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2020-06-04 Home Front: Politix
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Rosenstein says he wouldn’t approve Russia warrant now
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 [APNEWS] Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told lawmakers Wednesday that he would not have approved an FBI surveillance application for a former Trump campaign aide during the Russia investigation had he known at the time about the problems that have since been revealed.
But he did approve it then, the consequential results including political sliming of innocent men, personal bankruptcies of victims, and inflaming political passions to the detriment of the nation as a whole. Prince Johnson is really sorry he videotaped Samuel Doe being tortured and castrated. He's a preacher now, and reformed. Samuel Doe, on the other hand, remains deader than Tut, and his agonies can't be undone.
Rosenstein’s comments amounted to a striking concession that law enforcement officials made mistakes as they scrutinized ties between Russia and Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Motive is key. If you do things on purpose they're not "mistakes." If they had been mistakes nothing would have happened after a short initial investigation.
 But even as he acknowledged the legitimacy of anger from Trump and his allies, he defended his appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller to lead the probe and affirmed his support for the conclusion that Russia interfered but did not criminally conspire with associates of the Trump campaign.
If Russian "interference" was confined to phony Facebook accounts and a bunch of bots, what was the need for a special prosecutor targeting the Trump administration? Why was Mueller given carte blanche?
“I do not consider the investigation to be corrupt,
That's a rose colored view. It was corrupt on its face, and now the facts are out to back up that statement.
but I understand the president’s frustration given the outcome that there was no evidence” of a conspiracy between the campaign and Russia, Rosenstein said.
Golly. I'll bet Trump also recognizes the frustrations of Adam Schiff, San Fran Nan, and Jerry Nadler.
His appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee was for the first in a series of oversight hearings scrutinizing the FBI’s Russia investigation and the law enforcement officials involved. With subpoena authority expected to be granted this week, the hearing served as the opening salvo of the GOP’s election-year congressional investigation into what they say are damaging findings about the Russia probe from an inspector general review.
What went around is what's coming around, y'say?
 The president’s allies have taken fresh aim at the Russia investigation over the last year, pointing to newly declassified information to allege that Trump and his associates were unfairly pursued. They have also claimed vindication from the Justice Department’s decision to dismiss the case against ex-national security adviser Michael Flynn and at times advanced unsupported theories against Obama administration officials.
Umm... Three words there: "January Fifth Meeting."
“We’re going to look backward so we can move forward,” committee chairman Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said in explaining the purpose for the hearings. “If you don’t like Trump, fine, but this is not about Trump or not liking Trump. This is about moving forward as a nation.”
Damage is done. Time to sift through the wreckage.
Graham also questioned whether Mueller should have been appointed at all. Rosenstein said he believed there was a sufficient basis for the investigation when he appointed Mueller in May 2017, but when Graham asked if he would agree that by that August, there was “no there there,” Rosenstein said yes.
May 2017 was five months into the administration. If I recall correctly, the calls for impeachment started coming a month before Trump was inaugurated.
Democrats lamented the hearing’s politically charged and retrospective nature, saying Republicans were attempting to refocus attention away from more urgent problems, including unrest in cities set off by the death of George Floyd and the coronavirus pandemic.
"Let's just Move On®. It's all in the past. We were all so much younger then!"
 “This hearing wastes this committee’s time in a blatant effort to support the president’s conspiracy theories and to help the president’s reelection,” said Democratic Sen. Mazie 'We Democrats know so much that we tend to alienate voters' Hirono of Hawaii.
Good to hear from the Sage of Honolulu. I don't recall her wanting to concentrate on problems of the moment during the patently biased witch hunts, the targeted events of which were coincidentally in the past when the fishing expedition began.
The hearing delved into detail in two areas that Trump allies have recently seized on to challenge the conduct of law enforcement.
Law enforcement has no place in politix, regardless of anyone's personal opinions. Law enforcement's job is to umm... enforce the laws.
Rosenstein was pressed repeatedly about his decision to sign off on the fourth and final application for a warrant to eavesdrop on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page on suspicion that he was a Russian agent.
 That's Carter Page, the sometime FBI asset...
Page has denied wrongdoing and was never charged with a crime, and a Justice Department inspector general report identified significant errors and omissions in each of the applications submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
Just little details that an assistant attorney general couldn't be expected to catch.
The watchdog said the FBI relied in part for its applications on a dossier of information compiled by a former British spy whose research was funded by Democrats and the Hillary Clinton campaign. The FBI used the dossier even though agents were aware of the possibility that it could have been colored by Russian disinformation and omitted information that called into question allegations they were making in the application.
Nobody thought the idea of Trump hiring hookers to pee on the bed Obama had slept in was umm... out of line? Unlikely?
Asked by Graham if he would have signed the warrant application knowing what he knows now, Rosenstein replied, “No, I would not.” 
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00:28 Angealing+B.+Hayes4677
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[APNEWS] Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told lawmakers Wednesday that he would not have approved an FBI surveillance application for a former Trump campaign aide during the Russia investigation had he known at the time about the problems that have since been revealed.
But even as he acknowledged the legitimacy of anger from Trump and his allies, he defended his appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller to lead the probe and affirmed his support for the conclusion that Russia interfered but did not criminally conspire with associates of the Trump campaign.
“This hearing wastes this committee’s time in a blatant effort to support the president’s conspiracy theories and to help the president’s reelection,” said Democratic Sen. Mazie 'We Democrats know so much that we tend to alienate voters' Hirono of Hawaii.