after Director James Comey stated that neither the FBI nor the Department of Justice (DOJ) possessed any information to support Donald Trump’s wiretapping allegations – Nunes stated on March 23 that the Trump administration’s communications might have been legally monitored during the transition period as part of an “incidental collection”.

its interesting to read the wiki and then piece together with whats going on with sullivan and flynn… which i think that they dont want people to do
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Tower_wiretapping_allegations

There is enough there to have fun making a timeline… be sure to use crayon as that is the tool de-rigour. However, what happens is that you start to figure out that somehow, all this is related given the timelines… and if so, the question of who revealed what so what was released even back then to even make guesses?

whose idea was to name the operation after a movie with whoopie goldberg?
Crossfire Hurricane (FBI investigation)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossfire_Hurricane_(FBI_investigation)
The investigation was officially opened on July 31, 2016, initially due to information on Trump campaign member George Papadopoulos’s early assertions of Russians having damaging material on Donald Trump’s rival candidate Hillary Clinton. From late July to November 2016, the joint effort between the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the National Security Agency (NSA) examined evidence of Russian meddling in the 2016 United States presidential election.

Actually not… “minimization instructions.” is not in play..

There are essentially two types of incidental collection. The first type is when legitimate foreign intelligence targets are speaking about a domestic person. The second type is when a legitimate foreign intelligence target is speaking with a domestic person. If the domestic person information is deemed not to have intelligence value then it is purged from government databases, but otherwise can be disseminated with minimization; in the first type of incidental collection the domestic names will be redacted, and in the second type of incidental collection everything the domestic person says will be redacted. As former CIA official Michael Morrell has put it, “In the second type of incidental collection, where the U.S. person is actually part of the conversation, typically nothing that U.S. person says can be disseminated.”

a big distinction they dont want you to ‘get’….
a conflation… which is where the split comes from they are so good making
one side kind of sort of knows.. the other side knows..
the sort of knows crowd is giving nefarious reasons to hate the knowing group
[this is why you dont see them do this or report on things everyone would agree on]

The tapes in question were made by who? the FBI? the FBI tapes international conversations? or were the tapes made by another agency and then ended up at the FBI? then whose unmasking rules apply?

The law in question they are all referring to without saying is: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)

[M]inimization at the acquisition stage is designed to insure that the communications of nontarget U.S. persons who happen to be using a FISA target’s telephone, or who happen to converse with the target about non-foreign intelligence information, are not improperly disseminated. Similarly, minimization at the retention stage is intended to ensure that information acquired, which is not necessary for obtaining, producing, or disseminating foreign intelligence information, be destroyed where feasible. Finally, the dissemination of foreign intelligence information needed for an approved purpose . . . should be restricted to those officials with a need for such information.

ah… so now… was this followed? was the communication destroyed?
was it necessary for Obama to know? how about others in his office?
if so, under what argument?

If the surveillance is pursuant to a court order or warrant, the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA Court or FISC) must find that the proposed surveillance meets the statutory minimization requirements for information pertaining to U.S. persons,[9] but intelligence agencies have broad discretion to spy without a court order or warrant, and so they must ensure compliance with those statutory minimization requirements under Section 702 of FISA

Under subsection 702(b) of the FISA Amendments Act, such an acquisition is also subject to several limitations. Specifically, an acquisition:
May not intentionally target any person known at the time of acquisition to be located in the United States;
May not intentionally target a person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States if the purpose of such acquisition is to target a particular, known person reasonably believed to be in the United States;
May not intentionally target a U.S. person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States;
May not intentionally acquire any communication as to which the sender and all intended recipients are known at the time of the acquisition to be located in the United States;
Must be conducted in a manner consistent with the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution

Now you have a checklist to make a determination from… 🙂

[expressing concern] in 2015 during the Obama administration, Representative Pete Hoekstra tweeted: “WSJ report that NSA spied on Congress and Israel communications very disturbing. Actually outrageous. Maybe unprecedented abuse of power.”

McCarthy also fills in some holes and connects the dots.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/michael-flynn-was-not-masked-because-fbi-framed-him-as-a-clandestine-agent-of-russia/

Notice that this guideline makes it the agency’s subjective call whether to mask a U.S. person’s identity. So, for example, even if the FBI has no actual evidence that Mike Flynn is a clandestine foreign agent — in fact, even if the Bureau has already decided to close a counterintelligence case on Flynn — it need not mask his name if it decides its baseless suspicion is reason enough to claim that Flynn’s conversations constitute “foreign intelligence.”

Or even if the FBI knows Flynn’s job as incoming national-security advisor is to consult with foreign counterparts, and even if the FBI knows Flynn has said nothing improper in his conversation with Kislyak, the Bureau is free to claim that Flynn’s name must be revealed in order to “assess the importance” of his conversations with Russia’s ambassador — something that is not done to other U.S. officials whose job is to consult with foreign emissaries, because the FBI knows it has no business monitoring the conduct of American foreign policy.

I think he is finally over his former admiration of his beloved agency, but it’s been a long hard battle.

https://libertyunyielding.com/2020/05/21/unmasking-susan-rices-memo-and-things-that-didnt-happen-for-1000-alex/

https://libertyunyielding.com/2020/05/23/grenell-tweet-on-kislyak-flynn-transcripts-suggests-interesting-scenario-for-what-the-fbi-was-doing/

Still fantasize about a post election Rep majority in the House doing an impeachment of Sullivan.

A realistic punishment for ex-FBI folk who are convicted / determined to have abused or violated FBI rules would be to have their pensions converted to the same social security amounts that normal folk have, rather than the gold-plated FBI (IRS for Lynch) pensions.

Not sure exactly what laws the corrupt FBI was violating, nor if the DOJ is even willing to prosecute, much less if a trial finds “guilty beyond reasonable doubt”.

However, “rule violation” is much easier to prove. And should be a much faster, normal punishment, that hurts far less than trial, but also avoids creating martyrs.

Sullivan getting impeached might qualify for some such reduced pension as punishment – which would make other judges less likely to do it.

https://jonathanturley.org/2020/05/22/a-date-with-destiny-d-c-circuit-gives-sullivan-10-days-to-defend-his-flynn-orders/

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/05/22/should-we-prepare-to-discover-the-fbi-never-officially-used-the-kislyak-flynn-transcript/

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/05/22/dni-ric-grenell-declassifying-flynn-kislyak-transcript-the-ic-doesnt-have-all-the-transcripts-summaries-it-wasnt-our-product/comment-page-2/#comment-8243684

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/05/22/interesting-segment-trey-gowdy-discusses-fbi-investigation-and-the-flynn-kislyak-transcripts-he-has-read/

https://hotair.com/archives/ed-morrissey/2020/05/15/flynn-attorney-mystified-entire-thing-sullivan-orders-whats-next/

He also notes that the Democrat Media did the same thing that I observed about a Lawfare post in another thread.
So when will Powell file an appeal? One might have expected that move already, but perhaps she’s waiting to see whether public opinion might push Sullivan into reversing himself and finally dispensing with this case. That might take a long wait, if Powell expects media scrutiny to move Sullivan. For instance, this Slate analysis that purports to rebut conservative criticism of Sullivan’s moves and explore his legitimate options never once mentions US v Sineneng-Smith nor US v Fokker Servs BV, the two precedents that speak directly to whether a federal judge has the authority to do what Sullivan is attempting here. Ditto this fawning look at Sullivan’s actions from the Washington Post out this morning.

No wonder most people think those the other party is living in a different world.
They do not intersect. ⇄