Daily Archives: January 15, 2021

Bill Allmann| Times Sports Correspondent

NEW SEWICKLEY TWP.On a typical mid-January evening, a game like the one between the Freedom and Ellwood City High School girls basketball teams would have had coaches pulling their hair out and those coaches and fans as well hoarse from screaming.

But, as the world has come to know, these are not normal mid-January evenings. Freedom coach John Kaerchers post-game voice was full and measured. There was a smile on as much of his face as could be seen above his mask.

The few parents in attendance were laughing and joking despite a comparatively ugly 40-22 Freedom win as well.

It was a struggle but it was just our second game, said Kaercher. We missed 10 free throws and 10 or 11 layups that I would call easily makeable.

Not only was this just our second game but we didnt get any scrimmages in before the shutdown. There are things you just cant simulate in practice.

It was just the second game for the Ellwood City squad as well and the need for game experience showed there was 1:06 left in the first half before the number of points surpassed the number of turnovers.

Most of our girls started the season in shape because of soccer, said Kaercher. But we lost all that in the shutdown. No one is in the condition they would normally be at this time of the year.

We have to learn to play 32 minutes again. We only lost two players to graduation but we still have to get all the players on the same page yet.

One of those returning players, though, may have had a lot to do with the post-game calm. Senior Karissa Mercier stepped up with eight of her game-high 14 points in the third quarter to keep the lead from getting uncomfortably close.

I was off in the first and second quarters, said Mercier, the only player on either team to score in double figures. Our whole team seems to be one that plays better in the second half and it worked for me.

Its definitely been a challenge this year because of the COVID. We havent had that many practices and, even then, we got a lot of breaks in practices because of the masks. You dont get those breaks in games.

Although neither team was in mid-season form for a mid-January game, both have qualified for the playoffs since the WPIAL is welcoming all teams into the playoffs because of the circumstances. That provides some time to get into post-season form but hasnt changed the urgency for Freedom.

I appreciate that we make the playoffs because of the way things are, said Mercier. But Id rather earn it. As long as we keep winning, well show that we earned it.

Kaercher has similar mixed feelings.

I totally agree with everyone reaching the playoffs, said the veteran coach. But we still need to prepare as if we want to win, to be at the top.

And every journey to the top has to start somewhere.

Read this article:

Freedom tries to shake off shutdown rust in win over Ellwood City - The Times

CHICAGO Revolution Brewing is expanding its sour beer program with the introduction of the Freedom Variety Pack a new 12-pack featuring four different Session Sours. Each beer is blended with real fruit juice concentrate, creating a vibrant range of colors along with compelling, distinct flavors.

Freedom of Speach, the brewerys first packaged Session Sour, was born at the Revolution Brewpub in spring 2017 and moved to cans the following year. The popularity of Revolutions sour beers has been on a steady climb since. Freedom of Speach is the top-selling sour beer in Illinois and second-best seller in the Great Lakes region.

Weve enjoyed fine-tuning our sour brewing and blending the last several years and seeing these beers enjoyed by a new group of Revolution drinkers, noted Josh Deth, Chairman of the Party at Revolution. People clearly want variety and fruit flavor options and its fun to try them all and pick your personal favorite.

The Freedom Variety Pack will ship to distributors beginning in mid to late February. Each 12-pack will feature three cans each of the following beers:

The Freedom Variety Pack will be Revolutions newest year-round offering, and will see distribution across much of the brewerys current nine-state footprint. Freedom of Speach will continue as a year-round six-pack, while the other three beers will remain exclusive to the Freedom Variety Pack.

About Revolution Brewing

Revolution Brewing is the largest independently owned brewery in Illinois. Brewed only in Chicago between the original brewpub space in Logan Square and production brewery in nearby Avondale. Revolution currently distributes in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nashville, New Jersey, New York City, and Wisconsin.

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Revolution Brewing Reveals Freedom Variety 12-Pack of Session Sours - Brewbound.com

The Justice Ministry on Friday presented its draft law that aims to ensure that freedom of speech is not breached on social media.

The bill seeks to set up a Freedom of Speech Council, a five member body elected by a three-fifths majority by the lower house of parliament for a six-year term, top ministry officials announced at a press conference on Friday.

Zbigniew Ziobro, the justice minister, said that the internet is nowadays a forum for numerous disputes, therefore Polish citizens should be ensured "the fundamental rights" mentioned in the country's constitution.

This calls for a legal framework that would force "global players" to respect the law, Ziobro went on to say.

"Today there are no such effective instruments, today social media decide themselves which content is to be censored or removed," Ziobro said.

The bill will be sent to the government for analysis and will also undergo broader consultation, said Sebastian Kaleta, a deputy justice minister.

"The Freedom of Speech Council will review complaints from internet users about content that has been removed or restricted by social media," Kaleta said, adding that the Council will have seven days to process the complaint.

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Poland drafts internet freedom of speech bill - The First News

But its a situation, the likes of which we dont have freedom of the press in this country. We have suppression by the press. They suppress. You cant have a scandal if nobody reports about it. This is the greatest fraud in the history of our country, from an electoral standpoint What is bigger than this? This is the essence of our country. This is the whole ball game. And they cheated

excerpt from an interview with President Donald Trump, published on Breitbart.com on November 29, 2020

Its so easy to spin the news, these days, and to disseminate disinformation. Thats one of the controversial results of modern technology the type of technology Im using right this moment, to publish an editorial on the Daily Post. Truth and untruth are equally easy to spread.

I stopped by a friends house yesterday to chat about the politics of public health, and as I walked in, my friend was listening to FOX News on the radio. I heard just a bit of the commentary before my friend switched off the radio so we could talk face-to-face without unnecessary distractions.

The FOX commentator had just said something like this:

The First Amendment says, Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. And yet here we are

Yes, here we are. But where, exactly, are we?

The commentator was presumably complaining about the threats to open and free communication posed by recent decisions, by big tech companies Twitter, Facebook, Google, Amazon to ban or censor certain individuals, including President Trump and popular alt-right websites like Parler.

Those threats, to free and open communication, are very real. But they have nothing to do with the First Amendment.

The First Amendment restrains the US Congress from abridging our freedom of speech, and our freedom of the press later interpreted to mean freedom of all media, including radio, TV and electronic media. As far as I can tell, the Constitution and the US Supreme Court have done a reasonable job of defending freedom of speech and freedom of the press from government abridgment. (Allowing for slight detours into government censorship during, for example, the American Civil War, when journalist were jailed for publishing articles critical of the Lincoln administration.)

There is nothing in the US Constitution, however, that grants all individuals equal access to privately-owned media outlets. Broadcast and print communications in the United States of America have never been free and open in any realistic sense. Within each media outlet, the owners and the editors have complete control of what content is shared, and what content is rejected. If the media outlet has its own printing press, its own broadcast towers, its own satellite, its own cable network, that media outlet has the ability to share whatever content it chooses, whenever it wishes to share it.

Smaller, independent news outlets (I am thinking here of the Pagosa Daily Post) make use of internet infrastructure owned by third-party corporations. We must therefore abide by the policies set by those private third parties. To date, Ive never had any of our Daily Post content questioned by the companies we depend on for distribution. (I have, meanwhile, had our content questioned by individual readers.)

President Donald Trump has spent the past several years criticizing certain privately-owned media outlets as purveyors of fake news, and for whatever reason, those very same news outlets have shared the Presidents vocal criticisms, with their readers. If they had so wished, these privately-owned news outlets could have completely ignored everything the President said. They were under no legal obligation to share complaints coming from the White House.

A free press is under no legal obligation to publish comments by the President or anyone else that they consider to be false or misleading.

Presumably, the private media shared the Presidents criticisms and questionable statements because they saw it as their job to share the news. (Which is also their bread-and-butter.) The decision by any particular private company to broadcast political news, or to host a website like Parler, or to provide search engine links to a website like Breitbart, or to share the Presidents tweets, have nothing whatsoever to do with the First Amendment. The decision reflects only a particular private companys policies and agenda.

My apologies to the FOX News commentator, but the First Amendment concerns only government censorship. When a nation allows private individuals to own and control monstrously influential tech companies Twitter, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple and monstrously influential broadcast corporations MSNBC, FOX News, CNN, Comcast, NPR and monstrously influential news outlets The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Washington Post we can guarantee that certain voices will be louder, and more widely shared, than other voices.

Some of my friends have been complaining, recently, about the disappearance of certain commentators and websites upon which they have been depending for alternative news information they view as more truthful than what can be found in the Lamestream Media.

Welcome to the world of democratic capitalism where, in so many cases, the government doesnt make the rules. Instead, the ruling capitalists make the decisions thanks in part to the First Amendment, and thanks in part to a massively inequitable economic system.

Its not, by any means, a perfect system if by a perfect system we mean that every person has equal access to a media soapbox. But it probably beats a system where the government makes all the decisions about which voices and opinions are heard, and which are not.

When President Trump or FOX News complains that we dont have freedom of the press in this country, they have things completely turned around. The press has an incredible amount of freedom in this country. It is free, even, to ban the President of the United States from its pages and websites and channels.

Bill Hudson

Bill Hudson founded the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 based on the belief that community leaders often tell only one side of the story while the public deserves to hear all sides.

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EDITORIAL: The Inconvenient Truth About 'Freedom of the Press' - Pagosa Daily Post

This is my response to my friend John, who recently posted on Nextdoor: Come January 1st, my mask is off. Whats next, handcuffs?

John, I am sorry to hear that. I fought for our freedoms, just as you did. But I have always understood that, while we cherish our freedom in this country, we are also a cooperative country.

That is, we all do, or should, recognize that we have laws, rules and regulations that limit our freedoms in the interest of protecting each other.

With freedom also comes responsibility. We can be cited for speeding, running stop lights, cutting other drivers off, driving recklessly or in any way that endangers others.

We are not allowed to kill each other or steal each others property. Why is that? Because we also respect that others have the right to live freely. That includes the freedom to know that others have no right to harm us, regardless of the color or our skin or our beliefs.

This is exemplified by rules established by community health initiatives. Our mayors and governors face tough decisions, and most try to make those decisions based on information provided by our scientists and other experts. They take a lot of heat for that.

But you wearing a mask protects both you and me and everyone around us. By doing that, you protect my freedom as well as yours.

READ:Colorado Sun opinion columnists.

There are those who still try to claim that the science behind the need to wear masks is not well established. They tend to ignore the fact that this coronavirus is new, and the science has evolved as we have learned more about it. Current rules are based on the latest and most complete knowledge that we have.

So, I strongly encourage everyone to continue to pay attention, to honor the science and abide by the orders established by authorities.

As of Jan. 11 we had more than 370,000 dead so far from this virus nationwide. I do not intend to be another statistic, and I will do what I can to insure that you, as well, do not become one.

Our hospitals are near capacity, and we are losing front-line workers who succumb to the sickness that they are helping all of us to prevent.

I was appalled in December when I heard a recording on NPR of a woman who said at a town meeting in Idaho that she wished medical professionals would stop sobbing and moaning and providing misinformation to the public.

And I wanted to repeat those words spoken by attorney Joseph Welch to Sen. Joseph McCarthy at a Senate hearing in 1954: Have you no sense of decency, sir?

Ken Deshaies of Littleton is a longtime real estate executive and author who lived in Summit County for nearly 20 years.

The Colorado Sun is a nonpartisan news organization, and the opinions of columnists and editorial writers do not reflect the opinions of the newsroom. Read our ethics policy for more on The Suns opinion policy and submit columns, suggested writers and more to opinion@coloradosun.com.

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Opinion: With freedom comes responsibility and that applies to wearing masks - The Colorado Sun

By Scott Deshefy| For The Bulletin

In 1910, long before televisions unveiling at the 1938 Worlds Fair, Belgian information expert, Paul Otlet, and Henri La Fontaine imagined a global repository and distribution point for sharing the worlds knowledge. Their vision evolved into the League of Nations International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation (forerunner of UNESCO). In 1934, prescient of the World Wide Web, Otlet wrote about a Radiated Library connecting TV watchers to encyclopedic knowledge via telephone wires.

The idea remained dormant until the 1960s, when J.C.R. Licklider, a psychologist and computer scientist, proposed linking the worlds computers into a network for scientific exchange. In the heart of the Cold War, that intrigued U.S. militarists, who sought a communication system that could withstand a nuclear war. In 1969, Leonard Kleinrock, Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn gave the Defense Department ARPANET, an Internet forerunner, which first connected computers at UCLA and Stanford, and then the Universities of California and Utah. After transmission control and internet protocols (TCP/IP) were ironed out, Ray Tomlinson sent the first e-mail in 1971.

Throughout its 60-year infancy, the internets purpose was for scientists and other academicians to share and peer-review empirically tested information. It was never intended a conduit for cultivating lies, promoting distrust, or encouraging sedition and hatred. Nor was it designed for advertising, commercialism or funneling its users algorithmically.

Weve allowed the internet to devolve that way because Americas selective forces have always been political and monetary. Now, with many of our citizens losing the distinction between online myth and off-line reality, a single oft-repeated fantasy is all it takes to savage our democracy. After months of unsubstantiated predictions and claims of electoral fraud by Donald Trump and his facilitators, its no surprise the Capitol was stormed by domestic terrorists Jan.6.Now, the FBI warns, armed protestors will gather throughout the country from Saturdaythrough Jan.20. Trumps march on the Capitol and Guilianis lets have trial by combat will retain some insurrectionary potency provided the departing president stays connected to his followers. And no nation can be a personality cult and function as a republicas well.

Because Trump nurtures and recruits flawed and violent elements of our society, he needs to be marginalized. Isolation via censorship on social media, while treading on his First Amendment rights, is a warranted act of counterterrorism, much like silencing a man who repeatedly shouts Fire in crowded theaters. Another impeachment round will likely go nowhere, as has invokingthe 25th Amendment. Congress would be wise to focus on the 14th Amendment (Section 3) instead, barring Trump from ever holding state or federal office again for inciting insurrection. Congressional leaders supporting his gambit should also be expelled. Because of its Confucian ethic, majorities in Japan often compromise with minorities to reach a consensus. In America, majority rule is undermined by conspiratorial thinking. Compromise and evidence-based decision-making are near-impossible here because ignorance and distortion are so regenerative, and mobs with zip ties and pipe bombs see communism in every act of common good and forethought. Liberty is perverted when freedom and individualism mean ignoring facts and science, opposing political correctness, transmitting diseases, amassing weaponry and destroying the planet. As for exiling Trump from QAnon, Proud Boys and other dangerous radicals, I suggest Saint Helena Island and a bungalow for demagogues unoccupied for 200 years. The sea air will do him good. Salus populi suprema lex esto.

Scott Deshefy is a biologist and two-time Green Party congressional candidate.

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Liberty is perverted when 'freedom' and 'individualism' mean ignoring facts and science - Norwich Bulletin

President Trump last week awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to, of all people, Rep. Devin Nunes. Nunes is the ranking Republican member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and among Congresss most prolific and consequential conspiracy theorists. In announcing the award on Jan. 4, the president declared that Nunes had unearth[ed] the crime of the century, referring to Nuness investigations into alleged misconduct by the Obama administration during the 2016 election. As part of this investigationthe animating principle behind the awardthe announcement reads, Nunes learned that the Obama-Biden administration had issued Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants to spy on President Trumps campaign and illegitimately unmasked several innocent spying victims for political gain.

The award comes amid weeks and months of disputes over information, misinformation and disinformation. There was the controversy over the New York Posts publication of Hunter Bidens purported text messages, which had Americans arguing, again, about how news organizations should handle apparently hacked or stolen content, whether the material was authentic and whether it was the product of some kind of information effort. It saw the release by a pair of Senate committees of a report on Biden and Burisma that was informed by information from an apparent Russian agent and had observers rightly concerned about the abuse of congressional oversight authorities. It saw the continuous congressional efforts to investigate the investigators from 2016 and 2017 based on conspiracy theories about coups and treason, which raised serious questions about the deployment of complex mixtures of facts and nonsense to attack important American institutions. Since the election, it has seen a barrage of disinformation in court proceedings and presidential statements about supposed voter fraud, and the entire period has been awash in lies about the coronavirus and public health measures surrounding it.

All of which makes it a propitious moment to revisit the so-called Nunes memo.

The Nunes memoand the subsequent response to it from Rep. Adam Schiffmay for many readers be lost in the mists of time. But way back in what feels like the Mesozoic Era, before the president was impeached, before George Floyds name was universally recognized, before anyone knew what COVID-19 was, it was a very big deal for a hot second. And it is one of the reasons Nunes was honored last week.

Back then, Washingtons chief concern was whether Trump had colluded with a foreign actor to win an electiona matter with which Trump remains obsessed to this day. The Mueller investigation was underway. And Trump was already demonizing the investigation, arguing repeatedly that the FBIs leadership had it out for him and had spied on his campaign. This was the germ of what became, over time, a full-blown conspiracy theory that the FBI had tried to prevent, and then tried to undo, Trumps election. And key to it, then as now, was the warrant sought from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) on former Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page.

The Nunes memo, which argued publicly that the Page warrant application was improper, was thus a key moment in the development of the myth that has since become a kind of article of faith among the presidents defenders. As such, it represented a critical step in what became a sustained disinformation campaignthe step in which the then-chairman of the House Intelligence Committee declared publicly that the Russia investigation had not been on the up-and-up.

But the story of the Nunes and Schiff memos is complicated. Because while the Nunes memo was an early and pivotal part of a long-term disinformation effort in defense of the president at the expense of American governmental institutions, it turned out to contain no small amount of truthat least if one believes the findings of the Justice Departments inspector general. And while the Schiff memo was designed to rebut Nuness attacks on those institutions and counter the disinformation campaign, Schiff turned out to be wrong on critical points.

This does not mean, as the presidents defenders have often crowed, that Nunes has been vindicated. Indeed, aspects of his memoas we describe belowstill seem in retrospect like intentional efforts to deceive the public about a central aspect of the Carter Page FISA application. This fact alone gravely undermines any effort to laud Nunes as a truth-teller.

It does show, however, that the relationship between truth and falsehood in disinformation can be complicated. Not all disinformation is composed entirely of lies. And not all efforts to rebut disinformation are built out of bricks composed entirely of truth.

What follows is a close examination of truth and falsehood, disinformation and counter-disinformation in the Nunes and Schiff memos. We intend it as a kind of case studyvaluable not just for historical accountability with respect to Nunes and Schiff and those in the press (including one of the present authors) who sided with one or the other of them, but also as future-looking guidance for situations in which political actors are using complex fact-patterns involving nonpublic information to advance contested claims on high-stakes matters.

The reason the controversy over the Nunes memo offers a useful case study is that the matter on which Nunes reported has, since the controversy, been investigated exhaustivelyso we can now see in some detail, line by line, how much Nunes and Schiff each got right and wrong. And we can see as well the nature of things each got right and wrong.

And the reality is complicated. The Nunes memo turns out to have been correct on important points, in addition to offering some blatant untruths. Yet the important points it makes are all in the service of a larger point on which it remains profoundly wrong and misleading. In other words, while subsequent inspector general findings sustained many of the specific facts Nunes asserted and showed a good number of others to be adjacent to the truth, its entire animating principlethat the FISA warrant was part of a politically motivated effort by the FBI to spy on Trump and take him downremains as much disinformation as it ever was.

The converse is true of the Schiff memo. What seemed like a sober and serious response to Nunes at first turned out to be wrong on a lot of points. It also omits some context that proves significant. Nonetheless, on the biggest questionwhether the warrants were, in fact, politically motivated by an inappropriate ambition to get the presidentSchiff is arguing (using a lot of bad facts) for what still turns out to be the truth.

A Bit of Background

For those who need a refresher on the facts, on Feb. 2, 2018, Nunes authored a memo asserting that the Page warrant was obtained under false pretenses and inaccurate information. On a strictly partisan basis, the House Intelligence Committee voted to release the Nunes memo. Days later, the committee also voted unanimously to release a memo that Schiff, then-ranking Democratic member of the committee, authored in response to rebut each of Nuness claims.

Upon its publication, Nuness memo was widely derided among pundits of all non-Trumpist stripes. Many critics argued that its logic was undermined by its own admissions. On a more legalistic level, Faiza Patel on Just Security outlined the fact that the memo missed the more fundamental point of what constitutes probable cause for a warrant. Some critics were more straightforward, calling it a dud for having failed to break real news. Former FBI Director James Comey tweeted, Thats it? and referred to the memo as dishonest. Even Republican Sen. Susan Collins cast doubt on the memo in a carefully worded statement, saying that a bipartisan memo subject to careful vetting would have been more appropriate. To that end, one of us wrote on Lawfare: There are many reasons to doubt the memos factual integrity.

The FBI itself attacked the memo too. It released a statement saying the bureau was provided a limited opportunity to review this memo the day before the committee voted to release it and that it ha[s] grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memos accuracy. There was also concern about the committees decision to release the memo: The Justice Departments congressional liaison reportedly told Nunes that publicly releasing the memo would be extraordinarily reckless.

By contrast, upon its subsequent release, the Schiff memo was widely embraced as having effectively disputed Nuness claims. For example, Vox ran the headline The Democratic rebuttal to the Nunes memo tears it apart. Julian Sanchez of the Cato Institute responded to Schiffs rebuttal as follows: This is a pretty thorough demolition of Nunes insinuations of impropriety by FBI/DOJ, which were pretty weak as it stands. And, again, one of us wrote the following at the time of the release: [T]he [Schiff memo] thus raises serious questions ... about whether Chairman Nunes and his colleagues are acting in good faith.

Then, about a year ago, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz issued his subsequent report on the Crossfire Hurricane investigation in December 2019. And in important respects, Horowitz validated aspects of the Nunes memo and contradicted Schiff.

This led a number of commentators to claim vindication on Nuness behalf. The Federalist wrote that the Horowitz report vindicates the Nunes memo while showing that the Schiff memo was riddled with lies and false statements. The Wall Street Journals editorial board similarly claimed Nuness vindication, while the Washington Timess editorial board demanded, Devin Nunes is owed an apology. Indeed, claims of vindication were issued not just by conservative commentators; the Washington Post, for example, asserted that the inspector generals report, to some extent, substantiated the Nunes memo.

A year has now passed. And while tempers have not cooled on the matter of the Steele dossier, a certain degree of quasi-consensus has developed. Nobody today is defending the FBIs appalling handling of the Carter Page FISA applications, which involved serial errors and misstatements and has triggered a wider-ranging inspector general investigation of the bureaus handling of FISA materials, reform by the bureau and scrutiny by the FISC itself. And while the presidents defenders still insist that the errors in question were part of a wider, political conspiracy against Trump, this argument has not caught on beyond those most committed to the presidents cause. There simply isnt evidence that its true.

In a polarized politics in which one political camp insists on living in its own factual universe, moreover, such complex interplays of fact, error and lie as took place in this case seem likely to be a recurrent feature of our political environment. As such, going back over the Nunes and Schiff memos in some detail in light of what we have since learned seems like a useful exercise.

The Nunes and Schiff Memos

The Nunes memo is short, totaling less than four full pages. It was actually sent by HPSCI Majority Staff and was drafted in large part by Kash Patel, then-senior adviser to Nunes, later a top aide to then-Acting Director of Intelligence Richard Grennel and currently the chief of staff at the Defense Department. It concludes that material and relevant information was omitted from Pages initial and supplemental FISA applications. Nunes was certainly right about that, according to the facts and determinations made by the inspector general; the report itself states that the inspector general identified significant inaccuracies and omissions in each of the four applications7 in the first FISA application and a total of 17 by the final renewal application.

To arrive at that conclusion, the Nunes memo rests on the following assertions (rearranged here and organized more discretely):

The Schiff memo, by contrast, identified three overarching ideas on which it aimed to correct the record:

A number of atmospheric points added to the apparent credibility of the Schiff memo. Schiff, ever the prosecutor, cited each of his assertions, including using quotations; this contrasted with the Nunes memo, which argued more by assertion. Schiffs memo was also more substantial. Length, of course, is not indicative of accuracy, but with a detailed, complex and nuanced story like that of the Page FISA applications, Schiffs willingness to explain himself in detail probably enhanced his memos air of credibility. Put simply, the work seemed more professional, and it was elaborated better.

What Nunes Got Right and Wrong

The problem is that being more professional is not the same thing as being right. And the inspector general report makes clear that Schiff got some things wrongand Nunes got some things right.

First and foremost, Nuness instinct that the Carter Page FISA applications were, in fact, deficient, is well borne out by the subsequent record. The inspector general report finds that the Page FISA applications cumulatively contained 17 material errors or omissions. This is a very big deal, and Nuness memo in retrospect is the first major indication that someone smelled a rat. Whatever one thinks of Nunes, thats not nothing.

In that regard more specifically, the FBI did indeed have concerns about Steeles potential political bias and the accuracy of his information, much of which it never validated. An entire subsection of the inspector generals report is entitled Initial Feedback and NSD Concerns over Steeles Potential Motivation and Bias. The inspector general found, though text messages suggested otherwise, that the investigative team may not have initially informed the National Security Division of the Justice Department about the potential or suspected political connections to Steeles reporting until the day the FBI drafted the initial FISA warrant and that nothing to that effect appeared in the October 11 draft FISA application.

The trouble for Nunes is that his in-retrospect perceptive insight that the Page FISA was overly reliant on potentially unreliable information from Steelean insight that required the inspector generals investigation to validatecame immediately alongside a second claim that was far easier to check and was a flat misrepresentation. The Nunes memo claims that the FBI did not disclose or reference the role of the DNC, Clinton campaign, or any party/campaign in funding Steeles efforts, even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior DOJ and FBI officials.

In fact, the application contained a lengthy footnote that made the political context clear, albeit without naming U.S. persons explicitly. This gross mischaracterization, upon which the Schiff memo rightly seized, did much to discredit the Nunes memo and draw attention away from what turned out to be its early warning about one of the key deficiencies of the FBIs handling of the Page applications. Nor does it save the Nunes memo on this point that the inspector general ultimately criticized the FBI for not giving the court more information about Steeles political connections as it became available. The Nunes memo is simply deceptive on this pointand pretty clearly intentionally so, given the text of the FISA application itself.

Nunes also leaves out an important fact: that FBI personnel treated the entirety of Steeles reporting with a healthy skepticism precisely because the informationas the inspector general later characterized the bureaus concernscould be inaccurate, false, embellished, exaggerated or provided by the Russians as part of a disinformation campaign. Whats more, while the bureaus concerns about Steele were raised at the 11th hour, they were raised nonetheless. That they were not disseminated adequately within the Justice Department signified not some political conspiracy, the inspector general found, but a failure of communication.

This section offers a particularly vivid example of our broad point. Nunes got something big right here: As the inspector general found, the Justice Department over-relied on Steeles information in the narrow context of the Page FISA applications and did not adequately describe reasons to disbelieve him or his reporting. Yet he did so in a context that came perilously close to simply lying about the FBIs degree of disclosure to the court.

Consider also the Nunes memos focus on then-Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, who shared a long-standing professional relationship with Steele. Ohrs wife, moreover, was a Russia expert who was working for Fusion GPSthe investigative firm that contracted with Steele. Nunes peppers the two paragraphs he devotes to Ohr with facts: Ohr did work for Deputy Attorneys General Sally Yates and Rod Rosenstein; his wife did work for Fusion GPS; Steele did tell Ohr he was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being the U.S. President; and the Ohrs relationship to Steele was not in fact disclosed to the FISC in the warrant application. Schiff, meanwhile, describes this collection of facts as overstat[ing] the significance of [Ohrs] interactions with Steele, and mislead[ing] about the timeframe of Ohrs communication with the FBI.

The Ohr story too matches our overall theme: Nuness facts are accurate, but they dont amount to the point he appears to be trying to make with them. To Schiffs point, he omits relevant context and gratuitously marshals references to known players such as Yates and Rosenstein all in service of muddying the waters and suggesting that Ohrs involvement was part of some kind of plot to mislead the court.

Conversely, Schiffs minimization of Ohrs role is contradicted by the inspector generals report, which details how Ohr met with the members of the Page investigative team 13 times over a few months and concludes that Ohr committed consequential errors in judgment.

Yet again, the inspector general does not find what Nunes is clearly driving at: that Ohrs efforts were part of some conspiracy to abuse the FISA process and spy on the presidents campaign using bogus informationmuch less that either Yates or Rosenstein was involved. Writes Nunes, clear evidence of Steeles bias was recorded by Ohr at the time and subsequently in official FBI filesbut not reflected in any of the Page FISA applications .. The Ohrs relationship with Steele and Fusion GPS was inexplicably concealed from the FISC. Rather, what the inspector general ultimately found about Ohr is, as the above-quoted language suggests, that he made errors in judgment in not informing his superiors about his activities and that information he gave the FBI about Steele should have been included in the FISA renewal applications. The inspector general does not find that Ohrs activities caused misleading or false information to be presented to the court; in fact, to the contrary, the inspector general found that as a result of Ohrs behavior, the FBI has more information about Steele that it should have reported to the court.

As part of its larger fixation on insisting that the FBI misled the court about Steeles being a political operative, the Nunes memo also emphasizes the financial backing for Steeles work. Steele was a longtime FBI source who was paid over $160,000 by the DNC and Clinton campaign, via the law firm Perkins Coie and research firm Fusion GPS, to obtain derogatory information on Donald Trumps ties to Russia. These facts are basically right: The inspector general confirms that Steele was an FBI source from 2013 to 2016 and also concludes that Steele had been paid for his information.

The implication of Nuness claim, howeverthat these important details were withheld from the courtis only partially true. Steele claimed to have informed his handling agent at the FBI, according to the inspector general, that he was aware that Democratic Party associates were paying for Fusion GPSs research, the ultimate client was the leadership of the Clinton presidential campaign, and the candidate was aware of Steeles reporting.

The Nunes memo states: The initial FISA application notes Steele was working for a named U.S. person, but does not name Fusion GPS and principal Glenn Simpson, who was paid by a U.S. law firm (Perkins Coie) representing the DNC (even though it was known by DOJ at the time that political actor were involved with the Steele dossier). This is accuratesort of: The FISA application does not state the political affiliation of the entities that commissioned the work, though it says clearly that [t]he FBI speculates that the identified U.S. person was likely looking for information could be used to discredit [Trumps] campaign. And the inspector general does criticize the bureau, as noted above, for failing to update the description of Steele after information became known to the Crossfire Hurricane team, from Ohr and others, that provided greater clarity on the political origins and connections of Steeles reporting, including that Simpson was hired by someone associated with the Democratic Party and/or the DNC.

But here it is quite clear that these omissions were not part of any kind of effort to withhold the truth from the court. Notes taken by an agent at the time state that the law firm [paying for Steeles research] works for the Republican party or Hillary and will use [the information] at some point. Notably, when this meeting took place on July 13, 2016, Trump was not yet the Republican nominee, having won the nomination on July 19, 2016. Moreover, one of the case agents told the inspector general that Steele did not disclose information about the identity of Fusion GPSs client, a law firm which was funding Steeles work due to a confidentiality agreement that prevented him from sharing that information. Steeles notes from that very meeting with the case agent state that the FBI did not press him to identify Fusion GPSs client. Indeed, Steele could not specifically recall ever informing the FBI of the law firms name and only thought it probabl[e] he had told them. The FBI had sketchy information about the political nature of Steeles funding, and it described that information in general terms. The FBI can be faulted, as the inspector general faults it, for not updating the court as information later became available. But this point simply will not bear the weight Nunes is trying to put on it.

In other words, once again, the inspector general documents serious errors and validates some of the facts in the Nunes memo, but in a fashion that contradicts the larger intended meaning of the Nunes memo. Yes, the name of the law firm and the Hillary Clinton campaign were not in the fateful footnote, but not because the FBI was trying to hoodwink the court.

Nunes has a stronger claim to simple vindication on the matter of the FBIs use of the Yahoo News article. Nunes writes: The Carter Page FISA application also cited extensively a September 23, 2016, Yahoo News article by Michael Isikoff, which focuses on Pages 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 (emphasis in original). As a factual matter here, Nunes is correct. Steele turns out to have been the source for the article restating his own material in the application. The only wrinkle here is that it is less than clear from the redacted application that the Justice Department was suggesting that Yahoo News was an independent reason to believe the information in question. A footnote reads in part that [t]he FBI does not believe that [Steele] directly provided this information to the press and suggests that it might have found its way to Yahoo News from elsewhere in the chain of entities that employed him.

Nonetheless, the inspector general reports that Steele likely wasnt asked about whether he was the source:

Case Agent 2 told the [Office of the Inspector General] that he could not remember asking Steele about the Yahoo News article during the meeting, and that he was more focused on getting Steele to play ball. The Supervisory Intel Analyst also said he did not recall Steele being asked whether he was a source of the Yahoo News article. Handling Agent 1 stated that he could not recall if the article was raised during the meeting with Steele.

According to Steele, he did not recall any discussion of the media during the early October meeting, and none was reflected in his notes. Steele further told us that if the issue of the media had been raised he would have recorded it in his notes given that he already had met with media groups in September.

Relatedly, the Nunes memo is correct in saying that Steele should have been terminated for his previous undisclosed contacts with Yahoo. The inspector general found that:

Handling Agent 1 told us that he understood why Steele would believe in September 2016 that he did not have an obligation to discuss his press contacts with him given that: (1) Steeles work resulted from a private client engagement; and (2) Handling Agent 1 told Steele on July 5 that he was not collecting his election reporting on behalf of the FBI. However, Handling Agent 1s view was that while it was obvious that Fusion GPS would want to publicize Steeles election information, it was not apparent that Steele would be conducting press briefings and otherwise interjecting himself into the media spotlight. Handling Agent 1 told us that he would have recommended that Steele be closed in September 2016 if he had known about the attention that Steele was attracting to himself.

Nunes also has a plausible case that the Steele material was ultimately pivotal to the FBIs decision to seek a FISA warrant at all. In his fourth substantive paragraph, Nunes cites several data points to imply that no FISA application would have been sought at all but for Steele. Specifically, the memo notes: Deputy Director [Andrew] McCabe testified before the Committee in December 2017 that no surveillance warrant would have been sought from the FISC without the Steele dossier information.

The inspector general later concluded that the Steele material was, in fact, an essential part of the application:

[T]he Crossfire Hurricane teams receipt of Steeles election reporting on September 19, 2016 played a central and essential role in the FBIs and Departments decision to seek the FISA order. As noted above, when the team first sought to pursue a FISA order for Page in August 2016, a decision was made by [the Office of General Counsel (OGC)], [the Department of Justice], or both that more information was needed to support a probable cause finding that Page was an agent of a foreign power. As a result, FBI OGC ceased discussions with or about a Page FISA order at that time.

In essence, the inspector general concludes that, while the dossier may have been a crucial element, it was not alone sufficient; other intelligence gave rise to the investigation and played a role as well, but the Steele material did seem to put the matter over the top.

The Really Big Thing Nunes Got Wrong

The specific text of the memo, in short, got some stuff right. It got some stuff wrong. And it contained no small measure of false innuendo.

What makes the story of the Nunes memo so interesting, however, is not just how it operated at the specific textual level. The purpose of the memo, after all, was not to vindicate Carter Page from the iniquity of probable cause of being an agent of the Russian Federation. The animating principle behind Nuness memo, rather, as the New York Times succinctly observed:

has everything to do with defending President Trump from Mr. Muellers investigation . Mr. Trumps allies in recent weeks have increasingly sought to shift the focus away from Russian election interference and instead portray the actions of investigators as the real scandal.

By casting doubt on the FISA process itself, Nunes launched a counteroffensive aimed at derailing or discrediting the federal inquiry that shadowed Trumps first year in office.

Nuness counterassault to discredit the Justice Department began a year before he wrote the specific memo: In 2017, Nunes, while in a car with a staffer in the evening, took a phone call, abruptly exited the car and took an impromptu trip to the White House to discuss the Obama administrations incidental collection on the Trump transition team, and subsequently held a press conference on the matter decrying the unmasking actions.

In other words, even to the extent it turns out to contain trueand actually prescientfacts, the Nunes memo has to be read in terms of the totality of the campaign of which it was part. It was a campaign to discredit the entirety of the Russia investigation, from how it began to how it progressed to the indictments it issued. And the basic thesis of this campaign was and remains entirely false.

The inspector generals report is clear on this point as well. The inspector general did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the decisions to open the four individual investigations that made up the FBIs Crossfire Hurricane, nor is there any serious suggestion of misconduct in the way it progresses outside of the narrow confines of the Carter Page FISA applications. In other words, Nunes managed to muster what turn out to be a lot of true factscompelling in their own right and damning as to the handling of an important matterin support of a false thesis.

Indeed, the use by prominent Republicans of the Carter Page FISA and inclusion of the Steele material maximized the narrative value of a point that, in the grand scheme of things, was really quite small. The integrity of the FISA process is, of course, not a small matter at all, but Steeles information about Page was by no means the totality, or even the majority, of the material the FBI developed about Page. And the Page investigation itselfand Steeles information within itrepresented only a tiny sliver of what made up the larger Crossfire Hurricane investigation. It plays a vanishingly small role in the Mueller report. And Steele had nothing to do with the investigations of George Papadopoulos or Michael Flynn, and little to do with the criminal aspects of the Paul Manafort case. His information played no role at all in the reporting on the Internet Research Agency or its social media manipulations. Nunes was savvy enough to take a muddy area where the FBIs failures were significant and leverage that into a picture of the entire Crossfire Hurricane investigation. And while he managed to do that to great effect, the overall thesis remains false.

All of which carries two important lessons as we think about disinformation and its components in the future. The first is that not every disinformation campaign is composed of false facts. The fact, for example, that the release of disparaging information about Hunter Biden may have taken place as part of an information campaign does not mean that the specific information released is false. In the case of the Nunes memo, a lot of people, including one of the present authors, would have done better to more carefully separate the integrity of the memos author from the integrity of the information his memo purported to contain.

The second key point, the flip side of the first, is that a bunch of facts does not necessarily make up a compelling case. Because at the end of the day, the Nunes memo did not discredit the Russia investigationnor did the inspector generals report. At most, they discredited one specific investigative technique the FBI employed in the course of looking at one thread of the Russia issues raised by the Trump campaign. It is possible to be 90 percent right and 100 percent wrong. Nunes was something less than 90 percent right, but he was certainly 100 percent wrong.

Trumps announcement concerning Nuness Presidential Medal of Freedom concludes:

Congressman Nunes pursued the Russia Hoax at great personal risk and never stopped standing up for the truth. He had the fortitude to take on the media, the FBI, the Intelligence Community, the Democrat Party, foreign spies, and the full power of the Deep State . Congressman Devin Nunes is a public servant of unmatched talent, unassailable integrity, and unwavering resolve. He uncovered the greatest scandal in American history.

This is the narrative in service of which Nunes wrote his famous memoa narrative in which he stood courageous against a plot to get the president. Yes, there is truth in the memo. But it was all in the service of this falsehood.

Read more from the original source:

About That Presidential Medal of Freedom: Revisiting the Nunes Memo - Lawfare