Mueller Investigation pt 6

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The Shrike said:
The comedy has been pretty good around here lately. Some thoughts:

1) Pretty sure the FBI is crawling with registered Republicans, although if we're going to consider breaking the law to be a "political view" you might have a point.
2) Crimes are determined following investigations. In this case, the Special Counsel investigation has produced 34 indictments and 7 guilty pleas.
3) Hahaha.
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My brother-in-law was in the FBI. The guys he worked with were anti-Clinton. Not just 'emails on a private server" anti-Clinton, but Benghazi anti-Clinton. He mocked them for their Benghazi nonsense.
 
Drysdale said:
Again, what was the crime that initiated the surveillance?
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What makes you think that a crime MUST have already been committed in order for surveillance to be initiated?

The FBI started a counter-intelligence investigation on Trump's campaign because they received information from one of the Five Eyes co-operating allied foreign intelligence services who were spying on the Russians.

During their own routine "SIGINT" surveillance of The Kremlin and Russian oligarchs, they noticed multiple members of the Trump campaign and other Trump associates (e.g. Rick Gates, Paul Manafort, Don Jr, Ivanka, Jared Kushner, Mike Flynn, George Papadopoulis, Michael Cohen, et al) kept repeatedly popping up. They became concerned about that because non-Russian, non-Government citizens who keep turning up in surveillance on the Russian government almost always turn out to be Russian spies. As the UK is part of "Five Eyes" it was their duty to inform US government intelligence services such as the FBI about what they had observed.

The FBI/CIA would be derelict in their duty to the security of the United States if they had ignored such information.


Britain’s spy agencies played a crucial role in alerting their counterparts in Washington to contacts between members of Donald Trump’s campaign team and Russian intelligence operatives, the Guardian has been told.

GCHQ first became aware in late 2015 of suspicious “interactions” between figures connected to Trump and known or suspected Russian agents, a source close to UK intelligence said. This intelligence was passed to the US as part of a routine exchange of information, they added.

Over the next six months, until summer 2016, a number of western agencies shared further information on contacts between Trump’s inner circle and Russians, sources said.

The European countries that passed on electronic intelligence – known as SIGINT – included Germany, Estonia and Poland. Australia, a member of the “Five Eyes” spying alliance that also includes the US, UK, Canada and New Zealand, also relayed material, one source said.

The Guardian has been told the FBI and the CIA were slow to appreciate the extensive nature of contacts between Trump’s team and Moscow ahead of the US election. This was in part due to US law that prohibits US agencies from examining the private communications of American citizens without warrants. “They are trained not to do this,” the source stressed.

“It looks like the [US] agencies were asleep,” the source added. “They [the European agencies] were saying: ‘There are contacts going on between people close to Mr Trump and people we believe are Russian intelligence agents. You should be wary of this.’

“The message was: ‘Watch out. There’s something not right here.'”​


https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/apr/13/british-spies-first-to-spot-trump-team-links-russia
 
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"Hey Pigs! You aren't allowed to look for evidence that I've murdered someone, unless you already have proof that I did!"
 
smartcooky said:
The FBI started a counter-intelligence investigation on Trump's campaign because they received information from one of the Five Eyes co-operating allied foreign intelligence services who were spying on the Russians.
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Shouldn't it be Ten Eyes? I kept on thinking, "Which one of the three lost an eye?"
 
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Ah yes, the Men in Black mind eraser has been flashed yet again. No one remembers Papadopoulos' loose lips in the bad with the Aussie Ambassador. Trey Gowdy is especially susceptible.

These guys might want to be careful what they wish for:

RCP: Republicans Seek Release of Papadopoulos Transcripts
Former Rep. Trey Gowdy stunned House investigators recently by all but announcing the existence of secret FBI recordings of Trump campaign foreign policy volunteer adviser George Papadopoulos, made in the summer of 2016 by an undercover FBI operation.
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Papadopoulos has his own version that no doubt Gowdy and other GOP believers are going with.

WAPo: The Surreal Life of George Papadopoulos (really long article)
He has released a book, “Deep State Target,” that lays out an alternate version of events, in which he was set up in a series of traps laid by the FBI, the CIA and foreign intelligence operatives. It has received enthusiastic endorsements on Fox News, where Papadopoulos has become a regular guest, and other right-leaning outlets.
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Some history:
Papadopoulos had no contacts with Russia, so he connected with someone who he believed did: a Maltese academic named Joseph Mifsud, who was a director at LCILP. On March 24, 2016, Papadopoulos wrote an email to Trump campaign co-chair Sam Clovis and the foreign policy team, saying that his “good friend” Mifsud had introduced him to a woman who was Putin’s niece (she wasn’t) and to the Russian ambassador in London (he hadn’t) and that the Russians were “keen to host us.” In an email, Clovis counseled holding off on taking action before NATO allies were consulted but added, “Great work.”....

On May 10, Papadopoulos had drinks with Alexander Downer, Australia’s high commissioner to the United Kingdom at the time, and mentioned that Moscow might reveal damaging information it had about Hillary Clinton. This was relayed to Canberra and later to the U.S. Embassy in London. Upon this basis, it has been reported, the FBI launched a counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign, code-named Crossfire Hurricane.
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The article is quite interesting. Papadopoulos believes it was all a setup starting with Midfud supposedly being part of the setup. So that is a key element. It will be interesting to see.

But what would have triggered the FBI to investigate Trump? Money laundering, connections to the Russian mob, doing business in Russia? I can see that. What I can't see is someone at the FBI initiating the Trump investigation out of the blue, especially when we know some of them hated Clinton.

The rest of the article reads like a gossip piece, how George met his wife, etc.

In the summary we get Jim Jordan's (the new Trey Gowdy of the GOP) wet dream:
Stephan Roh, a Zurich-based lawyer who communicates with the media on Mifsud’s behalf, maintains that Mifsud “is not a Russian spy but a Western intelligence co-operator.”

Mifsud went into hiding days after Papadopoulos’s plea became public, and his disappearance leaves rabbit holes that threaten to swallow even the most cautious explorer. But we can say this much: If he was Kremlin-linked, then he managed to infiltrate a lot of European and possibly American institutions, and it’s strange that there hasn’t been an outcry or investigations into the breach. On the other hand, if he was part of Western intelligence, then, as Republican congressman Jim Jordan told Fox News, “that changes it all.”
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Is PapaD a liar, or not a liar:
I was struck to see a number of Papadopoulos’s statements verified. Yes, he had helped engineer a meeting, through an Egyptian embassy official, between Trump and Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi. Yes, he had offered input on Trump’s foreign policy speech in late April 2016. Yes, there was an email from Theresa May’s office asking Papadopoulos to pass on official congratulations to Trump.

At the same time, however, the collection undermined many claims that he has made. Some examples: “Deep State Target” describes a cryptic conversation with a Belarusan American businessman named Sergei Millian in January 2017 that Papadopoulos characterizes as “the last I hear from him. Ever.” But in reality Millian kept emailing Papadopoulos, getting no reply, for months afterward. The book claims that Trump headquarters informed him of an interview request from Russian news service Interfax and gave him instructions about what to say, complimenting him afterward. In reality, Interfax contacted Papadopoulos directly, and though the campaign okayed the interview, the feedback afterward apparently wasn’t positive. Papadopoulos wrote to campaign official Michael Glassner to ask if he was, as others had told him, “off the campaign because of an interview I gave.”
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There's a lot more of this stuff.

This is a good summary, IMO:
I had been through many potential narratives of Papadopoulos, but now a simple one was starting to emerge: that an ambitious young man with a strong desire to impress people had most likely embellished his way into a world of trouble, relaying common rumors (e.g., that the Russians had damaging information about Hillary Clinton) as firsthand information to people like Alexander Downer. If this theory was true, then Papadopoulos’s story wasn’t about how a vital campaign operative fell into traps laid by deep-state conspirators. It was about how, in a time of Trump-Russia hysteria, a minor player could set off global earthquakes because he wanted to look big.
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The FBI was not wrong to investigate PapaD even though a lot of what he said was probably lies. OTOH, it makes sense that the Russians were probing more than one way into the Trump campaign.


Be sure to also see what smartcookie posted above.
 
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smartcooky said:
The FBI started a counter-intelligence investigation on Trump's campaign because they received information from one of the Five Eyes co-operating allied foreign intelligence services who were spying on the Russians.

During their own routine "SIGINT" surveillance of The Kremlin and Russian oligarchs, they noticed multiple members of the Trump campaign and other Trump associates (e.g. Rick Gates, Paul Manafort, Don Jr, Ivanka, Jared Kushner, Mike Flynn, George Papadopoulis, Michael Cohen, et al) kept repeatedly popping up. . . .
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/apr/13/british-spies-first-to-spot-trump-team-links-russia
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Although I appreciate these reminders every time you share them, folks who aren't aware of this by now are pretending to be unaware on purpose. For the Americans within this group I find such behavior sickening. It's a double slap-in-the-face to James Randi, who founded the organizational precursor to this forum on tenets of objectivity and critical thinking. If there is a forum anywhere in which folks would examine evidence and be willing to change their minds about something based on that evidence, it should be this one. The fact that we've got regular participants here failing to even pursue that standard, let alone live up to it, is rather demoralizing.
 
The Shrike said:
Although I appreciate these reminders every time you share them, folks who aren't aware of this by now are pretending to be unaware on purpose. For the Americans within this group I find such behavior sickening. It's a double slap-in-the-face to James Randi, who founded the organizational precursor to this forum on tenets of objectivity and critical thinking. If there is a forum anywhere in which folks would examine evidence and be willing to change their minds about something based on that evidence, it should be this one. The fact that we've got regular participants here failing to even pursue that standard, let alone live up to it, is rather demoralizing.
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I'm confused. Is the Guardian not a reliable source, because I think of it as one.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
I'm confused. Is the Guardian not a reliable source, because I think of it as one.
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Short version of what he said as it relates to your stated confusion - It's not a problem with the Guardian. It's a problem with people, even people here, pretending not to already know this stuff.

Personally, I think that added more depth than usual to the Papadopoulos part of this, either way.
 
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Just because... Mueller's report had a number of distinct shortcomings. Here's an article that discusses one of the general branches of that. Here's a kind summation from the introduction.

So it is also a surprise that this approach—a careful assessment of the legal case—is not one Mueller also follows in addressing the campaign finance issues raised by Donald Trump and his campaign’s solicitation and acceptance of assistance from the Russian government. The Report treats the campaign finance issues almost cursorily—one could say, superficially— even to the point of failing to identify and address all the applicable law. The results are an unconvincing decision to decline any prosecutions, and a major question about the enforcement of this law in 2020 and beyond.
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Aridas said:
Just because... Mueller's report had a number of distinct shortcomings. Here's an article that discusses one of the general branches of that. Here's a kind summation from the introduction.
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It's interesting that someone went through the trouble of writing this critique, but so far (about halfway through) this is not striking me as very significant. Campaign finance violations would have been a big yawn. Maybe Mueller has passed that on to someone else.

My scandal threshold is pretty high, though.

Can't really comment too much because I haven't read the full report (Mueller's).
 
Minoosh said:
It's interesting that someone went through the trouble of writing this critique, but so far (about halfway through) this is not striking me as very significant. Campaign finance violations would have been a big yawn. Maybe Mueller has passed that on to someone else.

My scandal threshold is pretty high, though.

Can't really comment too much because I haven't read the full report (Mueller's).
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It is campaign finance issues, after all, which are less important than the areas that were focused upon, when they're taken individually. Still, it is a matter of concern, especially given the backdrop that it's set upon and that quid pro quo and illegal foreign assistance were main areas of real concern from the start. Beyond that, it speaks again to the fact that Mueller was being very... cautious in what charges were made and that the investigation was very far from all-encompassing, even where there was quite clear evidence of wrongdoing available. Cautious far beyond the standard of reasonable doubt, for that matter.
 
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The Shrike said:
Although I appreciate these reminders every time you share them, folks who aren't aware of this by now are pretending to be unaware on purpose. For the Americans within this group I find such behavior sickening. It's a double slap-in-the-face to James Randi, who founded the organizational precursor to this forum on tenets of objectivity and critical thinking. If there is a forum anywhere in which folks would examine evidence and be willing to change their minds about something based on that evidence, it should be this one. The fact that we've got regular participants here failing to even pursue that standard, let alone live up to it, is rather demoralizing.
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Saying all this while providing no evidence. :rolleyes:
 
Aridas said:
It is campaign finance issues, after all, which are less important than the areas that were focused upon, when they're taken individually. Still, it is a matter of concern, especially given the backdrop that it's set upon and that quid pro quo and illegal foreign assistance were main areas of real concern from the start. Beyond that, it speaks again to the fact that Mueller was being very... cautious in what charges were made and that the investigation was very far from all-encompassing, even where there was quite clear evidence of wrongdoing available. Cautious far beyond the standard of reasonable doubt, for that matter.
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Yeah, Mueller was cautious. I think overall that's a good thing. I'm pretty sure he laid out the case as clearly as he could. We don't know which bits we're missing due to redactions but it will all come out eventually.
 
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