emptywheel

One can take issue w/@ChuckRossDC's attempts to tie Halper to the dossier and his claim that a lifetime Republican asking Republicans questions is "surveillance," but give him his due for breaking this story.https://twitter.com/adamgoldmanNYT/status/997929140136431616 …

I don’t see how their political affiliations change anything lmao. Why would trump campaign officials meet with a democratic foreign policy expert?

Let's see, which would you prefer: 1) Having uniformed FBI Agents knock on Page and Papa's doors, making investigation public. 2) Having non-LE person FROM THE SAME PARTY do some discreet inquiries.

TIL when the feds sends a fed informant to spy on you, it's ok as long as the informant is a member of your political party. Even if you're running for president and the informant supports the other party's candidate! Also, it started pre-Downer/FBI contact. What was the basis?

One of the problems with @ChuckRossDC's story is he makes no mention of the publicly known March FBI concerns about Page.

As to the informant, you can refer to the FBI DIOG--or any other CI case--and find a slew of informants. Usually, they're a lot sketchier than Halper. The FBI did NOT use a lot of techniques v Pap that were available to it at that level.

But I keep asking GOPers: how would you have the FBI investigate the 4 suspected RU assets on Trump's campaign? WHat techniques would you approve?

I'm not a GOPer and will still allow the techniques may have been valid. But story of probe origins have shifted so drastically since the beginning, the public absolutely needs to learn what was known by who, when? Were there even 4 suspects when the probe started? Based on what?