thaiboxerken
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Faux News is reporting "breaking news" that Mueller's investigation has anti-Trump bias.........
Cont: All things Trump + Russia Part 2
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Skeptic Ginger
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That's quite humorous considering Trump's collusion with the Russians is the investigation.
Crossbow
Seeking Honesty and Sanity
You are still wrong.
Which is not at all surprising considering that you are one of the very few people who insist that torture is constitutional.
BobTheCoward
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I even quoted the state supreme Court ruling
“The law in Illinois is clear that neither the court nor counsel should attempt to define the reasonable doubt standard for the jury.”
And people pointed out to you repeatedly how you misstated my argument. I don't even think you are capable of stating the points of that thread back to someone.
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Where I read "should", you see "shall." Not the same.
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BobTheCoward
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BobTheCoward
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I amend my statement to several states take measures to discourage judges and lawyers from elucidating reasonable doubt. Please excuse my wrong and hyperbolic statement. Or don't.
Allen773
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Yes Mueller should certainly devote equal time and resources to all of the extensive and high-level friendly contacts between Russian officials and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. It would only be Fair (and Balanced).
Delphic Oracle
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By the time they paid for it, their doing so had no bearing on the creation of foreign-generated dirt.
If we're talking about the Steele memos, then that's technically British ex-spy dirt, though.
This is where the tapatalk signature that annoys people used to be
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BobTheCoward
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I would call it still Russian dirt collated (or made up) by a British ex spy.
Crossbow
Seeking Honesty and Sanity
Congratulations to you for finally recognizing the obvious.
Emily's Cat
Rarely prone to hissy-fits
The problem (for me anyway) is that much of the circumstantial evidence being floated this past year isn't even really circumstantial evidence - it's speculative inference. And much of the circumstantial evidence that does exist supports more than one inference, and not all of those inferences lead to a foregone conclusion of guilt. There's a lot of leading narrative out there.
Yes, many of the elements brought forth have seemed suspicious based on their framing and presentation. Many of the elements could also have been presented in a different framing and seemed innocuous. And many of the elements brought forth haven't been brought forth in an objective fashion.
I agree that Trump Jr. meeting with Vesnilwhatshername with the intent of receiving damaging information about Clinton was unethical. It may or may not have been illegal - I'm not a lawyer, and legal opinion seems to show less consensus that I would like in order to form a conclusion.
But it has been presented with purposeful framing: Russian lawyer with some degree of association with Russian government offered dirt = soliciting something of value from a foreign government = evidence of active collusion/conspiracy.
What raises more skepticism in me is the double standard in play here. Democrats literally paid a foreign intelligence operative to dig up dirt about Trump = somehow not soliciting something of value from a foreign government = no problems, perfectly acceptable.
There's always a fairly high likelihood that there is information in here that I don't know. I don't drool over the latest news tidbit, and I actually have a busy life outside of the current political drama
. I simply haven't been able to fathom the distinction being used to differentiate these situations from one another that isn't more easily explainable as simple partisanship.
The problem (for me anyway) is that much of the circumstantial evidence being floated this past year isn't even really circumstantial evidence - it's speculative inference. And much of the circumstantial evidence that does exist supports more than one inference, and not all of those inferences lead to a foregone conclusion of guilt. There's a lot of leading narrative out there.
Yes, many of the elements brought forth have seemed suspicious based on their framing and presentation. Many of the elements could also have been presented in a different framing and seemed innocuous. And many of the elements brought forth haven't been brought forth in an objective fashion.
I agree that Trump Jr. meeting with Vesnilwhatshername with the intent of receiving damaging information about Clinton was unethical. It may or may not have been illegal - I'm not a lawyer, and legal opinion seems to show less consensus that I would like in order to form a conclusion.
But it has been presented with purposeful framing: Russian lawyer with some degree of association with Russian government offered dirt = soliciting something of value from a foreign government = evidence of active collusion/conspiracy.
What raises more skepticism in me is the double standard in play here. Democrats literally paid a foreign intelligence operative to dig up dirt about Trump = somehow not soliciting something of value from a foreign government = no problems, perfectly acceptable.
There's always a fairly high likelihood that there is information in here that I don't know. I don't drool over the latest news tidbit, and I actually have a busy life outside of the current political drama
Look at the timing of the events around the meeting
June 7 17:16| Don Jr. confirms meeting w/ Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya
June7 21:13| Trump promises press conf the next week with Clinton dirt
June 8 |Trump posts link to DCLeaks
June 9 |Trump Jr, Kushner, Manafort meet with Russian operative
June 12 |Assange announces Clinton emails
June 27 |Hacked emails posted to DCLeaks
We have Don Jr's assertion that nothing happened in the meeting but we already know he lied several times about the meeting.
We have Trump claiming that there will be dirt on Clinton within a few hours of the meeting confirmation and the day after, posting a link to the website where the leaks were put.
That is pretty unlikely set of coincidences
BobTheCoward
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I don't think you are able to quantify the likelihood to then determine if it is likely or unlikely.
Hard stop, and I expect you may know where I'm heading... Can you please cite one or more examples?
We know that the meeting was arranged
We know that the Trump team intended to arrange to illegally get dirt on Clinton at that meeting
We know that the Trump team lied about the meeting
We know that they now say that the meeting wasn't productive but that shortly after the meeting had been agreed, Trump posted links to the site where dirt on Clinton was to be put.
I think it is reasonable to say that on the balance of probabilities, the meeting did indeed cover the subjects as described in the emails arranging it, and that is why the Trump team lied about it.
BobTheCoward
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I don't think that is reasonable compared to the alternative.
Which is that Trump Jr suddenly started telling the truth about the meeting and that it genuinely was all about adopting orphans, and it was just a coincidence that Trump Sr had posted a link to DCleaks just after the meeting had been arranged, and this was exactly the sort of thing that the email exchanges about the meeting were describing?
Or do you have a different alternative?
I know that you have ... highly "exacting"... standards for proof, but this is not proof but simply an assessment of the most likely explanation.
BobTheCoward
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The alternative is simply to not speculate until more information is made available. There are people that need to take a less skeptical position for greater intuition (investigators). We are not investigators.
Emily's Cat
Rarely prone to hissy-fits
Why do you think it's unlikely? We already knew that the DNC had been hacked, prior to that meeting being initiated in June. It had already been reported that Russia was the suspected hacker of the DNC servers, and that emails had been stolen.
The coincidence in question is only that a meeting was initiated between the time of the hack and the time of the release. It would be a more meaningful coincidence, to me anyway, if it weren't already widely known and reported that the emails had been hacked. The emails were going to come out at some point regardless. If they'd come out any time after that meeting was set up, it would be seen as a remarkable coincidence, even if it were months after the meeting.
Honestly, I keep circling back to the premise that all of this is just as explainable as attempts by a foreign country to weaken the US without any purposeful involvement from Trump or his campaign. It's just as successful, just as disruptive, and just as volatile whether Trump was actually involved or not. If he was involved, then it actually becomes somewhat less effective - we have a bad actor undermining our process, and that can be addressed as a one-off situation. If Trump were not involved, then we have never-ending speculation, and an unwillingness by a large amount of people to believe anything that indicates his lack of involvement, increased partisanship and political division, and an inability to focus on anything else for a solid year and counting.
Far more effective in terms of disruption if Trump isn't involved, and everything hinges on speculation and suspicion. That circus will never end, and will carry through into pretty much all future elections.
ETA: TL-DR - This whole mess is also explainable by a hostile foreign entity (not even necessarily Russia) exploiting superficial associations and coincidences in order to weaken the US position and distract us from... whatever.
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