Analysis | The Daily 202: Carter Page FISA warrants underscore the difficulty of disproving...

This is Interesting as we look back at the Steele Dossier and the Page FISA warrants. Seems some Judges didn’t get the word that Page was a CIA asset. The Dossier wasn’t verified etc. I have read reports that warrants maybe issued for FBI officials because of their shenanigans during the FBI Russian Collusion investigation!

Well when you thought you could bully someone into doing your beck and call just to find out it really doesn’t work that way in DC, talking bad about them doesn’t help your cause. I do find it funny as a sidebar that he said there were supposed tapes of his conversations with Comey, yet when the news reports that Cohen has some on him, now it’s foul and wrong. No president before has gone to the lengths Trump has to discredit the DOJ(folks he picked), the FBI(who serves a 10yr bid at the pleasure of the president, and Wray was picked, vetted, and confirmed by...), and the IC as a whole. Trump was briefed on the Russian situation before he took office so to say otherwise isn’t so smart. He’s been briefed on the regular ever since, and if he cannot see the writing on the wall, it’s not the problem of the organization briefing him. The IC he loves to hate are men and women who once again were picked by whom? So for all this bashing and blind accusations towards everyone, it doesn’t look bad on them, it shows that either you don’t know how to pick a candidate for a job, you don’t listen to those who recommend to you that certain folks not to take a job, this is a larger version of the apprentice (except Congress is winning), or just maybe you’re not as serious about the job as you say you are. That happens a lot to a variety of people, not just Trump.
As far as the polls, polls are subjective and the data can be slanted depending on how one wants to process it. I take no real faith in polls.

This is a fun thread to revisit as it populated my feed this morning.
A few points from the story:
1. "Obama tapped Trump Tower conspiracy theory" stemmed from Brietbart and Mark Levin. Sounds a lot like the head fake with the Steele dossier to get the Carter Page FISA Warrant in the first place - make up bullshit and throw it out there, using media reports to "verify" their veracity.
2. "Nobody is likely to pore through 412 page FISA Warrants", including the FISA judge(s), apparently. Turns out the IG sure did pore through them, and among other fun facts discovered an FBI agent altered support forms in order to make the predication of the warrant look more justified. More to come on that one.
3. Much is made of Rep Nunes having scurrilous motives for publishing a memo that spins information in the FISA warrant, hiding behind classified redactions, in order to make points that the Steele dossier was illegitimate and the FISA warrant against Page was illegally obtained in order to smear a Trump-Russia conspiracy, at the time being investigated by Bob Mueller and his team.

My conclusion, with the benefit of another year and a half of facts coming out:
The Democrats are not original in their thinking. They took very nearly this same set of circumstances, turned it on it's head when they were in the House Majority, and did the EXACT SAME THING on both offense and defense when the Ukraine issues arose. They saw what defenses were effective, used them, and then used the fact those arguments were made on behalf of Trump during the Mueller Investigation as evidence that Trump partisans agreed with them. On offense, they took a real issue (the phone call), ran it through the filter of a whistleblower, leaked aspects of the case to get hysteria up, and announced hearings, thinking they'd trip Trump up for obstruction when they subpoenaed the call transcript - triangulating that Trump wouldn't release it. Well that didn't work, and their mad scramble after release of that document is stark evidence of their game plan being upended. Undaunted, they went through the process of impeachment (eventually), and in retrospect not only did they use the same script but ultimately circled back to the same charge (albeit of the vague "obstruction of Congress" variety) when time came to draft articles. No bribery. No extortion. Although much noise was made on those subjects in the effort to move the needle on public opinion.

It is striking to me that they used nearly the same script.
From an IO perspective, it was masterful of folks (I still swear they have a PSYOP cell of some sort in their employ) to observe results and atmospherics from earlier events to revise their messaging and counter-messaging when the Ukraine impeachment saga got going. That was damned effective on their part. I wish I could get my people to inculcate those kinds of lessons learned and measures of effectiveness when doing what we do.
What they didn't count on and got blindsided by was that part of that script got turned on its head when Trump declassified and released the phone call transcript. That knocked a leg out from their stool and they made a cardinal mistake - driving on anyway without reassessing how that change in circumstances would alter the information environment. Trump had displayed a willingness to declass elements whose secrecy had previously been used for cover for spin (for and against). That made the shaping message (Trump has something to hide, thus he is guilty of something) unsustainable - or really difficult to sustain - and thus the main effort (Trump violated the law and should be removed from office) unsupported and ultimately, it collapsed.
I would use this as a case study in training, if it was at all practicable.

I need to get a job in political advising. I would be a damn ninja, and not make these kinds of mistakes because frankly, I am better at it then they are.
LTC (Join to see) Cpl Jeff N.