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Comment by katmannthree | Hacker News Reader

Hypothetically, suppose you work for an intelligence agency. Suppose that your specific role is to monitor foreign influence in the US.

What do you do when in your opinion (possibly supported by classified evidence) that duly elected president is compromised by foreign intelligence? What do you do when the president makes decisions that hurt the US and help countries opposed to us?

Suppose there's some irrefutable classified evidence that he's compromised and under foreign control. Do you really sit by and do nothing?

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Reality Winner didn't sit by and do nothing, in precisely the situation you describe. What are you doing to support her?

Classification isn't holy writ. In order to save the union, you'd be justified to publish anything under your own name. That would be more believable than anonymous leaks that can't be discerned about the general noise floor of anonymous leaking. Snowden put his own name on his releases. Why can't this hypothetical heroic spook do the same?

Suppose there isn't really any such evidence, your opinion is all there is, your intelligence agency has an awful reputation and is infamous for steering the country into conflicts and crises through falsified evidence and statements, and you work to remove the president.

Do you agree that if there is real legitimate evidence of him being compromised then working with congress to legally remove him from office according to the process given in the constitution is the right choice?

Do you agree that if there's real legitimate evidence of the FBI and CIA lying to the FISA court in order to spy on a political campaign that Comey and Brennan should be imprisoned?

Yes, absolutely. Just like clapper should have been for lying to congress.

That doesn't absolve trump of consequences for his own actions though. If he's dirty too, then he needs to go.

Sure but what did they lie about to the FISA court?

Did they not make up something about Trump's lady friends pissing on a bed in Moscow?

That was an allegation in the Steele dossier. What Nunes had alleged in the “Nunes Memo” was that the FBI mischaracterized the provenance of the Steele dossier in their FISA application to surveil Carter Page. At the time, the FISA application was classified and no one could see it.

When it was declassified, it turned out that Nunes was lying. See https://vault.fbi.gov/d1-release/d1-release/view footnote at the bottom of page 15, top of page 16. Steele is source #1.

So did they piss the bed or not?

Read the Steele report and Keith Schiller's testimony to congress and decide for yourself.

I have read enough of "The Steele Report" to decide that it was fabricated from whole cloth. That's also what everyone in FBI thought.

It’s weird though that Keith Schiller and Trump changed their stories about what happened that night right?

Sure? Please get back to me when there's more evidence of that than what I just outlined.

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