Abuse and Power by Carter Page

[ajax18]

Carter talks about general warrants and the English case of Enmont vs. Carrington. It was the abuse of general warrants that drove much of the rage in the minds of colonists and made them willing to fight the Revolutionary war. It was James Madison who helped introduce the idea of probably cause. And yet in America as cell phones, emails, and other modern media and documentation have developed, we've lost that protection from general warrants. One must wonder how the country started with the principles of James Madison only to arrive under the principles of James Comey.

[ajax18]

It looks like he sued the FBI and Department of Justice for 75 million and case thrown out. Well, he believed in the system enough to file the lawsuit, right?

It's more like the Durham investigation. Durham's objective is not to incarcerate the deep state, but rather to expose what they've done and tell the story.

[honorentheos]

Ajax,

I had thought we were confirming the terms of agreement for reading and discussing the book. I see my misunderstanding appears to be you wish to focus on a shorter discussion focused around the excerpt where Carter discusses his 2016 speech. Ok.

All right I'm trying to collect my thoughts. I'm not running away and I'm trying very hard not to be confrontational. I'm just trying to understand your view. I guess I'm coming from the old freedom of speech, constitutional rights, and the idea that the justice and the actions of the justice department should be applied independent of political affiliation. Are you telling me you believe the opposite? Are you telling me that there should be a two tiered justice system, one for populist nationalistic candidates and one for establishment globalist candidates.

It seems I need to answer your question about what constitutes collusion, and the unasked questions associated with it, before coming back to this.

And I apologize for my ignorance on this. But could you give me a specific definition of what exactly Russian collusion is and maybe answer some of the questions I laid out on it in my previous post.

There's a ton of examples. One is that Mitch McConnell is married to a Chinese heir of a big corporate Chinese company and right now stands to inherit a lot of money from that side of his family. If he makes a law that favors this Chinese business is that treason against American business interests or Chinese collusion?

The accusation of collusion focused on if the Trump campaign and the Russian government, or agents representing Russian interests, worked together to undermine the Clinton campaign and benefit the Trump campaign.

There are tangential issues that aren't specifically collusion but matter to the discussion. For example, the Russian government viewed Clinton with hostility, as an extension of US-Russian policy going back to the fall of the Soviet Union, and with her tenure as Secretary of State when Putin began his third term as president. Putin views the fall of the Soviet Union as follows: “First and foremost it is worth acknowledging that the demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century. As for the Russian people, it became a genuine tragedy. Tens of millions of our fellow citizens and countrymen found themselves beyond the fringes of Russian territory." The transition from a command economy to a market economy under Yeltsin saw the initial foundation for potential true liberal democracy undermined as the move to privatize the economy resulted in widespread consolidation of power and wealth, while Yeltsin disbanded the fledgling parliament and ultimately bent the twig of Russian governance post-USSR towards a flawed, corrupt system that left many Russians disillusioned. Putin, among many others, viewed this as an orchestrated and intentional act on the part of the United States to undermine them and reduce their ability to act as a global power. When he speaks of the demise of the USSR as the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century, it isn't to bemoan a bad twist of fate but to affirm that Russia had been treated poorly and must therefore look inward to regain the influence and might that he believes to be Russia's inherent nature by right of God and history. The first eight years under Putin saw brutal wars in Chechnya, conspicuous murders of critical members of the press who spoke out against Putin, and blatant retaliation against Putin critics and opposing politicians. It further saw the Rose Revolution in Georgia that erupted into the Russo-Georgian War which mirrored what we saw in Ukraine until the Ukrainians resisted the invasion. That's getting ahead of the story but it's worth keeping in mind that was we see today is nothing new. On the flip side, the years of Putin's first two terms also saw the Russian economy prosper in the same way the Venezuelan economy did with rising oil prices driving the sense Russia was rebounding for Russians. This was the same wave Hugo Chavez rode, for context.

The Obama admin took over just as Putin's 2nd term came to an end, and the Obama administration sought a reset with the Russian government under President Medvedev. The world saw the change in presidential office as a chance to affirm Russian commitment to constitutional rule even though Medvedev was Putin's guy whose tenure was largely seen as his being a puppet of Putin who served as PM during this period as the Russian constitution prevented him from running for a third consecutive term. While rocky, it became clear no reset was going to happen when Putin returned to the presidency in 2012. When the Ukrainian President Yanukovych was ousted as a result of the Orange Revolution in 2014, Putin looked at the West, and particularly at the US, as once again meddling in Russia's rightful territory. His meeting with Obama directly before the invasion of Crimea showed the two leaders were not on the same page, as Putin repeatedly focused on this as well as what Russians saw as US interference in Syria and other "Arab Spring" events. It seems clear that whatever they were doing before this, Putin viewed 2014 as a pivotal year in US-Russian relations that he views as giving license to any and all attempts to do unto us as he believes we did to him.

All of this is context for the parallel issue of Russian interference in the 2016 election, which is independent of collusion with the Trump campaign.

This brings up the next issue of Russian ties/Russian interests possibly held by Trump, his organization, and members of his staff/campaign. This parallels the many claims that one sees that Hunter Biden is the lynchpin for entanglements between Joe Biden and foreign interests that represent ways the interests of the US might be secondary to those other interests. The so-called Mueller Report, as well as the 2020 United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, determined that there were numerous, serious issues with Russian influence over members of the Trump administration. This is where Manafort and Page land, having developed relationships with Russian interests that courts found problematic or outright illegal. Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Carter Page, Michael Caputo, Roger Stone, Trump Jr., Jared Kuschner, etc., etc., etc., were all flagged and investigated for their Russian connections. Lying about them resulted in numerous jail sentences which Trump pardoned or commuted.

This isn't collusion. That is being willing to sell out your country for personal profit.

So when collusion is brought up, it seems that Trump and others like him use it as an umbrella term to say there was no evidence of Russian contact. But that's not what was determined, nor what collusion means. The Mueller and Senate Intelligence Reports both determined that the Trump campaign was not able to actually collude with the Russian government against the Clinton campaign even though, 1) The Russian government directly interfered in the 2016 election in favor of Donald Trump, 2) numerous Trump staff and campaign members had problematic ties to Russian interests, 3) numerous members of those same folks lied about those ties, 4) Trump, while in office, behaved in a decidedly problematic way towards Putin including the infamous meeting in Helsinki where he ditched his translator and other staff including SS personnel to be with Putin without other Americans for two hours.

This is the category that McConnell's ties to Chinese business also falls under, where folks point to Clinton Foundation donations from Saudi and other foreign interests, etc. It's also where Trump's ties to Chinese business and the Chinese government land.

So this is also where the excerpt from the book has bearing. Carter Page tells us this (page 2, 1st full paragraph, 3rd sentence): "If Russia did interfere in US elections through social media, as some would later allege, the government in Moscow was simply treating our politics as our diplomats and NGOs had treated theirs." In other words, he is aligned with Putin's view of the justification of Russian interference. The next two paragraphs further emphasize that Page is viewing Russian/US relations from the same lens as Putin.

It's important to note that his Russian connections of interest predated this speech, mostly deriving from connections he had with Victor Podobnyy, who was convicted of being a Russian spy. In retrospect it appears that Page had not realized Podobnyy was a Russian spy, and was just a dupe believing he was making a business deal. It appears his testimony to the FBI when interviewed, suggested his information was used in the conviction of that spy ring while he was not charged. However, his ignorance of the intelligence efforts of the Russians seems to be what kept him from being scooped up then, but also why he didn't move forward with caution, either.

So when he showed up in the Trump admin in 2016 as their Russian expert, it raised eyebrows. His speech that July didn't help. The primary direct reporting of his speech I could find was originally on the Russian think tank site, Katehon. The video they apparently had of it has been pulled from YouTube, though.
https://katehon.com/en/article/carter-p ... ntral-asia

I did find what appears to be a PDF transcript, here:
https://www.desmog.com/wp-content/uploa ... Speech.pdf

It's long and has the feel of a midlevel business PowerPoint which, to be fair, is hardly the stuff of treason. But he does make multiple references in it to the paradigm noted above regarding Russia's role in the Central Asian and Eastern European regions as well as disparaging views of western hypocrisy and failures.

As a tangent, the Katehon website is an interesting window into the Russian worldview and it's anti-western propoganda if of interest.
https://katehon.com/en

You'll note that it favors attempts to pit the American People against the US Government ala populist rhetoric in numerous articles if you choose to browse. Make no mistake, populism in the US is being pushed by Russia.

Anyway, back to this:

I guess I'm coming from the old freedom of speech, constitutional rights, and the idea that the justice and the actions of the justice department should be applied independent of political affiliation. Are you telling me you believe the opposite? Are you telling me that there should be a two tiered justice system, one for populist nationalistic candidates and one for establishment globalist candidates.
...
I guess this is tough as well since Carter Page as an academic sought peace and commerce with Russia which he believed was in the interest of both countries. And he sought to understand and help other Americans understand the Russian perspective. He totally disagreed with Ted Cruz or even Mitt Romney on Russian foreign policy. And I do think he influenced Trump to muse, "Wouldn't it be great for both countries if Russia and the US got along and worked together."

Maybe if we could just try to stick to the excerpt you copied and that I reread. Is there anything Page said there that you believe to be a lie or even embellishment? Or are you just saying, he supported a nationalistic America first and economic nationalist campaign so of course justice was applied differently.

I hope you can see that this isn't about Republican v. Democrat, or Conservative v. Liberal, but questions of how much entanglement the parties in question had with Russia? And that, once a person lied under oath, they exposed themselves to legal jeopardy independent of other facts.

Let's start with that as I think I've made a good faith effort to answer your prior questions, then advance the discussion based on those answers.

[canpakes]

It looks like he sued the FBI and Department of Justice for 75 million and case thrown out. Well, he believed in the system enough to file the lawsuit, right? But more to the point, he had a lawyer representing him.

Was a lawyer representing Page for the $75 million dollar lawsuit? Apologies for not being current on that.

If so, then Page appears to somewhat shoot his own argument (as transcribed by ajax) down, since the reason Page gives for no one standing up for Truth, Justice and The American Way® is that any lawyer daring to do so would find him/herself unaligned with the Deep State cabal, and unemployed down the road. Yet, any lawyer’s/firm’s cut from that kind of settlement is sufficient to eliminate the need to go job hunting later. The financial disincentive that Page wants to claim exists doesn’t have much of a reason to exist at all.

[honorentheos]

Carter talks about general warrants and the English case of Enmont vs. Carrington. It was the abuse of general warrants that drove much of the rage in the minds of colonists and made them willing to fight the Revolutionary war. It was James Madison who helped introduce the idea of probably cause. And yet in America as cell phones, emails, and other modern media and documentation have developed, we've lost that protection from general warrants. One must wonder how the country started with the principles of James Madison only to arrive under the principles of James Comey.

The first FISA warrants did have probable cause. The error of Kevin Clinesmith related to the latter warrants in changing the text of an email to say Page was not a source for government agents is where the most obvious malfeasance lies rather than general warrants being used. Per his testimony, he did this out of bias against Page, believing the email was a typo that he chose to "correct" rather than do the right thing and confirm with the source. He lost quite a bit for cutting a corner out of bias, but the judge ruled it did not appear to be an intentional attempt to hurt Page, thus the probation rather than 0-6 months in prison most likely on the table instead.

[Res Ipsa]

Ajax, you might start with learning about campaign finance laws are and why they exist.

So you can't tell me whether or not it's illegal for a foreigner to contribute money to an American political campaign? It's an honest question because I don't know. An even more interesting question to m is why is that such a difficult question that requires me to learn about campaign finance laws and why they exist?

If you don’t know, but you want to know the answer, why aren’t you trying to find the answer? I’m not a campaign finance lawyer. If I wanted to know the answer, I would Google it. Why aren’t you doing that? I don’t know that it’s a difficult question if you are willing to take the time to look. But I know a couple of things from experience. First, campaign finance law is complicated because it involves self imposed limits on resources to win elections. That means it’s compromise legislation that will contain all kinds of limitations and exceptions as the people limiting their own funding try to make sure they aren’t placing themselves at a disadvantage.

Second, campaign finance law is complicated because the Supreme Court has held political donations are constitutionally protected speech, so at least parts of the laws that have been passed are unconstitutional.

Third, campaign finance law is complicated because of the extreme distribution of wealth. Look at how the 2016 Republican primary had candidates that were financed mostly by one rich person or family. With such an outsized ability to affect elections, individuals or organizations with vast financial resources have a tremendous incentive to devise schemes to exploit loopholes or get around the existing laws.

Finally, the only way for you and me to have any ability to act as a counterweight to monied interests is to combine our resources, which has led to complex laws involving Political Action Committees.

The answer to your specific question isn’t going to tell you much unless you understand why the answer is what it is. Without knowing the purpose of the law, you’ll have a factoid to sling around but no understanding at all.

Then it would help if you stop talking about “Russian Collusion.” It’s not a significant legal term — it’s a propaganda term favored by Trump.

So you can't tell me what Russian collusion is either, then? Were Republicans the only ones using the term during Mueller investigation? Are you saying you never heard it on CNN? What did Schumer mean when he proclaimed that Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2020 election?

I’m not telling you any of those things. The Mueller report explains why “collusion” Is not a relevant legal term. Whether anyone else used the term is irrelevant: It was the term Trump invented and popularized. I have no idea what he actually meant by it. I don’t care whether CNN repeated it or Schumer used the word collude in some sentence. If you want to know what Schumer meant, you’ll have to ask him. If we are talking about potential abuse by the DOJ, then the term “Russian Collusion” is a red herring. The DOJ investigation was not into Russian Collusion — it was into whether certain laws were broken.

The relevant legal term is “conspiracy” and it relates to agreements to violate laws.

I'm starting to wonder if any of these words even have any meaning. Conspiracy means to breathe together. What is a conspiracy, and why does that take an 8 volume philosophical treatise to answer? What exactly was the conspiracy between Donald Trump and Russia and how exactly did Russia help Trump win the 2020 election? Was it Russian trolls posting right wing talking points on Twitter? Is your contention that Julian Assange was helped by the Trump administration to release Clinton emails, but Mueller never could quite prove it?

I have no idea what you are talking about. Obviously, words have a range of meanings as well as etymologies. Obviously I’m not using Conspiracy to mean “to breathe.” Crimes are found in statutes, and terms are either defined in the statute or in the relevant court decisions. I don’t need eight sentences, let alone eight volumes, to give you a rough legal definition: (1)an agreement between our among individuals to violate the law and (2) a substantial step taken by at least one conspirator to advance the object of the conspiracy. For a more precise definition, read the relevant statute. I don’t know where you got your eight treatise talking point, but it confuses defining the words with a treatise on the history and development of conspiracy law over time.

Mueller found insufficient evidence of the required agreement under the relevant laws to establish a conspiracy. This is one of the areas in which you are confusing a criminal investigation with prosecution. It also illustrates the distinction between collusion and conspiracy. When used in its common sense, collusion can happen without an agreement. For example, Trump asking Russia to find Clinton’s e-mails followed by hacking of DNC servers by Russia could be considered as collusion, even if there were no agreement. Likewise, Manafort’s giving polling data to a Russian agent could fit the definition of collusion if Russians used it to target their cyber operations, even if there were no agreement to do so.

As to successfully changing the results of the election, that’s another red herring legally. My understanding is that the relevant laws do not require proof that any conspiracy succeeded - only that a substantial step was taken.

I don’t know why you are asking me things that bear no resemblance to what I’ve said. If you read the Mueller report, you’ll see that Mueller concluded that he did not find sufficient evidence of an agreement between Trump or his campaign and Russian representatives. I accept that as a reasonable conclusion of the investigation. It could be that Assange’s release of the e-mails affected the results of the election. Or that the Russian bot operation flooded social media with enough disinformation that it tipped the election to Trump. With such a low number of votes determining the result, any number of causes could have been sufficient to affect the result. But, while Mueller found a sufficient basis to charge a substantial number of Russians with crimes, he did not find sufficient evidence that those crimes were the result of an agreement between those Russians and Trump or members of his campaign. It’s the agreement that’s lacking — not evidence that Russia tried to help Trump elected in violation of US law.

Finally, if you want to see an actual political abuse of a special prosecutor’s office, read up on the investigation of the Clinton campaign and Bill Barr flying around the world in a desperate effort to find some evidence that the Clinton campaign and Ukrainians had somehow hoodwinked the world into believing that Russia was interfering with the 2016 election.

I'm trying to focus on Carter Page. If your point is that George Bush or Bill Barr committed similar abuses of power, your point is well received and I'll take your word for it. GWB is a part of the deep state as far as I'm concerned. But in the interests of time I really would appreciate if you read some of the Carter's book and tell me where you think he's lying in as concise a manner as possible. You're right that I'm a little ball of outrage after reading this book. So tell me exactly why Carter Page's story is just a right wing fabrication out of whole cloth with no basis in fact and how Comey and the Obama justice department were actually acting in a nonpartisan political manner. Or if you think they should have been acting in a partisan manner because it was Trump, that's ok too. I'm just trying to understand your ethical/legal position on this.

As Honor so elegantly said, a blow by blow examination of passages from the book are lies misses the important points. First, Page’s assertions in his book are his burden to prove, not mine to disprove. And if you want to claim that any given assertion from the book is true, then it’s your burden to prove they are true, not mine to prove they are false. So you pick the ones you want to talk about and provide evidence they are true. Then I’d be happy to talk about those specific assertions. But I’m not doing your homework for you. Page is a self-interested party who has been pushing his agenda through lawsuits and failing. That’s enough for me to not take his word on the color of the sky without checking.

I don’t think the DOJ should make partisan decisions. I also think that the fact that the DOJ investigated potential political corruption by people that happen to be of one political party in a specific case makes the DOJ partisan.

For example, I took criminal law from a guy that headed up the Abscam investigation, which was a bribery scandal almost entirely among democrats. That the crimes happened to be being committed by democrats did not mean that the DOJ was being partisan. Democratic Congresscritters were taking bribes and, as a Democrat, I want the DOJ to investigate and prosecute crimes, regardless of party affiliation.

Finally, with regard to being a little ball of resentment and rage, you were that long before you listened to Page’s book. And, as long as you seek out sources that are willing to tap into that range in order to make a buck, you’re just going to continue your rage addiction.

As for the “deep state” — that’s exactly who you want in the DOJ. The “deep state” is comprised of career, nonpolitical employees who aren’t subject to being hired and fired every time the presidency changes hands. The only reason that the deep State looks “liberal” to you is that the MAGA movement is so extreme that, like you, it labels conservatives from 20 to 30 years ago as “liberals.” The deep state is an anchor that gives some stability to the system over time. The “deep state” conspiracy you believe in is a paranoid fantasy. Rebranding GWB as other than the moderate Republican that he was and governed as is straight up delusion.

If you want to have a serious discussion about Carter Page’s claims, put them out there and we can discuss. But no Gish Galloping or whataboutism. Justin stick with the claim, the evidence, and we can go from there.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

It looks like he sued the FBI and Department of Justice for 75 million and case thrown out. Well, he believed in the system enough to file the lawsuit, right?

It's more like the Durham investigation. Durham's objective is not to incarcerate the deep state, but rather to expose what they've done and tell the story.

Would you please read Gad’s entire post for comprehension before responding to it? This skimming down and picking out a sentence at the end of a post thing you do leads to you responding in nonsensical ways because you don’t even have the context right. “F”. He makes a good faith effort and a quality post, and you just skim it and then respond to something you made up in your nugget. Disrespectful.

- Doc

[Res Ipsa]

It looks like he sued the FBI and Department of Justice for 75 million and case thrown out. Well, he believed in the system enough to file the lawsuit, right?

It's more like the Durham investigation. Durham's objective is not to incarcerate the deep state, but rather to expose what they've done and tell the story.

LOL. You have such a clear double standard when it comes to Relief Society and Ds, it’s amazing you can’t see it. The DOJ is supposed to investigate and, if appropriate, prosecute crimes. But when it comes to Durham, you think it’s peachy keen for him to investigate your vision of a liberal conspiracy (deep state) even though that’s not his job and he can’t find any evidence of a criminal conspiracy. You keep accusing others of having two standards, but you’re really talking about yourself.

[Gadianton]

Was a lawyer representing Page for the $75 million dollar lawsuit? Apologies for not being current on that.

If so, then Page appears to somewhat shoot his own argument (as transcribed by ajax) down, since the reason Page gives for no one standing up for Truth, Justice and The American Way® is that any lawyer daring to do so would find him/herself unaligned with the Deep State cabal, and unemployed down the road. Yet, any lawyer’s/firm’s cut from that kind of settlement is sufficient to eliminate the need to go job hunting later. The financial disincentive that Page wants to claim exists doesn’t have much of a reason to exist at all.

Yes. I wouldn't call myself current, but after that ridiculous right-wing meltdown Ajax quoted from Page, the first thing I looked for is evidence of Page ever using a lawyer.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/0 ... j-00054593

Page and an attorney representing him in the suit did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the ruling.

[Res Ipsa]

Carter talks about general warrants and the English case of Enmont vs. Carrington. It was the abuse of general warrants that drove much of the rage in the minds of colonists and made them willing to fight the Revolutionary war. It was James Madison who helped introduce the idea of probably cause. And yet in America as cell phones, emails, and other modern media and documentation have developed, we've lost that protection from general warrants. One must wonder how the country started with the principles of James Madison only to arrive under the principles of James Comey.

The plaintiff in the case was Entick, not Enmont. Did you read it? It was a case in which the executive ordered the search of a private home. The Court held that the search was a trespass of the homeowner’s property rights that was illegal unless the search was conducted pursuant to a statute or the common law (court precedent). It led to the practice of having search warrants issued by judges. It also influenced the adoption of the fourth amendment, with its probable cause requirement.

But what does this have to do with Carter Page? The warrant that affected him was issued pursuant to a statute enacted by Congress. That complies with the holding in Entick. And it was issued by a judge using the probable cause standard, which is what the 4th Amendment requires. So what’s the beef?

Is this one of the arguments that enraged you?