US Officially Blames Russia

[A'isha]

Spicer just said at the morning News Conference that Trump had been "incredibly tough on Russia". No one is taking him seriously .In private, even the GOP congressmen have got to be snickering at him.

Some of them are. Others are diving right into the Heil Trump pool.

It sure didn't take the GOP long to go from insisting that Russia was our biggest enemy during the 2012 debates to groveling for Putin.

 

[jimbob]

Spicer just said at the morning News Conference that Trump had been "incredibly tough on Russia". No one is taking him seriously .In private, even the GOP congressmen have got to be snickering at him.

My teenage daughter recently informed me that there is a hashtag #Spicerfacts - we were driving to my Dad's, listening to her siblings' spotify playlist and when Under Pressure came on, she informed me of this, because one of the facts was that the base line in Ice Ice Baby had nothing to do with Under Pressure.

My kids' musical tastes aren't exactly cutting edge.

 

[NoahFence]

I'm feeling a bit vindicated here.

 

[trustbutverify]

Spicer just said at the morning News Conference that Trump had been "incredibly tough on Russia". No one is taking him seriously .In private, even the GOP congressmen have got to be snickering at him.

I suspect recent occurrences of "toughness" might be calculated political gestures, like Dolan's recent Sprewell hook-up.

 

[thaiboxerken]

I wonder if the mental gymnastics required to be a Trump apologist causes massive headaches.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

The most obvious one was obstruction of justice, when she told FBI agents she didn't know what the multiple little (c) (s) and (ts) in front of paragraphs in documents meant.

FFS, she would have seen multiple documents and presentations every freaking day that included those.

That's it? That's all ya got?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Lying to the FBI is a crime. It doesn't matter the topic. Ask Martha Stewart. She did jail time for it.

Pretty sure "don't know" and "don't recall" are your standard versions of "I plead the Fifth" for any public official. Any reason you've directed your outrageous outrage only at Clinton and for such a minor* infraction?


*Minor as in the security breach you are so outraged about didn't even rise to the level of a crime. It was a less than pristine work record at most.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

The records stuff was illegal, but not criminal. It's something that the government uses to fire people. But the Democrats thought it wasn't important and nominated her anyways.

And yet you seem so outraged at Clinton's criminal behavior of lying to the FBI*.


*Which I'm pretty sure saying one doesn't know something might actually not be a lie.

 

[quadraginta]

And yet you seem so outraged at Clinton's criminal behavior of lying to the FBI*.


*Which I'm pretty sure saying one doesn't know something might actually not be a lie.

It is if you're a Democrat.

Only Republicans get the benefit of the doubt.

 

[sunmaster14]

Pretty sure "don't know" and "don't recall" are your standard versions of "I plead the Fifth" for any public official.

You have got to be kidding. There is a world of difference between saying "don't know" when you do and pleading the 5th. The former is a felony crime, and the latter is not even a crime.

 

[A'isha]

New York Times: Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence

 

[Molinaro]

All day yesterday the lead story from Fox and Daily Caller were the fact that intelligence community leaked the information. They consider the information revealed in those leaks as less important.

Yet, with wikileaks information, it was all about the content of the leaks and the fact that the leaks themselves took place were irrelevant.

The degree of partisanship, and hypocritical behavior on the right is astounding. And disgusting.

 

[varwoche]

This stinks to high heaven.

<varwoche goes looking for impeachment betting pool>

 

[willhaven]

Lying to the FBI is a crime. It doesn't matter the topic. Ask Martha Stewart. She did jail time for it.

Which Hillary Clinton did not do. According to FBI director Comey himself.

So, you've got nothing? Try again?

 

[sunmaster14]

New York Times: Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence

Sheesh. It's like the opposite of burying the lede. Perhaps it should be called raising the lede from the dead? The use of the term "repeated" is completely tendentious. "Repeated" implies a coordinated series of communications building to something nefarious. In fact, all it means here is "more than one."

Here are some choice excerpts from the article (my emphasis added):

The intelligence agencies then sought to learn whether the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians on the hacking or other efforts to influence the election.

The officials interviewed in recent weeks said that, so far, they had seen no evidence of such cooperation.

But the intercepts alarmed American intelligence and law enforcement agencies, in part because of the amount of contact that was occurring while Mr. Trump was speaking glowingly about the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin. At one point last summer, Mr. Trump said at a campaign event that he hoped Russian intelligence services had stolen Hillary Clinton’s emails and would make them public.

The bolded above is a mischaracterization of Trump's joke. If the FBI is basing their investigation on that joke, in part, then their investigation is a joke.

Several of Mr. Trump’s associates, like Mr. Manafort, have done business in Russia. And it is not unusual for American businessmen to come in contact with foreign intelligence officials, sometimes unwittingly, in countries like Russia and Ukraine, where the spy services are deeply embedded in society. Law enforcement officials did not say to what extent the contacts might have been about business.

...

It is also unclear whether the conversations had anything to do with Mr. Trump himself.

The F.B.I. has spent several months investigating the leads in the dossier, but has yet to confirm any of its most explosive claims.

The agency’s investigation of Mr. Manafort began last spring as an outgrowth of a criminal investigation into his work for a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine and for the country’s former president, Viktor F. Yanukovych. It has focused on why he was in such close contact with Russian and Ukrainian intelligence officials.

The bureau did not have enough evidence to obtain a warrant for a wiretap of Mr. Manafort’s communications, but it had the N.S.A. scrutinize the communications of Ukrainian officials he had met.

At this point, it seems that CNN and the New York Times are trying to gin up controversy. I doubt the fact that the effort is timed with the resignation of Flynn is a coincidence at all.

 

[A'isha]

I like how you quote and then proceed to completely ignores Trump's campaign manager Manafort being criminally investigated for his work with a pro-Russian Ukrainian group (which actually led to his resignation - Trump sure has had an awful lot of his advisers resign for illicit contacts with Russia, hasn't he?), as you grasp at any straw you can to defend Dear Leader.

 

[willhaven]

It's not a wild goose chase. I'm just tired of having to reinvent the wheel time after time. I probably have 400 posts in that thread, almost all of which were substantive and well-supported. All of my work on the topic is there. 1) Hillary violated a felony statute when she was grossly negligent in her handling of classified materials ("extremely careless" in Comey's words, but it means precisely the same thing). 2) She violated another felony statute when she delivered classified materials (thousands of her emails) to people not authorized to have them, including her lawyers, her IT guy, and the good people at Platte River Networks in Colorado.

3) She almost certainly lied to federal investigators (although hard to prove), and 4) she obstructed justice by having her people delete emails after it was clear they would be subpoena'ed (and, in fact, emails were even deleted after a subpoena issued). 5) She almost certainly lied to Congress as well (although, once again, lying is hard to prove).

6) She clearly violated regulations promulgated pursuant to the Federal Records Act, and did so with clear intent to circumvent it, as well as the Freedom of Information Act. It's debatable whether that is an actual crime, although I suspect that conspiring to willfully circumvent federal regulations is (which she did).

Of course, those are only crimes related to her email practices while serving as Secretary of State. She committed lots of crimes before 2009. The first one I am aware of is taking a $100,000 bribe by way of cattle futures trading from her futures broker.

1) Not according to the FBI.

2) Zero emails had proper classification markings. FBI director Comey says it would be "a reasonable inference" for Hillary Clinton to to believe that no proper markings means the document was not classified to begin with.

And of course, the three "marked classified" emails in question weren't actually classified.

Every single document that was classified at the time was not marked as classified.

It's hard to nail someone for passing around classified information when they might not have known it was classified in the first place, right?

3) She didn't lie to the FBI. As per FBI director Comey himself.

4) It's in the NARA guidelines. A federal employee can delete personal emails at their sole discretion. Without oversight. The government simply doesn't have the right to archive your personal emails, even if you're a government employee.

The NARA guideline is well described by State replying to the Judicial Watch witchhunt.

There is no question that former Secretary Clinton had authority to delete
personal emails without agency supervision – she appropriately could have done so even if
she were working on a government server. Under policies issue both by the National
Archives and Records Administration (“NARA”) and the State Department, individual
officers and employees are permitted and expected to exercise judgment to determine what
constitutes a federal record.

...

This means that all employees are required to review each message, identify its value, and either delete it or move it to a recordkeeping
system.​

The subpoena doesn't pertain to every Clinton email, of course. Only the ones pertaining to the Benghazi investigation, which she apparently turned over.

The DOJ and State said that the NARA guidelines permitted Clinton to delete non-work emails at her discretion.

And don't forget that the FBI was able to recover her deleted emails anyway, and FBI director Comey's findings point out that, even though some of the deleted emails ended up being work-related, that it did not appear to be an effort to conceal anything.

5) When exactly did Hillary Clinton lie to congress? What was the lie?

6) And yet, when asked, she turned over her records for preservation after all, didn't she? Colin Powell turned over precisely zero records for preservation.

Both Powell and Clinton seemed to be operating under the assumption that emailing others at their .gov accounts was sufficient for preservation, but that was wrong.

Luckily for Clinton, she still had the records to turn over in the end.

Sometime after Clinton left State, the timeline for turning over your records was shortened to something like 20 days. Before that, there was no timeline.

Clear intent to circumvent? Again, not according to the FBI. And when you take into account that Clinton had approached Powell about his practices beforehand, it seems even less nefarious when they had both assumed the .gov system paper trail was sufficient.

 

[A'isha]

Interesting how sunmaster14 dismisses the FBI investigation of Manafort because they couldn't get a wiretap warrant in their still-ongoing investigation, but is totally convinced Clinton is guilty as hell despite the FBI clearing her.

 

[uke2se]

1) Not according to the FBI.

2) Zero emails had proper classification markings. FBI director Comey says it would be "a reasonable inference" for Hillary Clinton to to believe that no proper markings means the document was not classified to begin with.

And of course, the three "marked classified" emails in question weren't actually classified.

Every single document that was classified at the time was not marked as classified.

It's hard to nail someone for passing around classified information when they might not have known it was classified in the first place, right?

3) She didn't lie to the FBI. As per FBI director Comey himself.

4) It's in the NARA guidelines. A federal employee can delete personal emails at their sole discretion. Without oversight. The government simply doesn't have the right to archive your personal emails, even if you're a government employee.

The NARA guideline is well described by State replying to the Judicial Watch witchhunt.

There is no question that former Secretary Clinton had authority to delete
personal emails without agency supervision – she appropriately could have done so even if
she were working on a government server. Under policies issue both by the National
Archives and Records Administration (“NARA”) and the State Department, individual
officers and employees are permitted and expected to exercise judgment to determine what
constitutes a federal record.

...

This means that all employees are required to review each message, identify its value, and either delete it or move it to a recordkeeping
system.​

The subpoena doesn't pertain to every Clinton email, of course. Only the ones pertaining to the Benghazi investigation, which she apparently turned over.

The DOJ and State said that the NARA guidelines permitted Clinton to delete non-work emails at her discretion.

And don't forget that the FBI was able to recover her deleted emails anyway, and FBI director Comey's findings point out that, even though some of the deleted emails ended up being work-related, that it did not appear to be an effort to conceal anything.

5) When exactly did Hillary Clinton lie to congress? What was the lie?

6) And yet, when asked, she turned over her records for preservation after all, didn't she? Colin Powell turned over precisely zero records for preservation.

Both Powell and Clinton seemed to be operating under the assumption that emailing others at their .gov accounts was sufficient for preservation, but that was wrong.

Luckily for Clinton, she still had the records to turn over in the end.

Sometime after Clinton left State, the timeline for turning over your records was shortened to something like 20 days. Before that, there was no timeline.

Clear intent to circumvent? Again, not according to the FBI. And when you take into account that Clinton had approached Powell about his practices beforehand, it seems even less nefarious when they had both assumed the .gov system paper trail was sufficient.

While I applaud your efforts to counter the many lies Sunmaster and others have haunted this forum with, this isn't the thread for it. Clinton's emails is a closed chapter. This thread is about Trump's campaign colluding with a hostile foreign power to grasp power in the US. Don't let the Trump apologists change the subject.

 

[sunmaster14]

I like how you quote and then proceed to completely ignores Trump's campaign manager Manafort being criminally investigated for his work with a pro-Russian Ukrainian group (which actually led to his resignation - Trump sure has had an awful lot of his advisers resign for illicit contacts with Russia, hasn't he?), as you grasp at any straw you can to defend Dear Leader.

I didn't mention it for two reasons: (1) the news of the criminal investigation is old; here is the NY Times article on it from July 31, 2016; and (2) the more recent New York Times' characterization (and yours) of the investigation as a criminal one into "Manafort's work" is baseless.

Here is an excerpt from the July 31st article:

Mr. Manafort pressed Mr. Yanukovych to sign an agreement with the European Union that would link the country closer to the West — and lobbied for the Americans to support Ukraine’s membership, as well, despite deep reservations because of the prosecution of Ms. Tymoshenko.

Mr. Manafort helped draft a report defending the prosecution that Mr. Yanukovych’s government commissioned from the law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in 2012.

Mr. Manafort’s role was disclosed after a document was discovered in a box in a sauna belonging to a former senior Ukrainian official. Other documents in that cache are now evidence in a criminal case against a former justice official, and could shed more light on Mr. Manafort’s role.

That is the only mention of a criminal investigation in that article (which is the only one linked by the article you linked. How is it fair to characterize that as a criminal investigation into Manafort's work?