This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 |
I don't think we should include this in the article because it merely promotes a Trump's self-interests. Our readers deserve better.- Mr X 🖋 20:40, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
third-party analysis and facts collected by reliable sources." Well, if that's what you want, here's a sampler: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] Falling Gravity 22:34, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
The fact that he called the response memo "very political and long" should be noted, even if the entire tweet is not included.Falling Gravity 22:52, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
Trump criticized the memo, calling it "very political and long."to the "Rebuttal memo" section. Maybe more details about the tweet could be added. Falling Gravity 03:25, 11 February 2018 (UTC)
Nope. It's undue and yes, if we did include it then any significant responses need to be included as well. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 07:18, 11 February 2018 (UTC)
1. Should the article describe the media campaign as supported by Russian Bots? 2. If yes to number 1, should the Russian bot support for the campaign be in the first defining sentence of the article? Casprings ( talk) 03:48, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
Support Both Multiple sources make this connection. See:
As such, this is foundational to the article. External support from a state actor is what makes this campaign notable. Casprings ( talk) 03:57, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
"Should this article state that 'ReleaseTheMemo' is a Russian-sponsored social media campaign in the lead sentence and without attribution?"Given that the sources all attribute that claim to ASD's "Hamilton," there is no reason for Wikipedia to eschew similar attribution. TheTimesAreAChanging ( talk) 07:00, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
Based on votes above, I think there is clear consensus to include "bots" in the body of page and to mention this in the lead, but not in the first phrase. My very best wishes ( talk) 18:57, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
This text does not belong in the lede:
In April 2017, Nunes stepped aside from chairing the House Intelligence Committee's Russia investigation while the House Ethics Committee conducted an inquiry into possible ethics violation involving his secret coordination with the White House. He then began his own secret parallel investigation. The Ethics Committee investigation ended in December 2017, and Nunes later claimed he had never recused.
This article is about a Congressional Republican-authored memo which is only referred to as the "Nunes" memo. It's not a Nunes memo per se, as it has the backing of the Republican majority of the Congressional Committee which released this. Thus, since this article is not about Nunes himself and since this memo is not of his exclusive provenance, it's a WP:NPOV violation to include, in the lede, the information about Nunes having been involved in an ethics inquiry. Such language detracts from the proper use of this lede, which is to summarize/introduce an article about the memo. Comments? Xerton ( talk) 02:22, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
Nunes' dishonesty and collaboration with the White House, beginning with his so-called stealth "midnight ride" before his un-recusal to get propaganda material from POTUS's staff, is the central background to this memo per RS. This lede text could be shortened and made more direct to point out its central significance, but the substance of the RS narrative can't be denied in the lede so as to support the White House/Fox News false narrative. RS do not describe the memo as a good faith governmental instrument. It is characterized in detail as part of of a now-failed disinformation strategy. SPECIFICO talk 14:25, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
The fact that Nunes has been in contact with Flynn (who's been convicted of lying to the FBI) should also be mentioned [10]. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 16:10, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
A policy compliant article isn't necessarily a well-written one. I'm not here to WikiLawyer or split hairs, but from a basic style argument, the disputed text is out of place in the lead. It is the only text in the lead not directly concerning the memo/its release. The first paragraph rightfully defines the memo, then digresses and goes back in time to clumsily explain who Nunes is, yadda yadda yadda. The second paragraph discusses the memo and concerns over its release. The third paragaph summarizes #ReleaseTheMemo, and the fourth summarizes the release and aftermath. Now, I am not arguing that Nunes' stepping aside should be removed from the article, merely that its inclusion in the lead is logically and stylistically the most distant outlier, and I argue that its omission from the lead does not significantly hinder comprehension of the lead, nor the article. --Animalparty! ( talk) 00:31, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
Wrong factually -- it lacks source cites and seems the wording is distorting the cites I find. The label "secret" for the investigation seems WP:WEASEL improper, the portrayal of the ethics result as "ended" should say "cleared" him, and the December date followed by saying Nunes "claimed" he never recused is misleading about the timing as that came soon after the reports of recusal and is not "claimed" as it is not in doubt. While many in April did initially cover Nunes stepping away during the ethics probe as "recusal", that was also said only "stepping aside as head" to the committee investigation per Washington Post, and he remained the Chairman of the committee. The coverage corrections that he did not recuse was done at the start of June per Washington Examiner and relayed by MSNBC / Rachel Maddow, or by or LA Times. The parallel probe for FBI leaks/bias/partisan spinning was covered by September by CNN, and reported as starting in March 2017 The Atlantic. Cheers Markbassett ( talk) 03:17, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Does this encyclopedia article about a memo really need to include a full quote calling Devin Nunes a "nut job"? While I agree we can include John Dean's commentary, his personal beef against Devin Nunes is irrelevant here. Falling Gravity 22:35, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
I disagree. John Dean is the former White House Counsel to Richard Nixon, was involved in Watergate and was a witness in a federal investigation. He is indeed *uniquely* qualified to comment. And we have a response section with other quotes - so why not this one? Because it's negative? That's not a valid reason, that's just WP:IJUSTDONTLIKEIT. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 14:41, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
The rebutting Schiff memo uses this phrase:
There is a definition for the term at https://www.fbi.gov/about/leadership-and-structure/intelligence-branch
I would like to know where this phrase should link. I don't know if it is worth an entire article on Wikipedia but am confused by Intelligence_(disambiguation)#Information,_including_its_acquisition and which article would be best deserving on a redirect, where to put a section for it.
Would this fit somewhere under espionage? ScratchMarshall ( talk) 00:33, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
I suggest that this article be moved to a title that includes both the Rep and Dem memos. It makes little sense to have two articles. O3000 ( talk) 02:09, 25 February 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for creating the redirects, if only to stymie premature article creation. I oppose a rename of this. There is no collective name. "Nunes memo" is what it has been called, everywhere and for weeks, and the Dem response is not called "Democratic memo" or "Schiff memo" (well, occasionally) or anything like that - it's called "Democratic response to the Nunes memo." It was the "Nunes memo" that was the target of all the hype (including the phony #Releasethememo buildup, which the Republicans promoted as if urging some unknown censor to release it, even though it was in their power to release it all along). This is the Nunes memo, and the response/debunking should be right here in the same article. -- MelanieN ( talk) 01:23, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
I don't think that it should be a separate article, but it puts the Nunes memo in a new light. SPECIFICO talk 23:15, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
The section on the rebuttal memo needs some serious expansion. Not sure right now if it needs to have its own article but DUEWEIGHT would suggest that it does indeed. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 07:49, 25 February 2018 (UTC)
We have a detailed "contents" section spelling out the allegations in the memo. It seems to me that the Democratic response should be paired with that section. Either point-by-point as the issues are raised, or (probably better) in a section immediately below it, "Responses", organized in the same way and responding in the same order to the allegations. -- MelanieN ( talk) 01:29, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
How exactly is this considered a conspiracy theory? Especially after the release of the Democrats (Schiff) memo which corroborates many of the facts in the original (Nunes) memo, even though it was supposed to rebut them. I can't remove the category because the article is locked but another Wikipedia user needs to remove the conspiracy theory category ASAP... PZP-003 ( talk) 09:52, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
Nunes had argued for months that the FBI and DOJ had taken part in a conspiracy.Nunes counts. That's Schiff, but at some point even Dems add up to someone.:) O3000 ( talk) 00:32, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
We could, and should, easily create a whole section about this:
"The Nunes memo is designed to do just that by furthering a conspiracy theory that a cabal of senior officials within the FBI and the Justice Department were so tainted by bias against President Donald Trump that they irredeemably poisoned the investigation." [17]
-- BullRangifer ( talk) PingMe 00:35, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
WaPo, Newsweek, The Guardian, NYTimes, ChicagoTrib O3000 ( talk) 00:53, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
The more salient issue is whether "conspiracy theory" is a defining trait of the memo, per WP:CATDEF and WP:DEFINING, and also whether placing the article under "conspiracy theories" violates NPOV. --Animalparty! ( talk) 00:58, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
Bottom line: Read Conspiracy theory. It doesn’t just mean every time someone detects or describes a conspiracy. It’s a term with negative connotations and a very narrow definition: “an explanation of an event or situation that invokes an unwarranted conspiracy, generally one involving an illegal or harmful act carried out by government or other powerful actors. Conspiracy theories often produce hypotheses that contradict the prevailing understanding of history or simple facts. The term is often a derogatory one.” For example, the Russia investigation describes or alleges a conspiracy, but the Russia investigation is not a conspiracy theory. And while partisans may throw around the term “conspiracy theory” for the Nunes memo, it doesn’t match our definition of the term. -- MelanieN ( talk) 01:31, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
The Nunes memo very closely matches the definition MelanieN provides above. I'm not proposing a move to Nunes memo (conspiracy theory), but the nature and purpose of the memo is to promote a false narrative of secret government malfeasance. SPECIFICO talk 01:42, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
The fatal flaw of the Nunes memo conspiracy theories, in one exchange
The Nunes memo is designed to do just that by furthering a conspiracy theory that a cabal of senior officials within the FBI and the Justice Department were so tainted by bias against President Donald Trump that they irredeemably poisoned the investigation.
Instead of evidence, the memo engages in the same dark and misleading conspiracy theories that have characterized other efforts by President Trump’s allies to discredit the Russia investigation.
Nunes memo reveals congressman’s penchant for conspiracy theoriesO3000 ( talk) 02:06, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
Three pieces of crucial information that the newly released Democratic memo does not disprove:
It provides no information to disprove the Republican claim that the DOJ and the FBI relied heavily on the Steele “dossier” to obtain the first of four FISA search warrants against Carter Page.
It fails to establish that DOJ and the FBI properly informed the FISA court that the Steele dossier had been commissioned and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign (a vague footnote doesn't count).
It fails to counter the GOP claim that FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe admitted to the House Intelligence committee during his closed-door testimony on December 19, 2017 that without the dossier, the government never could have obtained a FISA court warrant to spy on U.S. citizen Carter Page.
Someone should update the article with this relevant information.
PZP-003 ( talk) 10:01, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
It's easy to say that it doesn't refute anything when a lot of the relevant information is heavily redacted...Persistent Corvid 01:23, 28 February 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by PersistantCorvid ( talk • contribs)
All of the responses in the "Others" section are critical of the memo. Even worse many of the people quoted are known critics of Nunes and Trump. There should be some responses in this section that support the findings of the memo. Otherwise the section should be re-named to something else like "Criticism". PZP-003 ( talk) 05:36, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
PZP-003, you complain about some article(s) that you see as "heavily biased and not NPOV". Do you realize that NPOV DOES NOT require content or sources (and thus articles) to be unbiased or neutral? It DOES require editors to remain neutral in how they edit and deal with biased content. For more on this, please read my essay: WP:NPOV means neutral editors, not neutral content. -- BullRangifer ( talk) PingMe 05:01, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
Disinformation in the memo should be labeled "allegations". When we have more accurate information, we need to use that word.
Currently we have this:
That isn't entirely accurate, so should we correct it?
How should we improve this?
Criticism sections are normally discouraged, and having all rebuttals in the Response section is't good. The rebuttals should be connected to the claims and allegations. -- BullRangifer ( talk) PingMe 18:09, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
References
The purpose section is weird (and weirdly placed.) It seems to date back to an older version of the article before the memo was released. However, now that we have a section on the "contents", what exactly is the purpose section for? Should the two be merged? Is the purpose section supposed to summarize the argument the memo was trying to make, or is it about what it was trying to accomplish politically? Right now it seems like we're summarizing the memo's argument twice. -- Aquillion ( talk) 08:46, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
I made
this revert because I generally didn't think these edits were an improvement; as I said in my edit summary, it felt like it was trying to shift from secondary coverage (which provided context and interpretation) to perform
WP:OR on primary sources. There were also a lot of removals with very little in the way of explanation. Some of the added sources were also questionable (a Youtube video?), while many of the ones that were removed served important purposes - secondary sources reporting on CNN's coverage both illustrate its importance and provide us with a broader range of interpretation to draw on. I was particularly bothered by the removal of two key, well-sourced pieces of relevant context - Prior to release of the memo, news media reported that Trump told his associates that release of the memo would discredit the investigation
, and Allies of Trump tried to move focus away from the Trump presidential campaign's alleged role in the Russian election interference by attempting to use the Nunes memo to portray the
Special Counsel investigation as the real scandal.
The edits also added a bunch of quotes in a way that I don't feel improved the article - generally speaking, summaries cited to reliable secondary sources that provide interpretation and analysis are preferable to direct quotes. --
Aquillion (
talk) 06:25, 10 May 2018 (UTC)
Ah, talk! Cool. Hello!
I reverted the changes to what I called 'secondary sources' but what I should have really called 'indirect citations'. IMHO, the citation should link to the article making the assertion instead of an article pointing to the article making the citation. Please examine the citations I added back to see what I mean. If you agree we shouldn't have indirect citations, please remove them. Or, make them direct citations by attaching them to content/analysis which is added to the WP article.
I didn't simply remove,
-- 'Prior to release of the memo, news media reported that Trump told his associates that release of the memo would discredit the investigation'.
I replaced it with,
++ 'On February 2nd, CNN reported, "In recent phone calls, Trump has told friends he believes the memo would expose bias within the FBI's top ranks and make it easier for him to argue the Russia investigations are prejudiced against him, according to two sources." [12]'
Why? Because we said 'news media' said associates said Trump said.. what? It wasn't even quoted. Not compelling. So let's dig the actual text out of the citations. Looking at the first citation we see it says 'according to CNN'. So let's remove that indirect citation. The second citation is the CNN report. Great! Why not quote the CNN article directly so it's clear exactly what the source of the information is. Basically CNN is asking us to trust them and their sources and their summary of a sentiment. That's fine, but IMHO it should be a quote attributed to CNN.
Is adding a YouTube video against WP policy? IMHO, that's the great thing about WP as opposed to a book. We can link to actual interviews instead of their transcripts. Seeing their body language adds a lot IMHO. That's what I did in this case:
"Are you likely to fire Rosenstein? Do you still have confidence in him after reading the memo?" Trump replied, "You figure that one out."
Speaking of which, I didn't simply remove,
-- 'Allies of Trump tried to move focus away from the Trump presidential campaign's alleged role in the Russian election interference by attempting to use the Nune's memo to portray the Special Counsel investigation as the real scandal'
I replaced it with,
++ 'Prior to the memo's release, Trump was asked, "Are you likely to fire Rosenstein? Do you still have confidence in him after reading the memo?" Trump replied, "You figure that one out."[13] When asked to comment on Trump's answer, White House Deputy Press Secretary [Raj Shah] said, "No changes are going to be made at the Department Of Justice. We fully expect Rod Rosenstein to continue on as the Deputy Attorney General"[14].'
In the first place, the original text is editorializing by ascribed a motive to action. There is a _debate_ as to the motive. Did Trump want the memo released to discredit the SC and fire him? Trump certainly fueled that suspicion by replying, "You figure that out". So I included it. But later, his spokeperson said the AG would stay on. So I included that too. If there were other quotes or events that support one suspected motive or another, let's include 'em. If there is compelling analyses for one motive or another then let include that, but in quotes with a citation. Otherwise, let's present facts and quotes and leave it to the reader draw conclusions.
All that said, I've learned my lesson that edits that modify or remove should be kept separate from those that simply add content and should be justified in the talk section. I certainly appreciated the time you're taking to discuss the edits here and will pay it forward. Kingces95 23:36, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
'Prior to release of the memo, news media reported that Trump told his associates that release of the memo would discredit the investigation'.is an accurate, complete, and factual summary of events according to the sources cited for it; as far as I know, no sources dispute that characterization. The quote you attempted to replace it with is entirely unsatisfactory and completely fails to capture the context that numerous reliable sources highlighted a vital to the timeline. Similarly,
Allies of Trump tried to move focus away from the Trump presidential campaign's alleged role in the Russian election interference by attempting to use the Nune's memo to portray the Special Counsel investigation as the real scandalis a factual summary of events cited to reliable sources, and replacing it with a random Trump quote lost that vital bit of context. Your reordering of the paragraph on Kessler had a similar problem - you pushed down the conclusion of the source in favor of dropping a quote in; but our job as an encyclopedia is to summarize the sources, not to encourage the reader to second-guess them. Piecing together a collection of "facts and quotes" in order to guide the reader to a conclusion is absolutely not how a Wikipedia article works - that is original research. Our job is to write an article that reflects the conclusion of the reliable sources, boiling down their coverage of the topic into a general summary of what someone would get by reading all of them. When multiple mainstream news outlets report something as fact, we're required to reflect it as fact here, rather than trying to turn it into a he-said, she-said game of quotes; we can represent when something is controversal or disputed, but only when we have sources of similar reliability and weight directly disputing it, which (at the moment) isn't the case here. Also, we should probably stop edit-warring over this; for now, please respect WP:BRD and give other people a chance to weigh in (or for us to try and work out a compromise) before trying to implement these changes again (we can run an WP:RFC if we really can't reach a consensus on them here on our own - admittedly sometimes hard when there are only a few users discussing something.) -- Aquillion ( talk) 02:32, 12 May 2018 (UTC)
In response to
A YouTube video in particular doesn't pass WP:RS on its own, since it lacks the editorial controls and fact-checking used by eg. the news sources cited in the original version.
This YouTube video contained an interview. Why do readers need to have it subject to 'editorial controls' when they can just watch it themselves? They might believe their own lying eyes? Specifically, this is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ldy8eBR5xtM&feature=youtu.be&t=18 What is so wrong about watching this?
You removed the quote Glenn Kessler analyzed in his fact checker blog so we are left with this:
Glenn Kessler, a fact checker for The Washington Post, analyzed an accusation made by Devin Nunes in a February 7, 2018, interview on the Hugh Hewitt Show.
What rational do you offer for not appending the quote he analyzed?
"The truth is that they [Democrats] are covering up that Hillary Clinton colluded with the Russians to get dirt on Trump to feed it to the FBI to open up an investigation into the other campaign."
Kessler may have awarded Four Pinocchios but he also stipulated to a number of facts which I will have included. Re-order/join the following quotes as you wish but I will see them included:
Kessler stipulated the following, "the Clinton campaign, via a law firm, did seek 'dirt' on Trump and Russia" and that "the FBI did use Steele’s reports to help obtain a court order allowing surveillance of a Trump associate" and that "Steele gave to the FBI material written by Clinton associates" and goes on to say, "for some, that may seem like a lot of smoke" yet maintains that it remains "a huge leap to say Clinton colluded with Russians" due to the multiple intermediaries between the Clinton campaign and Steele's Russian sources, namely "(a) the campaign hired (b) a research firm that hired (c) a researcher who spoke (d) to Russian sources."
No, not all of those are "facts", but lies and misrepresentation which he debunked. Do you really want to profile them? Is that what you're trying to do? If so, due weight requires that the debunking is more prominent than the lies. -- BullRangifer ( talk) PingMe 18:05, 12 May 2018 (UTC)
Ah, no YouTube due to copy right. Makes sense. But we can link to CNN.com directly if we'd like to reference a quote made during an interview.
First, if we include a citation which asserts a statement made during an interview, what justification exists for not quoting the statement in question?
Second, what justification exists for not including the rational of the fact checker for arriving at the conclusion the statement is a lie?
Specifically, let's look at Kesslers article and separate (1) facts to which he stipulates from (2) those he asserts are not true. I'd suggest we with just one so we focus the discussion. How about:
The Clinton campaign, via a law firm, did seek “dirt” on Trump and Russia.
When he wrote that, is he stating what he considers a fact or not?
Is it not a logical fallacy to assert Nune's statement is false before establishing Nune's statement is false? Wouldn't that be begging "Begging the Claim"? Aka " Begging the Question". Kingces95 ( talk) 20:43, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
We should strive to avoid logical fallacies in Wikipedia's presentation of facts. Do you disagree?
The paragraph under edit contains two fallacies.
Glenn Kessler, a fact checker for The Washington Post, analyzed an accusation made by Devin Nunes in a February 7, 2018, interview on the Hugh Hewitt Show. During the interview Nunes leveled this false accusation, "The truth is that they [Democrats] are covering up that Hillary Clinton colluded with the Russians to get dirt on Trump to feed it to the FBI to open up an investigation into the other campaign." Kessler's "Pinocchio Test" rating was: "There is no evidence that Clinton was involved in Steele's reports or worked with Russian entities to feed information to Steele. That's where Nunes' claim goes off the rails—and why he earns Four Pinocchios." According to Kessler "Four Pinocchios" equals a "Whopper" (the equivalent of an outright lie).
Adding the word allegedly before false resolves the first issue. Assuming we can agree on that edit then we can move on to addressing the second.
I'd suggest resolving the second fallacy by one or the other or both of the following:
The paragraph to harvest from Glenn which describes his logic is this one:
The Clinton campaign, via a law firm, did seek “dirt” on Trump and Russia. Steele did rely on Russian sources, supposedly contacts mined from his years as a spy. Steele did actively seek to draw attention to what he had found, though virtually no reporters wrote about his allegations before the election because they could not confirm them. And the FBI did use Steele’s reports to help obtain a court order allowing surveillance of a Trump associate — but that was after Page had quit the campaign.
For some, that may seem like a lot of smoke. But it’s a huge leap to say Clinton colluded with Russians to do this. Instead, you have (a) the campaign hiring (b) a research firm that hired (c) a researcher who spoke (d) to Russian sources.
Glenn argues there are sufficient intermediaries between Clinton and the Russians to assert a claim she colluded is a lie. Others may look at that chain and draw a different conclusion. And, indeed, the WSJ did make the leap. [1]:
The Washington Post revealed Tuesday that the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee jointly paid for that infamous “dossier” full of Russian disinformation against Donald Trump. They filtered the payments through a U.S. law firm (Perkins Coie), which hired the opposition-research hit men at Fusion GPS. Fusion in turn tapped a former British spook, Christopher Steele, to compile the allegations, which are based largely on anonymous, Kremlin-connected sources.
Strip out the middlemen, and it appears that Democrats paid for Russians to compile wild allegations about a U.S. presidential candidate. Did someone say “collusion”?
Neither authority makes a definitive claim on the question of Hillary's collusion with Russia: One called it a "leap". The other asks if anyone else said "collusion". Given that, are we prepared to assert the statement true or false definitively when we have two fact checkers, who take opposite sides, who themselves are not definitive on this point? I argue not, and we should either expand on Glenn's argument or include an alternate appeal to authority.
Kingces95 ( talk) 07:19, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
References
Concerning the recent updates and edits to this article, I'm going by
MOS:INTRO: "The lead section should briefly summarize the most important points covered in an article in such a way that it can stand on its own as a concise version of the article.
" This is why I think the lede should briefly touch on the recently released FISA documents, but go more in depth in the article (I put it under the IC responses because the DOJ chose to release the redacted docs).
Falling
Gravity 02:41, 24 July 2018 (UTC)
@ FallingGravity: Please would you identify your specific OR concerns?
/info/en/?search=Nunes_memo#Release_of_Carter_Page_FISA_warrant_applications soibangla ( talk) 01:22, 25 July 2018 (UTC)
I have removed the section about "The application also showed that all four of the FISA court judges who approved the applications had been appointed by Republican presidents." as undue trivia but it was reinstated by Soibangla twice with the edit summary ""13 Angry Democrats" are behind all this!". What the heck does that even mean? But besides that, the fact that anonymous judges are appointed by a former Republican president makes no difference and is undue trivia. PackMecEng ( talk) 17:43, 25 July 2018 (UTC)
The applications also weaken their claims of partisan bias, since the documents confirm that all four judges who signed off on the Page warrants were not only appointed by Republican presidents, but named to the FISA court by the GOP-nominated chief justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts.In context the 'Trump allies' in that paragraph unambiguously refer to Nunes and the claims he made relative to the memo. We could perhaps fiddle with the wording a bit, but I felt it was worth including since a few people here weren't certain of the relevance, and that source seems to state it unambiguously. -- Aquillion ( talk) 18:20, 25 July 2018 (UTC)
Every story I've seen about the FISA warrants has mentioned that the four judges were all appointed by Republican presidents. IMO we shouldn't add any interpretation ("see, this isn't a Democratic plot after all") but we should include that fact. Reliable Sources clearly do not regard it as trivia. -- MelanieN ( talk) 18:59, 25 July 2018 (UTC)
The applications also weaken their claims of partisan bias, since the documents confirm that all four judges who signed off on the Page warrants were not only appointed by Republican presidents, but named to the FISA court by the GOP-nominated chief justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts.As Aquillion stated: "that source seems to state it unambiguously."
We do not mention the partisan attacks or the likeAre you kidding me? This entire article is about a partisan attack. An attack document created entirely by a few of the Republicans on the committee, and spurned/debunked by the Democrats. All of the rhetoric has been partisan. That's why so many sources think it worth a mention that the judges are not likely to have anti-Republican leanings. -- MelanieN ( talk) 23:24, 25 July 2018 (UTC)
This discussion has gotten lengthy and rather repetitive. So let’s see where we stand. After several inserts and reversions, the sentence is currently in the article with multiple sources.
This isn’t an overwhelming consensus either way but definitely leaning toward inclusion. -- MelanieN ( talk) 19:24, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
There is something wrong with the timing here:
BullRangifer ( talk) PingMe 07:05, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
It is written a little weird but the vote to release the Nunes memo was on January 18. [20] The actual release of the memo was January 29. [21] To preempt them the Democrats put out their own memo January 24. [22] PackMecEng ( talk) 13:48, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
Nunes stated on March 28, 2019, “the FBI-DOJ falsely claimed this investigation did not begin until late July. We now know for certain that is not true.”
I see this as relevant because it appears to contradict a flat assertion without qualification (eg, "according to the FBI") in the Nunes memo: "The Papadopoulos information triggered the opening of an FBI counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016 by FBI agent Pete Strzok." soibangla ( talk) 17:21, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
This article has a "bias" cleanup tag. Does the article need to be revised in order to correct this bias? Jarble ( talk) 15:39, 25 April 2019 (UTC)
This article is in really bad shape. Reading through it is a real slog. It is rife with repetition. If you want to simply know what the Nunes memo actually SAYS, you are confronted with a wall of text that mostly consists of point by point refutations rather than the actual content. The criticisms should be limited to the criticisms section, etc. The lede attempts to recap the entire article. There is not even a pretense of avoiding political bias. I would be happy to spend a little time rehabilitating the article. Warren Platts ( talk) 16:07, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
Horowitz’s report into the Crossfire Hurricane investigation shows that mistakes were made in the applications for FISA warrants to wiretap Carter Page, so is there anything in Horowitz’s report that can be used in this article? Blaylockjam10 ( talk) 19:50, 10 December 2019 (UTC)
We determined that the Crossfire Hurricane team's receipt of Steele's election reporting on September 19, 2016 played a central and essential role in the FBI's and Department's decision to seek the FISA order. As noted above, when the team first sought to pursue a FISA order for Page in August 2016
McCabe testified that "no surveillance warrant would have been sought from the FISC without the Steele dossier information"and others have echoed that as fact, though McCabe and Swalwell say it's not true. The HPSCI authorized the release of McCabe's testimony transcript some weeks ago, but I haven't seen it yet.
they decided they did not have adequate probable causeThe investigators thought they had probable cause, but their superiors disagreed until the dossier came in. soibangla ( talk) 23:47, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
Linking it here for reference: https://www.justice.gov/storage/120919-examination.pdf 06:22, 11 December 2019 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Notanipokay ( talk • contribs)
“On July 21, 2018, the Justice Department released heavily redacted versions of four FISA warrant applications for Carter Page which showed that key assertions made in the Nunes memo were false or misleading, corroborating the rebuttal made by Democrats.” This is false, Democrats claimed to refute Nunes assertions without factual basis. IG report subsequently confirmed Nunes’ findings. Levinpl ( talk) 04:41, 16 December 2019 (UTC)
Please show how the IG Report specifically addresses the three bullets in the section, which does not assert the Nunes Memo was completely false. soibangla ( talk) 02:20, 17 December 2019 (UTC)
There's a lot of usable information in this WaPo story link. The article concludes that Horowitz's report validates much of the Nunes memo, contrary to many of the media (and Democrat) reports. The Democrat's rebuttals section in that article should be a bigger deal, given how much was incorrect. This article honestly needs a re-write from the ground up. Mr Ernie ( talk) 20:53, 17 December 2019 (UTC)
It is obvious to anyone who has been through a GA review, or works at NPP and AfC that the article needs to be updated and the lead rewritten. It is too long, UNDUE in much of its detail, and inaccurate because it is based on older biased reporting, some of which we now know were born of lies from involved parties trying to cover their illegal actions. The ongoing criminal investigation by Durham will more than likely seal the deal; his report will basically provide further details in the indictments. Other concerns include the discrediting of RS that happen to favor the Nunes POV, including the WSJ editorial board. The proof is in the pudding and Mr Ernie is correct in many aspects and so are the other two editors who challenged the lead, WarrenPlatts and Blaylockjam10 and now me, so that makes 4 editors challenging similar aspects of the article. The WaPo article states, But how much is the Nunes memo itself vindicated? A fair amount, it turns out — at least in Horowitz’s estimation. We also have the scathing response from Judge Rosemary Collyer, the presiding FISA court judge along with corroborating articles in secondary sources such as the NYTimes and AP News. But this is rather typical of how RECENTISM plays out with biased reporting that is originally published to cause political harm to an opponent and then later debunked. One side of the political isle does not have the advantage over the other in that regard - they both do it. Atsme Talk 📧 17:32, 28 December 2019 (UTC)
This article needs a major overhaul, given the new information from the Twitter Files. https://www.aa.com.tr/en/world/leaks-show-twitter-found-no-evidence-of-russian-involvement-in-2018-hashtag-campaign/2786498 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Katzmann83 ( talk • contribs) 11:03, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
Breaking Down the #Memo is an excellent analysis and take down of the Nunes memo by a subject matter expert from Lane Powell PC. -- Valjean ( talk) ( PING me) 15:12, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 |
I don't think we should include this in the article because it merely promotes a Trump's self-interests. Our readers deserve better.- Mr X 🖋 20:40, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
third-party analysis and facts collected by reliable sources." Well, if that's what you want, here's a sampler: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] Falling Gravity 22:34, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
The fact that he called the response memo "very political and long" should be noted, even if the entire tweet is not included.Falling Gravity 22:52, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
Trump criticized the memo, calling it "very political and long."to the "Rebuttal memo" section. Maybe more details about the tweet could be added. Falling Gravity 03:25, 11 February 2018 (UTC)
Nope. It's undue and yes, if we did include it then any significant responses need to be included as well. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 07:18, 11 February 2018 (UTC)
1. Should the article describe the media campaign as supported by Russian Bots? 2. If yes to number 1, should the Russian bot support for the campaign be in the first defining sentence of the article? Casprings ( talk) 03:48, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
Support Both Multiple sources make this connection. See:
As such, this is foundational to the article. External support from a state actor is what makes this campaign notable. Casprings ( talk) 03:57, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
"Should this article state that 'ReleaseTheMemo' is a Russian-sponsored social media campaign in the lead sentence and without attribution?"Given that the sources all attribute that claim to ASD's "Hamilton," there is no reason for Wikipedia to eschew similar attribution. TheTimesAreAChanging ( talk) 07:00, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
Based on votes above, I think there is clear consensus to include "bots" in the body of page and to mention this in the lead, but not in the first phrase. My very best wishes ( talk) 18:57, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
This text does not belong in the lede:
In April 2017, Nunes stepped aside from chairing the House Intelligence Committee's Russia investigation while the House Ethics Committee conducted an inquiry into possible ethics violation involving his secret coordination with the White House. He then began his own secret parallel investigation. The Ethics Committee investigation ended in December 2017, and Nunes later claimed he had never recused.
This article is about a Congressional Republican-authored memo which is only referred to as the "Nunes" memo. It's not a Nunes memo per se, as it has the backing of the Republican majority of the Congressional Committee which released this. Thus, since this article is not about Nunes himself and since this memo is not of his exclusive provenance, it's a WP:NPOV violation to include, in the lede, the information about Nunes having been involved in an ethics inquiry. Such language detracts from the proper use of this lede, which is to summarize/introduce an article about the memo. Comments? Xerton ( talk) 02:22, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
Nunes' dishonesty and collaboration with the White House, beginning with his so-called stealth "midnight ride" before his un-recusal to get propaganda material from POTUS's staff, is the central background to this memo per RS. This lede text could be shortened and made more direct to point out its central significance, but the substance of the RS narrative can't be denied in the lede so as to support the White House/Fox News false narrative. RS do not describe the memo as a good faith governmental instrument. It is characterized in detail as part of of a now-failed disinformation strategy. SPECIFICO talk 14:25, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
The fact that Nunes has been in contact with Flynn (who's been convicted of lying to the FBI) should also be mentioned [10]. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 16:10, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
A policy compliant article isn't necessarily a well-written one. I'm not here to WikiLawyer or split hairs, but from a basic style argument, the disputed text is out of place in the lead. It is the only text in the lead not directly concerning the memo/its release. The first paragraph rightfully defines the memo, then digresses and goes back in time to clumsily explain who Nunes is, yadda yadda yadda. The second paragraph discusses the memo and concerns over its release. The third paragaph summarizes #ReleaseTheMemo, and the fourth summarizes the release and aftermath. Now, I am not arguing that Nunes' stepping aside should be removed from the article, merely that its inclusion in the lead is logically and stylistically the most distant outlier, and I argue that its omission from the lead does not significantly hinder comprehension of the lead, nor the article. --Animalparty! ( talk) 00:31, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
Wrong factually -- it lacks source cites and seems the wording is distorting the cites I find. The label "secret" for the investigation seems WP:WEASEL improper, the portrayal of the ethics result as "ended" should say "cleared" him, and the December date followed by saying Nunes "claimed" he never recused is misleading about the timing as that came soon after the reports of recusal and is not "claimed" as it is not in doubt. While many in April did initially cover Nunes stepping away during the ethics probe as "recusal", that was also said only "stepping aside as head" to the committee investigation per Washington Post, and he remained the Chairman of the committee. The coverage corrections that he did not recuse was done at the start of June per Washington Examiner and relayed by MSNBC / Rachel Maddow, or by or LA Times. The parallel probe for FBI leaks/bias/partisan spinning was covered by September by CNN, and reported as starting in March 2017 The Atlantic. Cheers Markbassett ( talk) 03:17, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Does this encyclopedia article about a memo really need to include a full quote calling Devin Nunes a "nut job"? While I agree we can include John Dean's commentary, his personal beef against Devin Nunes is irrelevant here. Falling Gravity 22:35, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
I disagree. John Dean is the former White House Counsel to Richard Nixon, was involved in Watergate and was a witness in a federal investigation. He is indeed *uniquely* qualified to comment. And we have a response section with other quotes - so why not this one? Because it's negative? That's not a valid reason, that's just WP:IJUSTDONTLIKEIT. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 14:41, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
The rebutting Schiff memo uses this phrase:
There is a definition for the term at https://www.fbi.gov/about/leadership-and-structure/intelligence-branch
I would like to know where this phrase should link. I don't know if it is worth an entire article on Wikipedia but am confused by Intelligence_(disambiguation)#Information,_including_its_acquisition and which article would be best deserving on a redirect, where to put a section for it.
Would this fit somewhere under espionage? ScratchMarshall ( talk) 00:33, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
I suggest that this article be moved to a title that includes both the Rep and Dem memos. It makes little sense to have two articles. O3000 ( talk) 02:09, 25 February 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for creating the redirects, if only to stymie premature article creation. I oppose a rename of this. There is no collective name. "Nunes memo" is what it has been called, everywhere and for weeks, and the Dem response is not called "Democratic memo" or "Schiff memo" (well, occasionally) or anything like that - it's called "Democratic response to the Nunes memo." It was the "Nunes memo" that was the target of all the hype (including the phony #Releasethememo buildup, which the Republicans promoted as if urging some unknown censor to release it, even though it was in their power to release it all along). This is the Nunes memo, and the response/debunking should be right here in the same article. -- MelanieN ( talk) 01:23, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
I don't think that it should be a separate article, but it puts the Nunes memo in a new light. SPECIFICO talk 23:15, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
The section on the rebuttal memo needs some serious expansion. Not sure right now if it needs to have its own article but DUEWEIGHT would suggest that it does indeed. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 07:49, 25 February 2018 (UTC)
We have a detailed "contents" section spelling out the allegations in the memo. It seems to me that the Democratic response should be paired with that section. Either point-by-point as the issues are raised, or (probably better) in a section immediately below it, "Responses", organized in the same way and responding in the same order to the allegations. -- MelanieN ( talk) 01:29, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
How exactly is this considered a conspiracy theory? Especially after the release of the Democrats (Schiff) memo which corroborates many of the facts in the original (Nunes) memo, even though it was supposed to rebut them. I can't remove the category because the article is locked but another Wikipedia user needs to remove the conspiracy theory category ASAP... PZP-003 ( talk) 09:52, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
Nunes had argued for months that the FBI and DOJ had taken part in a conspiracy.Nunes counts. That's Schiff, but at some point even Dems add up to someone.:) O3000 ( talk) 00:32, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
We could, and should, easily create a whole section about this:
"The Nunes memo is designed to do just that by furthering a conspiracy theory that a cabal of senior officials within the FBI and the Justice Department were so tainted by bias against President Donald Trump that they irredeemably poisoned the investigation." [17]
-- BullRangifer ( talk) PingMe 00:35, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
WaPo, Newsweek, The Guardian, NYTimes, ChicagoTrib O3000 ( talk) 00:53, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
The more salient issue is whether "conspiracy theory" is a defining trait of the memo, per WP:CATDEF and WP:DEFINING, and also whether placing the article under "conspiracy theories" violates NPOV. --Animalparty! ( talk) 00:58, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
Bottom line: Read Conspiracy theory. It doesn’t just mean every time someone detects or describes a conspiracy. It’s a term with negative connotations and a very narrow definition: “an explanation of an event or situation that invokes an unwarranted conspiracy, generally one involving an illegal or harmful act carried out by government or other powerful actors. Conspiracy theories often produce hypotheses that contradict the prevailing understanding of history or simple facts. The term is often a derogatory one.” For example, the Russia investigation describes or alleges a conspiracy, but the Russia investigation is not a conspiracy theory. And while partisans may throw around the term “conspiracy theory” for the Nunes memo, it doesn’t match our definition of the term. -- MelanieN ( talk) 01:31, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
The Nunes memo very closely matches the definition MelanieN provides above. I'm not proposing a move to Nunes memo (conspiracy theory), but the nature and purpose of the memo is to promote a false narrative of secret government malfeasance. SPECIFICO talk 01:42, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
The fatal flaw of the Nunes memo conspiracy theories, in one exchange
The Nunes memo is designed to do just that by furthering a conspiracy theory that a cabal of senior officials within the FBI and the Justice Department were so tainted by bias against President Donald Trump that they irredeemably poisoned the investigation.
Instead of evidence, the memo engages in the same dark and misleading conspiracy theories that have characterized other efforts by President Trump’s allies to discredit the Russia investigation.
Nunes memo reveals congressman’s penchant for conspiracy theoriesO3000 ( talk) 02:06, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
Three pieces of crucial information that the newly released Democratic memo does not disprove:
It provides no information to disprove the Republican claim that the DOJ and the FBI relied heavily on the Steele “dossier” to obtain the first of four FISA search warrants against Carter Page.
It fails to establish that DOJ and the FBI properly informed the FISA court that the Steele dossier had been commissioned and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign (a vague footnote doesn't count).
It fails to counter the GOP claim that FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe admitted to the House Intelligence committee during his closed-door testimony on December 19, 2017 that without the dossier, the government never could have obtained a FISA court warrant to spy on U.S. citizen Carter Page.
Someone should update the article with this relevant information.
PZP-003 ( talk) 10:01, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
It's easy to say that it doesn't refute anything when a lot of the relevant information is heavily redacted...Persistent Corvid 01:23, 28 February 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by PersistantCorvid ( talk • contribs)
All of the responses in the "Others" section are critical of the memo. Even worse many of the people quoted are known critics of Nunes and Trump. There should be some responses in this section that support the findings of the memo. Otherwise the section should be re-named to something else like "Criticism". PZP-003 ( talk) 05:36, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
PZP-003, you complain about some article(s) that you see as "heavily biased and not NPOV". Do you realize that NPOV DOES NOT require content or sources (and thus articles) to be unbiased or neutral? It DOES require editors to remain neutral in how they edit and deal with biased content. For more on this, please read my essay: WP:NPOV means neutral editors, not neutral content. -- BullRangifer ( talk) PingMe 05:01, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
Disinformation in the memo should be labeled "allegations". When we have more accurate information, we need to use that word.
Currently we have this:
That isn't entirely accurate, so should we correct it?
How should we improve this?
Criticism sections are normally discouraged, and having all rebuttals in the Response section is't good. The rebuttals should be connected to the claims and allegations. -- BullRangifer ( talk) PingMe 18:09, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
References
The purpose section is weird (and weirdly placed.) It seems to date back to an older version of the article before the memo was released. However, now that we have a section on the "contents", what exactly is the purpose section for? Should the two be merged? Is the purpose section supposed to summarize the argument the memo was trying to make, or is it about what it was trying to accomplish politically? Right now it seems like we're summarizing the memo's argument twice. -- Aquillion ( talk) 08:46, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
I made
this revert because I generally didn't think these edits were an improvement; as I said in my edit summary, it felt like it was trying to shift from secondary coverage (which provided context and interpretation) to perform
WP:OR on primary sources. There were also a lot of removals with very little in the way of explanation. Some of the added sources were also questionable (a Youtube video?), while many of the ones that were removed served important purposes - secondary sources reporting on CNN's coverage both illustrate its importance and provide us with a broader range of interpretation to draw on. I was particularly bothered by the removal of two key, well-sourced pieces of relevant context - Prior to release of the memo, news media reported that Trump told his associates that release of the memo would discredit the investigation
, and Allies of Trump tried to move focus away from the Trump presidential campaign's alleged role in the Russian election interference by attempting to use the Nunes memo to portray the
Special Counsel investigation as the real scandal.
The edits also added a bunch of quotes in a way that I don't feel improved the article - generally speaking, summaries cited to reliable secondary sources that provide interpretation and analysis are preferable to direct quotes. --
Aquillion (
talk) 06:25, 10 May 2018 (UTC)
Ah, talk! Cool. Hello!
I reverted the changes to what I called 'secondary sources' but what I should have really called 'indirect citations'. IMHO, the citation should link to the article making the assertion instead of an article pointing to the article making the citation. Please examine the citations I added back to see what I mean. If you agree we shouldn't have indirect citations, please remove them. Or, make them direct citations by attaching them to content/analysis which is added to the WP article.
I didn't simply remove,
-- 'Prior to release of the memo, news media reported that Trump told his associates that release of the memo would discredit the investigation'.
I replaced it with,
++ 'On February 2nd, CNN reported, "In recent phone calls, Trump has told friends he believes the memo would expose bias within the FBI's top ranks and make it easier for him to argue the Russia investigations are prejudiced against him, according to two sources." [12]'
Why? Because we said 'news media' said associates said Trump said.. what? It wasn't even quoted. Not compelling. So let's dig the actual text out of the citations. Looking at the first citation we see it says 'according to CNN'. So let's remove that indirect citation. The second citation is the CNN report. Great! Why not quote the CNN article directly so it's clear exactly what the source of the information is. Basically CNN is asking us to trust them and their sources and their summary of a sentiment. That's fine, but IMHO it should be a quote attributed to CNN.
Is adding a YouTube video against WP policy? IMHO, that's the great thing about WP as opposed to a book. We can link to actual interviews instead of their transcripts. Seeing their body language adds a lot IMHO. That's what I did in this case:
"Are you likely to fire Rosenstein? Do you still have confidence in him after reading the memo?" Trump replied, "You figure that one out."
Speaking of which, I didn't simply remove,
-- 'Allies of Trump tried to move focus away from the Trump presidential campaign's alleged role in the Russian election interference by attempting to use the Nune's memo to portray the Special Counsel investigation as the real scandal'
I replaced it with,
++ 'Prior to the memo's release, Trump was asked, "Are you likely to fire Rosenstein? Do you still have confidence in him after reading the memo?" Trump replied, "You figure that one out."[13] When asked to comment on Trump's answer, White House Deputy Press Secretary [Raj Shah] said, "No changes are going to be made at the Department Of Justice. We fully expect Rod Rosenstein to continue on as the Deputy Attorney General"[14].'
In the first place, the original text is editorializing by ascribed a motive to action. There is a _debate_ as to the motive. Did Trump want the memo released to discredit the SC and fire him? Trump certainly fueled that suspicion by replying, "You figure that out". So I included it. But later, his spokeperson said the AG would stay on. So I included that too. If there were other quotes or events that support one suspected motive or another, let's include 'em. If there is compelling analyses for one motive or another then let include that, but in quotes with a citation. Otherwise, let's present facts and quotes and leave it to the reader draw conclusions.
All that said, I've learned my lesson that edits that modify or remove should be kept separate from those that simply add content and should be justified in the talk section. I certainly appreciated the time you're taking to discuss the edits here and will pay it forward. Kingces95 23:36, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
'Prior to release of the memo, news media reported that Trump told his associates that release of the memo would discredit the investigation'.is an accurate, complete, and factual summary of events according to the sources cited for it; as far as I know, no sources dispute that characterization. The quote you attempted to replace it with is entirely unsatisfactory and completely fails to capture the context that numerous reliable sources highlighted a vital to the timeline. Similarly,
Allies of Trump tried to move focus away from the Trump presidential campaign's alleged role in the Russian election interference by attempting to use the Nune's memo to portray the Special Counsel investigation as the real scandalis a factual summary of events cited to reliable sources, and replacing it with a random Trump quote lost that vital bit of context. Your reordering of the paragraph on Kessler had a similar problem - you pushed down the conclusion of the source in favor of dropping a quote in; but our job as an encyclopedia is to summarize the sources, not to encourage the reader to second-guess them. Piecing together a collection of "facts and quotes" in order to guide the reader to a conclusion is absolutely not how a Wikipedia article works - that is original research. Our job is to write an article that reflects the conclusion of the reliable sources, boiling down their coverage of the topic into a general summary of what someone would get by reading all of them. When multiple mainstream news outlets report something as fact, we're required to reflect it as fact here, rather than trying to turn it into a he-said, she-said game of quotes; we can represent when something is controversal or disputed, but only when we have sources of similar reliability and weight directly disputing it, which (at the moment) isn't the case here. Also, we should probably stop edit-warring over this; for now, please respect WP:BRD and give other people a chance to weigh in (or for us to try and work out a compromise) before trying to implement these changes again (we can run an WP:RFC if we really can't reach a consensus on them here on our own - admittedly sometimes hard when there are only a few users discussing something.) -- Aquillion ( talk) 02:32, 12 May 2018 (UTC)
In response to
A YouTube video in particular doesn't pass WP:RS on its own, since it lacks the editorial controls and fact-checking used by eg. the news sources cited in the original version.
This YouTube video contained an interview. Why do readers need to have it subject to 'editorial controls' when they can just watch it themselves? They might believe their own lying eyes? Specifically, this is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ldy8eBR5xtM&feature=youtu.be&t=18 What is so wrong about watching this?
You removed the quote Glenn Kessler analyzed in his fact checker blog so we are left with this:
Glenn Kessler, a fact checker for The Washington Post, analyzed an accusation made by Devin Nunes in a February 7, 2018, interview on the Hugh Hewitt Show.
What rational do you offer for not appending the quote he analyzed?
"The truth is that they [Democrats] are covering up that Hillary Clinton colluded with the Russians to get dirt on Trump to feed it to the FBI to open up an investigation into the other campaign."
Kessler may have awarded Four Pinocchios but he also stipulated to a number of facts which I will have included. Re-order/join the following quotes as you wish but I will see them included:
Kessler stipulated the following, "the Clinton campaign, via a law firm, did seek 'dirt' on Trump and Russia" and that "the FBI did use Steele’s reports to help obtain a court order allowing surveillance of a Trump associate" and that "Steele gave to the FBI material written by Clinton associates" and goes on to say, "for some, that may seem like a lot of smoke" yet maintains that it remains "a huge leap to say Clinton colluded with Russians" due to the multiple intermediaries between the Clinton campaign and Steele's Russian sources, namely "(a) the campaign hired (b) a research firm that hired (c) a researcher who spoke (d) to Russian sources."
No, not all of those are "facts", but lies and misrepresentation which he debunked. Do you really want to profile them? Is that what you're trying to do? If so, due weight requires that the debunking is more prominent than the lies. -- BullRangifer ( talk) PingMe 18:05, 12 May 2018 (UTC)
Ah, no YouTube due to copy right. Makes sense. But we can link to CNN.com directly if we'd like to reference a quote made during an interview.
First, if we include a citation which asserts a statement made during an interview, what justification exists for not quoting the statement in question?
Second, what justification exists for not including the rational of the fact checker for arriving at the conclusion the statement is a lie?
Specifically, let's look at Kesslers article and separate (1) facts to which he stipulates from (2) those he asserts are not true. I'd suggest we with just one so we focus the discussion. How about:
The Clinton campaign, via a law firm, did seek “dirt” on Trump and Russia.
When he wrote that, is he stating what he considers a fact or not?
Is it not a logical fallacy to assert Nune's statement is false before establishing Nune's statement is false? Wouldn't that be begging "Begging the Claim"? Aka " Begging the Question". Kingces95 ( talk) 20:43, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
We should strive to avoid logical fallacies in Wikipedia's presentation of facts. Do you disagree?
The paragraph under edit contains two fallacies.
Glenn Kessler, a fact checker for The Washington Post, analyzed an accusation made by Devin Nunes in a February 7, 2018, interview on the Hugh Hewitt Show. During the interview Nunes leveled this false accusation, "The truth is that they [Democrats] are covering up that Hillary Clinton colluded with the Russians to get dirt on Trump to feed it to the FBI to open up an investigation into the other campaign." Kessler's "Pinocchio Test" rating was: "There is no evidence that Clinton was involved in Steele's reports or worked with Russian entities to feed information to Steele. That's where Nunes' claim goes off the rails—and why he earns Four Pinocchios." According to Kessler "Four Pinocchios" equals a "Whopper" (the equivalent of an outright lie).
Adding the word allegedly before false resolves the first issue. Assuming we can agree on that edit then we can move on to addressing the second.
I'd suggest resolving the second fallacy by one or the other or both of the following:
The paragraph to harvest from Glenn which describes his logic is this one:
The Clinton campaign, via a law firm, did seek “dirt” on Trump and Russia. Steele did rely on Russian sources, supposedly contacts mined from his years as a spy. Steele did actively seek to draw attention to what he had found, though virtually no reporters wrote about his allegations before the election because they could not confirm them. And the FBI did use Steele’s reports to help obtain a court order allowing surveillance of a Trump associate — but that was after Page had quit the campaign.
For some, that may seem like a lot of smoke. But it’s a huge leap to say Clinton colluded with Russians to do this. Instead, you have (a) the campaign hiring (b) a research firm that hired (c) a researcher who spoke (d) to Russian sources.
Glenn argues there are sufficient intermediaries between Clinton and the Russians to assert a claim she colluded is a lie. Others may look at that chain and draw a different conclusion. And, indeed, the WSJ did make the leap. [1]:
The Washington Post revealed Tuesday that the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee jointly paid for that infamous “dossier” full of Russian disinformation against Donald Trump. They filtered the payments through a U.S. law firm (Perkins Coie), which hired the opposition-research hit men at Fusion GPS. Fusion in turn tapped a former British spook, Christopher Steele, to compile the allegations, which are based largely on anonymous, Kremlin-connected sources.
Strip out the middlemen, and it appears that Democrats paid for Russians to compile wild allegations about a U.S. presidential candidate. Did someone say “collusion”?
Neither authority makes a definitive claim on the question of Hillary's collusion with Russia: One called it a "leap". The other asks if anyone else said "collusion". Given that, are we prepared to assert the statement true or false definitively when we have two fact checkers, who take opposite sides, who themselves are not definitive on this point? I argue not, and we should either expand on Glenn's argument or include an alternate appeal to authority.
Kingces95 ( talk) 07:19, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
References
Concerning the recent updates and edits to this article, I'm going by
MOS:INTRO: "The lead section should briefly summarize the most important points covered in an article in such a way that it can stand on its own as a concise version of the article.
" This is why I think the lede should briefly touch on the recently released FISA documents, but go more in depth in the article (I put it under the IC responses because the DOJ chose to release the redacted docs).
Falling
Gravity 02:41, 24 July 2018 (UTC)
@ FallingGravity: Please would you identify your specific OR concerns?
/info/en/?search=Nunes_memo#Release_of_Carter_Page_FISA_warrant_applications soibangla ( talk) 01:22, 25 July 2018 (UTC)
I have removed the section about "The application also showed that all four of the FISA court judges who approved the applications had been appointed by Republican presidents." as undue trivia but it was reinstated by Soibangla twice with the edit summary ""13 Angry Democrats" are behind all this!". What the heck does that even mean? But besides that, the fact that anonymous judges are appointed by a former Republican president makes no difference and is undue trivia. PackMecEng ( talk) 17:43, 25 July 2018 (UTC)
The applications also weaken their claims of partisan bias, since the documents confirm that all four judges who signed off on the Page warrants were not only appointed by Republican presidents, but named to the FISA court by the GOP-nominated chief justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts.In context the 'Trump allies' in that paragraph unambiguously refer to Nunes and the claims he made relative to the memo. We could perhaps fiddle with the wording a bit, but I felt it was worth including since a few people here weren't certain of the relevance, and that source seems to state it unambiguously. -- Aquillion ( talk) 18:20, 25 July 2018 (UTC)
Every story I've seen about the FISA warrants has mentioned that the four judges were all appointed by Republican presidents. IMO we shouldn't add any interpretation ("see, this isn't a Democratic plot after all") but we should include that fact. Reliable Sources clearly do not regard it as trivia. -- MelanieN ( talk) 18:59, 25 July 2018 (UTC)
The applications also weaken their claims of partisan bias, since the documents confirm that all four judges who signed off on the Page warrants were not only appointed by Republican presidents, but named to the FISA court by the GOP-nominated chief justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts.As Aquillion stated: "that source seems to state it unambiguously."
We do not mention the partisan attacks or the likeAre you kidding me? This entire article is about a partisan attack. An attack document created entirely by a few of the Republicans on the committee, and spurned/debunked by the Democrats. All of the rhetoric has been partisan. That's why so many sources think it worth a mention that the judges are not likely to have anti-Republican leanings. -- MelanieN ( talk) 23:24, 25 July 2018 (UTC)
This discussion has gotten lengthy and rather repetitive. So let’s see where we stand. After several inserts and reversions, the sentence is currently in the article with multiple sources.
This isn’t an overwhelming consensus either way but definitely leaning toward inclusion. -- MelanieN ( talk) 19:24, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
There is something wrong with the timing here:
BullRangifer ( talk) PingMe 07:05, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
It is written a little weird but the vote to release the Nunes memo was on January 18. [20] The actual release of the memo was January 29. [21] To preempt them the Democrats put out their own memo January 24. [22] PackMecEng ( talk) 13:48, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
Nunes stated on March 28, 2019, “the FBI-DOJ falsely claimed this investigation did not begin until late July. We now know for certain that is not true.”
I see this as relevant because it appears to contradict a flat assertion without qualification (eg, "according to the FBI") in the Nunes memo: "The Papadopoulos information triggered the opening of an FBI counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016 by FBI agent Pete Strzok." soibangla ( talk) 17:21, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
This article has a "bias" cleanup tag. Does the article need to be revised in order to correct this bias? Jarble ( talk) 15:39, 25 April 2019 (UTC)
This article is in really bad shape. Reading through it is a real slog. It is rife with repetition. If you want to simply know what the Nunes memo actually SAYS, you are confronted with a wall of text that mostly consists of point by point refutations rather than the actual content. The criticisms should be limited to the criticisms section, etc. The lede attempts to recap the entire article. There is not even a pretense of avoiding political bias. I would be happy to spend a little time rehabilitating the article. Warren Platts ( talk) 16:07, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
Horowitz’s report into the Crossfire Hurricane investigation shows that mistakes were made in the applications for FISA warrants to wiretap Carter Page, so is there anything in Horowitz’s report that can be used in this article? Blaylockjam10 ( talk) 19:50, 10 December 2019 (UTC)
We determined that the Crossfire Hurricane team's receipt of Steele's election reporting on September 19, 2016 played a central and essential role in the FBI's and Department's decision to seek the FISA order. As noted above, when the team first sought to pursue a FISA order for Page in August 2016
McCabe testified that "no surveillance warrant would have been sought from the FISC without the Steele dossier information"and others have echoed that as fact, though McCabe and Swalwell say it's not true. The HPSCI authorized the release of McCabe's testimony transcript some weeks ago, but I haven't seen it yet.
they decided they did not have adequate probable causeThe investigators thought they had probable cause, but their superiors disagreed until the dossier came in. soibangla ( talk) 23:47, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
Linking it here for reference: https://www.justice.gov/storage/120919-examination.pdf 06:22, 11 December 2019 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Notanipokay ( talk • contribs)
“On July 21, 2018, the Justice Department released heavily redacted versions of four FISA warrant applications for Carter Page which showed that key assertions made in the Nunes memo were false or misleading, corroborating the rebuttal made by Democrats.” This is false, Democrats claimed to refute Nunes assertions without factual basis. IG report subsequently confirmed Nunes’ findings. Levinpl ( talk) 04:41, 16 December 2019 (UTC)
Please show how the IG Report specifically addresses the three bullets in the section, which does not assert the Nunes Memo was completely false. soibangla ( talk) 02:20, 17 December 2019 (UTC)
There's a lot of usable information in this WaPo story link. The article concludes that Horowitz's report validates much of the Nunes memo, contrary to many of the media (and Democrat) reports. The Democrat's rebuttals section in that article should be a bigger deal, given how much was incorrect. This article honestly needs a re-write from the ground up. Mr Ernie ( talk) 20:53, 17 December 2019 (UTC)
It is obvious to anyone who has been through a GA review, or works at NPP and AfC that the article needs to be updated and the lead rewritten. It is too long, UNDUE in much of its detail, and inaccurate because it is based on older biased reporting, some of which we now know were born of lies from involved parties trying to cover their illegal actions. The ongoing criminal investigation by Durham will more than likely seal the deal; his report will basically provide further details in the indictments. Other concerns include the discrediting of RS that happen to favor the Nunes POV, including the WSJ editorial board. The proof is in the pudding and Mr Ernie is correct in many aspects and so are the other two editors who challenged the lead, WarrenPlatts and Blaylockjam10 and now me, so that makes 4 editors challenging similar aspects of the article. The WaPo article states, But how much is the Nunes memo itself vindicated? A fair amount, it turns out — at least in Horowitz’s estimation. We also have the scathing response from Judge Rosemary Collyer, the presiding FISA court judge along with corroborating articles in secondary sources such as the NYTimes and AP News. But this is rather typical of how RECENTISM plays out with biased reporting that is originally published to cause political harm to an opponent and then later debunked. One side of the political isle does not have the advantage over the other in that regard - they both do it. Atsme Talk 📧 17:32, 28 December 2019 (UTC)
This article needs a major overhaul, given the new information from the Twitter Files. https://www.aa.com.tr/en/world/leaks-show-twitter-found-no-evidence-of-russian-involvement-in-2018-hashtag-campaign/2786498 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Katzmann83 ( talk • contribs) 11:03, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
Breaking Down the #Memo is an excellent analysis and take down of the Nunes memo by a subject matter expert from Lane Powell PC. -- Valjean ( talk) ( PING me) 15:12, 19 September 2023 (UTC)