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Russian interference with the 2016 election

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  • Originally posted by Mountain Man View Post
    The fact that Trump isn't a target already is significant.
    It's not, you just don't understand the terminology. Robert Mueller notified President Trump's lawyers last month that the president is being investigated as part of the Russia probe, but was not viewed as a criminal target at that time.
    “He felt that his whole life was a kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.” - Douglas Adams.

    Comment


    • At that time, or at any time.
      Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
      But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
      Than a fool in the eyes of God


      From "Fools Gold" by Petra

      Comment


      • Originally posted by Charles View Post
        Yep. And from the putside I note the obvious hypocracy and that you did not answer my points about stuff you said yourself that could be seen as insulting. But of course you can ask people to leave, if you have not got an answer.
        I'll leave this post unreported on the condition that it is the last.

        Comment


        • Originally posted by Charles View Post
          Yep. And from the putside I note the obvious hypocracy and that you did not answer my points about stuff you said yourself that could be seen as insulting. But of course you can ask people to leave, if you have not got an answer.
          Moderated By: Sparko

          Charles you were asked to leave the thread. Do not post here again. This notice makes it official

          ***If you wish to take issue with this notice DO NOT do so in this thread.***
          Contact the forum moderator or an administrator in Private Message or email instead. If you feel you must publicly complain or whine, please take it to the Padded Room unless told otherwise.


          Comment


          • Originally posted by Mountain Man View Post
            The fact that Trump isn't a target already is significant.
            Originally posted by Tassman View Post
            It's not, you just don't understand the terminology.
            I'd agree with MM on this that the claim is significant, though I'd imagine we have different views on its significance.

            Robert Mueller notified President Trump's lawyers last month that the president is being investigated as part of the Russia probe, but was not viewed as a criminal target at that time.
            This is why, at first glance, I wasn't sure why this was even news. If there's a difference between Mueller's notification two weeks ago and Rosenstein's last week, it doesn't seem to go beyond the name of the protagonist.

            The real significance, from my point of view, is that in the wake of the Comey firing, which, among other published reasons, was credited to his reluctance to publicly proclaim that Trump wasn't a target of an investigation, we now have two reports from the most senior of DOJ officials, under threat of being fired, claiming Trump wasn't a target of an investigation.

            And there remains the parsing between target, subject, and witness that suggests these reassurances are weasel-worded.

            Comment


            • Originally posted by Sparko View Post
              Moderated By: Sparko

              Charles you were asked to leave the thread. Do not post here again. This notice makes it official

              ***If you wish to take issue with this notice DO NOT do so in this thread.***
              Contact the forum moderator or an administrator in Private Message or email instead. If you feel you must publicly complain or whine, please take it to the Padded Room unless told otherwise.

              Well, I could only promise not to report it myself, lol.

              Comment


              • Originally posted by lao tzu View Post
                I'd agree with MM on this that the claim is significant, though I'd imagine we have different views on its significance.



                This is why, at first glance, I wasn't sure why this was even news. If there's a difference between Mueller's notification two weeks ago and Rosenstein's last week, it doesn't seem to go beyond the name of the protagonist.

                The real significance, from my point of view, is that in the wake of the Comey firing, which, among other published reasons, was credited to his reluctance to publicly proclaim that Trump wasn't a target of an investigation, we now have two reports from the most senior of DOJ officials, under threat of being fired, claiming Trump wasn't a target of an investigation.

                And there remains the parsing between target, subject, and witness that suggests these reassurances are weasel-worded.
                Well yes. “Rosenstein’s message may have been based on a technicality. Trump may not officially be a target, but Mueller hasn’t ruled out making him one at some point in the future, according to a U.S. official with knowledge of the unfolding investigation.”

                https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...es-on-nyc-cabs
                “He felt that his whole life was a kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.” - Douglas Adams.

                Comment


                • The tin-pot dictator is getting ready to fire Mueller. And Dems file lawsuit.
                  “I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.” ― Oscar Wilde
                  “And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence” ― Bertrand Russell
                  “not all there” - you know who you are

                  Comment


                  • Good. Mueller should be fired. Comey's memos prove that there was no cause to appoint a special council, Giuliani is on board Trump's legal team to negotiate an end to the investigation, and if the Democrats file suit, they'll be forced to give up all their dirty secrets during discovery. It's the beginning of the end of the attempted coup.

                    Meanwhile, Sessions and his team are just getting started. You guys have no idea what's coming.
                    Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
                    But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
                    Than a fool in the eyes of God


                    From "Fools Gold" by Petra

                    Comment


                    • Originally posted by Mountain Man View Post
                      Good. Mueller should be fired. Comey's memos prove that there was no cause to appoint a special council, Giuliani is on board Trump's legal team to negotiate an end to the investigation, and if the Democrats file suit, they'll be forced to give up all their dirty secrets during discovery. It's the beginning of the end of the attempted coup.

                      Meanwhile, Sessions and his team are just getting started. You guys have no idea what's coming.
                      There doesn't seem to be anything here that can withstand scrutiny.

                      Comey's memos are as described in Comey's testimony following his dismissal. There has never been much doubt that the president sought to end the Flynn investigation, or that he knew this was a request that could not be made publicly, or even privately in front of other members of his administration. The memos corroborate this.

                      Absent that request, there would have been no reason to appoint a special prosecutor to shield the Flynn investigation and the larger investigation into Russia interference from interference. The continuing attacks on Mueller, including suggestions that he should be fired, without cause, along with the attacks on those empowered to remove him, reinforce the need.

                      In the midst of these issues is one conspicuous for its incoherence.
                      It's the beginning of the end of the attempted coup.

                      If the president is removed from office before the end of his term, the vice president will take his place. Describing this process as a coup entails identifying the vice president as the lead conspirator.

                      I have no reason to believe he would have any part in such an action.

                      The president will cease his attempts to wield the justice department as a personal tool to reward friends and punish enemies or he will suffer the consequences. It's possible the point where he is free to do so voluntarily has already passed, or even long passed, independent of Mueller's presence leading the investigation.

                      Were Mueller to be removed, and the special prosecutor's office ended, the fruits of his investigation would be turned over to the FBI, including the entire cast of cooperating witnesses. Recent events suggest that list could well see a consequential addition, which brings up an ironic datum overlooked to date by partisans.

                      Unlike Mueller, Comey, Rosenstein, and Sessions, all of whom have been targeted for removal in the president's flailing attempts to exert control, Cohen is a Democrat.

                      Comment


                      • Comey admitted under oath that the President never ordered or even suggested that the Flynn investigation should be ended, and Comey's memos prove that any comment the President made about the investigation was innocuous at worse. In fact, Trump, according to the memos, said he would like the investigation to continue to determine if anybody had done anything wrong. Perhaps this was naive on his part, never realizing that his enemies would launch possibly the biggest witch-hunt against a sitting President in US history.

                        Also, Giuliani's role is not to fire Mueller but to negotiate an end to the investigation, based in part no doubt on the evidence of Comey's memos and the criminal investigation currently being carried out by Sessions, Horowitz, and Huber.

                        There are a lot of pieces to the puzzle that you're apparently unaware of.

                        https://theconservativetreehouse.com...and-referrals/
                        https://theconservativetreehouse.com...dia-narrative/
                        https://theconservativetreehouse.com...ional-context/
                        Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
                        But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
                        Than a fool in the eyes of God


                        From "Fools Gold" by Petra

                        Comment


                        • Originally posted by Mountain Man View Post
                          Comey admitted under oath that the President never ordered or even suggested that the Flynn investigation should be ended, and Comey's memos prove that any comment the President made about the investigation was innocuous at worse.
                          "The President never ordered" is accurate, once stripped of the suggestion that Comey's testimony was tantamount to admission. "The President ... never suggested" is directly and repeatedly contradicted by the memos and a transcript of Comey's testimony, e.g., in response to questions from Sen. Risch.
                          RISCH: Thank you.

                          All right. So — so those three things, we now know, regarding the active measures, whether (ph) the president’s under investigation and the collusion between the — the Russian — the Trump campaign and the Russians.

                          I — I want to drill right down, as my time is limited, to the most recent dust-up regarding allegations that the president of the United States obstructed justice. And, boy, you nailed this down on page 5, paragraph 3. You put this in quotes — words matter.

                          You wrote down the words so we can all have the words in front of us now. There’s 28 words there that are in quotes, and it says, quote, “I hope” — this is the president speaking — “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”

                          Now those are his exact words, is that correct?

                          COMEY: Correct.

                          RISCH: And you wrote them here, and you put them in quotes?

                          COMEY: Correct.

                          RISCH: Thank you for that. He did not direct you to let it go.

                          COMEY: Not in his words, no.

                          RISCH: He did not order you to let it go.

                          COMEY: Again, those words are not an order.

                          RISCH: He said, “I hope.” Now, like me, you probably did hundreds of cases, maybe thousands of cases charging people with criminal offenses. And, of course, you have knowledge of the thousands of cases out there that — where people have been charged.

                          Do you know of any case where a person has been charged for obstruction of justice or, for that matter, any other criminal offense, where this — they said, or thought, they hoped for an outcome?

                          COMEY: I don’t know well enough to answer. And the reason I keep saying his words is I took it as a direction.

                          RISCH: Right.

                          COMEY: I mean, this is the president of the United States, with me alone, saying, “I hope” this. I took it as, this is what he wants me to do.

                          Comment


                          • Originally posted by Mountain Man View Post
                            Also, Giuliani's role is not to fire Mueller but to negotiate an end to the investigation, based in part no doubt on the evidence of Comey's memos and the criminal investigation currently being carried out by Sessions, Horowitz, and Huber.
                            I judge Giuliani's entry to be inconsequential, and that's at best. He's already implicated in spreading information leaked from within the FBI damaging to then-candidate Clinton, which would make it difficult or even impossible to portray himself as an impartial mediator. Moreover, my own initial impression is in substantial agreement with that of most commentators. While it's likely any defense counsel would love the opportunity to negotiate an end to an investigation involving their client, such an opportunity is never offered.

                            I suspect the only real meaning to Giuliani's entry is that, like a growing list of characters in this administration, the president liked the way he looked on TV. That was Anthony "I don't engage in auto-fellatio" Scaramucci's entree as well. If it's an irresponsible way to vet communications staff, it's likely to prove a far less wise method of vetting legal staff to spar with the larger, and more accomplished group of prosecutors on Mueller's team.

                            There are a lot of pieces to the puzzle that you're apparently unaware of.
                            I'll look at these, but with the understanding this source describes itself prominently, in their banner, as a "Rag Tag Bunch of Conservative Misfits." On this, if nothing else, I intend to trust them. Everything else requires verification.

                            Lining up a list of targets to be jailed for their opposition to the president is beyond unseemly. We don't arrest political opponents in this country, and any attempt to do so would unquestionably constitute high crimes and misdemeanors. The misfits would be better advised, assuming they're interested in supporting the president, to avoid suggesting articles for impeachment.

                            But suppose they're not actually supporting the president. To satisfy my love of irony, it'd be great if they're actually Russian agents engaged in a counter-intelligence coup attacking Trump with reckless advice offered under a false flag.

                            This runs the gamut from uninformed to poorly considered speculation. While the private briefing may have been restricted to the salacious details from one of the Steele memos, the wider issues of Russian interference were discussed in the larger group setting. As to Clapper's directing the release of this information to the president elect, or any other information that might be used against the president, as DNI, that was his job.

                            The two evident reasons as discussed in the first memo for sharing this with Trump are not addressed by the misfits: that the Russians were spreading this information, and that media sources, including CNN, had copies of the Steele dossier. The latter has been repeatedly confirmed, most notably by Buzzfeed, and the relevant report from the Steele dossier is itself evidence of the former.

                            This piece suggests a wide-bore conspiracy by the entirety of senior IC leadership to create some unnamed, but no doubt invidious media narrative, where the memo itself suggests the opposite, an attempt to forestall a negative narrative placing the president as being kept out of the loop, uninformed of derogatory material being discussed by elected officials in the capitol, by intelligence officials, and correctly expected to soon be released in the media.

                            The suggestion that it was not until after the briefing that the salacious details were shared with CNN, and by Clapper himself, is simply wrong, and it stretches credulity to credit this as the result of being uninformed. According to the same memo, CNN already had the dossier, as did a host of others, some of whom received the content directly from Steele himself. It was that unauthorized release that resulted in Steele's removal from the official investigation long before the election, with the campaign still underway.

                            tl/dr: It's not possible to judge Rice's final email without access to the redacted portion.

                            This piece is unreadable. It's some kind of attempt to expand on a piece from National Review that is only slightly less unreadable, with a prominently repeated quote-mine that doesn't even try to disguise itself, as the full quote is actually within the article. As the misfit piece features a picture of Rice in an orange jumpsuit, my observation on the wisdom of trusting their advice, as above, should be considered repeated.

                            The missed, larger context, is that the Obama administration, as of January 5, 2017, two weeks before the Trump inauguration, was aware that Flynn had compromised himself in a conversation with the Russian ambassador, creating a national security issue with sharing information with him on Russian interference. And indeed, his subsequent actions showed him unsuitable for the security clearance necessary to act as Trump's National Security Advisor.

                            On one hand, much of the email is redacted, and on the other, Grassley and Graham's propensity toward selective releases, most notably from the transcript of the closed session Simpson interview before the Judiciary committee, impelled Feinstein to correct the record by releasing the transcript in its entirety. Having made their reputation, they're going to have to live with it. They can't be trusted to have addressed the Rice email judiciously.

                            This is the behavior that I referred to earlier when noting that the Senate Judiciary Committee, while far more bipartisan than Nunes' select committee, still fell far below the bar set by the USSSCI.

                            Comment


                            • Originally posted by lao tzu View Post
                              "The President never ordered" is accurate, once stripped of the suggestion that Comey's testimony was tantamount to admission. "The President ... never suggested" is directly and repeatedly contradicted by the memos and a transcript of Comey's testimony, e.g., in response to questions from Sen. Risch.
                              RISCH: Thank you.

                              All right. So — so those three things, we now know, regarding the active measures, whether (ph) the president’s under investigation and the collusion between the — the Russian — the Trump campaign and the Russians.

                              I — I want to drill right down, as my time is limited, to the most recent dust-up regarding allegations that the president of the United States obstructed justice. And, boy, you nailed this down on page 5, paragraph 3. You put this in quotes — words matter.

                              You wrote down the words so we can all have the words in front of us now. There’s 28 words there that are in quotes, and it says, quote, “I hope” — this is the president speaking — “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”

                              Now those are his exact words, is that correct?

                              COMEY: Correct.

                              RISCH: And you wrote them here, and you put them in quotes?

                              COMEY: Correct.

                              RISCH: Thank you for that. He did not direct you to let it go.

                              COMEY: Not in his words, no.

                              RISCH: He did not order you to let it go.

                              COMEY: Again, those words are not an order.

                              RISCH: He said, “I hope.” Now, like me, you probably did hundreds of cases, maybe thousands of cases charging people with criminal offenses. And, of course, you have knowledge of the thousands of cases out there that — where people have been charged.

                              Do you know of any case where a person has been charged for obstruction of justice or, for that matter, any other criminal offense, where this — they said, or thought, they hoped for an outcome?

                              COMEY: I don’t know well enough to answer. And the reason I keep saying his words is I took it as a direction.

                              RISCH: Right.

                              COMEY: I mean, this is the president of the United States, with me alone, saying, “I hope” this. I took it as, this is what he wants me to do.
                              Yeah, keep going with the transcript, because Risch continued to tear him apart. So Comey admits Trump never gave him an order but then tries to push his claim forward with "I took it as" which is legally worthless. Comey can take it however he wants, because the only thing that matters is what Trump actually said. I mean, what if Comey "took it as" Trump ordering an assassination? Would that have justified investigating Trump for conspiracy to commit murder? It's also curious that Comey never pushed back or asked for clarification. It's almost like he wanted to sell a certain false narrative.

                              As someone recently said, if Trump were on trial for obstruction of justice, Comfy would be the star witness for the defense, and his memos would be Exhibit A.
                              Last edited by Mountain Man; 04-22-2018, 07:14 AM.
                              Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
                              But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
                              Than a fool in the eyes of God


                              From "Fools Gold" by Petra

                              Comment


                              • Also, I'm looking at your rebuttals to the Conservative Treehouse articles, and I'm left scratching my head wondering if you read them carefully, because your responses seem to fall short of the mark, refuting points that were either never made, or that you seem to have misunderstood.

                                Well, whatever. Other people can read the sources for themselves and make up their own mind.
                                Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
                                But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
                                Than a fool in the eyes of God


                                From "Fools Gold" by Petra

                                Comment

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