President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

Asking these questions shows that, as always, you didn't read the article.

 

I did read the article.

The guy sounds great. I wish he could stay, and had gotten his citizenship during the time he was here, as his relatives have.

I don’t want to lose guys like this.

But, everyone who is serious about the issue of immigration, says that we can’t just let folks overstay their visas..

Jeb!, who talked of Mexicans coming here as acts of love, also said that we shouldn’t politely ask those who have overstayed their visas to leave.

What should the policy be? If you overstay your visa, but are brown skinned, and hold a good job, you get to stay?

 

Time will tell.

 

Here's an excellent breakdown of the Nunes memo, also touching on Carter Page, written by a retired FBI SAC. You should read the whole thing, YF, it dismantles most of what you've written the last page or two. This is a guy who is intimately familiar with the process and the players, and it shows.

FBI Special Agent in Charge Who Has Testified in Front of Nunes Responds to Biggest Claims in Memo


"How did he react when the memo was released?

“When you read it, especially from my perspective, it is much ado about nothing,” Montoya Jr. said. “I've done hundreds, if not thousands, of these investigations, and all the memo does is make accusations about an investigative process. If there was an FBI conspiracy against Trump, it would have announced the Russia investigation before the election. But it didn't. That's because there is no conspiracy. That's not how you uphold the rule of law.”

Montoya Jr. expanded on what he means.

“The accusations are about the nature of the source. We get source information from all kinds of places,” he said. “We even get anonymous mail that arrives at the field office. The information is what matters.”

Re Carter Page:

"“Regardless of what one might think of Steele or the dossier, if you look at the dossier, there is specific information that Carter Page talked to Russian officials in a time period in 2016,” Montoya Jr. said. “He's acknowledged doing that. That's an indication the investigation against him was valid.”

“In the Page FISA, what is relevant is, judging from the memo, investigators can show Page was in the Moscow meeting we covered earlier. That validates information in the dossier about such a meeting,” Montoya Jr. said.

He continued to touch on Page: "This isn't the first time Page has come on the screen as a target in Russia. A 2013 investigation led to the arrest of Russian officials, Page was in the middle of that investigation. From my perspective as a CI investigator, he has already played with fire.

“That said, the question about him meeting with Russian officials is not necessarily that he met with them, but what did he talk to them about? The purpose of FISA coverage, as an investigative tool, is to try and determine that, to develop evidence of a crime or not. That's why we use it,” he explained.

“Investigations are classified to protect sources and methods, but also to protect those who have not committed a crime. If an allegation is proven false, the last thing we want to do is destroy someone's reputation or standing.”

Note that he's not saying that Page is guilty or innocent one way or the other. He's talking about why it was valid to check into what was going on.

 

The policy should be to extend the visas and make an easy path to citizenship.

 

Read it already. It’s dumb. Traveling to Russia isn’t a crime. Neither is meeting with Russians. That this one fact from the dossier could be conformed —hell, it was a public trip, he gave a speech at a Moscow University —should not be enough to get a foreign intelligence warrant against someone.

 

And the previous policy of monitoring with temporary work permits was preferable to the current policy, even if you think that neither is ideal. Unless you hate brown people like the president and many of his supporters.

 

He could be shaking Putin's hand and you'd be asking, "How do we know that's really Putin and not his sock puppet?"

 

So only people who are *already* guilty of a crime can be *investigated* now? The counterintelligence world shouldn't even *look* at people without a conviction ready to go?

 

Ok, so Nunes and the R's have their noses all out of joint because the Steele memo came out of oppo research, and thus was slanted, biased, and it was unacceptable that the FBI should use anything from it as a reason to investigate, am I correct?

How is that different from the investigation(s) of the Clinton Foundation, which was triggered in great part by the publication of Peter Sweizer's book "Clinton Cash", which also came out of oppo research? The DOJ investigated that for years, and Sessions has now re-opened that investigation - which came out of Republican oppo. That's ok, though, because it's the Clintons being investigated though, right? No big deal, they *should* be investigated. Why it's been almost a page or two since you brought it up...

 

Wasn’t his last visa a student visa? You can’t just renew that is you’re not in school.

An easy path to citizenship? His brother says that his siblings and cousins all have citizenship, and that he’s the only one who didn’t get it, so how hard is it? What steps did he take to get a proper visa, and to put himself on a pathway to citizenship?

I mean, there has to be some process, right? If this guy, or the coke dealing soldier didn’t follow the process, we should just grant them citizenship anyway?

 

I think that you are well aware that more than one thing Steele reported has been verified.