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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (1035648)	10/29/2017 4:04:21 PM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573733

A little bit about opposition research firms: These research firms are literally contracted to do research on politicians. The firm is /1 Laura Walker ??? @LauraWalkerKC hired for expertise in research, similar to hiring a law firm and/or a private investigator. The firm does the work for the client, but /2 the firm does not need to have the same political views as the client, and in fact opposing clients often hire the SAME firms for this. /3 The top firms for private research on this level are often staffed with attorneys, fraud examiners, former IC, former law enforcement as /4 these are experts in investigation. When you have a political candidate with known business and personal relationships in Russia and /5 former soviet satellites, the best opposition research firms will be ones staffed with experts on Russia - and IC experts will be the top /6 choice. An average oppo research firm will not have that type of expert on hand - you need a boutique firm with that specialty. So in /7 2016 POTUS primaries and election, the choices for oppo research firms that could track information and business dealings in Russia and /8 recognize the difference between benign business activity and red flag activity is actually narrow. Someone with Christopher Steele's /9 background and expertise is as high end as you can get. It is no surprise at all that numerous campaigns or campaign funders would seek /10 Oppo research from Fusion GPS. The fact that many clients retained them is not unusual. That is what they are in business for. And /11 Like a law firm, different people within the firm might work on overlapping cases, but that work is siloed. With all that being said, if /12 in the course of research, whether political, for a business merger, for a legal case or whatever, if in the course of in depth research /13 the research expert comes across something that has potential impact on national security (remember, UK is an ally) and the subject of /14 that research is likely to, or even not likely but potentially could enter a political position with national security implications, the /15 research expert reaching out to contact law enforcement or IC about the information is absolutely ethical. The Fusion GPS case shows /16 that regardless of who was paying for the information, and even when someone was not paying for it, the information found had so many /17 red flags that it was pursued whether or not that was funding by a client. It was pursued and law enforcement alerted. That is not /18 sinister. And it is also not unusual, particularly when a firm has former IC who know the potential ramifications of the information. /19 In short, nothing about who paid for oppo research from Fusion GPS matters or indicates anything weird. That's normal business. /20 Addendum: I did complex research for legal cases and NatSec issues for over a decade. Sometimes politics, but that was peripheral. So /21 I'm not describing this work as an outsider. And yes, I have shared information I have found with relevant authorities when critical. /22 And a follow up point: Steele was careful who he shared his report with as having his name published would obviously alert anyone who /23 he was working with/talking to for research that he was passing on the information to law enforcement. Worse, it alerts the bad actors /24 to stop allowing Steele's contacts access to information. And worse things could happen there. So once his name came out, there was no /25 point in the FBI continuing to use Steele for the investigation - his ability to do so discreetly was cooled to a hard stop. Also, no /26 surprise he went underground. Publicity is bad for an ongoing investigation, and in his case, dangerous. At that point, journalists /27