Cont: Breaking: Mueller Grand Jury charges filed, arrests as soon as Monday pt 2

[The Greater Fool]

You think the plea deal might be evidence of that?

I think Flynn knows what the FBI has on him, and recognizes the plea deal is his best option, which just may be why he accepted it.

 

[thaiboxerken]

I think Flynn knows what the FBI has on him, and recognizes the plea deal is his best option, which just may be why he accepted it.

Nah. People do plea deals just for funzies, not to get out of harsher penalties for crimes they committed in exchange for information about other crimes.

 

[theprestige]

I think Flynn knows what the FBI has on him, and recognizes the plea deal is his best option, which just may be why he accepted it.

What if what the FBI has is that Turkey thing, and that's why he pled out on the process charge?

 

[theprestige]

Nah. People do plea deals just for funzies, not to get out of harsher penalties for crimes they committed in exchange for information about other crimes.

If Flynn is on the hook for the Turkey thing, then his plea deal isn't evidence for the Russia thing.

 

[thaiboxerken]

If Flynn is on the hook for the Turkey thing, then his plea deal isn't evidence for the Russia thing.

Perhaps, but that assumes Turkey isn't part of the Russia thing.

 

[The Greater Fool]

What if what the FBI has is that Turkey thing, and that's why he pled out on the process charge?

What if?

Question is, what more does Flynn know about that you don't?

 

[johnny karate]

If you have better evidence of conspiracy than Flynn's "plea bargain", then bring it. This was the best SG could come up with, and it seems like everyone's willing to defend it as such.

Skeptic Ginger did not present the Flynn plea bargain as evidence of collusion, nor has anyone defended it as such.

Also, why did you put plea bargain in quotes? Are you denying its existence?

But by all means if you have something better let's see it.

Yes, if only we had high-ranking members of the Trump campaign meeting with a "Russian government attorney" who was offering to "provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary" as "part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump", and then lie about the details of the meeting afterwards.

 

[johnny karate]

That's the nice thing about an unopened box: you can still imagine anything you want inside.

And nitwits can deny there's anything in the box at all, despite having already been shown some of its contents.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Perhaps, but that assumes Turkey isn't part of the Russia thing.

It's looking like there are a number of foreign countries that may have helped Trump get elected. It may be only Russia that hacked the DNC emails and managed the bot farms. But there were meetings with other sleazy characters that revolve around money laundering and other nefarious deeds.

 

[NoahFence]

It's looking like there are a number of foreign countries that may have helped Trump get elected. It may be only Russia that hacked the DNC emails and managed the bot farms. But there were meetings with other sleazy characters that revolve around money laundering and other nefarious deeds.

Well that would certainly escalate things. Multiple countries?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Well that would certainly escalate things. Multiple countries?

It was from this, courtesy of Seth Abramson, and Mueller interviewed Barrack back in Jan:

TOM BARRACK. Never forget him. He's Trump's most trusted adviser—and I've been saying for months he and his pal Mike Flynn are key to explaining why a washed-up, deep-in-debt Manafort ended up on the campaign and how early Trump joined the conspiracy to use foreign powers to win.

2/ It was *under a week* after Manafort finally wrested control of the Trump campaign and Trump's schedule from Corey Lewandoski that Manafort's pal Tom Barrack started emailing foreign nationals saying he could set up meetings with Trump. Manafort's takeover was also Barrack's....

3/ Barrack and Flynn seem to have engineered not only Manafort's takeover of the Trump campaign's day-to-day operations but also the hiring of the whole national security team. In doing so, it seems they engineered the selling of the campaign to Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE....
4/ If you understand the Kushner-Barrack-Prince-Flynn-Manafort axis, with under-lieutenants Sessions and Clovis and "off-campaign" liaisons Stone and Don Jr., you basically understand how the Trump campaign became in early '16 essentially a foreign rather than American operation.

I know some people in this thread have been critical of Abramson, but this stuff matches up with a lot of other pieces.

 

[Aber]

If Flynn is on the hook for the Turkey thing, then his plea deal isn't evidence for the Russia thing.

Flynn's guilty plea is about lying about his contacts with the Russian ambassador. Those conversations happened at the time that Obama put more sanctions on Russia, and Russia unusually did not reply with counter-sanctions.

The FBI has tapes of those calls, but we do not know yet if Flynn made any promises about the Trump administration policy on Russia (or whether there were any earlier contacts discussing the same thing).

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

There ya go, they were using their work phones to hide their affair, which shows that their sleazy, tawdry dishonest affair was intimately involved with his FBI career, thank god we got that figured out.

No, it doesn't.

here is a cite you requested, as always, my pleasure.

Adulterous duo bypassed chain of command

No, I asked for a cite that backed up the claim you made.

 

[timhau]

Trump fans chastising someone for extramarital sex? Wow.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

Keep in mind that this conversation started another thread, because SG presented this stuff specifically, as evidence of the alleged conspiracy.

Actually it started when ponderingturtle sarcastically said that the charges against those who have plead guilty were made up, and you asked how many of those guilty pleas were for "Russian collusion".

It's not really about how plea bargains work, it's about what you think this particular plea bargain means. If you don't think this plea bargain stands on its own as evidence, then let's talk about the other evidence. What should SG have led with? What evidence would you lead with, if you weren't stuck explaining how plea bargains work.

I wouldn't dream of trying to sum something as big and complex up in a single post. I'll give you an example, though, if you like.

This post has one link to a relevant news story, and a thread of commentary explaining the wider context. That's evidence. Proof? No. Something from which we can draw firm conclusions? No. But evidence. And there's a lot more, if you choose to look for yourself.

 

[The Big Dog]

Correct. And?



Are you claiming that he shared information with Page that Page was not authorised to have access to? Can you provide a citation for that claim, please?

No, it doesn't.



No, I asked for a cite that backed up the claim you made.

Yeah, and I provided it. Not sure why I bothered, of course.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

Yeah, and I provided it. Not sure why I bothered, of course.

Can you quote the part of the article that states that Page was not authorised to have access to the information that she had access to?

 

[The Big Dog]

Can you quote the part of the article that states that Page was not authorised to have access to the information that she had access to?

Strzok and Page were improperly using their status as **** buddies to improperly end run the FBI chain of command to feed McCabe information to keep his eye on an investigation that he ultimately had to recuse himself from.

Several witnesses told the OIG that Page circumvented the official chain of command, and that Strzok communicated important Midyear case information to her, and thus to McCabe, without Priestap’s or Steinbach’s knowledge.

This should be trivially simple to understand

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

This should be trivially simple to understand

It is. That's why I asked you to quote the part of the article that said Strzok provided Page with information she wasn't authorised to have access to. That you have been unable to do so indicates that the article contains no such assertion, and therefore it is not something you should have used in order to support that assertion of yours.

 

[jimbob]

If Flynn is on the hook for the Turkey thing, then his plea deal isn't evidence for the Russia thing.

No, it means that the FBI (and presumably Flynn) believe that he is more use to the investigation as a cooperative witness. If all Flynn had done wrong was lie to the FBI and fail to register as a foreign agent for Turkey, then why would the FBI ignore that for guilty plea to a lesser crime, when there is sufficient evidence to convict Flynn on the more serious crime?

You don't offer plea bargains to someone if they are the only suspect and you have enough to convict them on a more serious offence. You offer plea bargains to someone low-down in a conspiracy when you have enough evidence to convict them on a more serious offence, and you know that they can provide evidence on more senior conspirators.

You might offer a plea bargain if you are dubious about the quality of your evidence for the more serious crime, but that is not the case here.