Nunes Memo Suggests that FISA Process Was Abused

On Feb. 2, President Donald Trump declassified a memorandum by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on “Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Abuse at the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”Referred to as the “Nunes memo,” it deals largely with four applications made by the FBI and DOJ to the FISA court to intercept electronic communications of Carter Page.

The first was made on Oct. 21, 2016. Each application was good for only 90 days. Three were signed by FBI Director James Comey; one by Deputy Andrew McCabe. Sally Yates, Dana Boente and Rob Rosenstein signed the applications on behalf of Department of Justice.

As in the case of an ordinary search warrant, the judge hears only the government’s side of the case. As such, it is essential that the application tell the truth, which means the whole truth.


Proper use of the FISA application is “necessarily dependent on the government’s production to the court of all material and relevant facts” which includes information favorable to the target of the FISA application then known to the government.

The memo charges that in the case of Page, “the government had at least four independent opportunities to provide the FISA court with evidence favorable to Page.” Four times it failed to do so.

The memo further charges that:

1. The Steele dossier was compiled by Steele on behalf of the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign. They paid Steele $160,000 through the Clinton campaign’s law firm, Perkins Coie and Fusion GPS, to obtain derogatory information on Mr. Trump’s “ties to Russia.” That information, although known to the FBI and DOJ, was not disclosed to the FISA court.

2. In the FISA application to surveil Page, the Steele dossier was buttressed by a seemingly independent news article in Yahoo News by Michael Isikoff, detailing Page’s July 2016 trip to Moscow. “This article does not corroborate the Steele dossier because it is derived from information leaked by Steele himself to Yahoo News.” (Steele has since admitted in a British Court that he met with Yahoo News and several other outlets in September 2016 at the direction of Fusion GPS.) For these and other media contacts, Steele has now been terminated as an FBI source, for violating the cardinal rule of source handling—maintaining confidentiality.

3. Before and after Steele was terminated as a source, he maintained contact with DOJ via then-associate deputy attorney general Bruce Ohr, who worked with Yates and later Rod Rosenstein. Shortly after the election, the FBI began interviewing Ohr.

In September 2016, Steele admitted to Ohr, that he “was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president. This clear evidence of Steele’s ‘bias’ was recorded at the time, but not disclosed in any application made to the FISA court to surveil Page.”


To make things, worse, Ohr’s wife was employed by Fusion GPS “to assist in the cultivation of opposition research on Trump.” Fusion’s work was also paid for by the DNC and the Clinton campaign.

The memo concludes:

“While the FISA application relied on Steele’s past record of credible reporting in other unrelated matters, it ignored or concealed his anti-Trump financial and ideological motivations. Furthermore, Deputy Director McCabe testified before the Committee in December 2017, that no surveillance warrant would have been sought from the FISA court without the Steel dossier information.”

In every U.S. jurisdiction, an attorney has a “duty of candor” to the court. The lawyer cannot knowingly make a false statement of fact to a judge. He cannot withhold material facts from the court. And he has a duty to correct any false statement of material fact previously made.

A prosecutor in his official capacity, is the representative of all the people, including the defendant. It is as much his duty to safeguard the constitutional rights of the defendant as those of any other citizen, (the People v. Cochran, 1924). The U. S. Supreme Court said essentially the same thing in Berger v. U.S. (1935). That includes a duty to disclose to the defendant and the court all evidence that tends to negate guilt.

Lawyers who lie to the court, or withhold material facts, subject themselves to sanctions, including disbarment. Finally how Ohr could investigate in a case involving his wife’s employer, especially where his wife was actively involved, screams “conflict of interest.”

Posted: QCOline.com February 22, 2018
Copyright 2018, John Donald O'Shea

You Design U.S. Immigration Policies!

President Donald Trump and the Democratic leadership are at loggerheads over immigration.

The president wants a wall, and merit-based immigration. Democrats want open borders. What’s your solution?

Who would you allow to enter our country? Would you require that immigrants be literate? Would you require that immigrants be able to speak English? At least, broken-English?

Would you accept immigrants who believe Catholic Canon Law should be the supreme law of the land? Who believe Sharia Law should be the supreme law of the land?

Would you require that immigrants should be able to support themselves?

Would you accept immigrants who will not be able to support themselves, and who will immediately go on welfare? Is it the duty of taxpaying Americans to provide the new immigrants with free housing? Free food? Free medical care? Free schooling through high school? Free college?

Are you comfortable with accepting immigrants with no job skills who will compete for low income jobs with Americans who lack job skills? If you flood the job-market with immigrants with no job skills, will you depress wages? Make it harder for Americans with no or minimal job skills to find employment?

Would you accept immigrants who believe America is an evil country? The “Great Satan?” 

Would you accept immigrants who have no desire to assimilate? Who come to create in America a somewhat better version of the country from which they just emigrated?

Would you accept immigrants with criminal records for murder, robbery, burglary, rape, gun crimes, thefts, manslaughter? Would you accept immigrants who are drug dealers? Who have made a living transporting cocaine into the USA? Heroin? Who have worked for foreign drug cartels?

Would accept immigrants who have made their living by smuggling illegal aliens into the U.S. or come to America to fly airliners into our great buildings or drive a truck into a crowd of children? To plant pressure-cooker bombs at the Boston Marathon, etc.?

Are you willing to admit immigrants who believe their “religion” requires them to kill heretics? Apostates? Americans of different faiths? To replace courts within our judicial system with courts that make their religious law the supreme law of the land?

With open borders and no wall, how would you propose to keep our "undesirable immigrants" you do not believe should be allowed in this country? Or are there no "undesirable immigrants, "as far as you’re concerned?

Should America open its borders to all, and concern itself with terrorism, heroin and cocaine sales, and criminal conduct only after the fact? Should we leave such matters exclusively to our criminal justice system after the crimes have been committed and perpetrators have been caught?

Or should our country be pro-active to prevent terrorism, drugs sales, and criminal misconduct at the hand of immigrants by carefully vetting, to keep such immigrants out of our country altogether?

As you consider each of the questions, ask yourself whose policies are better for dealing with these issues? The Democratic solution is keep the borders open! Therefore, a wall is unnecessary. Accept anybody who wants to come, any distant relative of anybody who is already here. Keep the visa lottery system, ignore the fact that, for all intents and purposes, only people from certain countries fly airliners into civilian buildings, engage in suicide bombings at weddings and funerals, use ambulances to perpetrate suicide bombings, and behead those they regard as infidels.

President Trump’s solution would give amnesty to over a million “Dreamers,” build a wall, end chain migration, end the visa lottery system, and go to a merit based immigration system.

Mr. Trump says he wants people to come who will love our country, and who will help better our country. Who do you agree with?

Whose program better addresses the issue I have set out above? What’s your program for dealing with those issues?

One other question: Why should we have less security at our borders than we do at our airports?


Posted: QCOline.com February 15, 2018
Copyright 2018, John Donald O'Shea

Why Volunteer to be Burned at Stake?

President Donald Trump has repeatedly denied Russian collusion.

He further said he is willing to speak to special prosecutor Robert Mueller. But if the president speaks without preconditions, he’s utterly insane.

Even with preconditions as to the scope of the interrogation, he’s insane. Here’s why.


Mr. Trump could go in expecting to be questioned about Russian collusion—and “any matters that ... may arise directly from that investigation.” But Mr. Mueller’s powers are even broader. If Mr. Mueller feels a full investigation requires him to inquire into additional matters, Mr. Trump might suddenly find himself being examined on foreign investment violations pertaining to a hotel he built 10 years ago in Timbuktu, or on claims that he willfully understated his income to avoid taxation in 2013.

If you think that’s fanciful, consider that Paul Manifort has already been charged with money laundering, which seemingly bears no relationship to Russian meddling. Special counsel (prosecutor) Mueller was appointed to investigate the “Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.” But the law also allows prosecution of related perjury, lying to the FBI, etc.

And if the special counsel feels that additional jurisdiction is necessary to fully investigate, that could be granted, upon his request, by acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed him.

One danger Mr. Trump faces is prosecutor Mueller deciding that the president has lied during the interview—even if the statement in question was not made under oath.

This danger is real, even if Mr. Trump is pure as the driven snow on the collusion issue. He still is in grave danger of saying something contrary to what one or more other witnesses have already said, and being charged with lying to the FBI, or some similar process crime.

Prosecutor Mueller and his team—many of whom are Democrat donors—have been investigating the president and his associates since May 17, 2017. They must have piles of statements. It is almost inconceivable that among that mountain of transcripts, Mueller wouldn’t be unable to find some statements of material fact that will contradict something the president says. That will afford the prosecutor a basis for charging the president with lying.

It matters not that that prior statement itself may be a lie, as long as it has the appearance of truthfulness to Mr. Mueller. Just consider the damage that has already been done by the bogus “Fusion GPS Dossier.”


What the president is up against, is equivalent to being dragged before the Papal Inquisition, circa 1250 A.D. Imagine the following taken scenario from “The Inquisition of the Middle Ages.” Would you voluntarily appear?

“The Inquisitor summons everyone within a certain radius to come forward and reveal to him whatever they have known or heard of anyone leading to the belief that he might be a heretic ... or that he had spoken against any article of faith ....


“In a trial by the Inquisition, a man would be reported to the Inquisitor ... for heresy, or his name would occur in the confession of another prisoner. A secret investigation would be made, and all accessible evidence against him would be collected. He would then be cited to appear or arrested. ... The accused was presumed to be guilty—or he would not have been put on trial!

“The Inquisitor prepared himself by collecting and studying all the adverse evidence that could be produced, while the prisoner was kept in sedulous ignorance of the charges against him.”

Generally, the Inquisitor was a well-educated cleric; the accused, more often than not, was illiterate, and entirely unfamiliar with mortal danger of being a witness against himself on a charge of heresy, while facing a trained interrogator.

This is what President Trump faces unless he sets limits on the scope of the interrogation: an educated and astute businessman facing a squad of trained prosecutors, most with Democratic leanings, who are looking to charge him with making false statements, while sitting on a mountain of depositions.

It is inconceivable, that with all the evidence already gathered, the president will not say something that an earlier depositions belies. If he talks to them at all, he’s insane.

If he goes in without preconditions, limiting the scope, he’s utterly insane.

If Mueller insists, without strict preconditions, the president should sue at least to delimit the scope of the investigation.

Posted: QCOline.com February 8, 2018
Copyright 2018, John Donald O'Shea