Hey, you didn’t fall off the potato wagon yesterday, amirite? 
If you both are commenting on my post, then no it’s not a joke.
The report will be interesting, but conspiracy is a crime and so even if there are more Russia tidbits in the report, we know for a reasonable fact that (Mueller was not able to confirm that) at no point Trump said, “Let’s try to get Russia working for/with us.” And we know that Manafort didn’t have an arrangement (that Mueller could find) with Russia to maneuver Trump in accordance with their plans.
Corrupt intent is a crime. If Trump ever said, “Let’s put some stuff into our speeches and policy platform favorable to Russia, so they’ll give me money to build Trump Tower Moscow.” Then, if Mueller found that, he could prosecute him or recommend him for impeachment. He didn’t do so.
As best we can tell, Mueller might have recommended Trump for impeachment by Congress on the topic of Obstruction. On the Russian side, we can reasonably say, without seeing the document, that we’re unlikely to see significantly more than we already have.
So, basically, while the report will be educational, we can be reasonably certain that there isn’t going to be anything that would turn the 40% loyal to Trump against him. And that 40% is the majority of the Republican base. The Senate won’t publicly turn against him (they’ll just kneecap him further as time continues).
Having more content by which to hate Trump and to more deeply feel disappointment towards the Republican party may be a wonderful thing and all, but it ain’t indictments.
Getting the 60% who hate/distrust Trump to continue to find reason to hate/distrust him is not useful to society in any way. It does not move anything anywhere. I mean, I do certainly hope to be proved wrong by the general American populace on whom the phrase, “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” was crafted, but I have no strong optimism on that front.
I strongly want to know everything that Mueller knows. But between knowing that information or simply knowing that lots and lots of criminal proceedings are still underway - but being completely blind to them - I would pay someone $10,000 for the latter. I’m quite happy to be patient and look at the bigger picture.
It’s like when the House Intelligence Committee, under Gowdy, possibly dumped a bunch of people into a perjury trap by letting them get away with lies. Being corrupt isn’t always for the worse, if you’re not looking at the bigger picture.
If Barr redacts more of the report, to protect Trump from political fallout - wonderful!
Let’s take an example.
Say that Trump and Cohen, a year or two ago, believe that they have successfully hidden all record of Trump Tower Moscow from the FBI. They haven’t. The FBI knows that there were plans for it. But let’s also say that there were specific conversations about the deal, between Cohen and Trump, that demonstrate corrupt intent. Cohen knows that Trump recorded that conversation on his (Trump’s) phone. The FBI doesn’t know that. And beyond this one thing, we’ll pretend that Cohen is clean and the FBI has nothing on him.
But because Cohen believes he’s in the clear, when the Feds start asking about the deal, he has no defense. He has to either lie (quickly) or tell the truth. If it’s the former, because it was a hastily crafted lie, the odds are pretty good that it will be disprovable. He’s now lied to the Feds and they can start leveling charges against him, until he tells the truth (or…a truth that they can’t disprove). The FBI is in a good position to get what they need from him.
Instead of that scenario, however, let’s say that the Washington Post breaks the news about Trump Tower Moscow, a few weeks before the FBI comes to talk to Cohen. It’s clear from the article that the Feds have all the emails ever sent to Russia. But there’s no reason to believe that they have the recording on Trump’s phone.
Cohen looks through his email history, reads everything, and determines that there’s a possible case to say (if that’s the only evidence that have) that the deal started before the campaign, Trump verbally delegated the task to Cohen during the duration of the campaign as a sort of “recusal”. The deal would continue, but Trump would be able to forget about it, and just think about the country’s best interests. And, Cohen would say, he even tried briefing Trump about the status a couple of times, but Trump made it clear that the further the election went the more off-the-table the deal was and he didn’t want to be thinking about it while thinking about the country - that takes precedence over his pocket book.
And, again, note that I’m not describing reality, I’m describing a hypothetical. We’re assuming that Cohen can say these things and the emails that the FBI has will be consistent with this story, but probably not with other ones. If you had to make a spontaneous lie - including rough dates and so forth - you’re liable to screw yourself. With this story, you’ve made sure that it fits the record that the FBI has, you’ll have made a mental record of dates, and you’ll have arranged with Trump and everyone else who was involved that this is the reality of history, and that those dates are the correct dates for certain events. Others overheard Trump complaining to Cohen, because he was trying to talk about Russia during the campaign, and Trump didn’t want that. It’s a lie - there was no such conversation - but there’s no way to disprove it and multiple sources are confirming it.
Now, when the Feds ask Cohen about Trump Tower, he can lead them down this beautiful path to exoneration. When they doubt him about something, and they go call up some other person to ask whether they recall an event like “such and such” that person will confirm it, not deny it. And so will the one after that. There will be no evidence to the contrary.
Secrets are to the benefit of the FBI. While I find the mystery of Russian coordination to be off immense importance and care deeply about the specifics, I want it to be solved more than I want it to be a wonderful, continuing soap opera that plays out in the media. It’s not a story. It’s a crime. I want convictions.
I don’t want OJ Simpson 2.0. It got great ratings, and the media and society loved it as the event of the year. “Wonderful!” But, to me, it’s just a case of a murderer going free. It’s not a wonderful, interesting tale. It’s just one of millions of crimes.
We can generate mystery and soap opera. Russian Collusion is not better than House of Cards season 1. If you just want entertainment, it’s possible to satisfy oneself with fiction.
Reality matters. The Presidency and government are not team sports. Those children being thrown into cages on TV are not a craftily written scenario to establish a heel character for the show. They’re actual kids in actual cages.
I don’t want information, I want change. The report isn’t going to accomplish that. Continued investigation of criminal activity by the FBI, undertaken within a veil of secrecy so that they have the absolute strongest possible hand when going into each interview, is currently the strongest path to change.
If Barr protects Trump from political damage by making sure that there’s absolutely no hints of anything criminal, then that’s just that much less information that the bad guys have to use to prepare a shared cover that won’t fall apart and won’t lead to any further information. Barr will help him politically, but he will just help to damn him in the way that matters more.
Trump is safe politically. Throw egg on his face and he’s still President of the United States. You might feel better at having been able to egg him, but you won’t even have accomplished something amounting to a symbolic victory. He washes his face and continues to be President.
I wasn’t commenting on your post.
When **JohnT **said he thought “it” was a joke, I assumed he was reacting to my my phony “redacted” screenshot (which was a joke). My response was to him (and I quoted him to make that clear) not to you. If I had been reacting to both of you, I would have quoted both of you.
I think you and I are doomed to misunderstand each other.
[/clarification]
Some brilliant counteroffensives from Democrats in the past few days. Obviously Adam Schiff’s dressing down of committee Republicans, who thought they had *him *on the defensive, was a tour de force. But this David Korn piece on why the real scandal is the claims by both Trumpists and lefty Kremlin skeptics that there is no scandal? Holy shit, he is on fire and on point. A true must read: Here’s the Real Trump-Russia Hoax – Mother Jones
Why would Mueller have recommended “impeachment” on any charge? That’s not within his remit. His job would be to put the evidence of wrongdoing before Congress via the report, with the understanding that it’s Congress’s job to decide whether impeachment was appropriate.
Had he found evidence of indictable offenses, Mueller likely would have (and perhaps already has) passed that onto the appropriate jurisdiction. But impeachment? That’s more about politics than law enforcement.
Lol red meat for the hysterical holdouts.
“Two fundamental facts were established long before Mueller completed his investigation. First, the Russians attacked an American election in order to sow chaos, hurt Hillary Clinton, and help Donald Trump. Second, Trump and his top advisers during the campaign repeatedly denied this attack was underway, echoing and amplifying Moscow disinformation (the false claim that Russia was not attacking).”
Both false. The Russians didn’t “attack” an “election”. They posted memes.
Hillary Clinton and the media lapdogs sanctimoniously admonished Trump for suggesting the election was rigged. Why he is undermining our democracy, a dangerous fascist. There was no hint that an “attack” was underway.
If indeed you hysterically continue to call the paltry meme-posting that was little more than background noise an “attack”, how could the Trump campaign have known that this was happening? If anyone would have known it was happening it would have been the spooks working for Obama. They said nothing while it was happening. It was largely something the disgraced spooks cooked up because they failed to stop Trump from being elected.
The fact that the secret police couldn’t stop the Trump mutiny is proof that US elites are in a state of decline. The number one reason to have a secret police is to stop things like Trump from happening. Could you imagine the Dulles brothers allowing Trump to happen? The US state is awash with incompetents. Capitalism has poached all of the competent individuals.
Actually the “attack” was the hacking of the Democrats, which 17 US intelligence agencies agreed the Russians were directly responsible for.
But thank you for clearly framing the debate: on the one side there’s intelligence, and on the other side there’s you.
Lol, I saw Farnaby in here taking his typical shit on America. Didn’t disappoint, that’s for sure.
Cite
Your posts are our cite.
Clown College called…actually, they don’t want you back.
He absolutely has to put in a ton of effort to remain as clueless and idiotic as he is. Just imagine how much good he could accomplish if he used the energy he wastes ignoring the actual facts about the Mueller investigation and the realities of the world and instead planted trees or gave out free hugs.
To be pedantically fair, the Big 4 of intelligence agencies - CIA, FBI, NSA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence - did the main tracking and analysis of the Russian interference in the campaign; the other agencies did other related work. But Will remains an idiot.
Yes, Vladimir Putin ordered the Military Intelligence Unit (GRU) to post memes.
What are you, fucking stupid? :dubious: What did you do after 9/11, go around telling people that the attackers just mooned everyone and then flew away?
Stop embarrassing your country and either learn to read or stop making everyone have to look at you and feel disappointment in the human race. Learn to care about the fucking country or, if you’re not American, then go tell people about what a great guy Jimmy Saville was or whatever other fucked up thing you want to defend to embarrass your country.
Judge for yourself but you don’t have to dig through it all. Just know he’s a Libertarian.
Summary: things I think are different than the facts, and I’d rather that what I think is right, even tho I speak without any experience or expertise about these things.
I do love the country and its many societies, but I will not wave that flag for you Jimbo.
Which facts are those?
IOW he’s following the example of Our President.