News on Youtube Feb 3 2018

This memo is not the smoking gun that I think Congressman Nunes and President Trump want

it to be.

For me, the biggest takeaway is: Whoa!

A lot of people, Republicans and Democrats, approved electronic surveillance of the president's

foreign policy aide -- Jim Comey, Andrew McCabe, Sally Yates, Dana Boente, Rod Rosenstein.

All of them had found reason to conclude that there's probable cause that Carter Page was

the agent of a foreign power, and that, therefore, we should take the extraordinary step of approving

electronic surveillance of an American citizen.

And it's not just that these senior officials found there was probable cause to believe

that, it's that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has to approve these warrants,

agreed with the Justice Department and FBI that there was probable cause.

Not once but a total of four times.

That's pretty amazing.

Is there a legitimate question about whether the memo fully explained the potential biases

of Christopher Steele, the author of the "dossier"?

Sure.

I would like to know precisely what language was used to describe him and his information

and how he came to be interested in Carter Page.

Did it simply not mention Hillary Clinton, or did it not mention political opponents

altogether?

If there wasn't enough information given to the FISA court, sure, let's go ahead and have

oversight on that.

Let's have an internal Justice Department investigation.

And while you should definitely give the court information that might call into question

the motives of your informant and the basis for his evidence, that doesn't mean his evidence

isn't accurate.

"A lot of people should be ashamed of themselves, and much worse than that."

This memo does not in any way tell us enough to warrant anybody's firing.

The interesting thing about this memo isn't the contents of the memo, it's how the memo's

going to be used by President Trump and other people who really want to stop this investigation

in its tracks, and seem to me to be pretty desperate to do that.