The Democrat memo: unpersuasive and frivolous

Andrew McCarthy writes at National Review,

Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, has written a six-page response to the FISA-abuse memo published Friday by the committee’s Republican staffers under the direction of Chairman Devin Nunes (R., Calif.).

I won’t get sidetracked by the fact that Nadler’s “Dear Democratic Colleague” letter has been “exclusively obtained” by NBC News — i.e., that it was leaked to the media, whereas the so-called Nunes memo was provided to committee Democrats before publication so they could seek changes. The Nunes memo had to be subjected to a rules-based process because of classified-information issues. The Nadler memo does not seem to contain classified information; it just responds to what the Republicans have produced, which is now public record.

...In the case of these FISA applications, the principal problem is not Steele himself but his information. We can never even get to the task of evaluating whether Steele’s anonymous, Russian, multiple-hearsay sources have some bias against Trump or Page. We don’t know who the sources are, and the FBI seems never to have corroborated them.

...There is nothing wrong with taking information from a suspect source as long as the investigator then rolls up his sleeves and corroborates the information.

...From everything we have heard thus far, the FBI did not corroborate Steele’s informants.

...Steele himself, in the libel cases against him, has taken the position that he cannot vouch for the truthfulness of the allegations in the dossier. Rather, he admits they were hearsay claims that he passed along because they seemed alarming, but that needed vigorous investigation by the FBI to determine their provenance and accuracy.

Thus, the investigators’ animus against Trump would become a very alarming problem. As experienced agents, they are well aware that they must corroborate their sources before proceeding with something as serious as a FISA warrant application; if they failed in that rudimentary duty, it is perfectly reasonable to ask whether their personal feelings got the better of them — especially since we now have direct sources whose credibility cannot be evaluated at all, a purveyor of their multiple-hearsay allegations who is deeply biased against the target, and the overlay of a presidential election in which one candidate’s opposition research is being used to justify spying on the other campaign.

So far, the FBI and Justice Department have provided only cause for grave concern that they gave a federal court unverified, highly unreliable information that was essential to the court’s probable-cause finding, and that they did so without being candid with the court about the biases of the information’s purveyor. That being so, the burden is on the FBI and the Justice Department to prove that they did not act improperly in seeking the FISA warrant — especially since they, rather than the rest of us, are in possession of the information that they insist would vindicate them.

Steele might know more about Russia and organized crime than Putin himself. Such expertise would still not endow his anonymous, hearsay sources with credibility, or fill in the chasm left by the lack of verified factual information for an expert to interpret.

...warrants are issued based on the quality of the information proffered to the court, not the duration of the information-gathering process.

...FISA law appears to make the dossier more relevant and problematic, not less.

...But the 2013 investigation into which Page stumbled was a case of Russian agents trying to recruit him as a source. Far from doing anything criminal, Page appears to have cooperated with the FBI and Justice Department to nail the Russian spies.

...Congressman Nadler’s attack on the Nunes memo is wholly unpersuasive, and in several particulars frivolous.

I have excerpted only the bare bones of McCarthy's arguments. Get the meat here.