Cont: All things Trump + Russia Part 2

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sunmaster14 said:
Nope. I'm flying solo. I'm the tip of the spear. I'm the guy in his pajamas who brings down Dan Rather (although I had nothing to do with that).
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You're flying solo ... probably because you're wrong.

I'll circle back Saturday ... try not to spend too much time between now and then trying to come up with reasons why you're not actually wrong !
 
Beelzebuddy said:
You see this, right here? This is what people are complaining about. How do you know they have not yielded fruit? How do you know they are dead ends?

You've flipped from saying that we just can't possibly make any inferences at all over what the bare facts are, no matter how opprobrious they may appear, to concluding that the investigation is running into dead ends, presumably because you personally haven't heard the story in the news for a while.

I'm sure you can think of a good reason for your sudden abundance of credulity, but it doesn't escape anyone's notice that it happens along partisan lines.
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Come with me here. Trump is perhaps the single most hated politician in our lifetime. I mean, seriously hated by a large number of people. People who are near desperate to get him out of office any way they can.

Do you disagree with that assessment?

We have had repeated accusations of all sorts, supported by speculative reasoning and anonymous sources.

Do you disagree with that?

Trump and his administration have been being investigated in some fashion or other, by the media as well as by formal channels since before he took office.

Do you disagree with that?

Now... Of all of those lines of investigation, which have been found to be true and damaging to Trump? Which of the accusations has panned out over the course of the last 10 months?

Does it make any sense at all to conclude that the accusations have been accurate, and that solid corroborating evidence has been found... and that this information has NOT been shared by the media? Given the prominence of Trump in the media and the consistency of accusation leveled at him, and the volume of anonymous confidential insider information being provided to the media that represents Trump negatively... what possible reason is there to assume that any of the accusations has been corroborated but nobody is sharing that information? What sense would that make?

That's not to say that all of the investigations are concluded - they aren't. But of all of the many different investigative routes so far brought forth for consideration, they don't seem to have borne fruit.
 
Argumemnon said:
Ok, I'll take that example. It's even more stupid and a better illustration of what I'm saying! Thanks for bringing it up!

You look for the suspect, find him, find a weapon like the one used in the murder, find fingerprints on it and a ton of circumstancial evidence, and you let him off the hook by inventing a stupid reason. Yes, very typical of you.
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Holy cow. Innocent until proven guilty. This seems to be a foreign concept to you, despite Canada having the same presumption of innocence in legal proceedings.

Nobody is letting anyone off the hook. But circumstantial evidence alone is insufficient to convict! Just because a person has a gun and no alibi doesn't mean the committed a murder! It's worth considering them a suspect, but not enough to conclude guilt! This is not a difficult concept!
 
Emily's Cat said:
Come with me here. Trump is perhaps the single most hated politician in our lifetime. I mean, seriously hated by a large number of people. People who are near desperate to get him out of office any way they can.

Do you disagree with that assessment?

We have had repeated accusations of all sorts, supported by speculative reasoning and anonymous sources.

Do you disagree with that?

Trump and his administration have been being investigated in some fashion or other, by the media as well as by formal channels since before he took office.

Do you disagree with that?

Now... Of all of those lines of investigation, which have been found to be true and damaging to Trump? Which of the accusations has panned out over the course of the last 10 months?

Does it make any sense at all to conclude that the accusations have been accurate, and that solid corroborating evidence has been found... and that this information has NOT been shared by the media? Given the prominence of Trump in the media and the consistency of accusation leveled at him, and the volume of anonymous confidential insider information being provided to the media that represents Trump negatively... what possible reason is there to assume that any of the accusations has been corroborated but nobody is sharing that information? What sense would that make?

That's not to say that all of the investigations are concluded - they aren't. But of all of the many different investigative routes so far brought forth for consideration, they don't seem to have borne fruit.
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I was under the impression that such investigations will take time. You're right, no charges have been filed, nothing that ties Trump to any broken laws, etc.

So, let's wait and see, since we were told from the get go that this would be a long term investigation. It really could be that nothing will come of it. It also really could be that there are some very interesting leads which you and I don't know about. Nothing about being legally presumed innocent requires that you and I leap to the conclusion that he is actually innocent. (Nor, of course, should we leap to the opposite conclusion too readily.)
 
Stacko said:
Mueller's team executes search warrant to obtain Facebook ad buy details.



In order to obtain this warrant it means that Mueller has concluded that specific foreign individuals committed a crime by making a "contribution" in connection with an election. It also means that he has evidence of that crime that convinced a federal magistrate judge of two things:
1. that there was good reason to believe that the foreign individual committed the crime.

2. that evidence of the crime existed on Facebook

If any Trump associate knew about the foreign contributions that Mueller's search warrant focused on and helped that effort in a tangible way, like providing voter data, they could be charged. In addition, anyone who agreed to be part of this effort in any way could be charged with criminal conspiracy. They wouldn't need to be involved in the whole operation or know everyone involved but they would have to agree to be part of some piece of it.
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How do you reach that conclusion?
 
Bob001 said:
Foreign governments don't get to spend money attempting to influence American elections.
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Why not? We do it all the time, as do other governments.

Bob001 said:
It may also be that buying the ads isn't a crime, but lying about them to the FBI is, and Manafort, Flynn, Trump Jr. etc. may well have lied about their knowledge of the Russian ad campaign.
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You're assuming that they knew about the ads. Do you know this to be the case? Or are you speculating?
 
phiwum said:
I was under the impression that such investigations will take time. You're right, no charges have been filed, nothing that ties Trump to any broken laws, etc.

So, let's wait and see, since we were told from the get go that this would be a long term investigation. It really could be that nothing will come of it. It also really could be that there are some very interesting leads which you and I don't know about. Nothing about being legally presumed innocent requires that you and I leap to the conclusion that he is actually innocent. (Nor, of course, should we leap to the opposite conclusion too readily.)
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That's what I'm doing! And also, what I've been berated for doing. I haven't leaped to ANY conclusion, and most definitely not a conclusion of innocence. The worst thing I've done is to fail to leap to a conclusion of guilt.
 
Argumemnon said:
Yes, because no one who disagrees with you could possibly do so on the weight of the evidence you deny exists. At this point your position is ideological.
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:rolleyes: No more so than yours.

Sure, you can form your opinion on the weight of what you consider to be evidence. Feel free. But don't insist that I accept your very large pile of anonymous allegations, hypothetical that might mean something, and inferences based on speculation as being 'evidence'. And definitely don't insist that I accept your inferences about what those allegations mean as being anything other than opinion.
 
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Emily's Cat said:
Holy cow. Innocent until proven guilty. This seems to be a foreign concept to you, despite Canada having the same presumption of innocence in legal proceedings.

Nobody is letting anyone off the hook. But circumstantial evidence alone is insufficient to convict! Just because a person has a gun and no alibi doesn't mean the committed a murder! It's worth considering them a suspect, but not enough to conclude guilt! This is not a difficult concept!
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That's a legal construct, and it has little relevance to discussions among critical thinkers.
 
Making Sense of the Manafort FISA Report
One was prior to the 2016 election and apparently unrelated to it. That one focused on Manafort’s work for the then Russia-aligned government of Ukraine. It lapsed some time in early 2016. The election warrant began in 2016 and extended into the early months of 2017. The report says it grew out of, rather than triggering, the counter-intelligence probe into ties between Trump campaign officials/associates and Russian intelligence operatives.
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So Manafort was under investigation for shenanigans with a Ukraine kleptocrat and money laundering before the Trump campaign collusion investigation.
 
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