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Mueller Investigation pt5

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phiwum said:
Let's all agree on the following, shall we?

Lying is bad, in general.

More lies are worse than fewer.

Lies about significant issues (say, over a firing that may be considered obstruction) are worse than lies about trivialities (say, size of an inauguration crowd).

Let's all agree that press secretaries sometimes shade the truth. I don't know that they all lie, but they certainly spin. I believe that most press secretaries try to avoid telling literal lies.

With all that out of the way, we can avoid discussions about whether other press secretaries have lied. Insofar as they have done so, they have behaved badly. If Sanders lied, she has behaved badly, no matter how many other folk have behaved badly.

Our question, then, is has she behaved badly?
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It is incredible how so far from normal this presidency has gotten and yet people offer up such tu quoques.
 
Zambo said:
On collusion, you are not following the plot. Unless you are proposing throwing out the Mueller Report and commissioning a new one then this is going no where.
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I'm not talking about your "plot." You asked what's not to like about the "Republican spin" that "collusion was settled - there was none," and I'm saying it's both the faulty premise and invalid inference.

On obstruction, you are confusing an understanding of the law with an expectation of the likely result of a prosecution under that law.
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You said, "So in that case obstruction becomes a moot point." No, obstruction of justice is both an illegal act and an impeachable offense, neither of which is a "moot point." Furthermore, whether or not Mueller found evidence of criminal conspiracy on the election interference, he did find evidence of other crimes, so the bogus "no crime, no obstruction" argument is itself moot.
 
When Nixon's press secretary Ron Ziegler had to walk back Watergate era statements, he said they had become "inoperative." One memorable exchange with the press came after months of Ziegler (and Nixon) denying any official White House involvement in the Watergate break-in. Then Nixon suddenly announced he had investigated and found there might be some official involvement, after all. When asked about this sudden change of heart by the press, Ziegler famously replied:
''The president refers to the fact that there is new material; therefore, this is the operative statement. The others are inoperative.'' Link
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Paul2 said:
or, said another way:

How many people have stolen a candy bar from a store as a child, and used a copy machine at work for personal matters, and taken a pen or a pad of paper home from work and used it for personal purposes? That’s stealing, but it is orders of magnitude different from robbing a bank.

Let’s not use a binary “If you’re not 100% good, you’re bad” to conflate clearly discernible levels of corruption.
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Personally I prefer that there is a rather big difference between going 62mph in a 55 zone of a Superhighway during daylight and driving 120 mph through a 15mph school zone during dismissal.
 
Zambo said:
I am of the opinion that Twitter is a popular communication medium, but that the content and posts are contractually/legally not very important. There is insufficient Case Law to determine whether I am understating the importance of Twitter posts compared to letters, faxes (do they still exist), emails, recordings etc.

But does the Mueller report reference to "public statements" suggest that Twitter posts are not the equivalent of say a letter or email.
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When the White House refers to the president's tweets as official statements, I'm not sure why you think that tweets matter less than any other public statement by the president. Why would official statements via twitter be treated differently?
 
Trump Tweets

Despite the fact that the Mueller Report should not have been authorized in the first place & was written as nastily as possible by 13 (18) Angry Democrats who were true Trump Haters, including highly conflicted Bob Mueller himself, the end result is No Collusion, No Obstruction!

The Fake News Media is doing everything possible to stir up and anger the pols and as many people as possible seldom mentioning the fact that the Mueller Report had as its principle conclusion the fact that there was NO COLLUSION WITH RUSSIA. The Russia Hoax is dead!

The end result of the greatest Witch Hunt in U.S. political history is No Collusion with Russia (and No Obstruction). Pretty Amazing!
 
Trump Tweets

Despite the fact that the Mueller Report should not have been authorized in the first place & was written as nastily as possible by 13 (18) Angry Democrats who were true Trump Haters, including highly conflicted Bob Mueller himself, the end result is No Collusion, No Obstruction!

The Fake News Media is doing everything possible to stir up and anger the pols and as many people as possible seldom mentioning the fact that the Mueller Report had as its principle conclusion the fact that there was NO COLLUSION WITH RUSSIA. The Russia Hoax is dead!

The end result of the greatest Witch Hunt in U.S. political history is No Collusion with Russia (and No Obstruction). Pretty Amazing!
 
newyorkguy said:
James Comey was fired on May 9, 2017. Sarah Sanders, then the White House's deputy press secretary was asked about it by the press on May 10th and the 11th. She did give details, that the agents reached her (or the White House) by "email, text messages." Below are quotes from a Business Insider article written right after the May 11th press conference:


The press was immediately suspicious.


You can see where Sanders had a problem with this when testifying under oath. If the Mueller attorney questioning her followed the same logic progression in trying to vet this as the press member had, she would likely be asked next, how did the agents contact her? If she gave the same answer -- email, text messages -- she might then be asked to produce some. Which she wouldn't have been able to do since they didn't exist. How would she attempt to explain not producing them? She couldn't simply refuse; she'd be committing obstruction. Say she deleted all of them? That might not play too well! Plus, the danger the investigators would ask to examine the devices in order to have IT experts see if they could retrieve the deleted text messages and emails. She decided to do the safe thing: she swallowed hard and admitted to the hearing that she had been lying. She was willing to take a hit in the media if her testimony was referenced when the Mueller Report eventually came out, in order to avoid an even bigger problem if she tried to stonewall the investigators or mislead them as she had members of the press.



Squeegee Beckenheim is correct. Sanders was saying she'd heard from many FBI agents praising the administration's decision to fire Comey after the fact. That doesn't make sense to me either for the same reasons I outlined previously. Of course, as we now know, it doesn't have to make sense because it never happened. ;)
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It was a particularly stupid lie. How many FBI agents would contact a deputy press secretary to say the president made a good decision?
 
Safe-Keeper said:
I wonder if the best solution to posts like his is to simply ignore him. The alt-right/trumpkin playbook is to never, ever go on the defensive. Never apologise, never concede anything, never admit someone has a good point. Just deny, lie, and play stupid. Pretend Obama's 18 lies over eight years are somehow comparable to Trump's habit of lying that many times in a single day. Stall the whole discussion, or better yet, try to derail it to be about Obama, AOC, or some other boogeyman of the alt-right. If someone on the left does something wrong (because everyone who disagrees with the alt-right and/or Trumpkins are "on the left"), pounce on them even though it makes you look ridiculously hypocritical. Then accuse "the left" of hypocrisy, just to make everything even more absurd.

They are effectively trolls. A new kind of trolls, but still trolls. Just let them yell into the void. You'll never convince him anyway, and he knows how he's coming across, he just doesn't care.

Once he realises he can't derail discussions anymore, he might get sulky and put a red cross in his avatar, but I for one won't even see that, as I have him on ignore.
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Hallelujah and amen! :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:
 
In regard to those trying to give Sarah Sanders a pass because "all Presidential press secretaries lie." Nope!

1. Lying is wrong ethically no matter what. It is especially not forgivable when used to cynically mislead and manipulate the public in regard to crucial aspects of government and policy by someone representing the highest office in the country. The behavior of others doesn't count here any more than "Well sure he stole all his mom's money and left her homeless but really, he is not the first person to do that kind of thing."

2. Unlike Sanders, press secretaries for prior presidents usually did not so repeatedly, undeniably and blatantly lie. They may have "spun" the facts by selective omission, by selective quoting (sometimes out of context), by careful use of wording ("It would be outrageous to accuse the president of shoplifting" is not the same as denying he shoplifted), or by attributing a statement to the president rather than vouching for the truthfulness of that statement themselves ("The president absolutely denies having had sex with that woman" is not the same as the press secretary saying that statement is true). Sometimes press secretaries have even kept themselves in deliberate ignorance to allow them to make statements in this fashion. Evasion, distortion, distraction? Sure, but it was previously very rare for press secretaries to just make-up entirely fraudulent statements with zero basis in fact (even during the Nixon Whitehouse years).

3. Most egregious in my view: Sander's lie about Comey was especially disgusting, outrageous, and unforgivable because it represented blatant character assassination. It was expressly designed to damage an individual's reputation and to hurt their career. It had a real victim, unlike a distortion or small lie about the size of a crowd at a presidential speech.

Even the folk stories about dealing with the Devil usually have the Devil not lying per se but making such a cleverly worded pact that the 'soul" later realizes how they were taken in. Sanders is even more dishonest than the Devil in her behavior. And no doubt she and her supporters view her as very religious and moral! Unbelievable at all levels!

BTW: I don't know why there are new articles/opinions expressing surprise that Sanders continues to deny she lied. She lies all the time: why would she not continue to lie about lying?

[mostly Nija'd by phiwum. I'll have what he's having...]
 
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phiwum said:
Let's all agree on the following, shall we?

Lying is bad, in general.

More lies are worse than fewer.

Lies about significant issues (say, over a firing that may be considered obstruction) are worse than lies about trivialities (say, size of an inauguration crowd).

Let's all agree that press secretaries sometimes shade the truth. I don't know that they all lie, but they certainly spin. I believe that most press secretaries try to avoid telling literal lies.

With all that out of the way, we can avoid discussions about whether other press secretaries have lied. Insofar as they have done so, they have behaved badly. If Sanders lied, she has behaved badly, no matter how many other folk have behaved badly.

Our question, then, is has she behaved badly?
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That depends on your perspective. For example, would you say that Sander's statement about the FBI agents will qualify as the biggest lie of the year? If so, then she's only equal to her predecessor under Obama Jay Carney. If you qualify her statement being less than "the lie of the year", then she has not behaved nearly as badly as Jay Carney under Obama.

Chris B.
 
phiwum said:
Or perhaps they wanted to know whether large numbers of FBI agents were in favor of Comey's firing, since that would be relevant to the obstruction issue.
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Nope, getting her to lie under oath would be relevant to a process crime. If you don't believe that the agents in charge were big on trying to get conflicting answers during testimony, then you have no idea how these investigations really work.


Fast Eddie B said:
If I’m understanding you correctly...

...this is blatant false equivalency.

For instance, I’ve heard, as recently as yesterday, Trump supporters point out Obama lied too. And go to “If you like your doctor/health insurance you can keep your doctor/health insurance”. Or the alleged $2,500 annual savings of Obamacare.

So, the “lie” tally is roughly Obama 3, Trump 9,000 and counting.

Not exactly equivalent. And a pretty pathetic defense of a President who lies compulsively.
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Which lies have actually pulled money from your pocket (assuming you have health care coverage). I'd agree the equivalency is not there. If someone says they "played the best game of golf ever today", that doesn't remove coins from my pocket. However when someone said "Keep your Doctor keep your plan" my health care costs increased dramatically. So yea, they're not even close.

Craig4 said:
No, the Bitch Queen of the Briefing Room is in a class by herself. Most press secretaries don't lie because they're in a room full of people whose job it is to catch them in lies. They may spin and offer wildly different interpretations of events but to out and out lie would be foolish in the extreme. She like all Trump supporters just don't care what the truth is.
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Your bias is showing.

Chris B.
 
ChrisBFRPKY said:
That depends on your perspective. For example, would you say that Sander's statement about the FBI agents will qualify as the biggest lie of the year? If so, then she's only equal to her predecessor under Obama Jay Carney. If you qualify her statement being less than "the lie of the year", then she has not behaved nearly as badly as Jay Carney under Obama.

Chris B.
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In that case, Sanders is much worse. Her reason was not political and was based on nothing.

Carney's was far more accurate. It represented the situation as applied to the majority of people. For some people that couldn't keep their plans, a significant percentage were not attributable to the ACA. I don't even know if they didn't believe when they put that position out there. It is a classic example of something just not as nuanced as the bigger picture.
 
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