$15M, not $1.5.
And I don’t think it’s a “might have been.” I think it’s pretty well established, former head of the CIA said it did and backed out because he thought it was illegal.
Not only that, but if Flynn was continuing to act as a foreign agent on 1-20-2017 and beyond, instant felony.
“Under the alleged proposal, Mr. Flynn and his son…” (bolding mine)
This was the playbook for Mueller during the Enron investigation as well. Pride is certainly something that might keep a man like Flynn from flipping, but if he is willing to let his son go down with him without trying to save him (despite what an unrepentant shit that son appears to be as well) then he is truly a monster.
I can just see Sr and Jr on the phone with each other, saying “stay strong, Semper Fi (or whatever Army guys say to each other (did Jr serve?)), they can’t hurt us if we stick together” while chatting with Mueller on another line.
How did the Ed Murray story end? Oh yeah, Ed Murray resigned when it turned out he didn’t have support.
Flynn already offered to flip for the Senate Intelligence Committee months ago in exchange for immunity. (They politely declined.) Who knows what he’s been telling Mueller, if anything.
My guess would be: All of it.
Why are you posting this here? What is your point?
Those cites speak for themselves. He had support. Just not enough, especially after more allegations came out plus confirmation from Oregon CPS.
Read the post I was responding to.
On another note, it seems in the end that the info being offered to DTJ in that infamous meeting wasn’t from the Russian government after all, let alone from any hacked emails as many here and elsewhere have assumed. It was op-research dug up by that very same Fusion GPS firm which produced the Trump dossier.
It is interesting - I saw that this morning - but also not particularly meaningful.
I’m reasonably sure that the way the law works, if you go meet some Russian Mafia in a back alley to buy cocaine and C4, it doesn’t matter if the Russians given you powdered sugar and modeling clay, so far as your culpability is concerned. So long as I can demonstrate your intent to commit a criminal act, the actual success of that act is immaterial.
So basically a left-wing media outlet, taking the allegations seriously, asked various unions if they would withdraw support from Murray and they said “It needs to be more than accusation” and “until something is proven with some substance—we don’t vote on accusations”. Then once “more allegations came out plus confirmation from Oregon CPS” - i.e. there was more substance and corroboration to the accusations - the unions reconsidered their support. Is that what you’re saying happened?
And that’s somehow comparable to the right-wing media saying “It’s okay if Moore molested underaged teenagers because they were totally into it”?
they are getting their “facts” from fox and right wing radio - that’s how. they really don’t know what is happening.
:dubious:
I should also note that when I say, “it’s interesting”, I do mean that it is interesting.
I’m still trying to decide the implications of Russia using Fusion GPS at the same time that Fusion was researching Russia. I hope to pontificate on the subject at some point later in the day.
For the moment, though, it is - as said - irrelevant to the question of the Trump party’s culpability. There seems to be every indication from the information we know they knew from Page and Papadop, the timing of Trump’s speeches about emails, and Junior’s response to Goldy, that they thought they were going to receive illegally procured materials from the Russian government.
In your hypothetical, it’s known that the guy went to “meet some Russian Mafia in a back alley to buy cocaine and C4”. The point here is that no one knows from what original source DTJ was expecting the info to have come from. It’s all speculation. (For my part, I speculated that since the damaging info was supposedly Russian funding, it’s most likely he thought they had it from Russian connections who were thereby knowledgeable.)
There’s very little to go by from what’s known. But if in fact it turns out that it was Fusion research, that makes it less likely that he was told it was from hacked emails or similar.
It’s more analogous to a case where you see a guy sneaking furtively into a back alley so you suspect that he’s probably going to buy some cocaine and C4 from the Russian mafia. If it turns out that he was really just hooking up with his mistress, you don’t get to claim “hey, he probably thought it was cocaine and C4” as if the probability has not changed.
FWIW, RW CT on the subject has long been that the entire dossier possibly amounts to Russian disinformation (much of it comes from sources close to and within the Russian government and intelligence services). From that perspective, it’s completely consistent.
My inclination though would be that Fusion were freelancers and anyone could use them for their purposes.
Let’s name our guy Donny.
Donny has a friend, Poppy. Poppy knows a guy in the Russian mafia and emails Donnie saying that the mafia has some coke and C4 that they’d like to give him.
A few weeks later, another friend of Donny, Carty, actually goes to Russia and, while there, talks with the exchequer of the Russian mafia. He sends back an email saying, “They’re looking forward to a positive exchange in the future!”
A few weeks after that, someone from the Russian Mafia emails Donny and says, “We got your shit. Want to meet?”
Now, based on all of this, what would you say that it’s likely that Donny is hoping to get from the meeting? Is the fact that Poppy is saying, “No no, that’s not what was happening.” And Carty is saying, “No no, that’s not what was happening.” And Donny is saying, “No no, that’s not what was happening.” Is that a particularly good defense against emails and plane tickets?
I would say it depends on how close Poppy, Donny and Carty are, how many emails they’re getting, whether the emails were direct communications with each other or just CCs, and also whether there’s any other context to these various messages (e.g. whether they have anything else going on that the messages might refer to or the sole point of contact is this one issue).
[I can probably nitpick other aspects of your analogy, but the above should suffice.]
English, mother fucker.
Certainly possible. The main argument against is simply that Russia had little reason to believe that Trump could win, at the point in time. It’s far more likely that they simply wanted to use him as a pro-Russia mouthpiece, so they were flirting with him and his crew, knowing that he would want to say positive things about them if he thought they might give him something against his opponent.
With 20/20 hindsight, sure, we could say that this was some elaborate ruse to screw the incoming President and make him completely useless. But then why not play the same games with the Clinton campaign, seeing as her team was much more likely to win? (The closest any poll came to predicting a Trump win was still 2:1 against.)
Veselnitskaya’s current descriptions to the press of the meeting are, almost certainly, disinformation.
I’d say that it’s more likely that they used Fusion because they’re a for-hire intelligence operation that does legitimate spy work, and Russia likes to avoid using people who are direct employees of the Russian government. And, just in case the Trump campaign wins, they’re giving him American produced intel, so the law on providing foreign things of value to a campaign might not come into effect.
It could just be happenstance that they used Fusion. Or that Fusion is known to Russia, for the same reason that Fusion had contacts in Russia. It’s their specialty.
I don’t think either you nor I really has enough information about the world of opposition research companies to know how many there are, how much they specialize, etc. to really be able to make a guess at the odds that Russia should land on the same company at the same time.
Agree, it is irrelevant, and intent is everything. You have to closely read the story to understand the paper trail of what is being “offered” by Fusion GPS and to whom, in order to understand the important distinctions.
Veselnitskaya received an incidental memo prepared by Fusion GPS, which had been hired to conduct legal research on Bill Browder, by Baker and Hostetler law firm. The firm represented Russian businessman Denis Katsyv, who was engaged in disputes with Browder and U.S. prosecutors in the USA.
The important point here is that Fusion was not working on behalf of or hired by the Russian government. They were engaged for a specific purpose by an American law firm (Baker and Hostetler) to conduct legal research on Bill Browder, an American citizen, in an American case before an American court. Veselnitskaya was given the memo as part of the information Fusion learned in the course of this investigation. Representatives of Fusion GPS made it clear they had no idea that any part of their research gleaned from the unrelated American investigation had been used by Russians as part of their “offer” to the Trump campaign.
So there is no parity whatsoever between these two events.
Of far more importance, the issue isn’t how the information is obtained. It’s whether or not it is true. The Clinton campaign didn’t hire Fusion GPS and say, “Go find dirt on Donald Trump and his campaign that shows he was in league with the Russian government so we can use that dirt to win the election!” Rather, they reviewed what had already been revealed by the Republican-funded portion of the dossier (different to what is referenced in the Reuters article) and said, “This is disturbing. Can you find out more?” Christopher Steele himself – as a highly-respected former MI6 agent who had worked closely with the US Government over his career – did that in early August 2016, presumably with the agreement of the Clinton campaign, because he was so unsettled by what he had found. He thought our intelligence agencies might… you know… want to know how involved in our election the Russians were.
Lastly, what is done with the information when obtained is the most important distinction. The Clinton campaign learned what they learned – and didn’t use it in any way against Trump. They understood it was potential criminal activity, and that was not their wheelhouse. Trump’s campaign learned what they learned – and immediately used everything they obtained, legally or otherwise, to help themselves win the election. Worse, in exchange for this, they promised to lift the sanctions against Russia that Putin wanted more than anything else.
Two or more persons: We can certainly agree there are more than two persons involved in this potential conspiracy;
Conspire to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States: An offense such as to steal an election, or defraud the citizens of the United States out of a legitimate election process;
And one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy: Like maybe offer to release a bunch of illegally-obtained emails of one’s opponent in that election, in exchange for the lifting or lessening of sanctions against a particular adversarial government, maybe by making sure such an objective is included in the official Republican Party platform.
Despite his self-pronounced claims to the contrary, F-P’s very fine brain seems incapable of grasping these important distinctions.
Go ahead and nit-pick it, F-P. Be sure to include some evidence that the Steele dossier “possibly amounts to Russian disinformation.” Just like you did(n’t) before. :rolleyes:
Certainly. In the case of everyday joe buddies with no normal reason to go to Russia, as they are in the analogy, it would be rather silly to believe that it isn’t a straightforward deal for coke and C4.
The Trump campaign’s explanation that everything was hectic and that these were people doing things on their own and that no one put 2 and 2 together enough to spot the issue is all, on the face of it, a pretty reasonable defense, particularly when you look at Carter Page and realize that there are few people in the world who wouldn’t realize was a nutball he is.
The problems are:
- Trump, Junior, Flynn, Clovis, etc. all seem like the sort of people who wouldn’t realize that Page is a nutball and would take his PHD and assertions about his business ties seriously.
- Trump’s attempts to shut down the investigation.
- Papadop’s meetings with Cyprus, Greece, the UK, Israel, etc. He certainly seems to have been being taken seriously.