2021 American Civil War

i think the rest of that post mitigates the first part.


media optics.

What? You literally said it was a partisan trial when:
1. It was not partisan (Mueller was/is a registered Republican who was appointed to positions by presidents from both parties)
2. It was not a trial.
 
What? You literally said it was a partisan trial when:
1. It was not partisan (Mueller was/is a registered Republican who was appointed to positions by presidents from both parties)
2. It was not a trial.
it was pretty partisan in terms of the way it was reported. you're right though, not literally a trial.
 
it was pretty partisan in terms of the way it was reported. you're right though, not literally a trial.
It was not even close to a trial. It was an investigation by an independent special council who was repeatedly interfered with by Trump, who had witnesses withheld by Trump, and was threatened with being fired, by Trump. The report definitively found election interference by Russia. He presented that report to congress AFTER Barrs shitstorm of a synopsis that bore little resemblance to the actual report findings. It was up to congress and the DOJ ( :lol: ) to proceed from there.
 
It was not even close to a trial. It was an investigation by an independent special council who was repeatedly interfered with by Trump, who had witnesses withheld by Trump, and was threatened with being fired, by Trump. The report definitively found election interference by Russia. He presented that report to congress AFTER Barrs shitstorm of a synopsis that bore little resemblance to the actual report findings. It was up to congress and the DOJ ( :lol: ) to proceed from there.
but it stuggles to transate that into quantifiable terms. it also states that the trump campaign was not directly involved in this effort by russia. it's the second part that the media never sought to clarify. if you were just skimming cnn or the nyt back in the day you'd have got the impression that trump himself was collaborating with russia. maybe it drove user engagement. it wasn't true at any rate.
 
but it stuggles to transate that into quantifiable terms. it also states that the trump campaign was not directly involved in this effort by russia. it's the second part that the media never sought to clarify. if you were just skimming cnn or the nyt back in the day you'd have got the impression that trump himself was collaborating with russia. maybe it drove user engagement. it wasn't true at any rate.

It stated that while there was contact between the sides there was not sufficient evidence to prove collaboration. It also stated that a major reason for this lack of sufficient evidence was witnesses pleasing the fifth or invoking executive privilege.
 
It stated that while there was contact between the sides there was not sufficient evidence to prove collaboration. It also stated that a major reason for this lack of sufficient evidence was witnesses pleasing the fifth or invoking executive privilege.
it also states that russian attempts insofar as they were made were characterised by russians representing themselves as non-russian actors for obvious reasons. having read a lot of that report there is no good reason to suggest any of the campaign people were aware that russian intel were amplifying campaign messages.

it's an interesting one because there's a fringe school which does point out very good counterpoints which are factual. but they themselves equate the idea that russia wasn't involved in the exfiltration of data, or hacking, of the dnc with the notion that there was no russian interference at all. there's some evidence to suggest that the primary email exfiltration was not a result of russian hacking, as the company charged with ascertaining whether this was or wasn't true has said they cannot confirm that it happened, and that company was crowdstrike, but there's also very solid evidence to suggest that russia obviously did interfere with botnets and campaigns in the us. and it's this last part which those who push back on some aspects of the russiagate event always neglect to mention.
 
You think they never looked at social media?
the accounts weren't advertised as russian. there was no real reason to suspect that they were. the only thing mueller points to is a request by one of those accounts for campaign stuff for a rally. but they used an american organizer who himself wasn't aware that it was a russian influence campaign as intermediary. so yeah there's just no direct evidence of collaboration and never really was.
 
the accounts weren't advertised as russian. there was no real reason to suspect that they were. the only thing mueller points to is a request by one of those accounts for campaign stuff for a rally. but they used an american organizer who himself wasn't aware that it was a russian influence campaign as intermediary. so yeah there's just no direct evidence of collaboration and never really was.
So the bipartisan Senate committee was completely wrong in its assessment?
 
So the bipartisan Senate committee was completely wrong in its assessment?
it never stated there was direct evidence of trump-russia collaboration. the mueller report i've just read doesn't say that at all. so it might not have been wrong.
 

Several Republicans on the panel submitted "additional views" to the report, saying it should state more explicitly that Trump's campaign did not coordinate with Russia. They say that while the report shows the Russian government "inappropriately meddled" in the election, "then-candidate Trump was not complicit."

that's basically the finding mueller makes over 450 pages.
 
that's basically the finding mueller makes over 450 pages.
“It says the Trump campaign chairman had regular contact with a Russian intelligence officer and says other Trump associates were eager to exploit the Kremlin's aid, particularly by maximizing the impact of the disclosure of Democratic emails hacked by Russian intelligence officers”

“The findings, including unflinching characterizations of furtive interactions between Trump associates and Russian operatives, echo to a large degree those of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation”
 
“It says the Trump campaign chairman had regular contact with a Russian intelligence officer and says other Trump associates were eager to exploit the Kremlin's aid, particularly by maximizing the impact of the disclosure of Democratic emails hacked by Russian intelligence officers”

“The findings, including unflinching characterizations of furtive interactions between Trump associates and Russian operatives, echo to a large degree those of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation”
having just read that report, i don't see the echo. not keen to read another 1000 page report but will skim it.
 
that's basically the finding mueller makes over 450 pages.
Those are additional submissions to the report by those on the panel. It’s not the panel’s main assertion that there was collusion.

It’s never been just about Trump. If the campaign colluded, which they did, it really doesn’t matter if trump knew or not.

Bizarre that you would think the opposite.
 
he was called a russian asset. so it does sort of matter whether he actually engaged with a foreign state knowingly or he didn't. bizarre not to want to know that.
If the campaign colluded, then the campaign colluded. Which it did. And was showcased by multiple investigations. Certainly doesn’t matter if the top dog knew or participated, it’s still collusion.

It’s the way Mafioso dons were taken down, even when they were ignorant of their subordinates actions.

You’re not from here, are you?
 
If the campaign colluded, then the campaign colluded. Which it did. And was showcased by multiple investigations. Certainly doesn’t matter if the top dog knew or participated, it’s still collusion.

It’s the way Mafioso dons were taken down, even when they were ignorant of their subordinates actions.

You’re not from here, are you?
so by that logic clinton should be on trial for misleading the fbi intentionally despite her campaign people saying they did it by themselves. that would be the consistent approach right?
 
so by that logic clinton should be on trial for misleading the fbi intentionally despite her campaign people saying they did it by themselves. that would be the consistent approach right?
Not sure to what you are referring here? Send a link.
 
Not sure to what you are referring here? Send a link.
Trump swiftly rejected Steele's claims and said a "group of opponents ... put that crap together." Nearly five years later, it's clearer than ever that he wasn't too far off about the origins of the dossier.
Two special counsel investigations, multiple congressional inquiries, civil lawsuits in the US and the United Kingdom, and an internal Justice Department review have now fully unspooled the behind-the-scenes role that some Democrats played in this saga. They paid for the research, funneled information to Steele's sources, and then urged the FBI to investigate Trump's connections to Russia.
https://edition.cnn.com/2017/05/26/politics/russia-investigation-what-to-know/index.html

Mother Jones first revealed the existence of the dossier a few days before the 2016 election, and said the memos were part of an "opposition research project" underwritten by Democrats. Nearly a year passed before the full truth came out about the financing: The money flowed from Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign to law firm Perkins Coie, to the research company Fusion GPS, and then ultimately to Steele, who got $168,000.

(Anti-Trump Republicans initially funded Fusion GPS' research during the 2016 GOP primaries, but the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee picked up the tab before Steele got involved.)

But Democratic involvement in Steele's work was much deeper than previously known. Court filings from the Durham inquiry recently revealed that some information in the dossier originated from Charles Dolan, 71, a public relations executive with expertise in Russian affairs who had a decades-long political relationship with the Clinton family. He has not been accused of any crimes.

Federal prosecutors said Dolan was in regular contact in 2016 with Steele's primary source Igor Danchenko, 49, a Russian citizen and foreign policy analyst who lives in Virginia. Danchenko was indicted on November 4 for allegedly lying to the FBI about his dealings with Dolan and a fellow Soviet-born expat that he claimed was one of his sources.

Danchenko pleaded not guilty last week. In a statement to CNN, his defense attorney Mark Schamel said Durham is pushing a "false narrative designed to humiliate and slander a renowned expert in business intelligence for political gain." Schamel also accused Durham of including legally unnecessary information in the 39-page indictment to smear Danchenko.

"For the past five years, those with an agenda have sought to expose Mr. Danchenko's identity and tarnish his reputation while undermining U.S. National Security," Schamel said. "...This latest injustice will not stand. We will expose how Mr. Danchenko has been unfairly maligned by these false allegations."

The indictment indirectly connected Dolan to the infamous claim that Russia possessed a compromising tape of Trump with prostitutes in Moscow, which became known as the "pee tape." (Trump and Russia both denied the allegations.) According to the Danchenko indictment, in June 2016, Dolan toured the Ritz-Carlton suite where the alleged liaison occurred, and discussed Trump's 2013 visit with hotel staff, but wasn't told about any sexual escapades. It's still unclear where those salacious details that ended up in the dossier came from.

Dolan was also indirectly linked in the indictment to still-unverified claims about Russian officials who were allegedly part of the election meddling. The indictment also suggested that Steele's memos exaggerated what Dolan had passed along to Danchenko.

The indictment also says the dossier contained a relatively mundane item about Trump campaign infighting that Dolan later told the FBI he actually gleaned from news articles. Prosecutors say Dolan even lied to Danchenko about where he got the gossip, by attributing it to a "GOP friend" who was "a close associate of Trump."

An attorney representing Dolan, Ralph Martin, declined to comment for this story because his client "is a witness in an ongoing case."
Durham explicitly stated in the Danchenko indictment that the Clinton campaign didn't direct, and wasn't aware of, Dolan's activities regarding the dossier. Clinton has said she only learned about the dossier when it was posted online, two months after the 2016 election. Senior Clinton campaign aides also said they found out about Steele's work from press reports.

Clinton's allies prod the FBI
The Danchenko indictment raises new concerns about the circular nature of portions of Steele's work, and how it fit into a larger effort by Democrats to dirty up Trump. Clinton's campaign funded the project, and we now know that much of the material in Steele's memos ended up being mere political gossip. Steele then sent his explosive but unverified findings to the FBI and State Department.

While Steele was passing his tips onto the FBI in fall 2016, a Clinton campaign lawyer separately met with a senior FBI official and gave him information about strange cyberactivity between servers at the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank, the largest private bank in Russia.

The lawyer, Michael Sussmann, has since been charged with lying to the FBI during that meeting, for allegedly saying he wasn't providing the dirt on behalf of any client, even though he ultimately billed that time to the Clinton campaign, and also billed them for other work he did on the server issue. Durham says Sussmann repeated this lie during a meeting with CIA officials in February 2017, where he told them about the server theory. Sussmann has pleaded not guilty.
The indictment says Sussman peddled the same material to a Slate reporter, who published a story right before the election. The story said reputable computer scientists uncovered unusual activity between servers belonging to the Trump Organization and the Moscow-based Alfa Bank, suggesting a secret backchannel.

The Trump Organization and Alfa Bank both denied there was a backchannel. The FBI investigated the underlying data and ruled out any improper cyber links by February 2017.
But after the Slate article came out, Clinton's campaign went on a PR blitz, tying Trump to Russia. Clinton had already slammed Trump for months, for embracing Russia's interference in the election, which included releasing hacked emails from Clinton's campaign chairman and the Democratic National Committee.
Sussmann was a partner at the law firm Perkins Coie, which indirectly hired Steele. Both men separately went to the FBI in 2016 with dirt about Trump, though there's no indication Sussmann knew about the dossier. (A 2019 Justice Department watchdog report pointed out that the FBI routinely accepts information from biased or dubious sources, and then investigators try to independently vet the material.)

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/11/18/politics/steele-dossier-reckoning/index.html
 
not sure i agree with that. we're saying that even if clinton didn't have knowledge that her campaign managers and operatives misled the fbi over the steele dossier and a lot of other things around russiagate that clinton herself should face trial? that she'd be guilty by association? it's an interesting idea. would potentially see trump and clinton in prison.
 
not sure i agree with that. we're saying that even if clinton didn't have knowledge that her campaign managers and operatives misled the fbi over the steele dossier and a lot of other things around russiagate that clinton herself should face trial? that she'd be guilty by association? it's an interesting idea. would potentially see trump and clinton in prison.
Completely off topic but I'm curious: why don't you use capital letters?
 
The Steele Dossier info which was initially funded by Republicans & was a raw intelligence document whose large swaths of which haven’t been disproven?

One person lying?

Sure, Clinton deserves some of the blame.

There’s also degrees of criminality / illegality & systemic issues.
it was a clinton campaign exercise. and two of those officials were accused of misleading the fbi. sussman just most high profile. they manupulated false information and pretended when they gave it to the fbi that they weren't acting on behalf of the campaign. as for the republican part, yeah as opposition dirt during the primary stage. it was never credible. the irony is the interlinkage between the gop and the clinton campaign. people in dc just gather info, make info up, and sell to highest bidder. which is probably not a new phenomenon.

i agree on the systemic point. which i said on the previous page. since 2016 at least there's been an uptick in each party trying to weaponize institutions which are supposed to be independent. now it might read as naive to anyone who studies political campaigns because almost all of them are dirty but 2016 was a kind of watershed in dirty tricks being played by each side.

for example, trump's dealings with comey are classic attempts to try and subordinate the fbi to the presidency. but then comey was in a bad spot because he had led an investigation against trump as candidate based on clinton campaign propaganda. it's one big gargantuan fecking mess.
 
not sure i agree with that. we're saying that even if clinton didn't have knowledge that her campaign managers and operatives misled the fbi over the steele dossier and a lot of other things around russiagate that clinton herself should face trial? that she'd be guilty by association? it's an interesting idea. would potentially see trump and clinton in prison.
I honestly don’t care, I just wanted to see where you went with that since it seemed like deflection on your part from the fact that the Trump campaign knew about Russian interference with the election.
 
I honestly don’t care, I just wanted to see where you went with that since it seemed like deflection on your part from the fact that the Trump campaign knew about Russian interference with the election.
yeah i didn't get the sense that you cared which is typical tbh.
 
it was a clinton campaign exercise. and two of those officials were accused of misleading the fbi. sussman just most high profile. they manupulated false information and pretended when they gave it to the fbi that they weren't acting on behalf of the campaign. as for the republican part, yeah as opposition dirt during the primary stage. it was never credible. the irony is the interlinkage between the gop and the clinton campaign. people in dc just gather info, make info up, and sell to highest bidder. which is probably not a new phenomenon.

i agree on the systemic point. which i said on the previous page. since 2016 at least there's been an uptick in each party trying to weaponize institutions which are supposed to be independent. now it might read as naive to anyone who studies political campaigns because almost all of them are dirty but 2016 was a kind of watershed in dirty tricks being played by each side.

for example, trump's dealings with comey are classic attempts to try and subordinate the fbi to the presidency. but then comey was in a bad spot because he had led an investigation against trump as candidate based on clinton campaign propaganda. it's one big gargantuan fecking mess.

No, it began as a republican funded project by Fusion who then sold the initial report to the Clinton campaign. Only then was Steel brought on to add to it and he claims he did not know who was getting the report till much later.
 
Like how I don’t get the sense that you actually believe half of what you’ve said in here today?

Would take an exceptional amount of willful ignorance to do so.
i believe the russians interfered. i believe that trump had no knowledge or direct participation of that interference. i believe that clinton's campaign willingly misled the fbi for political reasons and led a media campaign in the aftermath to continue to do so but on a public scale because they were bitter about losing and maybe even nervous about having potentially incriminated themselves along the way. i believe that the dems weaponize institutions the same way the republicans do but that the denialism is more of an institutionalized fact on the extremist gop side. i believe i've probably read more into this affair in the past two days alone than you have in the past four years and i believe i'm less ideologically inclined to want to see one side tarred and feathered while ignoring the wider context.

take that as you want.

No, it began as a republican funded project by Fusion who then sold the initial report to the Clinton campaign. Only then was Steel brought on to add to it and he claims he did not know who was getting the report till much later.
i acknowledge that.
 
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it was a clinton campaign exercise. and two of those officials were accused of misleading the fbi. sussman just most high profile. they manupulated false information and pretended when they gave it to the fbi that they weren't acting on behalf of the campaign. as for the republican part, yeah as opposition dirt during the primary stage. it was never credible. the irony is the interlinkage between the gop and the clinton campaign. people in dc just gather info, make info up, and sell to highest bidder. which is probably not a new phenomenon.

i agree on the systemic point. which i said on the previous page. since 2016 at least there's been an uptick in each party trying to weaponize institutions which are supposed to be independent. now it might read as naive to anyone who studies political campaigns because almost all of them are dirty but 2016 was a kind of watershed in dirty tricks being played by each side.

for example, trump's dealings with comey are classic attempts to try and subordinate the fbi to the presidency. but then comey was in a bad spot because he had led an investigation against trump as candidate based on clinton campaign propaganda. it's one big gargantuan fecking mess.
We do agree on your final statement. I can only shudder at the fallout from 2022 & 2024. We might look back upon this current ‘gargantuan fecking mess’ as a quaint time in our lives.
 
And his campaign?
i don't see proof for direct campaign dealings with russian intel as of yet. highly possible though. manafort and the rest aren't squeeky clean. the mueller report details stone having a meeting with potential sources but declining the information bceause he judged it was either false or dangerous. i do see proof of intermediary dealings where russian intel disguises itself and passes on info direct to the campaign. which is not collusion in the strict sense because you have to prove that the campaign knew they were colluding with russian intel not that they were the beneficiaries of it by proxy.
 
i don't see proof for direct campaign dealings with russian intel as of yet. highly possible though. manafort and the rest aren't squeeky clean. the mueller report details stone having a meeting with potential sources but declining the information bceause he judged it was either false or dangerous. i do see proof of intermediary dealings where russian intel disguises itself and passes on info direct to the campaign. which is not collusion in the strict sense because you have to prove that the campaign knew they were colluding with russian intel not that they were the beneficiaries of it by proxy.
So you believe they had no clue who they were dealing with that whole time?
 
So you believe they had no clue who they were dealing with that whole time?
i don't see any evidence of it. not in the social media campaigns which i don't think any political operation will question. here's info on your opponent coming from a republican grassroots organisation that seems legit, let's have it corroborated, as they did by independent intelligence agencies, and then use it if it's useful.

is there an example where trump campaign officials meet russian spies, receive information on the clinton campaign, and then knowingly reproduce that information?