A sober reminder of what insufficient evidence actually means

[Bill the Cat]

What im suggesting is in the thread title. Not having evidence to prove there was active collusion does not mean Trump did not collude, just as not having sufficient evidence to hold this fellow did not mean he was safe.

Nor did it mean he had committed a crime until he actually did. Suspicion is not grounds to declare someone guilty.

The refrain right now is that insufficient evidence to indict or recommend indictment equates to vindication.

Unless Trump commits a crime later, that's exactly what it means. Had the bombers never actually committed a crime, they would not have been guilty of anything.

The Sri Lanken bombing and the issues around this person bring into stark reality there is no such equation.

And the fact that the bomber LATER committed a crime disallows the equation you are trying to make.

Likewise, and even more so, the issue of obstruction.

The only way to equate these two circumstances is to imply that Trump will later commit obstruction.

[rogue06]

Moderated By: rogue06

Fixed thread title in that it was killing to continue pretending to ignore it

***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.

[Mountain Man]

Moderated By: rogue06

Fixed thread title in that it was killing to continue pretending to ignore it

***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.

What do you meand?

[Cow Poke]

Moderated By: rogue06

Fixed thread title in that it was killing to continue pretending to ignore it

***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.

I'm still unsubscribed so I don't see this, either!

[oxmixmudd]

And just because there's no evidence that you're a pedophile doesn't mean you're not a pedophile, right?

Is this really the standard you want to go with?

Neither are there multiple lines of evidence that imply I might be a pedophile, nor was an investigation launched based on that evidence to determine of I might be one, likewise there is not a result that says that they are unable to say the evidence actually clears me.

The details matter. Your over generalized analogy hides the truth.

Jim

[oxmixmudd]

What do you meand?

I sent sparko a pm asking him to change it immediately. I could not find a way to edit the title. He apparently had not seen the pm yet.

It's a simple typo.

Jim

[Mountain Man]

Neither are there multiple lines of evidence that imply I might be a pedophile, nor was an investigation launched based on that evidence to determine of I might be one, likewise there is not a result that says that they are unable to say the evidence actually clears me.

The details matter. Your over generalized analogy hides the truth.

Jim

Neither were there multiple lines of evidence implicating Trump to the point that Mueller could not conclude that Trump commited any crimes.

As for the investigation, every indication is that it was without merit and even fraudulent.

[oxmixmudd]

Nor did it mean he had committed a crime until he actually did. Suspicion is not grounds to declare someone guilty.



Unless Trump commits a crime later, that's exactly what it means. Had the bombers never actually committed a crime, they would not have been guilty of anything.



And the fact that the bomber LATER committed a crime disallows the equation you are trying to make.




The only way to equate these two circumstances is to imply that Trump will later commit obstruction.

For whatever the reason, you have not been able to grasp the concept of this thread. The issue I'm pointing out is the difference between the underlying reality and what can be legally established.

This terrorist WAS a threat to the people of Sri-Lanka of sufficient magnitude that he should have been able to be held indefinitely

But the EVIDENCE could not establish that reality. The EVIDENCE could not show he was such a threat.

But the EVIDENCE did not clear him, it just couldn't hold him. And the underlying reality was that the EVIDENCE not being able to show he was a threat did not imply he was not a threat. He could have danced like you are about Trump and said - See, legally I'm not a threat to anyone. But in reality he was.

Likewise, OJ Simpson was not convicted of Murder. But we all know he did it, and in a different court and a different time, the evidence would have convicted him. But he could dance too. LEGALLY he was exonerated.

The evidence in the Mueller report shows trump repeatedly trying to interfere with the investigation in ways that many believe are obstruction. But Mueller could not indict, although he did recommend that congress could (with the implication they should) take action.

The Mueller report shows Trump's campaign cooperating with the Russians in an unspoken, wink wink, nod nod manner. No explicit conspiracy. But then again none was needed.

You, MM, others are pretending that this lack of indictment reflects the underlying reality, while the evidence in the report clearly shows otherwise and the underlying reality of hindering an investigation and cooperating with a hostile foreign power is obvious.

The bombing shows the how austere the consequences can be when the EVIDENCE, or the legal process itself, can't establish the underlying reality. It is and should be a very sobering lesson to all of us not to play this game.


Jim

[Catholicity]

And just because there's no evidence that you're a pedophile doesn't mean you're not a pedophile, right?

Is this really the standard you want to go with?

OK. Look I've encountered pedophiles that left nothing but "first handed accounts" of what they did. It was a he said she said sort of thing. However that doesn't mean the person isn't guilty. Sorry but that argument is pathetic. Pedophiles often don't leave physical evidence, but they do leave eyewitnesses. So do Voyeurs and Frotteurizers.

[Mountain Man]

OK. Look I've encountered pedophiles that left nothing but "first handed accounts" of what they did. It was a he said she said sort of thing. However that doesn't mean the person isn't guilty. Sorry but that argument is pathetic. Pedophiles often don't leave physical evidence, but they do leave eyewitnesses. So do Voyeurs and Frotteurizers.

There are cases where there is evidence but reasonable doubt leading to a not guilty verdict. That is not the case with Trump. On the contrary, Mueller said quite plainly "this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime".

[rogue06]

Neither are there multiple lines of evidence that imply I might be a pedophile, nor was an investigation launched based on that evidence to determine of I might be one, likewise there is not a result that says that they are unable to say the evidence actually clears me.

The details matter. Your over generalized analogy hides the truth.

Jim

But what if you've been seen with young children, once said that you loved kids and had a thoroughly immoral opponent manufacture a totally fake document that was used to initiate such an investigation?

[tabibito]

But what if you've been seen with young children, once said that you loved kids and had a thoroughly immoral opponent manufacture a totally fake document that was used to initiate such an investigation?

That would of course make him guilty. And if he refused to accept all the evidence, then he'd be guilty of the even worse crime of denying what every-one knows to be true.

[oxmixmudd]

There are cases where there is evidence but reasonable doubt leading to a not guilty verdict. That is not the case with Trump. On the contrary, Mueller said quite plainly "this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime".

It says a lot more than that MM, and that 'a lot more' shows he may well have committed crimes. That statement you like to quote can't be extracted alone from the report because in the context of the rest of the report, it just doesn't mean what you claim it means, it is clear you are NOT characterizing the statement correctly. It would be like taking 'there is no God' from the verse 'a fool says in his heart there is no God' and then saying the Bible supports atheism.


Jim

[Mountain Man]

It says a lot more than that MM, and that 'a lot more' shows he may well have committed crimes.

Except Mueller says quite plainly that he couldn't reach that conclusion. That's a lot different than your example of pulling something out of context to imply that it says the opposite of what it actually says.

[oxmixmudd]

But what if you've been seen with young children, once said that you loved kids and had a thoroughly immoral opponent manufacture a totally fake document that was used to initiate such an investigation?

If you are referring to the Steele dossier and its interactions with the early phases of the FBI's investigation, What you indicate above is not a fair characterization of the content of the report, nor of how elements of it entered into the investigation. It is not a 'totally fake' document, in fact it is far from that in that a non-trivial amount of its content has been validated. And the portions that could not be validated have not been shown false.

In the high points of a CNN summary of what is true, false, or unverified, the Steele dossier looks like this:

Source: cnn

Steele's memos lay out specific meetings that haven't been corroborated. But his claim that there was regular contact between Trump's campaign and Russians has held up over time. When he wrote his memos in 2016, hardly any of these contacts were publicly known. They have since been revealed in Mueller's court filings, countless news reports and testimony on Capitol Hill.

...

much of Steele's memos focused on Russia's role interfering in the 2016 election. Steele's intelligence memos detail a pattern and preference for Trump that have since been confirmed by the US intelligence community and indictments against Russians brought by Mueller's investigation.

...

The dossier claimed that the Russians tried to influence Trump by offering him "sweetener" real estate deals, in hopes of drawing him closer to Moscow. The specific details about these purported deals haven't been corroborated, but the dossier said Trump declined these offers.
Throughout the campaign, Trump said he had "nothing to do with Russia." When the dossier was first published, there wasn't any indication that Trump's company was involved in Russia beyond the Miss Universe pageant that he hosted in Moscow in 2013.
But it recently became public knowledge that Trump pursued a lucrative project in Moscow deep into the 2016 campaign, and that his then-attorney Michael Cohen sought help from the Kremlin to move the project along. Cohen admitted these shocking details when he pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the Trump Tower Moscow proposal, which never came to fruition.
Steele's sources were right that Trump had recently explored business dealings in Russia. And his suggestion that it could be linked to the election has also been made by Mueller's team. In court fillings, the special counsel said that the proposal "likely required" help from the Kremlin and highlighted how it overlapped with "sustained efforts" by the Russians to influence the election.

© Copyright Original Source

I'm skimming a bit, and trying to keep the post modest in length. What I see in there that turned to be partially true is some of the claims about Carter Page. Now page was apparently targeted for recruitment by the Russians, which is in large part where the investigation of Him began (as far back as 2013) and why it raised red flags when he joined the Trump team.

Source: cnn

No public evidence has emerged to support these allegations, and Page has denied meeting with the president of Rosneft in dozens of interviews. But under questioning by the House Intelligence Committee behind closed doors, Page admitted that he met a different official from Rosneft during the trip.
Page said he spoke with Andrey Baranov, Rosneft's head of investor relations. But he said he doesn't recall any conversation with Baranov about sanctions. They made plans to meet up, Page said, because they were friends when he worked in Russia as an energy consultant.
The Russian government owns a majority stake in Rosneft. The US Treasury Department sanctioned the company and its president after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. Trump hasn't eased sanctions on Rosneft, and his administration has placed new sanctions on Russians.

© Copyright Original Source

There is still a lot going on there. And a lot that can't be corroborated, but that also can't be shown false.

In fact, lawfare has this to say about it:

Source: above

The dossier holds up well over time, and none of it, to our knowledge, has been disproven.

© Copyright Original Source

and

Source: above

As we noted, our interest is in assessing the Steele dossier as a raw intelligence document, not a finished piece of analysis. The Mueller investigation has clearly produced public records that confirm pieces of the dossier. And even where the details are not exact, the general thrust of SteeleÂ’s reporting seems credible in light of what we now know about extensive contacts between numerous individuals associated with the Trump campaign and Russian government officials.

However, there is also a good deal in the dossier that has not been corroborated in the official record and perhaps never will be—whether because it’s untrue, unimportant or too sensitive. As a raw intelligence document, the Steele dossier, we believe, holds up well so far. But surely there is more to come from Mueller’s team. We will return to it as the public record develops.

© Copyright Original Source

The lawfare article is in fact far more detailed than the CNN article.

wikipedia also has an extensive look at the Dossier content, and again we see that while it can't all be shown true, little to nothing in it has actually be shown to be false.



Jim