Mueller Investigation pt5

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At least a campaign violation, followed by a cover-up.
Looks like Barr has decided that the old Nixon rule doesn't hold anymore: now, if the cover-up is good enough, the actual crime, and therefore the cover-up doesn't exit.
Nixon and Clinton would have been exonerated with an AG like this.
 
Cabbage said:
The problem with that is Trump is far from the only one lying about Russian contacts.
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if they’re lying to cover up lesser crimes I don’t see how that’s better. I know conservatives are celebrating this like anything short of treason should be given a pass but I want to know what all the lies were about if it wasn’t Russian collusion
 
Ziggurat said:
I frequently hear the military discuss what they already did after the fact.
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Ok, so your current stance is that we should hear about the US's retaliation, but we should not hear anything about what the Chinese stole? Why would the government do that? Did the Chinese tell their people about the hack? Did they explain what they did, what they got, and how it was relative? Seriously, what are you looking for here? I do not believe for a moment that the US government would tell us anything unless they were busted. Even then it would be minimal.

Ziggurat said:
No, actually, it doesn't. Blaming one party doesn't require that you blame or abstain from blaming another party. So I'm left uncertain as to whether or not you'd blame the thief in addition to the homeowner, let alone what you think the government's proper role would be in handling that theft.
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Christ, can't trust anything to common sense these days.

Yes, I would blame the thief. Not blaming the thief would be stupid, right? That being said, if my door was open and waiting for someone to come in and get stuff I would also blame myself. Why would I leave my door open? Why wouldn't I get better security? So on and so forth.

Businesses can't/shouldn't/generally don't wait for themselves to be hacked before taking steps to prevent it. We certainly don't where I work. We certainly don't let our clients blow in the breeze until they get hit and then start doing something about it.

Again though, after all of this ********, you still can't actually blame Obama for anything. You've tried, a few different ways, but still come up short. Well I mean, you did make assumptions based on nothing. So there's that.
 
theprestige said:
Of course it answers the question. Behold!

Q. Why did Trump lie about those things?

A. Because he's a stupid liar, as has been demonstrated over nine thousand times.
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Nope. That is skirting the question with an easy go to excuse. He had a motive to lie about the meeting. He stood there and told this country a lie that the meeting "primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children"...one which he authored. He has motives for every lie he tells.
 
plague311 said:
Ok, so your current stance is that we should hear about the US's retaliation, but we should not hear anything about what the Chinese stole?
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We won't hear about what China does with what they stole because China won't tell us, and they'll use it in secret, because that's the best use of it. I'm not suggesting that the US government should or would keep it secret.

And you announce retaliations to discourage other parties from hostile acts against you.

Did the Chinese tell their people about the hack?
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Why would they? Their penetration of our system isn't equivalent to a retaliation for that penetration. They will publicly deny that they even did it, because you're not supposed to do that.
 
theprestige said:
By this time tomorrow, the conventional wisdom will be that the Mueller report contains a smoking gun, and that Barr is covering it up.
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Whether it has a smoking gun or not should be established when the report is made public in its entirety. What is in question now is whether it will be released or not. If it's not, that in itself will be telling.
 
Stacyhs said:
Nope. That is skirting the question with an easy go to excuse. He had a motive to lie about the meeting. He stood there and told this country a lie that the meeting "primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children"...one which he authored. He has motives for every lie he tells.
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What we have is a President who lies about just about anyone and ANYTHING. That in itself is almost unimaginable. That people like Prestige and others considers this to be acceptable stuns me. But I'm with you Stacy. Trump has reasons for his lies. Some may not be criminal motivations but isn't it really likely that some absolutely are? Deception may not be conclusive proof of an underlying crime , but it certainly warrants the suspicion.

I find it difficult to believe that Trump was lying just to stay in practice.
 
sackett said:
If Donny Dirt's creatures can maintain implausible deniability, that's good enough for him. Hell, any shabby rag is good enough for a quisling to hide his junk.
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And Trump's predictable pattern continues:

Trump today: "Release the whole report."

Comes time to actually release it:

Trump: "I said to release it but all those other people say it can't be released."
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Probably not the rewarded part, but the rest yes. That was obvious before this.
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Why not the rewarded part? Things Trump gave Putin are on the record.
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Well, SOME of the things Trump gave Putin are on the record... (e.g. blocking sanctions against Russia).

That doesn't necessarily mean that ALL the things Trump gave Putin are on the record. Its possible that he's done some stuff behind the scenes to benefit Russia.
 
Stacyhs said:
Whether it has a smoking gun or not should be established when the report is made public in its entirety.
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A lot more than the report should be released. We should also see the letter outlining the authorized scope of Mueller's investigation. We should see the FISA application on Carter Page, who was alleged to be a foreign agent but who has after all this surveillance and investigation not been charged with anything. We should see exactly what the FBI was doing with the dodgy dossier. We should see exactly who unmasked Flynn. Etc, etc. Mueller's report is just one piece of the puzzle.
 
Belz... said:
But they're not the same problem. By talking about collusion you're ignoring the actual crime: conspiracy.
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To be clear: I'm not ignoring the allegation of unethical and criminal activity. I'm just not using the word you would use, to refer to those allegations.

And instead of acknowledging that we're talking abut the same thing and continuing the conversation, you're slamming the whole thing to a halt to issue a vocabulary lecture. Why? Now that you know what I mean by the term, why are you still having so much trouble with it?

Do you actually have any examples of someone using "collusion" to ignore the allegations, rather than to refer to the allegations?

Do you actually have any examples of someone implying Trump did collusion, and that's okay because collusion isn't a crime?
 
acbytesla said:
What we have is a President who lies about just about anyone and ANYTHING. That in itself is almost unimaginable. That people like Prestige and others considers this to be acceptable stuns me. But I'm with you Stacy. Trump has reasons for his lies. Some may not be criminal motivations but isn't it really likely that some absolutely are? Deception may not be conclusive proof of an underlying crime , but it certainly warrants the suspicion.

I find it difficult to believe that Trump was lying just to stay in practice.
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Everything we do in life, outside innate things like breathing, has a motive. With Trump, his lying is motivated by self-interest without regard to how it affects anyone else, his need to bully and hurt others, and sometimes, just because he enjoys it. My personal opinion is that he lies when he doesn't need to because he just likes to lie. It gives him some kind of personal pleasure.
 
theprestige said:
Yes it does. It matters for impeachment. While the criteria for impeachment is entirely up to the House's subjective majority opinion, it's a lot easier to sell "high crimes and misdemeanors" if you actually have strong evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors. A lot easier to sell to your fellow congressmen, and to the public at large. Hell, if the evidence is clear enough, and widely published, the public at large will be asking you to impeach.

I predict that next, a House subcommittee will review the full Mueller report. They'll refer it to the full committee... and the full committee will recommend no action, because there's nothing in the report to hang an impeachment on. I also predict that along the way there will be plenty of grandstanding by Democrat committee members, implying that redactions in the report are suspicious, that the report itself is unreliable (because it's not saying what we wish it said), etc.
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The hilited prediction has a reasonable chance of being correct. IMO the important thing is for your described procedure to take place. The full unredacted support should be vetted by your congress.
 
Belz... said:
So why are you muddling the issue by misusing words?
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I don't think I'm misusing words. I think collusion is a perfectly cromulent way to refer to the underlying behavior.

What I'm actually asking about is the origin of this meme that using the term means one is muddling the issue.

Here's Wikipedia on the word:

Collusion is a secret cooperation or deceitful agreement in order to deceive others, although not necessarily illegal, as a conspiracy. A secret agreement between two or more parties to limit open competition by deceiving, misleading, or defrauding others of their legal rights, or to obtain an objective forbidden by law typically by defrauding or gaining an unfair market advantage is an example of collusion. It is an agreement among firms or individuals to divide a market, set prices, limit production or limit opportunities.[1] It can involve "unions, wage fixing, kickbacks, or misrepresenting the independence of the relationship between the colluding parties".[2] In legal terms, all acts effected by collusion are considered void.[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collusion​

"Not necessarily illegal." But certainly illegal in this context. Illegal activity has certainly been a connotation of the word in my mind as long as I can remember. I don't mind being corrected on vocabulary if I'm using the wrong terms. And I'll certainly stop using "collusion" here if it actually does muddle anything. But I won't be bullied out of using it just because you refuse to allow it in conversation. How did this issue even come up? Do you know?

Do you know where the "you can't say collusion because collusion isn't illegal" meme came from?
 
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