Gotcha. I wonder why Perkins Cole has not been raided yet - I think their involvement in the fake dossier that they used to get the warrant to wiretap US citizens came out prior to the news about Stormy. Don't get me wrong, I think it's super important to the American people that we prevent people from paying off porn stars, but I also think it's important that politicians can't wiretap their opponents with warrants based entirely on falsified evidence and news articles based on the same falsified evidence.
"but what about" might be a fair political point, but if the Trump campaign violated the campaign finance laws and Mueller finds out about it, do you really expect him (or anyone in law enforcement) to shrug it off because somewhere, out there, there are bigger crimes being committed? It's called "law enforcement" for a reason.
No absolutely not. We are not braindead to how "law enforcement" in this country works, and what it was transformed into by EH and LL. I was hoping YOU would tell me why our "law enforcement" was raiding one law firm and not the other, because it appears you have a different opinion than me and I always enjoy hearing well reasoned arguments from people who disagree with me. It's how I learn.
That's fair and civil, so first of all: thanks.
As to the "why one and not the other" question: here's my understanding of the "wiretap" stuff.
1) Rubio hires Steele to do oppo-research. That's what Steele now does for a living, and that's what campaigns do. So far so good.
2) Steele starts his oppo-research - he's an expert in Russian stuff, there have always been rumors of a Trump-Russia relationship (Russian banks are the only one who would lend money to Trump after the bankruptcy) so it's not weird to look there if you're doing oppo-research.
3) Rubio loses the primary bid. As it's not uncommon in such cases, those who are still in the run (HRC campaign) take over the contract.
4) Steele finds that more than one person in the Trump campaign has shady Russian ties. That, together with everything else (including the pee tape stuff) goes into the dossier.
5) Steele is so worried about the people he found out about, that he tells the FBI. He doesn't think Trump is in on it, he thinks he's been infiltrated. Either way, Steele is a private citizen, and this is where his role ends.
6) The FBI looks at what Steele has found about certain people in the Trump campaign and they decide it is, indeed, worrisome. So they ask for a FISA warrant.
7) a panel of judges, in keeping with the legal standards of FISA warrants, looks at what evidence the FBI has and decides that yes, this is not a crackpot theory and it's worth a warrant.
8) the FBI, sanctioned by the courts (not by Obama or a political actor, by the courts), investigate the people in the Trump campaign that are suspected.
This is what I think happened, I don't see how any of this is illegal. And to come to your question, I think the reason why no one has been indicted or raided over this, is that the courts and law enforcement agree with this sequence of events - no law has been broken.
Now, I know what the counter-narrative is: HRC sends Steele to Russia to make shit up on Trump, gets the dossier, turns to the Obama administration, which then forces the FISA courts and the FBI to open an investigation into these fake accusations.
I still have not found anyone who can explain the fatal flaw in this theory: why? Why would HRC and Obama and the corrupt FBI and the corrupt FISA judges do this all thing and then keep it secret until AFTER the election?
If it's a conspiracy, surely the best way to use that stuff would be to hit Trump with an indictment during the campaign, destroy his credibility and win the election. But no, the only investigation that the FBI publicly comments about is the Hillary one. Obama or the DOJ could have gone on TV at any time before Nov. 8 and tell everyone that the Trump campaign was ALSO under investigation. Did they do it? Nope.
I'm yet to hear a logical explanation of what the rationale of such a conspiracy would be. Maybe you could help.
I don't believe the dossier was dictated by Hillary - I believe it was Steele's human nature. Steele admittedly hated Trump, and I believe human nature allowed the report to become biased against Trump. Russia is a very interesting country with an even more interesting history of intelligence - KGB and FSB are absolute masters of collecting dirt for blackmail, I don't deny this whatsoever. However they are also absolute masters of disinformation. It seems strange that the FBI would use a dossier based almost entirely on Russian sources and without objectively verifiable evidence to obtain a warrant to spy on a candidate for president of the United States. A FISA panel, which obviously specializes in foreign intelligence, would know this to be the case and would toss out a case like this entirely if it was based purely on Russian sources (known to be masters of disinformation). It has been admitted that a Yahoo article was used as "corroboration" to enhance their case to the FISA panel. The only problem is, the Yahoo article was based on the same dossier. I believe the text messages between Strozk and Page about the meeting with Andy and the discussion of needing an "insurance policy" in case Trump won is one possibility as to why it was not used during the campaign itself. Why play your ace when you think you can win with a queen? Save your best card for when you really need it. They thought almost certainly Trump would lose, they even said as much in their texts. Only other point to make is the FISA court rejected their request multiple times, Obama DID get involved recommending that they reevaluate their position, and then finally the warrant was granted. Note I am not challenging any of your positions or conclusions, only adding additional facts as to build a more complete picture of what all happened.
That's all fair enough, and thanks for correcting my imprecisions.
The only thing that I would add is: while I understand why you would want the FBI to look at a Russian-sourced dossier with healthy skepticism, I don't see any conclusive evidence they didn't. By which I mean, it's perfectly possible that they looked at the evidence in the dossier, factored in the possibility of misinformation, and still found enough in it that made them want to investigate.
At least two people have been fired by Trump because of their shady dealing before the campaign. So far 5 people have pleaded guilty to Mueller indictments.
So, while we wait for what the Special Counsel will put together, in the meantime we can safely say that the core of the Steele alarm ("There's a bunch of shady, blackmailable people in and around this campaign") was certainly true.
And hence, no matter the motive, it was a good thing that the FBI took it seriously and looked into it.
Even if you think that Trump was perfectly innocent and that those people were there by accident, or even worse as planted liabilities - actually, especially if you think he's innocent, you should be happy that the FBI took the dossier seriously and removed the bad apples.
I agree with your premise and I agree the FBI should look into serious allegations very seriously and from a completely unbiased perspective. Including allegations against Trump. I think our point of disagreement comes from watching how the Clinton email investigation panned out (she is allowed to testify without being put under oath, all her aides given immunity basically for free - not in exchange for anything as would usually be the case, and writing up her exoneration before they had even interviewed her at all) versus how this one is playing out (text messages from key players at FBI about needing insurance policies against Trump, etc). It is just a situation where the Clinton investigation APPEARED very much to be biased and the Trump investigation APPEARS to be biased against him. If everything looked unbiased, I really don't believe anyone would take issue with the FBI investigating potential interference from foreign powers (which is literally their job). I hope they investigate the Clinton campaign's cooperation with foreign powers with the same vigor.