4 minutes ago, The Norseman said:

Whether or not the investigation was politically motivated is really not the point.  What matters is whether or not the investigation should have even taken place at all.  The FISA court itself has publicly stated it's disapproval of the way this investigation was derived and conducted.  So, they would disagree with your assessment that Clinesmith types of omissions were not impactful in their decision to issue warrants. 

https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/17/politics/fisa-court-slams-fbi-conduct/index.htm

The FISA court is trying to save face. The entire FISA process needs to be overhauled IMHO. 

But that's secondary.

The entire premise of the IG investigation was this narrative from Trump and his defenders that the entire investigation was some politically motivated hit job by Obama's DOJ. There are STILL people around this forum parading this narrative that "Obama weaponized the DoJ!!", and the IG report finds zero evidence for that assertion.

Durham, hand-picked by Barr to go and prove that the case didn't have a predicate, also found that the FBI had acted appropriated in opening the investigation.

That entire line of attack by Trump defenders was rendered false by people hand-picked by Barr to turn over the investigation. And they found bupkis.

These are the facts. 

The ONLY thing that the internal investigations turned up was that the FBI was sloppy in building its case for FISA warrants for Page. Which is a problem that needs to be rectified, and reforms should take place. But this does NOT alter the findings that the FBI had predicate to open the investigation, and that threads that led to people very close to Trump turned up indictments and convictions.

For any other administration all of this would be a huge scandal. This is far worse than any of the manufactured scandals the right dreamed up the previous 8 years. For Trump? It's just more reason for the defenders to dig in their heels and defend "their guy".

You guys are like Cowboys fans defending Nate Newton because of team-sports politics. The guy is trash. 

4 hours ago, JohnSnowsHair said:

The FISA court is trying to save face. The entire FISA process needs to be overhauled IMHO. 

But that's secondary.

The entire premise of the IG investigation was this narrative from Trump and his defenders that the entire investigation was some politically motivated hit job by Obama's DOJ. There are STILL people around this forum parading this narrative that "Obama weaponized the DoJ!!", and the IG report finds zero evidence for that assertion.

Durham, hand-picked by Barr to go and prove that the case didn't have a predicate, also found that the FBI had acted appropriated in opening the investigation.

That entire line of attack by Trump defenders was rendered false by people hand-picked by Barr to turn over the investigation. And they found bupkis.

These are the facts. 

The ONLY thing that the internal investigations turned up was that the FBI was sloppy in building its case for FISA warrants for Page. Which is a problem that needs to be rectified, and reforms should take place. But this does NOT alter the findings that the FBI had predicate to open the investigation, and that threads that led to people very close to Trump turned up indictments and convictions.

For any other administration all of this would be a huge scandal. This is far worse than any of the manufactured scandals the right dreamed up the previous 8 years. For Trump? It's just more reason for the defenders to dig in their heels and defend "their guy".

You guys are like Cowboys fans defending Nate Newton because of team-sports politics. The guy is trash. 

First of all, the Durham report has not been released.  Some output of their investigation has been actioned, like the Clinesmith indictment but in large part his investigation is still in process.  I see though, that you have already chosen a side and will believe nothing that comes out of the Durham report that doesn't support your narrative.  Even Muller's report clearly states that no evidence of collusion was found, but you are selecting pieces from it that in your mind show evidence of collusion to swing the 2016 election. 

Secondly, most if not all these charges and convictions on Trump campaign officials are largely based on process crimes connected to the investigation itself.  Lying to the FBI, witness tampering, etc, etc.  In other words, there would have been no crime had there not been an investigation.  Others were financial fraud found during the investigation.  Crimes for sure, but not anywhere near the premise of the collusion investigation.  There is some evidence of contact with the Russians which is suspect, but there has never been any detail of what the actual collusion was or what intent it had to swing the election.  

 

2 hours ago, The Norseman said:

First of all, the Durham report has not been released.  Some output of their investigation has been actioned, like the Clinesmith indictment but in large part his investigation is still in process.  I see though, that you have already chosen a side and will believe nothing that comes out of the Durham report that doesn't support your narrative.  Even Muller's report clearly states that no evidence of collusion was found, but you are selecting pieces from it that in your mind show evidence of collusion to swing the 2016 election. 

Secondly, most if not all these charges and convictions on Trump campaign officials are largely based on process crimes connected to the investigation itself.  Lying to the FBI, witness tampering, etc, etc.  In other words, there would have been no crime had there not been an investigation.  Others were financial fraud found during the investigation.  Crimes for sure, but not anywhere near the premise of the collusion investigation.  There is some evidence of contact with the Russians which is suspect, but there has never been any detail of what the actual collusion was or what intent it had to swing the election.  

Ok, so even moar first of all, the Durham investigation is the actual political witch hunt. The only reason it exists is because Barr wasn't satisfied that Horowitz wasn't able to find political bias against Trump in the FBI investigation.

So already we're at a place where Barr is pushing for the conclusion he wants, not justice. And we've seen a prosecutor for Durham resign because of political pressure Barr was placing on the investigation.

THIS is a weaponized DoJ. THIS is an executive branch wielding the justice department for political ends.

Secondly, Mueller did not state there was no evidence. It LITERALLY makes the statement "that the investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts." It also makes the clear statement that "collusion" was not something they were to investigate; collusion is not a legal term, and what they were narrowly charged with investigating was whether there was a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia to interfere with the election. And they "could not establish" this, with plenty of caveats - primarily that witnesses they had wished to question were not made available to them. In short, the Trump administration refused to cooperate, and so Mueller effectively threw his hands up and said "guess I can't do nothin'".

Mueller uncovered some, thought ultimately not enough, evidence of "conspiracy", and most certainly uncovered evidence of obstruction.

On the first, Mueller was not given access to members of Trump's campaign that may have yielded evidence - exculpatory or otherwise. That's obstruction, but I guess we no longer care about that. Mueller then outlined numerous cases of obstruction that virtually any prosecutor would seek charges on, but Mueller himself claimed he could not because of guidance from the OLC.

You're repeating falsehoods bandied about in right-wing media that do not reconcile with the actual report. Read the report, not someone else's summary of it.

Finally, you speak of "process crimes" as though they are not themselves acts of criminals. This phrase is invoked in some attempt to soften the seriousness of the crimes, when the reality is that these crimes are almost always committed in the act of covering up much larger crimes. 

To repeat: criminals would rather take the rap for the process crime than for the actual crime they're covering up. 

If we swap out Hillary for Trump in this scenario, all we would be hearing from the right is non-stop vitriol about how crooked and dirty she is. But when it's Trump? Oh, it's just a partisan witch hunt (that happened to find lots of witches), and we of course need our OWN partisan witch hunt to go after the evil FBI that dared to investigate - with predicate - our fearless leader Donald "J is for Jenius" Trump.

 

 

2 hours ago, JohnSnowsHair said:

Ok, so even moar first of all, the Durham investigation is the actual political witch hunt. The only reason it exists is because Barr wasn't satisfied that Horowitz wasn't able to find political bias against Trump in the FBI investigation.

So already we're at a place where Barr is pushing for the conclusion he wants, not justice. And we've seen a prosecutor for Durham resign because of political pressure Barr was placing on the investigation.

THIS is a weaponized DoJ. THIS is an executive branch wielding the justice department for political ends.

Secondly, Mueller did not state there was no evidence. It LITERALLY makes the statement "that the investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts." It also makes the clear statement that "collusion" was not something they were to investigate; collusion is not a legal term, and what they were narrowly charged with investigating was whether there was a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia to interfere with the election. And they "could not establish" this, with plenty of caveats - primarily that witnesses they had wished to question were not made available to them. In short, the Trump administration refused to cooperate, and so Mueller effectively threw his hands up and said "guess I can't do nothin'".

Mueller uncovered some, thought ultimately not enough, evidence of "conspiracy", and most certainly uncovered evidence of obstruction.

On the first, Mueller was not given access to members of Trump's campaign that may have yielded evidence - exculpatory or otherwise. That's obstruction, but I guess we no longer care about that. Mueller then outlined numerous cases of obstruction that virtually any prosecutor would seek charges on, but Mueller himself claimed he could not because of guidance from the OLC.

You're repeating falsehoods bandied about in right-wing media that do not reconcile with the actual report. Read the report, not someone else's summary of it.

Finally, you speak of "process crimes" as though they are not themselves acts of criminals. This phrase is invoked in some attempt to soften the seriousness of the crimes, when the reality is that these crimes are almost always committed in the act of covering up much larger crimes. 

To repeat: criminals would rather take the rap for the process crime than for the actual crime they're covering up. 

If we swap out Hillary for Trump in this scenario, all we would be hearing from the right is non-stop vitriol about how crooked and dirty she is. But when it's Trump? Oh, it's just a partisan witch hunt (that happened to find lots of witches), and we of course need our OWN partisan witch hunt to go after the evil FBI that dared to investigate - with predicate - our fearless leader Donald "J is for Jenius" Trump.

What was the collusion and how did it effect the election?

1 hour ago, The_Omega said:

 

 

nonsense of John Ratcliffe that even Senate Republicans thought was too insane to include in their investigation

 

you really got her now 🤣

28 minutes ago, The Norseman said:

What was the collusion and how did it effect the election?

Given the obstruction, hard to say.

We know various high level Trump campaign officials were exchanging information (including internal polling data) with Russian agents in direct contact with Putin.

We weren't able to get more information because Trump shut the door on access to anyone who could give them more. Actions of an innocent man? .....

We know that Russia was able to leverage the marketing capabilities of various social platforms to help peddle actual fake news (that's still considered gospel to many Trump supporters) to encourage likely Trump voters and discourage likely Clinton supporters.

And we know they're still doing it today.

We expect that presidential candidates and, for certain, elected presidents to not specifically solicit the help of foreign nations hostile to the hegemony and influence of the United States. Yet, here we are.

1 hour ago, JohnSnowsHair said:

nonsense of John Ratcliffe that even Senate Republicans thought was too insane to include in their investigation

 

you really got her now 🤣

if course shmegma fell for it. 

 

That's it. I'm not voting for Hillary.

HUGE.

holy crap. i'm definitely voting for trump now!  

MASSIVE.

GAME CHANGER.

 

15 hours ago, NVeagle said:

 

17 hours ago, NVeagle said:

 

So what's distracting the public from Ivanka, Jared, and other Trump officials using private email servers?

5 hours ago, toolg said:

So what's distracting the public from Ivanka, Jared, and other Trump officials using private email servers?

Sleepy Joe.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris . . . Two Great Dummacrats . . . We'll Be Lucky If It's Only Temporary Socialism.  "Gee, you sure smell  GREAT, Kamala !"                     

6 Russian intelligence officers charged for their role in cyber attacks.

GRU launched attacks against Ukraine's power grid, sent ransomware to US hospitals, hacked computers supporting French President Macron, and the Olympics. Its members were charged with interfering in the 2016 US election. I wonder what else they were up to?

Russia is attacking Americans on US soil and nothing is being done about it. 

3 minutes ago, toolg said:

Russia is attacking Americans on US soil and nothing is being done about it. 

Yeah responding to attacks on our sovereignty and national security used to be a thing, but our President needs a real estate deal to go through in Moscow and owes countless millions to Russian oligarchs so we don't really do that anymore. 

 

And yet, people upset with Hillary's private email server had no qualms about Trump going so far as to tweet from a non-secure iPhone during security briefings.

 

Or the private mail servers used by the Trump team.

 

It is almost like mail security isn't the real issue?

Manafort Owns Up to Passing Campaign Data to Suspected Russian Agent

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-campaign-chief-paul-manafort-owns-up-to-passing-sensitive-data-to-suspected-russian-agent

 

This is collusion.

@Abracadabra got any inside details on this one ? i guess you notsees gotta notsse, right notsee ?