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

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Skeptic Ginger said:
It's only hard if you watch the lies on Fox News.
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Also, they know deep down what is right and what is wrong. They understand that a foreigner trying to influence elections is wrong and illegal. They are just seeking excuses for their boy.
 
llwyd said:
I wonder if you are aware of the distinction of being pro-business vs pro-market. The US currently is a plutocracy: corporations are persons, money is free speech and the political process is totally infested with corporate donations. But to be pro-corporate is not to be pro-market, often it's pretty much the opposite.
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I have no intention of getting in the way of your wonderment. If the mountain won't come to Mohammed, then Mohammed will go to the beach.
 
xjx388 said:
Correct me if I’m wrong: the analysis in this thread seems to indicate that if you pay a foreign national to provide information or use their foreign connection to do opposition research, no problem.

If I’ve grokked this correctly, that seems like a thin veneer to comply with the letter but not the spirit of the law. If Trump had hired a Russian agent to provide/find dirt on the Clintons, I don’t think that would have gone over well...


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"Not gone over well" and "is criminally illegal" are two very different things.

If you instigate offering to pay someone to do something (make hats and t shirts, do opposition research, whatever) and just pay them for the service, there is no spoken or unspoken "debt" or reciprocal obligation left on your end.

If you're just receiving campaign assistance (donations, gifts, etc) from foreign nationals, that's illegal, (and I'd assume because of how the "you scratch my back, I scratch yours" principle generally operates in human interactions, be it a formal, official "quid pro quo" or not.)
 
acbytesla said:
I can't believe that nonsense went on for 2 years and people care still mentioning it.
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In James Clapper's Book, Facts and Fears, when he talks about Benghazi, he brings up his dead horse speech:
Here in Washington we often try other strategies that are somewhat less successful, such as we’ll buy a stronger whip for the dead horse. We’ll change riders. We’ll say things like, ‘This is the way we’ve always ridden this horse,’”
We’ll appoint a committee to study the horse. We’ll lower standards so that more dead horses can be included. We’ll appoint a tiger team to revive the dead horse. We’ll hire outside contractors to ride the dead horse
We’ll harness several dead horses together to increase speed. We’ll attempt to mount multiple dead horses in the hopes that one of them will spring to life. We’ll provide additional funding and training to increase the dead horse’s performance. We’ll do a productivity study to see if lighter riders improve the dead horse’s performance. We’ll declare that since a dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overhead and therefore contributes more to the mission than live horses
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Emily's Cat said:
:confused: The position you seem to hold is a bit confusing to me. It seems that you think it's acceptable for a candidate to hire a foreign spy to dig up dirt on their opponent... but that it's not acceptable for a candidate to consider accepting dirt on their opponent if they are NOT paying a foreign person for it?
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I think you're just easily confused. Party A pays Party X to research (yeah, let's call it research) Party B. Party A no longer owes anything to Party X. Party B gets a call from Party Y, a known political stalking horse, offering him free dirt on Party A. Party B, in a you-scratch-my-back-world, now owes Party Y.

As Don Corleone said to the undertaker, "Someday, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service for me. But until that day, accept this justice as a gift on my daughter’s wedding day."
 
portlandatheist said:
In James Clapper's Book, Facts and Fears, when he talks about Benghazi, he brings up his dead horse speech:
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I like that. I don't recall which FBI agent who was investigating the emails who said it. Essentially, everyone knew this was a bs investigation from the start. They would look into it because it was their job but they also knew it was a waste of time and resources.
 
theprestige said:
How exactly is this analogy supposed to work?

A guy in Finland steals fifty bucks from the Clinton campaign, donates it to Trump, and... What? Now we have to impeach Trump?
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If he accepted the money knowing where it came from, then yes.

And before you say, well that's silly, would it still be silly if the amount was $50,000, or $50 million? The crime would be the same even if the amount differs.
 
xjx388 said:
Correct me if I’m wrong: the analysis in this thread seems to indicate that if you pay a foreign national to provide information or use their foreign connection to do opposition research, no problem.
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Correct, it's a business transaction between the campaign and the service provider, exactly the same as hiring a Chinese company to make your hats and banners. They provide a service, you pay them, neither is beholden to the other.

If I’ve grokked this correctly, that seems like a thin veneer to comply with the letter but not the spirit of the law. If Trump had hired a Russian agent to provide/find dirt on the Clintons, I don’t think that would have gone over well...
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It would however been legal. However that's not even what the Clinton Campaign did. Firstly the Campaign itself never hired anyone, a lawyer working for them did. Secondly, the Lawyer was approached by an American company and hired them. No one in the Clinton Campaign, not even the Lawyer, had anything to do with the decisions to sub-contract out the work to a second company, or for that company to further sub-contract the work to Steele. They didn't even know where the information was coming from until late in the campaign.

This is like hiring a US company to make your hats, and having them then sub-contract that job out to a second company who then outsources the Job to a Chinese firm.

If you can't see how that it rather different to directly meeting with operatives of a foreign government, especially one hostile to the US, so as to be given information you didn't hire them for, and also quite possibly, later on actually receive stolen data from your opponent via other operatives of that Government, then you really aren't looking very hard at the issues involved.
 
theprestige said:
It's like I keep saying: Arguments by analogy always fail. I make an exception, and try to take an analogy seriously, and what do I get?
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That's why I liked my analogy from earlier....

Say you were running for Mayor, then it's the difference between hiring a PI to investigate your opponent and later finding that the pictures were taken by a guy with mob connections, and one day getting into your limo to find a guy with mob connections sitting there with a folder full of photos of you opponent, greetings from his boss, and an offer you couldn't possibly refuse.
 
Stacko said:

Way to admit that if no one will prevent Mueller from looking for crimes; criminal activity will be found Devin.
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How is anybody discussing anything other than this?

We now have Devin Nunes, on tape, admitting that the actions by the Trump team were illegal, that they need to shut down the Mueller investigation, that Kavanaugh must be confirmed before midterms, and that Rosenstein must be impeached after midterms.
 
I suppose there's also this: https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1027338771082227712

As @ChrisRaimondi notes, the image below may be the MOST damning piece of evidence indicating Trump a) knew of the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting and b) knew what it was about. In the first 9 months of 2016, his first tweet about Clinton's emails was...

...the day of the meeting.

2/ Add to that that he said on June 7—the day of the pre-June 9 planning meeting—that he had Clinton dirt he'd soon share, and add to *that* that he was slated to be at Trump Tower on June 9 discussing that speech with Manafort and Kushner... any juror would see what's happening.

3/ Never mind what we know of his management style and how he insists on being kept informed—*especially* on any topic he's *focused* on—and his son having a history of subservience to his dad, and Trump concocting a fake cover story for the meeting after... like I said: he knew.

4/ Trump's tweet came 10-20 minutes after the end of a meeting he says he didn't know about, on the same topic as the meeting, which meeting was in the building he was in, which topic he'd never tweeted about in 2016... coincidences that big don't happen.

5/ So, if you're on board with the evidence establishing Trump knew of the meeting, knew it was about Clinton emails, would've been upset the emails weren't produced, and wanted (immediately post-meeting) his team to get those emails from the Russians... then see my pinned tweet.
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That's the meeting that Nunes is on tape as admitting was "criminal".
 
PhantomWolf said:
That's why I liked my analogy from earlier....

Say you were running for Mayor, then it's the difference between hiring a PI to investigate your opponent and later finding that the pictures were taken by a guy with mob connections, and one day getting into your limo to find a guy with mob connections sitting there with a folder full of photos of you opponent, greetings from his boss, and an offer you couldn't possibly refuse.
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I'd say "**** you, I'm going to my horse ranch."
 
Foolmewunz said:
I think you're just easily confused. Party A pays Party X to research (yeah, let's call it research) Party B. Party A no longer owes anything to Party X. Party B gets a call from Party Y, a known political stalking horse, offering him free dirt on Party A. Party B, in a you-scratch-my-back-world, now owes Party Y.

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You're just going to confuse them with all those parties. They'll only go to 'em and get loaded, and then they won't remember a thing.

:p
 
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