Mueller Investigation pt5

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Segnosaur said:
My belief is that the picture with the crosshairs was accident/an oversight, and that Stone just happened to pick the first image that he came across and posted it without paying too much attention. (i.e. no specific threat intended.) The reason? Because I can't see any real benefit to doing that to a judge, and we've seen other people make similar mistakes.

That doesn't mean I'm absolving Stone. After all, he should be keeping his mouth shut and not posting ANYTHING about the judge or the case. Plus, as another poster pointed out, the source of that particular image seems to be linked to a web site that posts anti-semetiic nonsense... If someone is making references to those types of sites, you should be questioning their integrity. (e.g. in a "do you really read playboy for the articles" sort of way.)
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I don't think it was accidental, but neither do I think those are crosshairs. More likely, to me, that Stone's giving a nod to the creators in order to generate support. That symbol looks suspiciously similar to the stormfront logo. I haven't caught up on the whole thread and did some news skimming but didn't find the information I was looking for. Does anyone here know if it has been established yet which website the picture originated from?
 
jimbob said:
I'm sure there is a perfectly good reason why this would not be impeachable.

I'm really struggling why the Republican party aren't also working to impeach him.
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Have you paid attention to the worldview that they've so painstakingly built for the kind of people who favor Fox News out of lies, disinformation, and general BS? They've invested so much into that that they really don't have much of a viable exit strategy that wouldn't reveal how incredibly irresponsible and depraved the major figures in the Republican Party have become.

Segnosaur said:
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

I can't really think of any benefit Stone or Trump would have gotten by getting labeled as Nazis. So why do you think he published a photo of a them wearing swastikas? The idea that he just reused the picture without looking closely at it seems to make more sense than any sort of secret messaging. "Look at us... we are all nazis!"
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Benefit? Isn't making liberal heads explode benefit enough? It would hardly be the only time that the right has intentionally invoked Nazi symbology for the "fun" of it, either. The kind of "fun" they will then pass off as a "joke," despite the disturbing similarities between things that they propose and fascism, and then harangue the "left" for overreacting to their "joke." Not that it's likely to convince many on the "left" so much as it will trigger the confirmation bias and persecution complex of the right.
 
Aridas said:
Have you paid attention to the worldview that they've so painstakingly built for the kind of people who favor Fox News out of lies, disinformation, and general BS? They've invested so much into that that they really don't have much of a viable exit strategy that wouldn't reveal how incredibly irresponsible and depraved the major figures in the Republican Party have become.
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Perhaps themselves starting impeachment proceedings might be a viable exit strategy.
 
Segnosaur said:
My belief is that the picture with the crosshairs was accident/an oversight, and that Stone just happened to pick the first image that he came across and posted it without paying too much attention. (i.e. no specific threat intended.) The reason? Because I can't see any real benefit to doing that to a judge, and we've seen other people make similar mistakes.
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It certainly is bizarre. I’m not sure what he hoped to gain. I think he was just in a rage.

Stone’s remarks after he posted also made it seem like he was confused. He seemed to think people thought his worded message was being interpreted as a threat rather than the picture. I’m not buying it.

When concerns were raised about it being a threat, it was obvious it was in reference to he crosshairs in the picture. Stone playing dumb on that issue is not convincing.

He even used the word “hitman” in his message, although in reference to Comey. He seemed to be sending a message: “Hitman, crosshairs, judge…are you second amendment solution people picking this up?”

The apology is actually an apology from his lawyers done with his permission. Sure, it has a signed apology from Stone, but the letter says the lawyers are apologizing. Not that Stone asked them to submit the apology. Or even that they are apologizing on his behalf or at his request. Only with his permission.

Stone claims to be a master of influence and control. A image of crosshairs next to the judge is not something we would expect such a person to easily overlook.

The picture appears to have originated at fbcoverup.com (which I have not gone to because the web site is not safe). It is similar to a number of (older) images that have a photo of a liberal person with the background altered to include the crosshairs and “Corruption Central” and some colored letters at the bottom and some have a skull symbol with “Attorney” and “Toxic”. The image is somewhat different in that the face is larger in the image for the judge than in the rest.

The image probably came from either americans4innovation.blogspot (which appears to be an alt-right conspiracy site) or therussophile.org (a Russian news aggregator). This is not some common random picture. A Google image search using dates prior to 2/18/2019 gives more than a dozen photos of the judge with the two from the sites above being way down in the middle of the page.

The date of the blog article associated with that image is 2/4/2019. The wayback machine has no saved record for the therussophile site. The first save for the americans4innovation site is 2/10/2019. It saved changes to that site on 2/17, 2/18, and 2/19.

The image that Stone posted is a cropped image of the image on those sites. I can find no instance of the cropped image prior to 2/18. That indicates that Stone (or someone working for Stone) created the cropped image.
 
smartcooky said:
Perhaps themselves starting impeachment proceedings might be a viable exit strategy.
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I have been saying it since Trump got elected that the GOP needs to cut out the cancer by itself, or it will be tainted for decades to come.

But I fear Stegno is right in that Trumpers have invested too much of their identity into The Donald to admit to themselves and the world that they have been conned.
 
DevilsAdvocate said:
It certainly is bizarre. I’m not sure what he hoped to gain. I think he was just in a rage.

Stone’s remarks after he posted also made it seem like he was confused. He seemed to think people thought his worded message was being interpreted as a threat rather than the picture. I’m not buying it.

When concerns were raised about it being a threat, it was obvious it was in reference to he crosshairs in the picture. Stone playing dumb on that issue is not convincing.

He even used the word “hitman” in his message, although in reference to Comey. He seemed to be sending a message: “Hitman, crosshairs, judge…are you second amendment solution people picking this up?”

The apology is actually an apology from his lawyers done with his permission. Sure, it has a signed apology from Stone, but the letter says the lawyers are apologizing. Not that Stone asked them to submit the apology. Or even that they are apologizing on his behalf or at his request. Only with his permission.

Stone claims to be a master of influence and control. A image of crosshairs next to the judge is not something we would expect such a person to easily overlook.

The picture appears to have originated at fbcoverup.com (which I have not gone to because the web site is not safe). It is similar to a number of (older) images that have a photo of a liberal person with the background altered to include the crosshairs and “Corruption Central” and some colored letters at the bottom and some have a skull symbol with “Attorney” and “Toxic”. The image is somewhat different in that the face is larger in the image for the judge than in the rest.

The image probably came from either americans4innovation.blogspot (which appears to be an alt-right conspiracy site) or therussophile.org (a Russian news aggregator). This is not some common random picture. A Google image search using dates prior to 2/18/2019 gives more than a dozen photos of the judge with the two from the sites above being way down in the middle of the page.

The date of the blog article associated with that image is 2/4/2019. The wayback machine has no saved record for the therussophile site. The first save for the americans4innovation site is 2/10/2019. It saved changes to that site on 2/17, 2/18, and 2/19.

The image that Stone posted is a cropped image of the image on those sites. I can find no instance of the cropped image prior to 2/18. That indicates that Stone (or someone working for Stone) created the cropped image.
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Stacko has an earlier example

Stacko said:

He's clearly in a good place right now.
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The Great Zaganza said:
Look, threatening to kill the judge is a clever strategy to have a mistrial: how can that judge still be impartial?
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Nope. From the Popehat article:

Some have speculated that Stone, always fumbling for an angle, may have wanted to force Jackson to withdraw from the case. That won’t work. Federal courts have long held that a party can’t insult or antagonize a judge and then demand her recusal on the theory that the insults have biased her. That’s why President Trump couldn’t force United States District Judge Gonzalo Curiel off his case with his bigoted and boorish claims that Curiel’s ethnic background disqualified him from hearing the Trump University case. In fact, a party can’t even force a judge off a case by threatening her—and some have tried. The reason is obvious: If a litigant could force a judge to drop a case with deliberate misbehavior, then insults and threats would fly and dockets would descend into chaos.
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jimbob said:
Stacko has an earlier example
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Thanks.

That seems to be from 2/8 originating for aim4truth aka American Intelligence Media.

In any case, it was not a widely available image that would have just come up on an image search for a picture of the judge, and it was cropped and does not appear to have been done so until Stone's post.
 
smartcooky said:
Perhaps themselves starting impeachment proceedings might be a viable exit strategy.
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Doubtful. At least not without a bunch of preparation to shift things from Fox News and the rest of right-wing media. At this point, them starting impeachment proceedings would be fairly likely to get them branded as RINO's, traitors, etc.
 
Trump Retweets

Geraldo Rivera
‏Verified account
@GeraldoRivera
Geraldo Rivera Retweeted Mediaite
This is crazy scary. A cabal of unelected bureaucrats-angered & upset that @realDonaldTrump fired their boss-whispered about overthrowing him. Has this ever happened? Why isn’t the mainstream seeing this for what it is. This is malignant arrogance from a man fired for lying.
 
https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1097875418756116482

We had to cut this for length, but McCabe told me that his guess is that the White House "immediately knew the steps I took after Jim got fired, and the cases I opened" because of Nunes. "When I was surprised to see Nunes at the briefing, I knew it would happen very quickly."

And here is what McCabe says about this in the book: "Now that the Gang of Eight was a crowd of two dozen in the room, I thought, the chance of this not getting back to the president was basically zero. Then Devin Nunes walked in, and the chance was less than zero."

McCabe, in his book, on the Gang of 8 briefing: "Rosenstein went to talk to Nunes, came back, told me, Nunes is staying, he says he’s not recused from this, he refuses to leave...At the end of the day it’s his recusal, I can’t enforce it. We can’t kick him out of the room."
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TofuFighter said:
I don't think it was accidental, but neither do I think those are crosshairs. More likely, to me, that Stone's giving a nod to the creators in order to generate support. That symbol looks suspiciously similar to the stormfront logo. I haven't caught up on the whole thread and did some news skimming but didn't find the information I was looking for. Does anyone here know if it has been established yet which website the picture originated from?
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http://cosmicconvergence.org/?p=30951

YW
 
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