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From another thread...

Because of what we know about the Trump campaign colluding with Russia, I reject this.

The most stupid thing about the Trump campaign was that he probably didn't need the Russians. With republican election officials ensuring Hillary Clinton effectively started at -10,000,000 votes and Comey going to bat with the spurious investigations over the emails, he had the election messed up enough.
 
The most stupid thing about the Trump campaign was that he probably didn't need the Russians. With republican election officials ensuring Hillary Clinton effectively started at -10,000,000 votes and Comey going to bat with the spurious investigations over the emails, he had the election messed up enough.
I have to disagree.

Things like the Comey email investigation announcement was a little damaging on its own, but the significance of the issue was amplified by russian disinformation campaigns. Without that, the announcement might have just been some minor detail that gets overlooked. But with the Russians pushing "clinton can't be trusted with security" it affected more voters than than it might have otherwise.

Then you also have their hacking into the democratic email server, which did a couple of things: Confused voters (what, there are 2 servers? Clinton must really be corrupt!), and gave Democratic opponents ammunition in the form of "look the primaries weren't a fair fight!"

By itself the Russion election interference probably wouldn't have made a difference, but I do think it helped push Trump over the top (especially given his narrow margin if victory in certain key states).
 
Also, I believe that the Russians hacked the RNC servers and got dirt on Republicans and with that information, Putin forced many of them to support Trump. Remember when a bunch of Republicans went to Russia after Trump was elected and no one knows why? There still isn't an explanation as to why a convoy of Republicans visited Moscow after Trump's victory.
 
I have to disagree.

Things like the Comey email investigation announcement was a little damaging on its own, but the significance of the issue was amplified by russian disinformation campaigns. Without that, the announcement might have just been some minor detail that gets overlooked. But with the Russians pushing "clinton can't be trusted with security" it affected more voters than than it might have otherwise.

Then you also have their hacking into the democratic email server, which did a couple of things: Confused voters (what, there are 2 servers? Clinton must really be corrupt!), and gave Democratic opponents ammunition in the form of "look the primaries weren't a fair fight!"

By itself the Russion election interference probably wouldn't have made a difference, but I do think it helped push Trump over the top (especially given his narrow margin if victory in certain key states).

When he reopened the investgation in October, knowing full well there was no criminal activity to investigate, was the first time Trump held a lead in the polls. None of the bovine excrement wikileaks pushed nor the Russian attack ads did that for him.

What Comey did was push the polls close enough that the disenfranchisements could do their job.
 
From another thread...

Because of what we know about the Trump campaign colluding with Russia, I reject this.

Was there actual cooperation between Trump campaign and the Russians?
There is overwhelming objective evidence that the Russians interfered, but my understanding is that they interfered without actually colluding with the campaign.

Didn’t the Mueller Report conclude there was no collusion? (And also conclude that Trump committed more than one count of obstruction of justice during the investigation)

ETA
Also, I assume that the Trumpcampaign was not competent enough to conclude without leaving a trail.
 
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Was there actual cooperation between Trump campaign and the Russians?
There is overwhelming objective evidence that the Russians interfered, but my understanding is that they interfered without actually colluding with the campaign.

Didn’t the Mueller Report conclude there was no collusion? (And also conclude that Trump committed more than one count of obstruction of justice during the investigation)

ETA
Also, I assume that the Trumpcampaign was not competent enough to conclude without leaving a trail.

Well for one, supposedly Manafort provided internal Republican polling data to a Russian agent. And the Republican Senate concluded that the Trump campaign "probably" knew it was helping Russia when working with WikiLeaks

Now I believe you are right in that Mueller concluded that the Trump campaign was willing to work with the Russians but was not competent enough to. I am not sure why Manafort's activities did not count as "collusion". (Maybe he thought it required more links? Or maybe he made his conclusions before he had all relevant information)
See: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/15/tru...loyee-kilimnik-gave-russia-election-data.html
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-senate-idUSKCN25E1US



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Was there actual cooperation between Trump campaign and the Russians?
There is overwhelming objective evidence that the Russians interfered, but my understanding is that they interfered without actually colluding with the campaign.

Didn’t the Mueller Report conclude there was no collusion? (And also conclude that Trump committed more than one count of obstruction of justice during the investigation)

ETA
Also, I assume that the Trumpcampaign was not competent enough to conclude without leaving a trail.
Trump campaign chief Manafort's associate Kilimnik gave Russia 2016 election strategy, polling, U.S. says


Hmm why would a candidate for POTUS be channeling this information to an adversary?

Meanwhile, Russia controlled the highly effective drip-drip-drip through WikiLeaks.

Blatant collusion.
 
Didn’t the Mueller Report conclude there was no collusion?
It did not. It concluded that pretty much everyone they spoke to was lying through their teeth about everything and that they did not have the authority to investigate further without implicating Trump himself, which they weren't willing to do. But they were willing to write down the names of everyone they didn't suspect of collusion, followed by holding up a sheet of blank paper.

It was Barr's summary which took that report and squeezed it until something vaguely exoneration-shaped fell out.
 
Didn’t the Mueller Report conclude there was no collusion? (And also conclude that Trump committed more than one count of obstruction of justice during the investigation)

ETA
Also, I assume that the Trumpcampaign was not competent enough to conclude without leaving a trail.

Technically no? IIRC, the Mueller Report concluded that they couldn't prove direct collusion to a rather high standard of proof, but that 1) (numerous) attempts were made, 2) Trump campaign data went to the Russians via Manafort, for example, 3) and that there were significant efforts to impede the investigation and generally cover up that had real impact. There was also things like the Trump Tower Moscow deal being worked on that provided Putin with direct blackmail on Trump and little in the way of further details on whether anything else was being done/discussed in those communications and there were unusual Russian actions that closely matched and sought to bolster Trump campaign actions. One might somewhat reasonably conclude from the crap actually there, though, that telling foreign allies what you want done and giving them tools to help you isn't actually direct collusion if they simply don't answer back directly and just act "on their own" in concert with you, especially if you use mafia code to create weasel room. :eye-poppi

Further, there's the issue of Mueller's investigation pretty well ignoring more direct issues under distinctly shaky premises. IIRC, McConnell v FEC and Congress both had a very direct ruling on a matter and Mueller dropped the major part of what should have been investigated/prosecuted under premises that directly ignored/opposed both those rulings. With that said, it's possible that the corruption enabling of Citizen's United could have ruled something relevant to that matter, though I've still seen no evidence that it actually did.

Beyond that, of course, there's the issue of the scope of the investigation being changed partway through by Rosenstein and thus Mueller not following up on a bunch of things that he apparently assumed were being investigated by others... but apparently weren't investigated because of how Rosenstein handled such. And there's the issue of Barr immediately killing a bunch of related investigations the moment he could and actively working as a partisan coverup man again.

So... in short, to recap, no, the Mueller Investigation did not determine no collusion. Just that it couldn't prove it under the circumstances (to the point where all the technicalities were above unreasonable doubt).
 
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I am not sure why Manafort's activities did not count as "collusion".

If I remember/understand it correctly, collusion technically requires actually discussing. Manafort's actions were as good as unilateral as far as the investigation could determine after being very significantly impeded.

To repeat a line from what I just said, one might somewhat reasonably conclude from the crap actually there, though, that telling foreign allies what you want done and giving them tools to help you isn't actually direct collusion if they simply don't answer back directly and just act "on their own" in concert with you, especially if you use mafia code to create weasel room.
 
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After Russia's showing in Ukraine, I'm beginning to doubt quality of their troll farms and their alleged "kompromat".

Personally, I'd say that the issue with the Trump Tower Moscow kompromat has far less to do with the quality than it's nature and how easily it was given.


"Collusion" isn't a legal concept. Mueller didn't weigh in on it.

Fair enough. Criminal conspiracy is probably the more correct term for what Mueller actually worked to investigate. Conspiracy requires 2 or more people actually conspiring. They had evidence of Manafort's actions, just not proof that it wasn't unilateral and no real ability to investigate the other side.
 
Mueller made it very clear that there was a case for charging Trump for Obstruction, but that he, Mueller, couldn't make that call for that, as it would be prejudicial to a future Jury.
He believed that Trump would be charged, using his evidence, and wanted to make a conviction stick.
 
I’ve probably posted this graphic before, but so many contacts by Trump operatives and Russians pretty clearly shows some level of coordination, or at least attempted coordination between the parties.

46168493715_0bb250514f_z.jpg


Sure rises to the level of “collusion” to me. Whether it rose to the level of a prosecutable crime is another matter.
 
After Russia's showing in Ukraine, I'm beginning to doubt quality of their troll farms and their alleged "kompromat".
Ummm... why?

The two events are wildly different and have nothing to do with each other.

Yes, Russia's invasion into Ukraine has highlighted problems in their military. But the resources/skills needed to "hack" an election are very different (and probably required fewer resources) than the logistics of an invasion.

Election interference probably just required a small team of hackers (a few to set up a bot net to flood social media sites, one or 2 to hack the Democrat's email server) and a couple of intelligence agents to craft what message to push. I don't even think they would even need exceptionally skilled hackers (as there are probably tools to do many of those tasks)

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Ummm... why?

The two events are wildly different and have nothing to do with each other.

Yes, Russia's invasion into Ukraine has highlighted problems in their military. But the resources/skills needed to "hack" an election are very different (and probably required fewer resources) than the logistics of an invasion.

Election interference probably just required a small team of hackers …


… and a legion of "idiots utiles" to relay and amplify the messages.

Same as can be seen everywhere, from France to Burkina Faso for example.
 
Was there actual cooperation between Trump campaign and the Russians?
There is overwhelming objective evidence that the Russians interfered, but my understanding is that they interfered without actually colluding with the campaign.

Didn’t the Mueller Report conclude there was no collusion? (And also conclude that Trump committed more than one count of obstruction of justice during the investigation)

ETA
Also, I assume that the Trumpcampaign was not competent enough to conclude without leaving a trail.

No Mueller, the card carrying republican member under orders made that conclusion independent of edit: evidence. A truly independent counsel would have had to come to a different conclusion.
 
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