The bigger problem is, they’ve created a controversy where none should exist. It’s not Trump’s supporters or opponents we should be concerned with. The real problem is that an increasing number of people will assume that our institutions have become so partisan that they’re not to be trusted. The problem is that some people will identify with snippets of items from the memo that they perceive as true, even if they acknowledge that Nunes and his ilk have partisan motives for releasing the memo. Many will say that the Democrats are equally partisan in opposing its release. When people assume partisan motives, people lose faith in the system. That doesn’t benefit those who are interested in restoring faith in the system and seeing democracy function; it **benefits those who want to destroy faith in the system and thus democracy itself **
The fallout from this undermines confidence in the inviolability of our international intelligence relationships–if indeed there’s any left at this point. Ya want isolationism? Oh, we’ll get that, and a side of fries.
Freedumb fries.
I just want to say that that is the perfect summary for the conservatives these days.
Stepping on their own dicks, then insisting that they got laid.
Made me laugh, anyway.
Buttery mails.
What is fascinating is that Nunes and Trump decided to hold up Page as some kind of victim, when it’s common knowledge this idiot had suspicious dealings with Russia for years. Could they have tried to pick a more sympathetic fellow?
The only intelligent thing to conclude from the memo is that for some reason, the GOP is going out of its way to defend a known Russian agent and attack the FBI for doing what it’s supposd to do. Innocent people don’t behave like this.
Man, I wish I had your brevity. You really cut to the chase. Perfectly said.
+1
This is honestly one of the most embarrassing posts I have ever seen from a poster I normally find respectable.
I will grant this entire discussion in embarrassing, so maybe there’s an illusion of context, but this has to be the current recordholder for the best written example of someone slamming facefirst into a tree and thus failing to see the forest. (Even worse are posts and such from Russian bots, but those don’t count.)
Your entire interpretation of the “memo” is absurd, and that’s on top of the fact the MEMO is absurd. As you know perfectly well, the “memo” leaves out a lot of context, but even assuming that’s the only dishonest thing about it, it’s fucking asinine. The memo is no way honest in its intent, and it doesn’t even attempt to make the case that the Mueller investigation is dirty, because it doesn’t have to.
There is in fact no evidence presented that the FBI acted improperly in getting their fourth warrant against Carter Page, whom they’d been watching since before Donald Trump ran for President. You can say all you want “oh, they only got the warrant because of the dossier and they didn’t tell the judge Christopher Steele didn’t like Donald Trump” but in fact you neither know that nor can demonstrate that it’s unusual even if true. More to the point, it is insanely obvious that they did not get their fourth year of watching Carter Page solely because of the dossier.
You have no evidence whatsoever, nor does Devin Nunes, that the FISA warrant would have been denied had they told the judge where the dossier came from - itself a claim you don’t know is true. Nor is there any reason to think that would have happened, given that they plainly had many other reasons to ask for the warrant to be extended into a fourth year.
You leave out that the dossier was started by REPUBLICAN funding. I wonder why. You blather than Christopher Steel didn’t like Trump. Who cares? What does that have to do with applying for a warrant to spy on a guy WHO HAD BEEN SPIED ON SINCE LONG BEFORE HE WORKED FOR TRUMP? Did the FISA warrant issued in 2013 include consultation with a crystal ball? Christ Jesus.
Everything you’re claiming is ridiculous, many points make no sense whatsoever, and that’s despite the fact that the memo even as written almost certainly has a very, very high level of total fucking bullshit and any reasonable person should at least read it thinking “this is a partisan document, is not accompanied by primary sources, and I should consider what the other side of the story is.” But I feel dirty when engaging in arguments over fact with Trumpists, so let’s cut to the chase:
It has no bearing on Robert Mueller’s investigation.
If the Republican Party and their supporters want to go shit-bonkers over poor Carter Page, fine. I doubt there’s a case. But that has no bearing on Robert Mueller’s investigation. Mueller was appointed to start his work five months before the FISA warrant on Page was extended for the third time since 2013.
What evidence is there Mueller is biased? Has a conflict of interest? Is working for the DNC? None, none and none.
You are being hoodwinked by one of the most transparent con jobs in political history. Allow me to explain what the actual facts are.
-
The Russian Federation put effort, and continues to put effort, into interfering with American elections and political discourse. That is a fact beyond absolutely any dispute.
-
There is a great deal of evidence that people in the Donald Trump campaign and administration have committed illegal acts related to Russian interference in the 2016 election.
-
Robert Mueller is in charge of an investigation into that.
-
Donald Trump and a number of his allies in the Republican Party are going to great lengths to attempt to either stop the authorities from conducting that investigation or to publically discredit the organizations involved, despite the fact that
-
There isn’t any logical reason to think that Robert Mueller, Rod Rosenstein, et al. have any reason, or have ever tried to, conduct a phony investigation.
The memo lies completely outside of these facts. If you want to argue that the FBI has been unduly pursuing poor Carter Page, by all means make that argument. Go nuts. But I don’t think you give a shit about Carter Page. I know Sean Hannity doesn’t. Rather, the GOP propaganda machine is working to conflate the two, just as they’ve been seizing on basically anything to change the narrative to “Robert Mueller’s investigation is dirty.”
Do you remember all those bad things Robert Mueller did? No, because he’s clean; you will please note no one’s ever pinned anything on him. He’s a cop and a Republican, and there’s nothing to rip him for, so, instead, the Devin Nuneses of the world are ripping into an organization - the FBI - so the entire thing can be painted as Bad. The memo was never meant to convince you of facts; if it were, it would be a lot more damning. It was meant to rile up Trumpists. It didn’t matter what was in it; they spent weeks retweeting Russian bots that tweeted #releasethememo and once it was out they’ll just read into it what they want to be there. Trumpists are already saying things the memo doesn’t even hint at.
**
The purpose of the memo is to create public support among Republicans for Donald Trump to fire Rod Rosenstein and, thus, Robert Mueller. **
Full stop. That’s it. Once that is done, no one will care about poor, poor Carter Page. And it’s working, because the Trumpists have swallowed it. They have completely, totally bought not only the stupid memo but have read into it, as was intended, that everyone investigating Donald Trump is dirty and must all be fired.
So, in the next month or so, Mueller will be fired, even though there is no evidence and no logical reason to think his investigation is anything but an honest and necessary one, and the extraordinarily substantial evidence against Trump’s campaign team will no longer be investigated.
As to what happens in a country where the head of state can prevent the law from touching him, I leave that to you.
Playin’ golf in the…hot sun!
I fought the law and the law lost!
I fought the law and the law lost!
(apologies to the Bobby Fuller Four, the originals of redneck punk.)
This is one of the best points I’ve seen made regarding this whole kerfuffle. Sooner or later, the bottom is going to fall out. When it turns into all of the above, plus Sessions, Kelly, every FBI/CIA/NSA agent who ever voted for a Democrat and half the senate and house, only the true believers will still be willing to offer a defense of “it’s not Trump, it’s everybody else,” with a straight face.
Seriously… *will *it? Will it really??
At some point, just like in the McCarthy hearings, someone in a position of authority will refuse to permit a junior official’s character to be baselessly assassinated. FBI Director Wray partially stood up to this by threatening to resign rather than fire McCabe, but there are also indications he was pressuring McCabe to resign or retire. There has to be some federal official out there - somewhere - whose conscience will only permit so much.
And as is mostly known, it is interesting that Sen. Joe McCarthy’s chief counsel during the time of his infamous hearings, Roy Cohn, was later Trump’s personal attorney before ultimately being disbarred.
And don’t forget Gowdy has publicly stated that the FISA Memo Does Not ‘In Any Way’ Discredit Mueller Investigation.
Okay, on to the second part of my rant; with due respect, you’re wrong.
There DOESN’T have to be anyone who stands up to what happens. In the case of Joseph McCarthy, there was. McCarthy wasnh’t even the senior Senator from his own state, and that’s all he was, a Communist-crazed Senator who failed to get majority support from his own party when he was censured. He wasn’t the President. He didn’t have a major media outlet willingly lying for him. He had few allies outside the Senate, where they were badly outnumbered at the end.
Trump has none of those disadvantages.
Let’s play a game of “what if.” What if Trump fired Rosenstein and replaces him with a lackey that willingly fires Mueller and shuts down the investigation? What happens?
The answer is really clear; He gets away with it. The House of Representatives will do nothing; Paul Ryan will probably say he finds it concerning, but the odds he’ll take the only action he possibly could - impeachment - are zero. The Senate will do nothing. There is no one in the Executive Branch who will do anything. The only brake on the President is Congress, and they’ll do nothing. The GOP has succesful smeared the FBI and Department of Justice enough that the Trumpists will totally, unequivocally support the firings. The Gowdys and McCAins in the GOP are outnumbered twenty to one. Trumpists are not a majority of the US populance, but they are enough to prevent Republicans in Congress from acting.
So once Mueller is fired, it’s over. There will be no investigation, and there is no legal means to stop him that anyone will take, because only Paul Ryan can do that and he won’t. Come November, even if the Democratic Party wins the House,
- They cannot get the 67 seats in the Senate necessary to convict, and
- The investigation will have long since stopped, so
- People will be accepting the new normal.
You’re totally screwed, I’m sorry to say.
Sad to say, I fear this is the reality. There isn’t a functioning set of principles or gonads on the Republican side of the aisle.
The money. Got a nickel says a thorough investigation of his finances are going to unearth…problems. Problems that would inspire liens, forfeitures, that sort of thing. Trump doesn’t have money, his money has him. Show him a future in a second-floor walkup on food stamps, and he will bail.
We will never prove personal, direct collusion because there was none. Nobody in their right mind is going to conspire with a shit for brains motormouth. The coverup, the obstruction, ought to be enough. But if they aren’t, there’s still the money. Remember, this is the guy who was fined $25 megabucks for the Trump Institute for the Terminally Gullible. Which is to say, he’s a dumb-fuck.
The ones with conscience simply leave the government.
Stopping an authoritarian regime requires more than having congressmen and bureaucrats retire early - that’s not standing up to an authoritarian.
I think *this *is a possibility.
This is pretty much true, unfortunately. The Democrats could probably restart their own investigation in the chambers that they control, but as you suggest in point 3, people might have moved on by that point and suspect that this is just Democrats being partisan.
And that’s the problem Democrats (and people who care about justice in this case) face. People may suspect that Trump and the Republicans colluded, but the average person at home is really just ignorant as hell and simply doesn’t understand their own government. They don’t understand the significance of the Russian investigation in the first place. They don’t care. They just want a job and money, and they pretty much assume the system is rigged anyway. They’d rather not be disturbed by negative news. Voters just want congress to get along.
The Republicans, even though they are not trusted or particularly liked, are still managing to influence people’s perceptions about the investigation and their targets. Consider how successful they were in influencing voters’ perceptions about how evil and wicked Hillary Clinton was. Far too many people bought into the false equivalency between her and Trump, to varying degrees anyway. And that is what will probably happen here: people will buy into a false equivalency between Democrats and Republicans, between the Obama DoJ and the Trump DoJ. Our society’s lack of education and curiosity about such things is beginning to catch up with us in a big way.