Merged All things Trump + Russia

[timhau]

Frankly, I'm a little surprised that there are still emails at all. I'd have figured the first few weeks in the WH would have resembled an industrial shredding operation, with any current subpoena truthfully answered with "nope sorry all gone kthxbai."

Maybe it just never occurred to them that at some point facts might matter.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Do we know this to be true? Was the lawyer an official representative of the Kremlin? There seems to be doubt about this. Seems like the only thing that could get Trump out of hot water is if she were not, unless it is illegal to receive election help from a citizen of another country.

I have seen it asserted on BBCs website that she was an official government "something", but I see denials too.

Is this, or will it be, the main point of contention?

Does it matter when the email said specifically,

The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary...

This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump

You might want to follow the facts rather than the Trump camp spin.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

What?
Kushner and Donald Jr. aren't close enough to Trump?

And from the above link:

I can also send this info to your father via Rhona, but it is ultra sensitive so wanted to send to you first.

No follow-up yet if that happened but, come-on, no one told Trump? Not credible.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

McConnell ran interference for Trump during the campaign to stop Obama from warning the country about Russian intervention in the election on Trump's behalf. What did McConnell know and when did he know it?

And Paul Ryan had at least his fingers in the cookie jar as well.

Daily Kos: What did Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell know about Trump/Russia collusion and when did they know it?

While the clear evidence that the Trump campaign knowingly colluded with the Russian government to win the 2016 election unfolds, don't forget that this did not happen in a vacuum. Don't forget that congressional leadership knew in 2015 that Russia was trying to hack the Democratic party.

Don't forget that the CIA was giving confidential briefings to leadership with information "indicating that Russia was working to help elect Donald J. Trump president, a finding that did not emerge publicly until after Mr. Trump’s victory months later, former government officials say."

And remember this?

Who stood in the way? "McConnell raised doubts about the underlying intelligence and made clear to the administration that he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly an act of partisan politics."

Also don't forget that June 15, 2016 meeting when House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) "joked" about Putin controlling Trump and Ryan immediately shut him down, saying "No leaks ...This is how we know we're a real family here." No leaks. We're family....

Both of them made efforts to downplay the Russian interference at the same time they were receiving classified briefings about the Russian interference.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Close enough to convince me, sure, but I'm heavily biased against Trump. I could possibly be convinced by seeing it written on a bathroom wall. I think a very direct connection would be necessary to convince most Trump supporters. One step removed isn't good enough.

The saying don't be so open minded your brains fall out comes to mind.

 

[Cain]

The Trump family is six steps ahead of everyone else.
#3DChess #MastersOfPersuasion #MAGA

 

[Mumbles]

And from the above link:

No follow-up yet if that happened but, come-on, no one told Trump? Not credible.

Agreed. There's a reason why John McCain has a "Just wait, there are still more shoes that will drop" attitude - at this point, he's the one republican I'd trust on this entire issue - and even there, it's mostly because he's one of the few republicans who is still disgusted by Putin. Most of the rest seem to think "Fascism, oligarchy, white nationalism - as long as we're in power, who cares?"

 

[CapelDodger]

This may well not link to Trump Sr, unless he or Junior say something really stupid (not beyond consideration, of course), but Kushner's position looks untenable. No doubt to the delight of some in the administration who find him a tad too cosmopolitan for their tastes, if you get my drift.

 

[anduin]

Do we know this to be true? Was the lawyer an official representative of the Kremlin?

Whether she was or was not is irrelevant. The published emails make it abundantly clear that Don Jr thought that she was a Russian government representative, as Rob Goldstone mentions several times that the Russian government is involved, that the prosecutor is involved, and that a government representative was flying to the US from Russia for the meeting.

In criminal proceedings mens rea is very important, and it is a vital element of entrapment and incrimination. Intent to commit the crime is often as bad as committing the actual crime. If you thought that you were buying drugs from a dealer, but he was an undercover agent, you still go to jail. If you thought that you were hiring a hitman to kill your wife, but he was just a troll who was stringing you along and recording your conversations, you could still go to jail for attempted murder.

Veselnitskaya and Goldstone could be a fraudulent duo intent on their own aggrandisement fantasies, Donald Jr, Manafort and Jared still would be guilty of attempted collusion and treason.

They are farked, IMHO.

 

[CapelDodger]

And from the above link:

No follow-up yet if that happened but, come-on, no one told Trump? Not credible.

If the meeting was a wash, as Junior contends, they may not have.

 

[Stacko]

Before the inevitable lie comes, Fredo was enough of an agent of the campaign to be reimbursed for travel.

 

[mgidm86]

What I see on the BBC website is :

which is not an assertion that she is an official government "something". What did you see?

More to the point is that Donald Jr was told she was a Russian government "something" and doesn't seem to have questioned it.

Yes, that is why I asked. "Linked to the government" then. I guess I misread it. I wonder if others here and elsewhere are using that as their proof that she is "government something", because I have seen no indication otherwise.

Is she a Russian government official or not?

 

[Babbylonian]

This may well not link to Trump Sr, unless he or Junior say something really stupid (not beyond consideration, of course), but Kushner's position looks untenable. No doubt to the delight of some in the administration who find him a tad too cosmopolitan for their tastes, if you get my drift.

Stupid and disengaged? Yeah, I feel you.

 

[mgidm86]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...rump-jr-emails-full-text-russia-rob-goldstone

This page has all the emails in plain text, easy to read. A lawyer could argue that these emails don't prove that Jr. knew or believed that he would be speaking to a Russian gov official. It doesn't look good though, for sure.

This would be key (bolding not mine):

Hope all is well. Emin asked that I schedule a meeting with you and the Russian government attorney who is flying over from Moscow for this Thursday.

Is she a Russian gov attorney? If not is this really enough to prove he thought she was? It could be possible that Jr. already knew she was not - if she was not. I'm just grasping at anything I can find, like a lawyer might do (INAL).


If she is an official than I'd say Jr. is in big trouble. I'm not trying to get him off the hook, I just want to KNOW this information. This site and too many news articles jump the gun way too often for me to be comfortable with this yet.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

If the meeting was a wash, as Junior contends, they may not have.

I don't get this. Jr has been caught in multiple lies, his father lies habitually, the campaign staff upper level have all been caught lying about Russian meetings.

Why in the name of Cthulhu would you accept Jr's claim?

The hacked emails were posted on [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DCLeaks]DCLeaks shortly after the meeting.[/url]

June 14: The DNC announces it has been the victim of an attack by Russian hackers.

June 15: A hacker going by the name Guccifer 2.0 posts documents stolen from the DNC, including the Democrats’ plan of attack against Trump. Trump releases a statement accusing the DNC of being behind the hack “as a way to distract from the many issues facing their deeply flawed candidate and failed party leader.”

June 21: Guccifer 2.0 posts documents stolen from the DNC on Clinton’s vulnerabilities as well as potential responses to lines of attack.

A concession is made:

July 18: The Republican National Convention adopts the official Republican Party platform, with the following language on Ukraine: “We support maintaining and, if warranted, increasing sanctions, together with our allies, against Russia unless and until Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity are fully restored. We also support providing appropriate assistance to the armed forces of Ukraine and greater coordination with NATO defense planning. … We will not accept any territorial change in Eastern Europe imposed by force, in Ukraine, Georgia, or elsewhere, and will use all appropriate constitutional measures to bring to justice the practitioners of aggression and assassination.”

The Washington Post reports the same day: “The Trump campaign worked behind the scenes last week to make sure the new Republican platform won’t call for giving weapons to Ukraine to fight Russian and rebel forces, contradicting the view of almost all Republican foreign policy leaders in Washington.”

Gordon, one of Trump’s national security advisers, would later tell CNN that he opposed efforts to add language that was more aggressively pro-Ukraine because he believed that would have been inconsistent with Trump’s public statements on the matter.

I'm sure a pattern follows from there.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Yes, that is why I asked. "Linked to the government" then. I guess I misread it. I wonder if others here and elsewhere are using that as their proof that she is "government something", because I have seen no indication otherwise.

Is she a Russian government official or not?

Care to suggest her motive if she was not an agent?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...rump-jr-emails-full-text-russia-rob-goldstone

This page has all the emails in plain text, easy to read. A lawyer could argue that these emails don't prove that Jr. knew or believed that he would be speaking to a Russian gov official. It doesn't look good though, for sure.

This would be key (bolding not mine):
Is she a Russian gov attorney? If not is this really enough to prove he thought she was? It could be possible that Jr. already knew she was not - if she was not. I'm just grasping at anything I can find, like a lawyer might do (INAL).


If she is an official than I'd say Jr. is in big trouble. I'm not trying to get him off the hook, I just want to KNOW this information. This site and too many news articles jump the gun way too often for me to be comfortable with this yet.

OMG, it's like you are arguing black and white is not really black and white.

 

[Stacko]

WTF!

.@SHSanders45 won’t say whether Jared Kushner’s security clearance is still operative.​

It shouldn't be and we shouldn't accept that as an answer.

 

[Cl1mh4224rd]

This initial copying activity was done on a system where Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) settings were in force. Most likely, the computer used to initially copy the data was located somewhere on the East Coast.

As a technically-minded person (or at least enough to know what to search for), this is kind of hilarious as "evidence".

The timestamps (created, modified, accessed) associated with a file on Windows or Unix-based operating systems (including Linux) are not timezone aware. They are stored as UTC.

It's done this way to make conversion to local time much easier. Otherwise, before displaying the timestamp to the user, the operating system would have to either 1) convert the timestamp from "the file's local time" to UTC, then back to your system's local time, or 2) calculate the relative offset between the file's local time and your system's local time and then apply that to the timestamp.

Both of those options are a complete waste of CPU cycles. In addition, storing the timezone info along with the timestamp takes up unnecessary space (disk and memory).

Early pioneers in this field were all about optimization, because they had very little processing power and storage to work with. They had to make the most of what little they had.

 

[Arcade22]

WASHINGTON — Haven’t seen it. Couldn’t tell you. Ask my office.

Congressional Republicans, well practiced by now in the craft of protecting an administration stalked by scandal, generally retreated to form on Tuesday when confronted with the extraordinary latest: an email last year, embraced by the president’s son, affirming the Russian government’s support for the Trump campaign and promising damaging information on his opponent.

The developments instantly roused a Capitol that can occasionally feel numb to Trump-size interruptions, jolting the overlapping investigations into ties between President Trump’s team and Russia and leaving Republican lawmakers to answer once more for the executive tumult that has shadowed the legislative year.

Even by the funhouse-mirror standards of Mr. Trump’s Washington, the stakes on Tuesday seemed to escalate in earnest, with some Democrats lurching more willingly toward words like “collusion” and even “treason.”

Yet the response from Republicans, at least initially, followed a familiar pattern: Approached for comment about Donald Trump Jr.’s email exchange and meeting, most senators declined to engage, expressed confusion about the questions or searched for plausible justifications for the conduct.

“Not right now,” Senator Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania said.

“Talk to others about politics,” said Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, typically more willing than most Republicans to tweak the administration.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/11/us/politics/trump-congress-republicans.html

I knew that Republicans have, as a group, been incredibly pathetic and weak in tackling Trump despite his outrageous behavior (with the typical token critics) but this is the ultimate proof of how worthless they are.

Cowardly bewailing, too frightened to stand tall. Play the hand you have been dealt, You've got no balls at all!