(1) What’s new in this memo that they haven’t been previewing over the last 1-2 weeks? I apologize if I missed something obvious. I didn’t know much about the Ohrs, but that’s apparently on me based on a quick Google search (this was Fox News meat in December).
(2) What in this memo had to be declassified?
I read most of Simpson’s House testimony. Specifically, I read all of the Q&A with the Democrats, which was fascinating. (I over-read on some of these sub-topics, and the Dems were shooting the sh*t casually about things like Michael Cohen’s alias, Michael Cohn, and his second SSN and potentially second passport that I’d never seen before. It was awesome.) I read the Gowdy Q&A and some of the Rooney. Gowdy and Rooney went into that testimony with a list of action items related to this memo (“DNC financing”, Yahoo). I doubt this is surprising to TPM readers hitting the comments section regardless of whether you too ka trip to Stupid Town in those portions of Simpson’s House testimony.
Whoever wrote this does not understand how warrants are obtained, or the information that may relied upon by a court to issue a warrant. This appears to be written by a high school student with no knowledge of the law and certainly no knowledge of the FISA warrant process. This is embarrassing.
After reading the “memo” I understand why they waited until Friday afternoon to release it. A big fat nothing burger that clearly was better as hype than substance.
Man… this backfired spectacularly. It’s kinda fun to watch - there’s clearly nothing here, and now everyone can read it.
Even Fox News has some pretty tepid coverage: “Did this stuff actually happen? We believe it did…”. I predict this will become yet another “largest crowd ever” moment.
I like to check out foxnews.com sometimes, and I’ve started to look for patterns about when the comments section is off underneath an article. (I assume they think these articles won’t get domestic and organic support in the comment section.) I clicked on 3+ links related to memo coverage, and saw no comments sections on.
Ten days or so from now there will a 10-page memo from the Dems which will set the record straight, and I’m imagining a scenario where Nunes won’t allow its release and Schiff will do a Feinstein.
PP said
“A lot of people should be ashamed of themselves and much worse than that,”
And to PP we’re ashamed to our core you of you and your corrupt presidency.
The memo is full of conspiracy theory logic. Strzok is involved because, um, he was in the FBI at the time! But the fact that Page and Papadopoulos were working in the same political campaign doesn’t constitute a tie between them at all! Logic. Lots of stuff relating what was learned later back to the FISA application too, which is of course information that the FBI wouldn’t have had when they filed the application. You can’t read sinister motives into actions based on information people couldn’t have had at the time.
This seems to be as slick a move as when they held that press conference with a bunch of binders and blank paper piled up to show all the work they had done. (What was that for anyway? I can’t remember)
They are only talking their target audience, who is barely paying attention.
That’s hilarious. This is even weaker than I imagined. But it corresponds with their standard authoritarian thinking, so that if there’s any taint to an information source, real or imagined, you can discard the entire source and never trust anything from them. So if CNN or Snopes or the Dossier might possibly have been wrong about one thing or work for Democrats, they’re a laughable source that makes you ridiculous if you ever cite them for anything; even if it involves direct quotes and verifiable facts. They won’t even read it because the source is tainted to the core.
But if they trust a source, it doesn’t matter how many times they’ve been proven wrong. You can directly disprove point after point to show that their source is entirely unreliable; yet they’ll still cling to the overall belief. It’s all about trusting authority and the only authority they respect is the one that feels right in their gut. Confirmation bias is the only confirmation they need.
