Mueller Investigation pt5

Status
Not open for further replies.
newyorkguy said:
That a man who has had political opponents murdered, that has imprisoned Russian police officers who -- sometimes unwittingly -- arrested the 'wrong people,' that has stolen and helped steal literally billions of dollars in Russian funds and property, that if this kind of man says he prefers Trump as president, that alone should make people not want to vote for Trump. But in this crazy time in our history none of that matters to some people. It seems nothing matters to them except indulging their fantasies about payback.[/QUOTE]

That and getting a tax break (temporarily, unless your one of the top 1%) and keeping brown people from tanning up your white country.
Click to expand...
 
Cabbage said:
Putin said he preferred Trump when they met in Helsinki:



https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/07/putin-trump-election-translation/565481/



Beyond that, I think we have a confusion between "express purpose" (which I take to mean for the single, explicit goal) versus "purpose expressed" (which I take to mean they actually came out and SAID/EXPRESSED what their particular purpose was).



The two phrases mean quite different things and I honestly can't tell if this is deliberate obfuscation or simple misunderstanding.



But anyway, you can't really ask someone to support one (express purpose) by asking for the other (purpose expressed). Completely different meaning as far as I can tell.
Click to expand...

A single explicit goal must be made explicit, by definition. Without the explicit statement of the goal, it's not actually an explicit goal.

What you're trying say seems to be that you think there's enough circumstantial evidence to make the goal obvious, even though it's never been expressed or made explicit anywhere.

I am not misunderstanding or obfuscating. I am questioning the use of terms like "express purpose" and "explicit goal" to convey a degree of confidence that isn't justified by the evidence.

Probably the best way to explain what you mean me to understand by those terms, is to just cite the evidence that you think supports their use. That's all I asked for, after all. But instead I got a lecture on the vagueness of the English language.
 
theprestige said:
A single explicit goal must be made explicit, by definition. Without the explicit statement of the goal, it's not actually an explicit goal.
Click to expand...

Well I simply disagree then. You can keep a single, express (that was the word, after all, not explicit) purpose in mind without ever telling anyone about it. That doesn't mean you didn't have it. Similarly, a group can covertly have an express purpose in mind without ever openly expressing that purpose.

Anyway, you specifically asked for where they (the trolls) expressed their purpose and no one ever claimed they did. If you wanted to ask for evidence of their purpose instead, you should have said so; but it's rather naive to expect the trolls would openly admit their purpose. You know as well as I do that kind of evidence isn't present here and was never expected to be.

Express (the adjective) simply has a different meaning than express (the verb).
 
theprestige said:
A single explicit goal must be made explicit, by definition. Without the explicit statement of the goal, it's not actually an explicit goal.

What you're trying say seems to be that you think there's enough circumstantial evidence to make the goal obvious, even though it's never been expressed or made explicit anywhere.

I am not misunderstanding or obfuscating. I am questioning the use of terms like "express purpose" and "explicit goal" to convey a degree of confidence that isn't justified by the evidence.

Probably the best way to explain what you mean me to understand by those terms, is to just cite the evidence that you think supports their use. That's all I asked for, after all. But instead I got a lecture on the vagueness of the English language.
Click to expand...

How ridiculous. As if Putin is going to send the investigators a specific plan along with a PowerPoint presentation.

It is a FACT that the Russian government was ACTIVELY trying to get Donald Trump elected. This is not in dispute. The only question was if the Trump campaign coordinated and conspired with the Russians
 
acbytesla said:
How ridiculous. As if Putin is going to send the investigators a specific plan along with a PowerPoint presentation.

It is a FACT that the Russian government was ACTIVELY trying to get Donald Trump elected. This is not in dispute. The only question was if the Trump campaign coordinated and conspired with the Russians
Click to expand...
Bro, I'm not the one claiming "express purpose" and "explicit goal". Figure it out.
 
acbytesla said:
It is a FACT that the Russian government was ACTIVELY trying to get Donald Trump elected.
Click to expand...

I'm not fully convinced of this.

I think it is reasonably inferred from available evidence that the plan was to increase support for Donald Trump, but I also think that Putin, like the rest of us, was looking at polls which showed that would be unlikely. I'm a little more swayed by the theory that the Russians expected a win by Hillary, but wanted to make the electorate as divided and angry as possible and set up Donald as the head of a vocal resistance to undermine Hillary and make the US a less effective foil on the world stage. I suspect they were as surprised as the rest of us that their plan worked better than expected and actually swept him into office.

I think both Trump and the Russians expected him to lose, kick up a ruckus about stolen elections that would undermine our democracy. Likely he would have set up a media company and become the vocal opposition. Which would have been a MUCH easier job than running the country.

I think Putin loves the way things turned out but Trump is miserable.

I actually doubt they directly coordinated on this plan (Or at least I'm sure). But Trump was clearly aware that Russia was backing his candidacy. That much was written in plain language in an email to his son.
 
Cavemonster said:
I'm not fully convinced of this.

I think it is reasonably inferred from available evidence that the plan was to increase support for Donald Trump, but I also think that Putin, like the rest of us, was looking at polls which showed that would be unlikely. I'm a little more swayed by the theory that the Russians expected a win by Hillary, but wanted to make the electorate as divided and angry as possible and set up Donald as the head of a vocal resistance to undermine Hillary and make the US a less effective foil on the world stage. I suspect they were as surprised as the rest of us that their plan worked better than expected and actually swept him into office.

I think both Trump and the Russians expected him to lose, kick up a ruckus about stolen elections that would undermine our democracy. Likely he would have set up a media company and become the vocal opposition. Which would have been a MUCH easier job than running the country.

I think Putin loves the way things turned out but Trump is miserable.

I actually doubt they directly coordinated on this plan (Or at least I'm sure). But Trump was clearly aware that Russia was backing his candidacy. That much was written in plain language in an email to his son.
Click to expand...

I'd even bet that they thought it would be a long shot for their horse to come in. But that doesn't annul the fact they bought a ticket.
 
Cabbage said:
Well I simply disagree then. You can keep a single, express (that was the word, after all, not explicit) purpose in mind without ever telling anyone about it. That doesn't mean you didn't have it. Similarly, a group can covertly have an express purpose in mind without ever openly expressing that purpose.

Anyway, you specifically asked for where they (the trolls) expressed their purpose and no one ever claimed they did. If you wanted to ask for evidence of their purpose instead, you should have said so; but it's rather naive to expect the trolls would openly admit their purpose. You know as well as I do that kind of evidence isn't present here and was never expected to be.

Express (the adjective) simply has a different meaning than express (the verb).
Click to expand...
Besides the "express purpose" being mistaken for "expressed purpose," there is a point lurking in there. I believe the purpose was not necessarily to help Trump but to exploit U.S. tribalism by stirring up fears and resentments to further divide the public and undermine faith in key institutions, like democracy itself, NATO, the EU etc. We're easy to troll because such controversies are well-reported by the free press.

Meanwhile I'm still wondering - is there a downside for Republican senators if they play along with Trump's desire to suppress the report? I think yes, it could hurt them politically. In my state, a coverup would seriously damage a Republican Senate candidate. I don't know the details of which Senate races could be affected and which are supposedly "safe" for Republicans.

ETA: I think withholding the report will hurt him with independents.
 
Last edited:
Here's a list of some of the evidence that convinces me that Russian action around the election was aimed at increasing support and turnout for Trump. These are just the ones that occur to me off the top of my head.

The email setting up the Trump Tower meeting included this quote:

The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.

This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump - helped along by Aras and Emin.
Click to expand...

And the entire exchange makes it clear that the source of this effort is the Russian Government, acting in support of Trump's campaign. I imagine you might suggest that the Russians or the intermediaries might have been lying or misinformed about the intent here. But nothing in the exchange or since suggests that Trump Jr. or anyone involved was surprised or questioning of Russian state support. No evidence seriously points to it being anything but sincere.

When large amounts of troll farm activity were analyzed, the stuff that had a political viewpoint was by a large margin pro-trump or anti Hilary. Of the stuff that wasn't that directly, some was just planting anger, often with an angle against the Democratic party or the American left. Some was supposed support for left wing positions or causes but with an extremist bent out of whack with most actual proponents of those causes and it was the sort of thing that Trump supporters often held up as evidence of how terrible their opponents (ideological or political) were.

You could write several books analyzing the work the "troll farms" did, and we only have a limited amount of information on them so far. But the overwhelming big picture is that they were pushing people towards Trump.

We know now that Russia stole and released DNC emails, and we know from the indictment that they were involved in conversations with wikileaks about timing the release to be harmful to Hilary.

https://www.vox.com/2018/7/13/17569...illary-clinton-democratic-national-convention

On the motivation side,

Putin HATES Clinton.
https://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/clinton-putin-226153

Trump was saying things like this about Russia:
"The people of Crimea, from what I’ve heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were," Trump said.
Click to expand...

While Hilary was saying things like this:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hillary-clinton-on-ukraine-russia-behaving-like-nazi-germany/
 
The Big Dog said:
I've been out of town, how is the Mueller investigation going? should we expect lots more indictments before he is done like the Resistance said?
Click to expand...

Yes, we should, and plenty of them; and if you have been paying attention (as I have been) you will have known that Mueller has handed off investigations to SDNY, and to the VA and DC Federal prosecutors.

As the judge in the secret country/company proceeding said yesterday, the Grand Jury empanelled by Mueller (which is empanelled until at least the end of July) have been "continuing robustly"

By my count, at least another four indictments could be coming in the next few weeks.
 
acbytesla said:
No, we already KNOW there was collusion. If one doesn't think that the Trump Tower meeting wasn't collusion then they don't know what the word means. If one does not think that the Trump Campaign manager sending highly detailed polling data to Russian agents is not collusion, then they don't know what the word means. And Barr is proving that like Trump, he is willing to obstruct justice.
Click to expand...


1-800-TELL-FBI


That's the number you are looking for to let the FBI know that 40 of their agents, 19 prosecutors and the former head of their bureau missed the key information that you have.

No need to thank me, glad I can help.
 
Minoosh said:
This is a legitimate point and maybe they should be saying those things, but where do you go with those questions? Is raising them going to be particularly damaging? Probably not, because those questions have been out there a long time. People interested in connecting those dots connected them a long time ago. There's an overriding "why" IMO - why is Trump talking about burying the report? Withholding its findings not just from the American public, but from Congress?

Republican senators might have a good reason for not playing along with such a White House attempt. They stand to be completely blindsided by what the damn thing actually says. In principle, they might be willing to go along with a coverup, but wouldn't they want to know the dimensions of what's being covered up, if only to assess the political damage they may be exposing themselves to?

I doubt if the pounding away of Trump talking points is going to win Trump any new converts. Meanwhile, though I don't necessarily trust Lindsey Graham to do the right thing, I do trust that he has an instinct for self-preservation. So there's that.
Click to expand...

Congressman Schiff has begun pounding back.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom