Listen, I know it's a big deal when the POTUS lies. But aren't we used to it by now? If Trump somehow manages not to be a criminal and a crook (which seems downright impossible), it will be highly unusual for the recent history of his office.
Now: other than bluster, what is there actually about this "Russia" probe? What exactly are we investigating? Whether Russia was involved in "fake news" stories? Whether Russia was involved in releasing emails from the DNC? Emails which revealed terrible, immature, anti-democratic conduct?
The "Russia hacked the election" narrative doesn't include, AFAIK, accusations that they stuffed ballot boxes or anything, right?
edit: If the house investigation is about the Steele dossier (ie, the alleged oil deal between Trump and Russia), then that's a different ballgame entirely and that's great. This article doesn't mention that; my understanding was that that had only been brought up on the Senate side. It seems that the House side is still just about the "election hacking" - I hope I'm wrong.
Collusion between Trump/team and Russia. It's one thing for Russia to mess with an election, it's a vastly different thing if the campaign coordinated with them to do it.
If "messed with" the election just means misleading propaganda, then is it really an issue if they coordinated with them? How is it any different than hiring a PR firm based in another country?
forgive me if i'm being uncharitable, but it comes across as if you're being willfully obtuse.
"messed with" means hacking and possible criminal coordination between a campaign and russian officials. if it came out that the clinton campaign had coordinated with [insert historic rival] intelligence, people would be calling for executions.
> if it came out that the clinton campaign had coordinated with [insert historic rival] intelligence, people would be calling for executions.
...not sure which Clinton you mean here, but if you meant Bill, it's quite likely that he did indeed coordinate with Saudi Intelligence in a reasonably similar fashion.
...and so did the man he defeated, George H.W. Bush.
"having close ties" is not "illegally coordinating an election campaign", and saudi is not a rival of the united states -- it's been among its strongest allies since fdr. but that's neither here nor there and i'm not interested in defending either of the clintons. you're trying to dodge the issue when it's spelled out. you're arguing in bad faith.
It strikes me as odd that Americans don't seem to mind that a President to some extent might be serving the interests of a foreign power above the interests of the his own citizens.
Who would have thought so many Americans would have a love affair with a KGB Agent that is responsible for murder and oppression and for his entire life worked to undermine America and has accomplished that to some extent with this Administration.
I think that the part you are missing is that the vast majority (like 65%) don't support or respect this President at all.
Of all the terrible things the government has done in the past 1 / 10 / 100 years, I don't think that a candidate coordinating with Russia about which fake news to publish is even worth mentioning.
If Congress has the guts to investigate the Steele dossier (which alleged Trump traded eased regulations for oil interests) then that's great. And if he is impeached on that basis, that's great too, although it leaves us with a probably worse Mike Pence. Better yet is if the entire government falls.
I'm not defending Trump or his conduct; I'm just saying this is a distraction.
The confidence with which you express the goals that you're projecting on Russia here is scary. Not only do we have yet to find evidence that Russia did anything involving the election (although we certainly could during these investigations), you seem to have sussed out their goal in doing that which has not been proven, and a motive of revenge.
It's weird. Hearing people talk like this is weird, and reminds me of the run-up to Iraq, except that at least then there were claims to evidence.
> I don't think that a candidate coordinating with Russia about which fake news to publish
Not to attack your statement in particular, but rather piggybacking on it as an illustration of those who are actually making this claim, to whom I ask:
Can you please provide me with an example of a widely publicized "fake news" that might have had a significant impact on the campaign, or otherwise swayed people opinion in favor of DJT? I can think of plenty of flat out misleading insinuations that were constantly being churned out by the left leaning media establishment the minute Trump started to pick up momentum.
Because that was the narrative the Obama admin started to run with as election day was getting closer, you know, just in case, and I found it laughable. That's when the whole "fake news" gimmick spontaneously became a thing across all major media outlets.
Surely they weren't referring to the dozens of accurate and damning emails published by Wikileaks exposing the corruption and media collusion of the democratic party in favor of one of their candidates, were they? Surely it wasn't related to the money trails and other shady transactions performed by the Clintons as exposed in Peter Schweizer's investigation [1]?
Are we to believe that somehow Trump's campaign "coordinated" with Russian operatives? What does that even entail exactly, besides trying to de-escalate the situation exacerbated by Obama when he tried to poison the well by expelling 35 Russians diplomats, as a retaliation for a yet unproven "interference" [2]?
Did Trump time his tactical tweets by the second for optimal impact according to good ole Vlad's recommendations? I mean seriously, can you please enlighten me with some sound logic on this? Because you will find that this will inexorably lead you to look inward at your own shitshow of a democratic party [3], and perhaps the cognitive dissonance will cease... or intensify.
Treason? You come to Hacker News to imply that the President of the United States has committed Treason. What proof do you have? This is pure slander.
Sorry your preferred candidate lost the election. Next time don't let violent, intolerant, elitist, smug liberals and celebrities take over your political party. Democrats used to be about Unions and the working family. Appears that era is over.
As noted in previous comments... There is a reason the Rust Belt voted for Trump, and it has nothing to do with Russia.
I implied no such thing, read what I wrote 50 times if you must until you see that I merely said treason is a serious crime, not a distraction. I didn't not imply he was guilty, we don't know that one way or the other; hence the investigation.
You really need to learn to have a discussion with someone, without blaming them for all of the perceived faults of the democrats. You don't know my political party, nor my preferred candidate, you're just assuming everything as if everyone who doesn't like Trump is the same.
> There is a reason the Rust Belt voted for Trump, and it has nothing to do with Russia.
No one thinks it does; the Rust Belt is just gullible and fell for a con man promising them things that cannot occur, those jobs cannot come back, they no longer exist. They heard what they wanted to hear because they're unable to hear the truth.
The current President is surrounded by a cult of personality. It makes it easier to see all of the news reports in the vein of "bitter mass media upset about election results" or "pandering to SJW/PC crowd."
Maybe it's just me but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of journalists are in some part motivated by their displeasure with the President's demeanor and public behavior. But that motivation doesn't mean they're dishonest, it just means that they will follow through on every lead in an investigation regarding POTUS corruption.
Keep in mind he only has a 35% approval rating, most American are bothered greatly by what's going on. He also lost the popular vote, so he won even though more people voted for someone else.
Such a deflection of the topic is unworthy of hacker news. Trump is the president, discussion about Trump's negatives are not an excuse to deflect with "what about Obama", he is not the topic. Giving a speech is in no way comparable to the topic at hand anyway.
It sets a precedent that the left does want to acknowledge. There was likely collusion between Obama and "Remainers". Obama made a speech with a threat that was intended to directly influence a vote in a foreign country. Where was the outrage from the Democrats and media when this was done?
Former Acting CIA Director Michael Morell has stated that he has seen no evidence of collusions between Trump and the Kremlin. "On the question of the Trump campaign conspiring with the Russians here, there is smoke, but there is no fire, at all," Morell said.[156]
James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence under President Obama, said there was no evidence of any collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives as of January 2017 when the intelligence community issued its report on the subject.[157]
You're again trying to fly off on a diversion of the topic, I'm not playing. This is not a discussion about Obama, period. Nor are public speeches that influence foreign countries remotely comparable to collusion to affect "our" elections. Your continual citing of only the evidence that supports your politics is nothing more than partisan deflection, you are not engaging in honest debate.
There's plenty right there in your own source that warrants investigation into Trump simply from the already proved contacts that have occurred between the Russians and Trump's associates. That they have not found direct evidence of Trump's involvement yet is not a reason to stop an investigation who's purpose is simply to find out what did actually happen.
I'm happy this is an ongoing investigation. I hope the Democrats keep pushing it. I suspect they will continue to find nothing and the public will become more and more aware of the hypocrisy on the left.
This also keeps the Democrats from addressing real issues in their party. They ran a bad campaign. Instead of owning it and finding ways to address issues with American voters, they have found a scapegoat in Russia. Good Job!
I haven't implied that, you're simply reading what I'm saying via partisan eyes. I merely stated treason is a serious crime.
And no, Clinton's campaign is not the real issue. She lost, that's over, no one is questing that. The issue is whether Trump and team were involved or not with the Russian interference with the election. No amount of deflecting back to Clinton will change the issue.
"What is childish is implying the President of the United States committed treason with nothing to back it up."
A bit like throwing wild unfounded accusations of blaming your predecessor of "tapping" your wires and when that doesn't fly try to redefine the meaning of words.
Or from the moment that the media writes something you don't like call them "fake" or threaten them with stronger libel laws.
Or when you are getting under fire blame somebody else or cry "this is unfair, look what the other one did".
The only time in my life that I personally witnessed this kind of behavior was when I was in Kindergarten. And I'm not trying to make a joke, I'm very serious about this.
I don't think your POTUS is the physical representation of well-considered mature views or standing, not by a long shot. I was always raised under the impression that all old people had a lot of wisdom in them, but there is one 70 years old one that changed my views on that dramatically.
It's never about the topic at hand but there always seem to be some deflection to things or persons which (honestly) doesn't matter anymore. And what I find particularly strange is that it can be perfectly be the case that there is no "treason", it's the weird behavior shown (and sorry a bit dishonesty) that makes it so damn compelling to believe it.
I thought the point of the investigation was to find out if Trump was complicit in Russia's involvement. IANAL but that seems very different from the mere thought of Russia going at it alone.
There were certainly contacts with Russian agents. What isn't clear is who knew that the people they were dealing with were Russian agents, rather than Russian businesspeople.
Edit: And graft vs treason, which can be a hard call.
I think the level of infighting in the US and Europe now is different from anything I've seen over the last couple of decades. The democratization of media is a net benefit but it helped bring about a world's worth of people seeking out news that matches their world view. It's made it very easy to spawn animus and make everything into an "us vs them" issue.
I think Russia is overtly and covertly involved in an effort to weaken western unions. And it seems like it's been a remarkably successful campaign.
So the alternative is to keep a population held together with a narrative manufactured by the central state along side a brutal military police apparatus to manage compliance.
I think the real culprit is that the masters of the universe who crashed the economy have not been able to put humpty dumpty back together again. And only managed to make the upper 1% fabulously wealthy why the rest of the population has a sinking standard of living and lower long term wealth prospects.
Even tho its ugly what we have now its the best thing that could happen. If the states and regions reassert there rights and set there own policy independent of federal government the result is more power to the state citizens. And a smaller circle of corruption with more accountability.
And if the Russians are involved then they have complete control of both federal parties because the main source of friction comes directly out of the ideology of both parties that use division to try to segregate the electorate and practice scorched earth on the other side.
What are you talking about? The fake news are basically like the spam and phishing sites except they are state sponsored. Freedom of speech doesn't mean you have to bombarded by propaganda spread by russian bots. This is cyberwar. Sooner or later things will get quite nasty.
Are you sure its bots? The Russians could have very easily hacked your computer and planted a virus that tracks you and injects personalized propaganda based on there secret profile of you.
> The democratization of media is a net benefit but it helped bring about [...]
We are living through the modern equivalent of when Guthenberg's technology allowed people to print their own bibles. You might remember how that one turned out: a huge religious schism, civil wars, large-scale terrorism, new laws enshrining religious discrimination which lasted for centuries...
I'm not saying this is what will happen; I think we've just underestimated the chaos the internet might have unleashed. It will certainly be worth it, in the long run; but at the moment it doesn't feel that great.
Very interesting comparison, thanks for sharing it. That paradigm-shift may indeed be one of the best analogs that we have to the current on-going changes in human communication.
There was a really good Hardcore History episode that told the story of one town that was an intense focal point of religious/cultural fervor and violence during that time period. The entire city was overtaken by multiple waves of extremely radical Anabaptists, and then was literally besieged by an army for multiple months as the guy in charge of the city tried to regain control. It was a spectacular story, with lots of juicy details. Dan Carlin does a great job of contextualizing and providing perspective, as usual.
P.S. I had to retype this comment as I accidentally deleted it while attempting to copy part of it... It's amazing (and frustrating) that Android chrome hasn't implemented text edit undo yet.
Basically we're looking at Trump being connected to Russian mafia for all his financing as well as Putin bribing him with 19% stake in the Russian state oil company for removing sanctions, as well as assisting with his campaign by hacking into the Podesta emails, sorta like how there were Watergate DNC office burglars.
Did you want all this in writing from Trump and notarized that he did this? Because that's not how it works. His job is to say he didn't do this.
I thought we're looking at Hillary being connected to Saudi Arabia for her financing as well as giving Russia 20% of U.S. uranium in exchange for donations to the Clinton Foundation, as well as Podesta ties to a Russian entity called Rusnano, and how Obama used a slush fund to move money to leftist hate groups.
Did you want all this in writing from Hillary and notarized that she did this? Because that's not how it works. Her job is to say she didn't do this.
Because you're deflecting from the topic. If you can't discuss Trump without deflecting to Hillary, you're not acting in good faith and having a real discussion. Not to mention that you're repeating claims that's been disproved and cleared.
Former Acting CIA Director Michael Morell has stated that he has seen no evidence of collusions between Trump and the Kremlin. "On the question of the Trump campaign conspiring with the Russians here, there is smoke, but there is no fire, at all," Morell said.[156]
James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence under President Obama, said there was no evidence of any collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives as of January 2017 when the intelligence community issued its report on the subject.[157]
Here are the facts of today:
Trump was elected President of the United States on November 9th, 2016
The Dow Jones is up 2800+, since Nov 9th.
Trump has issued 19 Executive Orders, 16 Presidential memoranda, 11 Presidential proclamations, and 1 Presidential notice.
None of those three facts are remotely relevant to whether or not Trump colluded with Russians, you are again being partisan and even mentioning those unrelated facts proves you're too partisan to have a real discussion. And smoke is more than enough to justify a proper investigation.
No, I implied that treason is a serious crime, nothing more. I do not know if he's guilty or not, that's why there's an investigation. There's enough shady shit clearly going on that the truth has to be found.
I think this will continue to show what it has from the beginning:
The Democrats can't handle losing an election they thought they had in the bag. So they are going to throw a fit and look for a scapegoat. All the while shifting more and more to the regressive left, abandoning the hardworking blue collar Americans in the middle.
There is a reason the Rust Belt voted Trump, and it wasn't Russia.
There's certainly plenty of stuff that's been written about supposed Trump-Russia links, much of it bizarre, contradictory, lacking in evidence, and even verifiably false but still widely believed anyway. Secret communications with Russia via a server in Trump Tower that looked remarkably like hotel junk emails from a server in a data center on the other side of the country from there, bizarre claims involving prostitutes paid to piss on hotel beds, liftings of sanctions and pro-Russian changes to the Republican platform that didn't happen (but few saw or cared about the debunkings)...
Uh, no. Aside from the fact that collusion between a foreign government and a presidential campaign would be extremely problematic that's not the major issue.
The major allegation on the table right now is that the Russian government offered Trump a sizeable share of Rosneft, the Russian national petrochemical corporation, in exchange for dropping the sanctions against Russia due to the conflict in Ukraine, and both parties followed through with the deal. The sanctions were relaxed by the Trump administration within the first month of coming into office while a stake in Rosneft has been sold to an anonymous buyer behind a cayman islands holding company.
If what you are saying is true, I'm wrong and that's great. I thought that the Steele dossier was only being discussed (let alone investigated) on the Senate side of the Hill; I hadn't heard about the House Intel committee taking it up. I understood that the House side was still just about the "election hacking."
The house side is a disaster right now. Nunes is the chair of the committee and his behaviour so far is very concerning. Specifically he went ot the white house to obtain information from staffers, then briefed Trump on it and went to the press before he went to his own committee. this from a man who was a part of Trumps team.
Edit: If you're downvoting because I'm wrong please correct me. If it's just because you don't like what I said then carry on I guess.
That was one of the many dubious allegations doing the rounds, certainly. There were two major problems with it. Firstly, the supposed "dropping of sanctions" a month after Trump took power didn't actually happen. The thing people claimed was dropping the sanctions was actually a small technical change that merely allowed US exporters to pay fees required to export goods that the sanctions weren't intended to block: http://www.snopes.com/trump-sanctions-russias-intelligence-a...
Secondly, the claim that the Russian government offered Trump a share of Rosneft came from a really dodgy dossier. Supporters of the dossier touted the fact that it correctly predicted the percentage of Rosneft share sold as proof the source had inside knowledge, but it was in fact public knowledge that the Russian government wanted to sell that percent of Rosneft and had been reported in Bloomberg a few weeks before the supposed source mentioned it. So it's all too plausible that the source was merely combining public information with what the person paying them wanted to hear.
> The major allegation on the table right now is that the Russian government offered Trump a sizeable share of Rosneft
What? Where are you getting that from (that it's "the major allegation")? It was just one of many claims in the Steele Dossier.
IIRC, in the Steele dossier, that stake in Rosneft (~15% or something?) was offered to Trump and he turned it down. That stake continued to be shopped around and recently was bought by a joint venture between Qatar and others, and some of the buyers can't be identified.
TBH, I'm not really sure why Trump would need to relieve sanctions in order to get a stake in this, as it's clear they've been shopping it around for a while.
> TBH, I'm not really sure why Trump would need to relieve sanctions in order to get a stake in this, as it's clear they've been shopping it around for a while.
> If Trump somehow manages not to be a criminal and a crook (which seems downright impossible)
The vast surveillance apparatus of the deep state have crawled everything they have on Donald Trump and all they could come up with was some locker room banter from 11 years ago. The man is straight as an arrow and has been for decades.
> Now: other than bluster, what is there actually about this "Russia" probe? What exactly are we investigating? Whether Russia was involved in "fake news" stories? Whether Russia was involved in releasing emails from the DNC? Emails which revealed terrible, immature, anti-democratic conduct? The "Russia hacked the election" narrative doesn't include, AFAIK, accusations that they stuffed ballot boxes or anything, right?
Stop asking questions. RUSSIA HACKED THE ELECTION! That's all you need to know. Quite how they subverted the voting apparatus of nearly 3000 counties is not a question you need to ask right now.
I expect you're receiving downvotes (not from me) because you're introducing a strawman argument.
The issue under investigation is if there was collusion between members of Trump's campaign and foreign operatives to, e.g. time releases or coordinate messaging, not attack the voting apparatus. The fact that the national security advisor lied to the VP about discussions with Russia (for which he was fired) and now will only testify under oath with immunity suggest that there indeed may be something worth investigating there.
> I expect you're receiving downvotes (not from me) because you're introducing a strawman argument.
I didn't introduce it - the parent did. I'm being downvoted because this is a left-leaning board. Shrug.
> The fact that the national security advisor lied to the VP about discussions with Russia (for which he was fired) and now will only testify under oath with immunity suggest that there indeed may be something worth investigating there.
There's the possibility that the entire basis of the Republican resurgence -- with its roots in the alt-right, conspiracy theories, the Tea Party, gold bugs, etc -- has been a Russian operation with the goal of destabilizing the US. Consider the role of RT, for example. And it's not like it hasn't happened before. Russia played a major role in shaping the anti-war movement in the 60s.
No power on Earth is that competent. And the Tea Party was very clearly a reaction to Obama getting elected, and egged on by the Republican establishment.
My take is that the "hacked the election" is mostly a right-wing framing.
What's much more interesting is evidence of collusion: money changing hands in undisclosed ways, policies changing dramatically after secret meetings, means of blackmail, etc. The first two wouldn't surprise me at all at this point.
The point being: if a foreign - hostile - state has substantial, non-disclosed power over US executive branch, that's a very big deal, and there's a number of laws meant to prevent exactly that sort of thing. The speculation is that at least one of these laws has been broken - that's much more damning than evidence of troll armies trying to sway votes.
More importantly. Who knew what, and when. Members of Trumps team had contact with Russia. Flynn already resigned over this. Sessions has had to recuse himself because of this. Nunes has engaged in questionable behaviour over this. Manafort had some sort of business relationship with a powerful Russian close to Putin.
There is a dossier from a "credible" source that indicates the Russians have dirt on Trump.
realistically, the question seems to be if Trump (or his team) encouraged Russian influence in the election in exchange for reducing sanctions or other favours.
As of now, it looks like nobody has taken his offer of immunity for testimony. What are the implications of this? The commentators on other sites seem to imply this means investigators already know something big.
I believe that, generally, immunity deals are constructed to require complete candor and truthfulness. It may have come up in the Lewis Libby trial. IANAL.
True and similarly despite the Senate Finance Committee having requesting exactly what the IRS did, target, Issa never offered Republican appointed Lois Lerner immunity. Republicans never charged her with anything but passed a contempt citation to cover their asses.
I have to admit that at this point, I'd just like to see somebody, somewhere, convicted of something, in a way that carries some sort of real consequences (i.e., no "yep, they're guilty, and the penalty is to retire from the public eye with all their ill-gotten gains and enjoying them until the day they die, except maybe if they take a break to write a book about their experiences for a couple million dollars" crap).
Think about it. When's the last time that happened at this level? Why should anyone at that level be concerned about a FBI investigation, or a Congressional probe, or anything else? When's the last time that amounted to anything at all?
I honestly don't hardly care who or which side of what aisle they are on. I do very much care that it be an accurate conviction, but that seems to be a target-rich environment right now.
In the case of the IRS Targeting scandals, ATF or Benghazi or any of the other fake scandals, no one was ever charged with anything. All of investigations were just political witch hunts for campaign purposes.
Did they ask for immunity, or were they offered it?
Anyone who is offered immunity will take it -- there's no reason not to -- but that doesn't mean they needed it or knew anything worth testifying to. But when you hear "please, someone -- anyone -- give me immunity!" from a suspect, it rather increases the odds that they have a strong reason for wanting immunity.
His lawyers could have convinced him to ask for immunity if there was even a slight chance of legal trouble. He may also only have some minor dirt to spill, so he's happy throwing some staffer under the bus.
And great. Give him immunity and get him in front of the Senate and House committees. If, as you assert, he has only minor dirt on some small player that will come out. And the immunity itself will save everyone time and money.
I'm not so sure... Thinking about the Valerie Plame leak case, Scooter Libby the VP's CoS was convicted for giving false testimony and obstruction. Those convictions stem from conflicting statements about how he knew Valerie Plame worked for the CIA.
If you were Flynn and thought you had a card that would keep you out of jail to play in a game where if you mis-remember how you know a seemingly trivial piece of information you go to jail... would'nt you try to play that card?
Your being down voted because voices of moderation and reason can often cause a disruption in the field surrounding the tinfoil hat and there for let in Russian mind control signals.
Has the United States ever convicted someone on the level of National Security Advisor (i.e., effectively a member of the cabinet, such as Secretary of Defense), or even put them on trial? Petraeus got a slap on the wrist, but for actions while he was a General.
In other countries, even the heads of state get put on trial. Off the top of my head, it's happened relatively recently in France and Israel. In the U.S., I can't think of even a member of the cabinet being tried; on the order of 1 federal judge has ever been impeached. Nixon was pardoned, for example.
Someone mentioned 5 people were granted immunity for the Clinton investigation; were any of the 5 at such a high level? Has someone on that level ever been given immunity or needed it?
Some countries I know have laws written that immunity is given to the head of the state from juridical conviction until the term is over, but the Congress would have the power to impeach.
>...In the U.S., I can't think of even a member of the cabinet being tried;
It will be hard to beat the Nixon administration for convictions: 2 attorney generals, chief of staff, 2 white house counsels, undersecretary of transportation, secretary to the president, special counsel to the president, secretary of commerce and the vice president!
Hey, that's a great page that I never imagined existed. I stand corrected; plenty of Cabinet secretaries were convicted, as well as 8 federal judges in 30 years (and therefore I assume many more in history).
Still, only one VP (Agnew, which I should have remembered) and of course no Presidents.
The undersecretary that you mentioned is now The "Senior Fellow on Ethics and Leadership at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress and Counselor to the Director at the School for Ethics and Global Leadership." [1]
Receiving a senior fellowship in Ethics is quite the turnaround from six months in prison.
Nixon's VP, Spiro Agnew, received a $10K fine and 3 years probation after pleading no contest to tax evasion from accepting bribes. IANAL, don't know if that counts as "conviction." He was disbarred for his plea of no contest.
Okay, but Clinton was subsequently tried in the Senate, as mentioned on that page: Clinton was subsequently acquitted of these charges by the Senate on February 12, 1999.
I'm not a Trump supporter (voted for Johnson but would have voted for Clinton if it mattered in my state), but this whole "Russia" investigation feels like partisan signaling nonsense like the Benghazi hearings.
Flynn didn't do anything illegal (I've yet to see a compelling argument that the Logan Act would apply here), just a breach of protocol. It was lying to Pence that did him in.
Manafort consulted for lots of presidential campaigns including Ford, Reagan, and Bush, so it doesn't surprise me that Trump used him, too. Of course, he's a criminal and a sleazeball, and he left the Trump campaign a long time ago.
Tillerson is just an ex-CEO of Exxon, so he might be pro-Russia but not in any untoward way.
It's likely that the DNC was hacked by APT28/29, and it's likely that they're FSB/GRU, and it's likely that they released the documents to Wikileaks. There's no public information that Trump was involved.
The Steele dossier is juicy and is being investigated by the intelligence agencies, so nothing to learn there until they tell us.
Then we have the Yates and Nunes ordeal, but I'm willing to believe that's just partisan junk.
Annnnyyywwaaaay, in an effort to be more rational this year, I'd like to try to solidify my positions and confidence levels via wagers. My general position is that Trump is not involved with Russia in any treasonous or even "quite inappropriate" way.
If you concretely believe that Trump is a Russian spy, or personally negotiated with Putin to get him to win the election in exchange for reversing sanctions or something, hit me up (my email is in my HN user info thing) with your proposed hypothesis and we can make a bet. I won't promise to take on all bets, but certainly a lot of the extreme positions I've seen on here I would. E.g., I'd bet at pretty high odds that he didn't take a position in Rosneft, as someone was claiming).
> Flynn didn't do anything illegal (I've yet to see a compelling argument that the Logan Act would apply here), just a breach of protocol. It was lying to Pence that did him in.
Maybe you're right, but he's asking for immunity for something—see elsewhere in this thread where Flynn has made his views on immunity deals clear.
This seems closer to "Ex-Trump adviser Flynn's lawyer tries a pretty common (for his client's industry) maneuver to ensure his client won't get jail time no matter what happens"
I'd be quite surprised if any of the Russian connections turned out to be meaningful. Every story that I've seen about anything along the Trump/Russia axis is soaked in enough weasel words to make a defense attorney cringe, and the details are generally senseless on close examination.
120 comments
[ 133 ms ] story [ 2831 ms ] threadNow: other than bluster, what is there actually about this "Russia" probe? What exactly are we investigating? Whether Russia was involved in "fake news" stories? Whether Russia was involved in releasing emails from the DNC? Emails which revealed terrible, immature, anti-democratic conduct?
The "Russia hacked the election" narrative doesn't include, AFAIK, accusations that they stuffed ballot boxes or anything, right?
edit: If the house investigation is about the Steele dossier (ie, the alleged oil deal between Trump and Russia), then that's a different ballgame entirely and that's great. This article doesn't mention that; my understanding was that that had only been brought up on the Senate side. It seems that the House side is still just about the "election hacking" - I hope I'm wrong.
Collusion between Trump/team and Russia. It's one thing for Russia to mess with an election, it's a vastly different thing if the campaign coordinated with them to do it.
"messed with" means hacking and possible criminal coordination between a campaign and russian officials. if it came out that the clinton campaign had coordinated with [insert historic rival] intelligence, people would be calling for executions.
...not sure which Clinton you mean here, but if you meant Bill, it's quite likely that he did indeed coordinate with Saudi Intelligence in a reasonably similar fashion.
...and so did the man he defeated, George H.W. Bush.
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/08/23/world/clinton-and-his-ties...
Yes, it is.
> How is it any different than hiring a PR firm based in another country?
One is treason, one is not.
Who would have thought so many Americans would have a love affair with a KGB Agent that is responsible for murder and oppression and for his entire life worked to undermine America and has accomplished that to some extent with this Administration.
Of all the terrible things the government has done in the past 1 / 10 / 100 years, I don't think that a candidate coordinating with Russia about which fake news to publish is even worth mentioning.
If Congress has the guts to investigate the Steele dossier (which alleged Trump traded eased regulations for oil interests) then that's great. And if he is impeached on that basis, that's great too, although it leaves us with a probably worse Mike Pence. Better yet is if the entire government falls.
I'm not defending Trump or his conduct; I'm just saying this is a distraction.
It's weird. Hearing people talk like this is weird, and reminds me of the run-up to Iraq, except that at least then there were claims to evidence.
Have you read Igor Panarin's work? He and Putin are both "ex"-KGB.
But hey, it's just a hypothesis. Let's see what evidence comes out.
Edit: http://perezhilton.com/2016-12-29-russia-donald-trump-electi...
Not to attack your statement in particular, but rather piggybacking on it as an illustration of those who are actually making this claim, to whom I ask:
Can you please provide me with an example of a widely publicized "fake news" that might have had a significant impact on the campaign, or otherwise swayed people opinion in favor of DJT? I can think of plenty of flat out misleading insinuations that were constantly being churned out by the left leaning media establishment the minute Trump started to pick up momentum.
Because that was the narrative the Obama admin started to run with as election day was getting closer, you know, just in case, and I found it laughable. That's when the whole "fake news" gimmick spontaneously became a thing across all major media outlets.
Surely they weren't referring to the dozens of accurate and damning emails published by Wikileaks exposing the corruption and media collusion of the democratic party in favor of one of their candidates, were they? Surely it wasn't related to the money trails and other shady transactions performed by the Clintons as exposed in Peter Schweizer's investigation [1]?
Are we to believe that somehow Trump's campaign "coordinated" with Russian operatives? What does that even entail exactly, besides trying to de-escalate the situation exacerbated by Obama when he tried to poison the well by expelling 35 Russians diplomats, as a retaliation for a yet unproven "interference" [2]?
Did Trump time his tactical tweets by the second for optimal impact according to good ole Vlad's recommendations? I mean seriously, can you please enlighten me with some sound logic on this? Because you will find that this will inexorably lead you to look inward at your own shitshow of a democratic party [3], and perhaps the cognitive dissonance will cease... or intensify.
Full disclosure: I was a Rand Paul supporter.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/20/us/politics/new-book-clin...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/29/barack-obama...
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNZmXhxuThU
Sorry your preferred candidate lost the election. Next time don't let violent, intolerant, elitist, smug liberals and celebrities take over your political party. Democrats used to be about Unions and the working family. Appears that era is over.
As noted in previous comments... There is a reason the Rust Belt voted for Trump, and it has nothing to do with Russia.
You really need to learn to have a discussion with someone, without blaming them for all of the perceived faults of the democrats. You don't know my political party, nor my preferred candidate, you're just assuming everything as if everyone who doesn't like Trump is the same.
> There is a reason the Rust Belt voted for Trump, and it has nothing to do with Russia.
No one thinks it does; the Rust Belt is just gullible and fell for a con man promising them things that cannot occur, those jobs cannot come back, they no longer exist. They heard what they wanted to hear because they're unable to hear the truth.
Maybe it's just me but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of journalists are in some part motivated by their displeasure with the President's demeanor and public behavior. But that motivation doesn't mean they're dishonest, it just means that they will follow through on every lead in an investigation regarding POTUS corruption.
And hey, even W liked Putin. He's a regular sort of manly man. Like the current President seems to idealize, in his own cokehead yuppie way.
Former Acting CIA Director Michael Morell has stated that he has seen no evidence of collusions between Trump and the Kremlin. "On the question of the Trump campaign conspiring with the Russians here, there is smoke, but there is no fire, at all," Morell said.[156]
James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence under President Obama, said there was no evidence of any collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives as of January 2017 when the intelligence community issued its report on the subject.[157]
It's like you don't even read the links you post
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_20...
There's plenty right there in your own source that warrants investigation into Trump simply from the already proved contacts that have occurred between the Russians and Trump's associates. That they have not found direct evidence of Trump's involvement yet is not a reason to stop an investigation who's purpose is simply to find out what did actually happen.
This also keeps the Democrats from addressing real issues in their party. They ran a bad campaign. Instead of owning it and finding ways to address issues with American voters, they have found a scapegoat in Russia. Good Job!
Time will tell, but at least some Democrats are starting to address the real issue, and not placing all the blame on the boogeyman (Russia):
http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/30/politics/joe-biden-donald-trum...
And no, Clinton's campaign is not the real issue. She lost, that's over, no one is questing that. The issue is whether Trump and team were involved or not with the Russian interference with the election. No amount of deflecting back to Clinton will change the issue.
A bit like throwing wild unfounded accusations of blaming your predecessor of "tapping" your wires and when that doesn't fly try to redefine the meaning of words.
Or from the moment that the media writes something you don't like call them "fake" or threaten them with stronger libel laws.
Or when you are getting under fire blame somebody else or cry "this is unfair, look what the other one did".
The only time in my life that I personally witnessed this kind of behavior was when I was in Kindergarten. And I'm not trying to make a joke, I'm very serious about this.
I don't think your POTUS is the physical representation of well-considered mature views or standing, not by a long shot. I was always raised under the impression that all old people had a lot of wisdom in them, but there is one 70 years old one that changed my views on that dramatically.
It's never about the topic at hand but there always seem to be some deflection to things or persons which (honestly) doesn't matter anymore. And what I find particularly strange is that it can be perfectly be the case that there is no "treason", it's the weird behavior shown (and sorry a bit dishonesty) that makes it so damn compelling to believe it.
Edit: And graft vs treason, which can be a hard call.
I think Russia is overtly and covertly involved in an effort to weaken western unions. And it seems like it's been a remarkably successful campaign.
I think the real culprit is that the masters of the universe who crashed the economy have not been able to put humpty dumpty back together again. And only managed to make the upper 1% fabulously wealthy why the rest of the population has a sinking standard of living and lower long term wealth prospects.
Even tho its ugly what we have now its the best thing that could happen. If the states and regions reassert there rights and set there own policy independent of federal government the result is more power to the state citizens. And a smaller circle of corruption with more accountability.
And if the Russians are involved then they have complete control of both federal parties because the main source of friction comes directly out of the ideology of both parties that use division to try to segregate the electorate and practice scorched earth on the other side.
We are living through the modern equivalent of when Guthenberg's technology allowed people to print their own bibles. You might remember how that one turned out: a huge religious schism, civil wars, large-scale terrorism, new laws enshrining religious discrimination which lasted for centuries...
I'm not saying this is what will happen; I think we've just underestimated the chaos the internet might have unleashed. It will certainly be worth it, in the long run; but at the moment it doesn't feel that great.
There was a really good Hardcore History episode that told the story of one town that was an intense focal point of religious/cultural fervor and violence during that time period. The entire city was overtaken by multiple waves of extremely radical Anabaptists, and then was literally besieged by an army for multiple months as the guy in charge of the city tried to regain control. It was a spectacular story, with lots of juicy details. Dan Carlin does a great job of contextualizing and providing perspective, as usual.
P.S. I had to retype this comment as I accidentally deleted it while attempting to copy part of it... It's amazing (and frustrating) that Android chrome hasn't implemented text edit undo yet.
Did you want all this in writing from Trump and notarized that he did this? Because that's not how it works. His job is to say he didn't do this.
Did you want all this in writing from Hillary and notarized that she did this? Because that's not how it works. Her job is to say she didn't do this.
The left is throwing a temper tantrum, at the same time hand waving away any possible wrongdoing by their members.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_20...
Former Acting CIA Director Michael Morell has stated that he has seen no evidence of collusions between Trump and the Kremlin. "On the question of the Trump campaign conspiring with the Russians here, there is smoke, but there is no fire, at all," Morell said.[156]
James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence under President Obama, said there was no evidence of any collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives as of January 2017 when the intelligence community issued its report on the subject.[157]
Here are the facts of today:
Trump was elected President of the United States on November 9th, 2016
The Dow Jones is up 2800+, since Nov 9th.
Trump has issued 19 Executive Orders, 16 Presidential memoranda, 11 Presidential proclamations, and 1 Presidential notice.
None of those three facts are remotely relevant to whether or not Trump colluded with Russians, you are again being partisan and even mentioning those unrelated facts proves you're too partisan to have a real discussion. And smoke is more than enough to justify a proper investigation.
Pot meet kettle.
Hillary Clinton appreciates your support and making it clear that Trump is the problem now.
Let's now focus on Trump, since he is the government official that is being investigated for corruption now.
What other problems do you think Trump will show?
The Democrats can't handle losing an election they thought they had in the bag. So they are going to throw a fit and look for a scapegoat. All the while shifting more and more to the regressive left, abandoning the hardworking blue collar Americans in the middle.
There is a reason the Rust Belt voted Trump, and it wasn't Russia.
The major allegation on the table right now is that the Russian government offered Trump a sizeable share of Rosneft, the Russian national petrochemical corporation, in exchange for dropping the sanctions against Russia due to the conflict in Ukraine, and both parties followed through with the deal. The sanctions were relaxed by the Trump administration within the first month of coming into office while a stake in Rosneft has been sold to an anonymous buyer behind a cayman islands holding company.
Do you have a source?
Edit: If you're downvoting because I'm wrong please correct me. If it's just because you don't like what I said then carry on I guess.
Secondly, the claim that the Russian government offered Trump a share of Rosneft came from a really dodgy dossier. Supporters of the dossier touted the fact that it correctly predicted the percentage of Rosneft share sold as proof the source had inside knowledge, but it was in fact public knowledge that the Russian government wanted to sell that percent of Rosneft and had been reported in Bloomberg a few weeks before the supposed source mentioned it. So it's all too plausible that the source was merely combining public information with what the person paying them wanted to hear.
What? Where are you getting that from (that it's "the major allegation")? It was just one of many claims in the Steele Dossier.
IIRC, in the Steele dossier, that stake in Rosneft (~15% or something?) was offered to Trump and he turned it down. That stake continued to be shopped around and recently was bought by a joint venture between Qatar and others, and some of the buyers can't be identified.
TBH, I'm not really sure why Trump would need to relieve sanctions in order to get a stake in this, as it's clear they've been shopping it around for a while.
Well, it's probably cheaper.
The vast surveillance apparatus of the deep state have crawled everything they have on Donald Trump and all they could come up with was some locker room banter from 11 years ago. The man is straight as an arrow and has been for decades.
> Now: other than bluster, what is there actually about this "Russia" probe? What exactly are we investigating? Whether Russia was involved in "fake news" stories? Whether Russia was involved in releasing emails from the DNC? Emails which revealed terrible, immature, anti-democratic conduct? The "Russia hacked the election" narrative doesn't include, AFAIK, accusations that they stuffed ballot boxes or anything, right?
Stop asking questions. RUSSIA HACKED THE ELECTION! That's all you need to know. Quite how they subverted the voting apparatus of nearly 3000 counties is not a question you need to ask right now.
The issue under investigation is if there was collusion between members of Trump's campaign and foreign operatives to, e.g. time releases or coordinate messaging, not attack the voting apparatus. The fact that the national security advisor lied to the VP about discussions with Russia (for which he was fired) and now will only testify under oath with immunity suggest that there indeed may be something worth investigating there.
I didn't introduce it - the parent did. I'm being downvoted because this is a left-leaning board. Shrug.
> The fact that the national security advisor lied to the VP about discussions with Russia (for which he was fired) and now will only testify under oath with immunity suggest that there indeed may be something worth investigating there.
He resigned but yes, he should be investigated.
The Tea Party goes back before Obama. It grew out of the RJR-funded fight against smoking restrictions.
What's much more interesting is evidence of collusion: money changing hands in undisclosed ways, policies changing dramatically after secret meetings, means of blackmail, etc. The first two wouldn't surprise me at all at this point.
The point being: if a foreign - hostile - state has substantial, non-disclosed power over US executive branch, that's a very big deal, and there's a number of laws meant to prevent exactly that sort of thing. The speculation is that at least one of these laws has been broken - that's much more damning than evidence of troll armies trying to sway votes.
Yes, did Russia hackthe DNC.
More importantly. Who knew what, and when. Members of Trumps team had contact with Russia. Flynn already resigned over this. Sessions has had to recuse himself because of this. Nunes has engaged in questionable behaviour over this. Manafort had some sort of business relationship with a powerful Russian close to Putin.
There is a dossier from a "credible" source that indicates the Russians have dirt on Trump.
realistically, the question seems to be if Trump (or his team) encouraged Russian influence in the election in exchange for reducing sanctions or other favours.
That is a big deal.
Think about it. When's the last time that happened at this level? Why should anyone at that level be concerned about a FBI investigation, or a Congressional probe, or anything else? When's the last time that amounted to anything at all?
I honestly don't hardly care who or which side of what aisle they are on. I do very much care that it be an accurate conviction, but that seems to be a target-rich environment right now.
Anyone who is offered immunity will take it -- there's no reason not to -- but that doesn't mean they needed it or knew anything worth testifying to. But when you hear "please, someone -- anyone -- give me immunity!" from a suspect, it rather increases the odds that they have a strong reason for wanting immunity.
They probably do, but if they're doing a good job w/the investigation, they are looking for more evidence to corroborate testimony like Flynn's.
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/847587940557623296
Source: https://twitter.com/BraddJaffy/status/847600901653012482
— Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, in an interview with NBC News on September 25, 2016.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/09/25/gen_flynn_...
And great. Give him immunity and get him in front of the Senate and House committees. If, as you assert, he has only minor dirt on some small player that will come out. And the immunity itself will save everyone time and money.
If you were Flynn and thought you had a card that would keep you out of jail to play in a game where if you mis-remember how you know a seemingly trivial piece of information you go to jail... would'nt you try to play that card?
https://twitter.com/JeffPohjola/status/847597736803225600
In other countries, even the heads of state get put on trial. Off the top of my head, it's happened relatively recently in France and Israel. In the U.S., I can't think of even a member of the cabinet being tried; on the order of 1 federal judge has ever been impeached. Nixon was pardoned, for example.
Someone mentioned 5 people were granted immunity for the Clinton investigation; were any of the 5 at such a high level? Has someone on that level ever been given immunity or needed it?
It will be hard to beat the Nixon administration for convictions: 2 attorney generals, chief of staff, 2 white house counsels, undersecretary of transportation, secretary to the president, special counsel to the president, secretary of commerce and the vice president!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_federal_polit...
Still, only one VP (Agnew, which I should have remembered) and of course no Presidents.
Thanks.
Receiving a senior fellowship in Ethics is quite the turnaround from six months in prison.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egil_Krogh
It does according to the standard I intended, FWIW. I don't think you can be sentenced if you aren't found guilty.
And Bill Clinton was put on trial.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_of_Bill_Clinton
Flynn didn't do anything illegal (I've yet to see a compelling argument that the Logan Act would apply here), just a breach of protocol. It was lying to Pence that did him in.
Manafort consulted for lots of presidential campaigns including Ford, Reagan, and Bush, so it doesn't surprise me that Trump used him, too. Of course, he's a criminal and a sleazeball, and he left the Trump campaign a long time ago.
Tillerson is just an ex-CEO of Exxon, so he might be pro-Russia but not in any untoward way.
It's likely that the DNC was hacked by APT28/29, and it's likely that they're FSB/GRU, and it's likely that they released the documents to Wikileaks. There's no public information that Trump was involved.
The Steele dossier is juicy and is being investigated by the intelligence agencies, so nothing to learn there until they tell us.
Then we have the Yates and Nunes ordeal, but I'm willing to believe that's just partisan junk.
Annnnyyywwaaaay, in an effort to be more rational this year, I'd like to try to solidify my positions and confidence levels via wagers. My general position is that Trump is not involved with Russia in any treasonous or even "quite inappropriate" way.
If you concretely believe that Trump is a Russian spy, or personally negotiated with Putin to get him to win the election in exchange for reversing sanctions or something, hit me up (my email is in my HN user info thing) with your proposed hypothesis and we can make a bet. I won't promise to take on all bets, but certainly a lot of the extreme positions I've seen on here I would. E.g., I'd bet at pretty high odds that he didn't take a position in Rosneft, as someone was claiming).
Maybe you're right, but he's asking for immunity for something—see elsewhere in this thread where Flynn has made his views on immunity deals clear.
https://twitter.com/robkelner/status/847590575352270850
I'd be quite surprised if any of the Russian connections turned out to be meaningful. Every story that I've seen about anything along the Trump/Russia axis is soaked in enough weasel words to make a defense attorney cringe, and the details are generally senseless on close examination.
I've wondered if these are positions taken from under the bus.