lying thing is specifically about federal law enforcement
It's actually much broader than that. Making a material false statement to any federal agent (for example your local postman), about something in his jurisdiction (say, the mail) is enough to qualify.
Note the "material" part. If you lie about the color of socks you are wearing, it doesn't matter.
FYI, it's also a crime to lie to the FISA court and to lie under oath to Congress. The FBI did both, as did other members of the security state, most notably John Brennan and Jim Clapper. If we are a nation of laws not men then those in power need to be held accountable for their crimes too.
The powerful people(prosecutors, for instance) use prosecutorial discretion to NOT prosecute those who are in the power. It is the revolving door, and collusion between powerful classes.
She was accused of making false statements to committing insider trading and the issues surround that claim, so they prosecuted her for statements they claimed false about a crime, insider trading, which they did not charge her with. So combined with charges of security fraud is what they ultimately got her with.
so how can you lie about something you are never taken to court for? if she was guilty of insider trading it would make sense to prosecute that, prove that, then that proves the charge of not telling the truth.
this is all part and parcel of federal prosecutions where they lay on as many charges as possible in order to intimidate you. Welcome to the world that led to Aaron Swartz's death.
And, how does one prove you lied?
The recorded statement?
No. There is, by policy, rarely a recorded statement.
Rather, it's just your word vs. the agent's notes.
That's absurd.
How do you defend yourself when an FBI agent says you said X if (a) the agent, by policy, did not record your conversation and (b) if you dared surreptitiously record the conversation, it would be a separate crime?
>It is a crime to lie to federal agents in the course of a criminal investigation. You can avoid committing that crime by not lying to agents.
18 USC Section 1001 is notoriously broad - for example, your local postman is a federal agent, it doesn't just pertain to law enforcement officials. You don't even need to lie directly to the agent - for example if you fudge your hours on a timesheet and that timesheet gets sent to the federal government for some use or other, you "knowingly and willfully made a materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the United States."
It doesn't matter if you're not under oath. It doesn't matter if you've been read your miranda rights - any material lie that is made to a federal employee within their jurisdiction is an offense.
Sadly, this means that in almost every case, the only reasonable thing to do is to refuse to talk to the agent and to ask for an attorney if they insist.
Not to disagree with you, but maybe, just maybe, the FBI agents and lawyers in this case were consciously not following protocol on purpose. And maybe, just maybe, they do that quite often, and even in completely run-of-the-mill, non-politically-relevent cases. Maybe, just maybe, the protocols they purposefully ignore are there so they can say mistakes were made if caught. Those protocols seem to have no teeth, after all.
In respect to privacy laws, I've always wondered if the only way we will get any reform is if some politician or other high public official gets persecuted and uses his/her power for change.
Sorry, but abuse of power by a federal institution that once upon a time harassed MLK isn't partisan, it's a problem.
The USA political system fosters a short term focus on who gets to be king of the hill, at the expense of reforming this shit show.
We get it: orange man bad. But guess what? Orange man didn't create this system. That was done over decades. Orange man didn't start a needless war that cost trillions and the deaths of thousands of troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens. Obama, who I voted for twice, not counting my primary votes for him, kept us in Afghanistan, and didn't pardon Snowden, but did pardon Chelsea Manning.
I don't care if this helps orange man a little bit, because he will be gone in a few years, worst case scenario, a few months best case. But the smooth talking, non offensive marketing figurehead for the other party will hopefully not have so much power to abuse when they take office.
Democrats need to realize that if this is pushed under the rug it will give evil orange man even more credibility and fire power about the "Deep State". If they push this under the rug this will be a huge rally cry (literally in the case of orange man) for 2020.
I realize we live in an upside down world nowadays, but I'd like to point out that FISA reauthorization votes in the past have been unanimously supported by Republicans while half of Democrats would vote against them.
They're planning for his children to be his successors on the throne. He doesn't seem interested in the constitutional term limits, either, and it's hard to see how you lose an election if you are free to cheat in it. I think the threat is real, and I've been around for a while. This isn't just the latest partisan spat.
That said, yes, you're correct about the FBI and surveillance stuff and all that.
Also: the NYT is part and parcel of the "shit show". Endless reporting about Her Emails. We've already forgotten that the orange man regularly uses unsecured personal cell phones to conduct business free from oversight, since that came out ... let's see... last week.
By cheating, you're referring to the 17 'unbiased' errors, 100% of which somehow simultaneously helped the Hillary campaign and pushed a sham special council investigation and impeachment on the people, all the while the media was pinky swearing there was more evidence than there actually was, right?
This article/PR piece does absolutely nothing to dispute the fact that Hunter got the job because of his relation to Joe. They go after the prosecutor angle because it's all hearsay on both sides and thus easy to spin, but what's indisputably obvious is that Hunter collected those paychecks as a form of influence peddling between Ukraine and his father. You'd have to be hopelessly naive to think otherwise. Don't worry though, the hard-nosed journalists at USA Today are on the case:
>"Hunter Biden? Never heard of him," said Ludmila Rynovaya, 72, a resident of Vodiane's nearby village – population 600 – who was chatting with a friend in a small grocery store.
Case closed! The only defense they can muster is that Hunter was a naive victim who was in over his head:
>"I'm not sure that (Hunter) Biden understood the environment he was getting into" when he agreed to serve on Burisma's board, said Musaieva, the Ukrayinska Pravda editor.
Oh poor Hunter, I'm sure it was all just a misunderstanding.
Also: if you're concerned about people's kids profiting off of connections in high places, you're going to be very upset when you look at Trump's kids.
I did not want to imply it's not a problem, but to highlight how untrustworthy the New York Times was, and still is.
Compare this with their coverage of a different revelation of state secrets: the US pressuring the UK to sell out their healthcare in the UK-US trade negotiations. They focus entirely on how it's "associated with a Russian disinformation campaign", with a tiny little addendum that "the leaks seem accurate".
They like to present themselves as trustworthy and neutral, and indeed their coverage is very accurate. But their selection of stories to cover, and angles to cover them from, hides a tremendous bias (which doesn't neatly map to US party lines, as the examples I gave illustrate).
The media outlet that a person finds unbiased completely gives away their politics. FOX news = Trump base, MSNBC, CNN = Trump opposition base. NYT = moderate liberal, WSJ = moderate conservative.
That is because every media outlet is biased. I have yet to find a news source that doesn't seem to lean in one direction or the other.
> Sorry, but abuse of power by a federal institution that once upon a time harassed MLK isn't partisan, it's a problem.
It's not as big of a problemas abuse of power by a federal institution that directed genocide and, incidentally, which that other federal institution answers to, which makes it strange that that's exactly what you are using it to minimize.
> Orange man didn't create this system.
The manner in which Donald Trump has corrupted the administration of the executive branch and for which is defenders—includig those who can't bring themselves to a direct defense by only engage in the kind do distraction you are engaging in now—are desperate to set the precedent of total absence of accountability is one of greatest dangers to democratic-republican government in the history of the nation. Certainly, it builds on a history tracing back at least through the Nixon pardon, the relative lack of accountability in Iran-Contra, the Republican Congress so burnt out from a failed attempt to impeach Clinton for lying about sex that it couldn't muster up accountability for a war waged not only without Congressional action, but against direct Congressional denial of authority, and scores of abuses, including bad faith in making determinations Congress required in the Iraq AUMF, war crimes, torture, etc., directed at the highest levels of the Bush Administration, etc.
But we're running out of opportunities to draw a line in executive abuses of power before there is no more capacity to restrain.
> Obama [...] did pardon Chelsea Manning.
In fact, he did not. He commuted Manning's sentence, which is a very different thing. Not that I see how the issue would be relevant to the rest of the discussion either way.
Clinton was impeached by the house. He was not convicted and removed from office by the senate. While "lying about sex" may have sounded innocuous at the time, in a post #metoo and Epstein world the behavior has different cultural meaning. In addition, Clinton's impeachable behavior went beyond lying about his own behavior, but witness tampering. In of itself Clinton's behavior might have been a personal matter or an HR issue, but the lies and witness tampering were related to his defence against an previously filed workplace sexual harassment lawsuit.
On December 19, 1998, Clinton became the second American president to be impeached (the first being Andrew Johnson, who was impeached in 1868)[a] when the House formally adopted articles of impeachment and forwarded them to the United States Senate for adjudication. A trial in the Senate began in January 1999, with Chief Justice William Rehnquist presiding. On February 12, Clinton was acquitted on both counts as neither received the necessary two-thirds majority vote of the senators present for conviction and removal from office – in this instance 67.
"Wouldn't it be more fair it the Times waited until after the election to publish this piece?"
No.
"They used to know better"
Wrong again:
1. They should have published it.
2. That article from the Bush era revealed something. The article posted here today is an editorial that doesn't reveal anything new. Instead it discusses a report from a government agency.
The election isn't for another year. What's the horizon that you're going to make us wait for?
This question has nothing to do with Trump and the election. It's about the misbehavior of our law enforcement and courts. That's a present danger, and important to address ASAP.
Hm, I thought this last IG report was going to be the one that had the Deep State perp-walked to Guantanamo and The Hague. Now it's the next one? Then the next one?
I never said anything like "the Deep State perp-walked to Guantanamo and The Hague", nor did anyone on this discussion. Maybe there is a right-win conspiracy theory about that, but it has nothing to do with the discussion here.
FBI / DOJ violation of the protocol in secret courts is really a serious matter in a democratic society.
It is not "a conspiracy theory", it is a logical interpretation of Durham's statement.
DOJ's internal investigation already showed lots of violation of its protocol. Durham made clear his investigation is not limited to within the DOJ/FBI, of course he found more damning evidence that's why he made this statement. Otherwise how would you logically interpret? Investigation outside of DOJ/FBI makes DOJ/FBI look better?
"literally the definition"? You have a weird definition of "conspiracy theory". Every interpretation does not fit with your narrative is a conspiracy theory?
Durham is known as someone who never makes public statements. Over the decades, he has never made a public statement. So for him to come out and make this statement means he’s confident he has something which Horowitz didn’t. People need to realize Horowitz didn’t have much power- he couldn’t compel testimony, couldn’t subpoena people, he could only look at FBI and not other agencies, and he had to take people’s word - so if someone said they didn’t have a bias, he had to take their word. Durham on the other hand has all those powers and he can look at all agencies and also international intelligence (which he points out in his statement).
Also Durham is known as someone who’s gone after people from both parties so this isn’t something about political affiliation.
I searched this article on reddit to see how the usual left leaning subreddits are reacting to it and was surprised to see it is nowhere to be found. Truly both sides are living in their own echo chambers
politics sub being one. 2 of the posts made by others were removed for being “off topic” in that sub. Others were downvoted to oblivion. I won’t comment further as I prefer HN to not get too political.
Like I pointed out in another comment, these numbers are useless comparison if it excludes T_D. T_D had multiple threads on this with 5-6k upvotes and thousands of comments since Monday. They even had a stickied post for the entire day on Monday as well as Wednesday when Horowitz testified. Their votes and sub count are throttled so I would expect the real number to be much higher.
Two different things here. The person I replied to said that every reddit was ignoring this specific article "I searched this article on reddit". My point was to show that that specific article was covered across 37 different subreddits. My conclusion would be that this specific NYT article didn't get much traction on any subreddit, due to the lack or relative upvotes.
That said, there are dozens of FISA posts on many of the political subreddits, typically linking to others sites, not the NYT article. The T_D has been very vocal about the FISA abuses, as they should be. Apparently T_D can't link to this specific article due to subreddit specific rules. So I can't really compare this specific NYT article. Plus comparing the # of upvotes across subreddits has a lot of other issues.
IMO, this recent abuse is due to the lack of transparency in the entire FISA process. There shouldn't be secret courts ordering secret wiretaps on Americans with no oversight. The whole program should be scrapped. Tell your reps to vote it down next time.
An important context is the amount of karma the popular posts get on those subreddits (proxy for engagement size), and the up/down ratio on the specific links.
T_D bans linking directly to sites deemed left leaning. Instead you would post an archived version of the article. It might be difficult to do that analysis given the hoops for posting. r/politics does the same for news deemed right leaning.
You are right, T_D only allows archive versions of NYTimes. With that said, they had multiple threads on this with 5-6k upvotes and thousands of comments since Monday. They even had a stickied post for the entire day on Monday as well as Wednesday when Horowitz testified. Their votes are throttled so I would expect the real number to be much higher.
I’ve read plenty about these specific criticism of the FISA system in the media I consume, which is often decried as being “left-leaning”. Indeed the article here by the New York Times is a good example.
So I doubt “the left” is suppressing this issue. The IG report is pretty clear that these issues had little relevance in the investigation of Russian hacking. And if our discourse can no longer achieve this (rather low) level of nuance, we are truly lost.
"Little relevance?" They failed 4 times to get a FISA warrant until the magical Steele dossier appeared. It was the entire basis for the warrant. If Trump paid for a research paper on any of the democrat candidates and then used that paper as a basis to spy on their campaign, then the democrats would actually have a reason to file impeachment charges.
Why do you bring in the left/right partisan divide into this? The left has been criticizing the secret FISA process since the Bush Patriot Act days. The IG report did not find any evidence of political partisan spying, it only faulted the process of getting the warrant.
On the other hand, as an advocate for civil liberties I'm kind of glad that this is becoming a partisan issue since Patriot Act votes in the past were unanimously supported by Republicans and by half of Democrats. Maybe now we'll get momentum to get rid of secret courts.
>Why do you bring in the left/right partisan divide into this?
Because the right has been complaining about these specific FBI agents biased conduct in this investigation for years now and trying to turn this into a 'we all know fisa is bad' comes off as epic gaslighting.
>The IG report did not find any evidence of political partisan spying, it only faulted the process of getting the warrant.
This is beyond a white washing. He absolutely found evidence that line agents were biased. He did not find clear 'evidence' that the outcome and leadership was biased. The key part is that confessions and a paper trail were not found to lead him to make that conclusion. He stated he made numerous referrals to the doj/fbi about misconduct. If you actually listen to his hearing statements on the 'evidence' for bias he is walking a fine line.
'we did not have documentary or testimonial evidence that (the mistakes) were intentional, but also make note the lack of satisfactory explanations (for the mistakes), from there i cannot draw any further conclusions' - this is during a line of questions from senator whitehouse, but there are many others like it.
James Comey did a victory lap, claiming he was "vindicated" by the report.
Horowitz was asked in the hearing if his report vindicated Comey. He was adamant that his report vindicated no one.
There is definitely a concerted effort to completely mischaracterize the report's contents, mainly because it has proven that the complaining from the Republicans has actually been correct all along.
Check out "Devin Nunes memo" and how media reacted to it last year. They called it a conspiracy theory. The IG report proved everything in his memo was spot on. Wikipedia still has the false info:
History has always proven in any system where there is a great power/responsibility granted to a group, no matter how many levels of oversight, there will always be some level of abuse at one or more of those levels.
One important thing to note for people reading media sources on this topic - "Consensually recorded" in IG-speak means the CHS (confidential human source) agreed to wear a wire--not that the target agreed to be recorded. This is why AG Barr call this spying. The same with sending FBI into "briefing" to collect info on General Flynn.
Media is spinning this "consensually recorded" as if both parties agreed to be recorded and therefore not spying but that's not true at all.
> Consensual monitoring is the interception by an electronic device of any wire, oral, or electronic communication where one of the parties to the communication has given prior consent to the monitoring or recording.
Thanks for the clarification; I think it is a significant observation, quite apart from any measure of sympathy I may feel regarding those targeted in this investigation.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 226 ms ] threadThere shouldn't even be secret courts. Debating their integrity almost glosses over the real, more fundamental, problem.
Secret courts themselves, their very existence, are abuses. That's just my opinion, but I really do think you start down a dark path when you create this type of judicial organ.
I naively thought that in our day and age we, or at least the West, had done away with secret courts. The time around Snowden was quite shocking to me. I fully agree that secret courts are a bad idea and that a free society has no place for them.
It’s why you don’t give governments secret toys and extra judicial powers, the people that run it are worst than toddlers, and more abusive and dishonest.
When hearsay from foreigners is sufficient 'probable cause' for a FISA warrant, there is no barrier to obtaining one.
I read in a recent article that, out of more than a thousand FISA applications, ONE was rejected.
FISA courts are a rubber stamp for wonton state surveillance.
Seeing as they knew what buttons to push and strings to pull to obtain these warrants, one has to wonder how many other times this script has been played.
Now, I was under the impression FISA courts has an aversion to allowing spying if there was a possibility of one of the targets being a US national.
Witness Martha Stewart. Now, she’s not your average citizen, but you can see how they railroaded her. Yup, they didn’t get her on FTC violations, nope, they got her for “lying”. If she’s not guilty of a crime how the hell do you get people for “lying”.
Note that this is not the same as the "if you're honest, you have nothing to hide anyway" argument in favor of mass surveillance. This is about answering a specific set of questions from a member of law enforcement in the course of a specific investigation. You always have the right to decline to answer questions under the Fifth Amendment in that situation as well (another way to avoid telling a lie). Obviously that's not true under a regime of mass surveillance, which is one of the many reasons I think mass surveillance is a bad idea and unconstitutional.
Interview the person multiple times, grilling them hard, using all the classic techniques. Repeat the exact same questions in each interview, interspersed with variations.
When you don't get any confession or evidence from them, comb through the transcripts to find a place where the "exact same" questions have different answers. All it takes is a slight change, a slip of the memory, a slip of the tongue...
Boom, now you can get them on "lying to the feds", and use that threat to leverage a plea deal or some other information.
It is an abusive tactic used all the time. If I hear someone is getting caught on "lying to the feds" I assume it means the evidentiary case is extremely weak and thats all they can get.
I understand that that's how the system works today. I object to it.
1) It doesn't account for fallibility of human memory, and our propensity to make mistakes. I believe that it's easy to badger a person to the point where they're intellectually disoriented, and "lies" become likely even without the suspect have bad intentions.
2) The asymmetry is a problem. Law enforcement routinely lies to suspects. Why is it okay for them morally?
3) We're told that these laws are necessary to prevent obstruction of justice, but it appears that these charges are frequently (maybe usually) when there was no obstruction at all: the police knew exactly what the truth was. They were setting a trap for the suspect, trying to get them to incriminate themselves in a different way.
Caveat: I didn't RTFA, since it's paywalled.
Just because something is illegal does not mean it should be illegal - and as far as dumb ass things to be illegal goes I think lying to the FBI is high up on that list.
There is already obstruction of justice which is significantly more reasonable a crime to charge someone with and if your lying was not obstruction of justice I don't see why the FBI should get to jail you for it.
Great. It should not be.
The Martha Stewart case is a prime example of why you should never talk to investigators. Never help any investigator. Ever. I'm pretty sure you can find something to hang me by if you let me ramble for hours.
> You always have the right to decline to answer questions under the Fifth Amendment in that situation as well (another way to avoid telling a lie).
I've read criminal defense lawyers advise people that they first contact a good lawyer before contacting the police (and have them present during any communication) if their spouse is missing.
What we have to remember is it is just a job for law enforcement and prosecutors. It is best to think of them as machines that act on some kind of feedback loop (incentives). We cannot directly make improvements to the machines. We have to try to change the incentive structure if we want any change in how the machines work.
So the question is: what are the incentives and what needs changing?
This is pretty poor advice. A prosecutor will absolutely subpoena your phone records and use the fact that you called a lawyer first to convince a jury you're guilty.
But you're right - in most cases, talk to investigators as little as possible. The classic YoutTube video [1] on this topic is worth a watch if people haven't seen it.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
1. Police and prosecutor will pull your records anyway, they generally look at spouse and people close to you first regardless of your innocence. 2. If this is the only evidence they have on your guilt, then you're likely to win on appeal if the jury is insane enough to find your guilt based on zero evidence.
I also imagine it’s very difficult to make a decision like this when distraught. I‘m pretty sure I’d (perhaps foolishly) only be thinking about finding my spouse, not the legal implications for myself. It seems like this would be the case for the vast majority of people in that situation.
I'm not saying be that guy at the DUI checkpoint screaming about being a sovereign citizen (Although I do have a fair bit of sympathy for them) but you can talk yourself into way more trouble than you're going to be able to talk yourself out of.
Would that even be admissible?
It comes down to the "calling a lawyer constitutes guilt" argument, which seems like it would cause any judge to roll her eyes.
I only watched till the first example, where he brings the example of a stupid lawer who talked to the police .. when his problem was lying to the police and giving contradicting accounts of what happened. Yeah, this is stupid.
But I do really not like the idea of mandatory lawers as it cements the class justice system, with good outcome for people who can afford good lawers and people qho cannot.
When I have done nothing wrong I don't want to need a lawer by design. But it makes sense, that lawers think different about that.
Note also that even an innocent person will almost always give contradicting accounts of a situation if interrogated for long enough.
[edit]
There were several such examples, including the one I remembered from 14-23 minutes.
Yes. It's much closer to the end of his talk where there is an erroneous contradicting witness and you can wind up convicted of lying to the police.
He also points to things like "Possession of a lobster can be a felony". You simply can't know all the laws, so getting a lawyer forces the police to narrow the scope immediately. At that point you can address the actual charges rather than letting the police fish through hours of your babbling hunting for something to hang you with.
> When I have done nothing wrong I don't want to need a lawer by design.
That's fine. But "Shut the hell up" remains good advice. The only benefit to "cooperating" with the police is at SENTENCING. And, if I'm actually innocent, that's a bit of a problem, no?
I agree with the basic advice. That being said, if a cop knocks on my door and says the neighbor's kid is missing, I'm still willing to take the minute personal risk of being implicated in order to help the police in their search.
Yes, technically I could have been the last one to see the kid alive and this could make me a suspect, but I also couldn't live with myself if I knew something but withheld it and something bad happened.
One idea of the police was to be servants of the people and not a power tool of the elite.
The "never speak to the police" paradigm would mean to me that police is all evil intended. And that would be the case, I dont think the solution is just more lawers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTurSi0LhJs
To a lesser extent this happened to General Flynn when he was charged, however in his case the Feds made a rare show of pseudo-apology and abandoned the case.
Richard Jewell is a famous example of naive talking (not even lying) being used against him - there's a Clint Eastwood releasing this weekend about his case.
Regardless of which political side you prefer, these tools of circular prosecution have and will be used against anyone when anything ranging from a media frenzy, to executive pressure, to a couple ambitious agents deems it warranted.
Not yet, they haven't abandoned the case yet. It was put on hold when Sidney Powell, Flynn's lawyer showed that FBI manipulated his 302 transcripts and the FBI replied that they would like to put the case on hold until the IG report is out.
In General Flynn’s case, his lawyer’s latest submission (3 weeks ago) also shows that he didn’t actually lie. FBI attorney Lisa Page edited his testimony and overnight, the testimony went from one thing to something he never said. Then FBI used that manipulates testimony to make him plead guilty because he had to sell his house and he went bankrupt from his past lawyer fees. The judge will most likely throw his case out now after this IG report is out which shows gross misconduct from FBI.
Lisa Page manipulated Flynn's transcripts.
Kevin Clinesmith altered CIA's email to say "Carter Page was not a CIA source" when the opposite was true.
I believe Clinesmith was referred for criminal case by the IG but I don't know if anything happened to Lisa Page.
Hold up, "boisterous storytelling"? Is that the new "boys will be boys"? You make it sound as if Stone was just caught lying about his weight.
Roger Stone was convicted of Witness Tampering, Obstruction of Justice, and lying about the actual subject of the investigation.
A system that is highly secretive and whose only accountability is to pretend to investigate itself inevitably will be abused more than an open one with transparent checks and balances. One has only to see that FISA has only turned down 85 out of 40k requests to understand this is a rubber-stamp process. (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig...)
I don't think that logic follows? That statistic could just mean that they're actually doing most things legally and properly, which is the outcome you'd want, right? I'd be worried if a significant percentage of their requests were turned down.
Also, as a comparison point: apparently several federal judicial districts have a 100% conviction rate, and overall, federal conviction rates are pretty high. Do you see these statistics as implying the whole thing is just a rubber-stamp process altogether? [1]
[1] http://justicedenied.org/issue/issue_67/federal_courts_jd67....
That's overstating my (not the GP) view, but I do believe the operational mechanisms in federal law enforcement push heavily towards conviction once accused.
Let me ask you a question: Do you believe there have been zero false convictions in those districts?
Possibly, but that's a separate point from the one I'm making.
> Do you believe there have been zero false convictions in those districts?
Seems unlikely. But that's not the baseline.
Ok, what is, and on who's authority?
And just to be sure I understand, you're judging mechanisms designed to come to factual conclusions by evaluating how many of their decisions lean one way, without reference to or concern with their factual basis?
> Ok, what is
I don't have a number.
> and on who's authority?
By common sense. The only way to get zero error in the absence of perfect information is to avoid convictions entirely. I'm not saying I like this trade-off; I'm just saying this is reality.
> And just to be sure I understand, you're judging mechanisms designed to come to factual conclusions by evaluating how many of their decisions lean one way, without reference to or concern with their factual basis?
No, that's the complete opposite of what I was saying, which was that you have to look a the factual bases and can't just judge by the statistics. Hence my reply earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21773010
I think you're correct that the logic employed doesn't follow. It is useless to look at the statistics alone and conclude one way or the other that FISA is or is not a rubber stamp. However, I think you are doing a category error: Criminal court proceedings are adversarial, FISA court is not.
Because there is no defense, public oversight, or judicial review. FISA cases are sealed, and secret. There is no risk of jury nullification or new caselaw because these cases are not argued by an adversary. Outside entities subpoenad in this fashion are barred from speaking of it (Under 99% conviction federal criminal statutes) Nobody is risking re-election here and the judges are appointed. The adversary is a strawman in FISA. The public is functionally shut out as well. It was designed for this purpose, the lack of accountability is a critical feature.
In order to employ the statistics properly you require context. In my high school sociology class the instructor posed this statistical fallacy: Drownings and grass growth rates are positively correlated. A naive observer born and living on Mars might ban grass to prevent drownings. This missing the mark because correlation != causation, and the true correlation is more people swim in the summer when grass grows faster. There is not swimming on mars.
>Also, as a comparison point: apparently several federal judicial districts have a 100% conviction rate [...] Do you see these statistics as implying the whole thing is just a rubber-stamp process altogether?
Comparing to high criminal conviction rates (often in the high 90%), the prosecutors and attornies general use the conviction statistics for their re-election campaigns. Cases which would result in "Jury Nullification" or some other modification of caselaw or jurisprudence are abandoned, keeping the rates artificially high. Refer to "Stingray" caselaw. This effect is partially caused by the adversarial court system being helmed by elected officials.
This is to say, that the regular criminal courts are an adversarial public system in which the accused get lawyers. Those lawyers sometimes win in court, other times the AG or prosecutor drops the charges when it looks like they will lose due to the legal arguments employed by the adversary. Dropped or unajudicated charges aren't counted in the statistics. Losing cases are not tried.
In order to maintain your claim here, there is some missing data:
1: Who is the adversary in FISA?
2: When does the public review the court proceedings?
Given the answers to 1 and 2 being "Nobody" and "Never", the statistics tell a much different tale than the criminal conviction statistics. Now the logic may follow.
That's not my argument—I think you read more into it than I intended! I wasn't trying to compare criminal courts to FISA courts; that was just an (unfortunate) coincidence in the analogy. The only reason I cited conviction rate as an example here was to illustrate why you can't just look at the statistics and draw a conclusion; that's all. It wasn't meant to serve as an argument for or against FISA courts.
If your testimony is important to the trial, you'll be asked to deliver it again in person, or in a deposition; either way you will have an opportunity to prep with your counsel.
In theory, a recording could be detrimental to you, as either the prosecution or defense would have a chance to play up tiny inconsistencies between your first recording and your live testimony/deposition. Without the recording, the best they can do is have the agent testify "that's not what he/she said the first time." Which doesn't really matter.
If you get prosecuted for lying to the agent, again, you would have a chance to testify at trial, and for your counsel to try to impeach the agent in front of the jury.
Lol, your word against a federal agent's. How well did that work out for Martha Stewart and her literal army of top end lawyers?
Does this have it's own pitfalls? Certainly. But it's time for the pendulum to swing the other way.
They will use any unconscious fib about any detail, no matter how irrelevant, to impeach you in court. The simplest thing to do is not speak to LEOs at all when they approach you.
You almost certainly won't be allowed to impeach the LEO's testimony based on their lies to you or other subterfuge: it's essentially a given that they can do that as part of their investigations, and the court and jury will be very deferential to them and not to the defendant.
It's actually much broader than that. Making a material false statement to any federal agent (for example your local postman), about something in his jurisdiction (say, the mail) is enough to qualify.
Note the "material" part. If you lie about the color of socks you are wearing, it doesn't matter.
so how can you lie about something you are never taken to court for? if she was guilty of insider trading it would make sense to prosecute that, prove that, then that proves the charge of not telling the truth.
this is all part and parcel of federal prosecutions where they lay on as many charges as possible in order to intimidate you. Welcome to the world that led to Aaron Swartz's death.
https://www.popehat.com/2011/12/01/reminder-oh-wont-you-plea...
18 USC Section 1001 is notoriously broad - for example, your local postman is a federal agent, it doesn't just pertain to law enforcement officials. You don't even need to lie directly to the agent - for example if you fudge your hours on a timesheet and that timesheet gets sent to the federal government for some use or other, you "knowingly and willfully made a materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the United States."
It doesn't matter if you're not under oath. It doesn't matter if you've been read your miranda rights - any material lie that is made to a federal employee within their jurisdiction is an offense.
Sadly, this means that in almost every case, the only reasonable thing to do is to refuse to talk to the agent and to ask for an attorney if they insist.
Edit: I was being extremely sarcastic. I was hoping linking to the EFF would be enough of a clue.
The USA political system fosters a short term focus on who gets to be king of the hill, at the expense of reforming this shit show.
We get it: orange man bad. But guess what? Orange man didn't create this system. That was done over decades. Orange man didn't start a needless war that cost trillions and the deaths of thousands of troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens. Obama, who I voted for twice, not counting my primary votes for him, kept us in Afghanistan, and didn't pardon Snowden, but did pardon Chelsea Manning.
I don't care if this helps orange man a little bit, because he will be gone in a few years, worst case scenario, a few months best case. But the smooth talking, non offensive marketing figurehead for the other party will hopefully not have so much power to abuse when they take office.
That said, yes, you're correct about the FBI and surveillance stuff and all that.
Also: the NYT is part and parcel of the "shit show". Endless reporting about Her Emails. We've already forgotten that the orange man regularly uses unsecured personal cell phones to conduct business free from oversight, since that came out ... let's see... last week.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/12/10/case-impe...
But in Fox news fantasy land... I'm sure he did!
>"Hunter Biden? Never heard of him," said Ludmila Rynovaya, 72, a resident of Vodiane's nearby village – population 600 – who was chatting with a friend in a small grocery store.
Case closed! The only defense they can muster is that Hunter was a naive victim who was in over his head:
>"I'm not sure that (Hunter) Biden understood the environment he was getting into" when he agreed to serve on Burisma's board, said Musaieva, the Ukrayinska Pravda editor.
Oh poor Hunter, I'm sure it was all just a misunderstanding.
If there was wrongdoing, the FBI can investigate:
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/12/12/trump-impeachme...
Also: if you're concerned about people's kids profiting off of connections in high places, you're going to be very upset when you look at Trump's kids.
Compare this with their coverage of a different revelation of state secrets: the US pressuring the UK to sell out their healthcare in the UK-US trade negotiations. They focus entirely on how it's "associated with a Russian disinformation campaign", with a tiny little addendum that "the leaks seem accurate".
They like to present themselves as trustworthy and neutral, and indeed their coverage is very accurate. But their selection of stories to cover, and angles to cover them from, hides a tremendous bias (which doesn't neatly map to US party lines, as the examples I gave illustrate).
That is because every media outlet is biased. I have yet to find a news source that doesn't seem to lean in one direction or the other.
It's not as big of a problemas abuse of power by a federal institution that directed genocide and, incidentally, which that other federal institution answers to, which makes it strange that that's exactly what you are using it to minimize.
> Orange man didn't create this system.
The manner in which Donald Trump has corrupted the administration of the executive branch and for which is defenders—includig those who can't bring themselves to a direct defense by only engage in the kind do distraction you are engaging in now—are desperate to set the precedent of total absence of accountability is one of greatest dangers to democratic-republican government in the history of the nation. Certainly, it builds on a history tracing back at least through the Nixon pardon, the relative lack of accountability in Iran-Contra, the Republican Congress so burnt out from a failed attempt to impeach Clinton for lying about sex that it couldn't muster up accountability for a war waged not only without Congressional action, but against direct Congressional denial of authority, and scores of abuses, including bad faith in making determinations Congress required in the Iraq AUMF, war crimes, torture, etc., directed at the highest levels of the Bush Administration, etc.
But we're running out of opportunities to draw a line in executive abuses of power before there is no more capacity to restrain.
> Obama [...] did pardon Chelsea Manning.
In fact, he did not. He commuted Manning's sentence, which is a very different thing. Not that I see how the issue would be relevant to the rest of the discussion either way.
What are you referring to?
On December 19, 1998, Clinton became the second American president to be impeached (the first being Andrew Johnson, who was impeached in 1868)[a] when the House formally adopted articles of impeachment and forwarded them to the United States Senate for adjudication. A trial in the Senate began in January 1999, with Chief Justice William Rehnquist presiding. On February 12, Clinton was acquitted on both counts as neither received the necessary two-thirds majority vote of the senators present for conviction and removal from office – in this instance 67.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_of_Bill_Clinton
No.
"They used to know better"
Wrong again:
1. They should have published it.
2. That article from the Bush era revealed something. The article posted here today is an editorial that doesn't reveal anything new. Instead it discusses a report from a government agency.
This question has nothing to do with Trump and the election. It's about the misbehavior of our law enforcement and courts. That's a present danger, and important to address ASAP.
Why?
Durham's investigation may reveal something even worse.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ct/pr/statement-us-attorney-joh...
FBI / DOJ violation of the protocol in secret courts is really a serious matter in a democratic society.
DOJ's internal investigation already showed lots of violation of its protocol. Durham made clear his investigation is not limited to within the DOJ/FBI, of course he found more damning evidence that's why he made this statement. Otherwise how would you logically interpret? Investigation outside of DOJ/FBI makes DOJ/FBI look better?
"literally the definition"? You have a weird definition of "conspiracy theory". Every interpretation does not fit with your narrative is a conspiracy theory?
Also Durham is known as someone who’s gone after people from both parties so this isn’t something about political affiliation.
/r/politics - 155 karma
/r/libertarian - 49 karma
/r/conservative - 34 karma
I'm not trying to make any case for any side here. Just providing some numbers.
IMO, pro-Trump/anti-Trump news is keeping many other important topics off the front page.
/r/politics is default sub-reddit, so every user is subscribed to it unless manually opted out.
r/politics/ - 5.6M members
r/conservative/ - 275K members
r/libertarian/ - 349K members
That said, there are dozens of FISA posts on many of the political subreddits, typically linking to others sites, not the NYT article. The T_D has been very vocal about the FISA abuses, as they should be. Apparently T_D can't link to this specific article due to subreddit specific rules. So I can't really compare this specific NYT article. Plus comparing the # of upvotes across subreddits has a lot of other issues.
IMO, this recent abuse is due to the lack of transparency in the entire FISA process. There shouldn't be secret courts ordering secret wiretaps on Americans with no oversight. The whole program should be scrapped. Tell your reps to vote it down next time.
So I doubt “the left” is suppressing this issue. The IG report is pretty clear that these issues had little relevance in the investigation of Russian hacking. And if our discourse can no longer achieve this (rather low) level of nuance, we are truly lost.
On the other hand, as an advocate for civil liberties I'm kind of glad that this is becoming a partisan issue since Patriot Act votes in the past were unanimously supported by Republicans and by half of Democrats. Maybe now we'll get momentum to get rid of secret courts.
Because the right has been complaining about these specific FBI agents biased conduct in this investigation for years now and trying to turn this into a 'we all know fisa is bad' comes off as epic gaslighting.
>The IG report did not find any evidence of political partisan spying, it only faulted the process of getting the warrant.
This is beyond a white washing. He absolutely found evidence that line agents were biased. He did not find clear 'evidence' that the outcome and leadership was biased. The key part is that confessions and a paper trail were not found to lead him to make that conclusion. He stated he made numerous referrals to the doj/fbi about misconduct. If you actually listen to his hearing statements on the 'evidence' for bias he is walking a fine line.
'we did not have documentary or testimonial evidence that (the mistakes) were intentional, but also make note the lack of satisfactory explanations (for the mistakes), from there i cannot draw any further conclusions' - this is during a line of questions from senator whitehouse, but there are many others like it.
Horowitz was asked in the hearing if his report vindicated Comey. He was adamant that his report vindicated no one.
There is definitely a concerted effort to completely mischaracterize the report's contents, mainly because it has proven that the complaining from the Republicans has actually been correct all along.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nunes_memo
Media is spinning this "consensually recorded" as if both parties agreed to be recorded and therefore not spying but that's not true at all.
https://oig.justice.gov/special/0509/chapter6.htm
> Consensual monitoring is the interception by an electronic device of any wire, oral, or electronic communication where one of the parties to the communication has given prior consent to the monitoring or recording.
I'm utterly devoid of sympathy when the government spies on itself.