Yes Trump and the gang are master criminals who can cover tracks and keep secrets from the most powerful and invasive spying apparatus in world history.
Didn’t say it was a crime. The poster believed the investigation of the Trump campaign was justified because of alleged ties to Russian intelligence (via Papadopolous). I simply pointed out that the US govt was very aware of Clinton ties to British intelligence, yet no investigation into those ties is warranted?
Did you even read the report where they detailed why the evidence wasn’t available?
Go ahead, investigate it. But if you really can’t see why one person being associated with a hostile foreign power could or would be treated differently from another person being associated with one of the US’s most trusted allies, there’s literally no hope for you.
What doesn’t make sense, Wesley?
Here’s what you need to know: Bill Barr is Trump’s attorney. The message that he is sending is that the FBI works for Trump. Federal law enforcement, with its vast powers, works for Trump. It not only won’t prosecute him and his allies for their misdeeds, they will prosecute their enemies for their trumped up (no pun intended) “misdeeds”.
We are in the beginning stages of an authoritarian government. Impeachment won’t stop him. Not even a defeat in the presidential election will stop him. Only a landslide loss will do that. And I am telling you now: he will not lose a landslide defeat unless there is a major disaster that the country blames him for.
People’s Republic of Trump Land. Get used to it, bro.
What doesn’t make sense is for Bo to say I’m wrong for saying Clinton helped pay for the russia investigation, then saying I was ‘adding clarifiers’ because I explained why she actually did that. If I’m wrong someone is free to explain why.
I agree with you about Trump. The GOPs hatred for democracy is a feature, not a bug. Virtually all white people who score high on authoritarianism are republicans now, which means their party is very prone to neofascism.
Even a loss in a landslide (which will not happen) won’t curtail the GOP’s war on democracy. It’ll just make them double down on voter suppression and gerrymandering.
So the problem is not manipulation of the election, but who is doing the manipulation. I suggest the Russia hawks be more honest about this and stop resorting to sanctimony about our precious democracy being violated.
I didn’t engage you with sarcasm – why are you doing this? Is it because you don’t have a good argument?
I didn’t say they were criminals. I didn’t say there was sufficient evidence, and in fact I said the opposite. What i said was that there was so much obstruction that the Mueller team couldn’t make a determination, which is what the Mueller team said (see guizot’s post above). Anyone can thwart an investigation if they are willing to go to jail for obstruction of justice by lying or pleading the fifth, which is exactly what happened.
Do you have a substantive response or more sarcasm? Because if it’s more sarcasm, I won’t bother coming back.
Have you met Will?
I’m just tired of snarky, uncited responses in the debate forums here. So, I’m doing my best to keep my responses level and free of sarcasm (with the exception of obvious joke responses), providing cites where necessary, and asking those I engage with to do the same. Otherwise, the debate forums just start to feel like the Pit.
As much as I hate to type this: I think this is absolutely correct.
Lying or pleading the fifth does not make hard evidence go away.
If there was coordination between the Russian govt and the Trump campaign there would be hard evidence.
3)If there was hard evidence, the US spy apparatus would have captured it since they were spying on the campaign for quite a while.
Which of these do you dispute?
I do note an authoritarian tendency to denounce the act of pleading the fifth as “obstruction”. Very sad.
I dispute there would be hard evidence, or enough to make it sufficient for any indictments. It’s easy enough to avoid using electronic communications. We know that the campaign met with some Russians, but if no one recorded what was said, then there would be no hard evidence even if the campaign said, “we want to collude with you to disrupt Hilary Clinton’s campaign. What can we do to help you?”
So, I dispute 2, making the rest of it irrelevant.
I didn’t mean to conflate a fifth pleading with obstruction. I meant for those to be two different things – pleading the fifth can restrict the ability of investigators to gather evidence, as can being willing to go to jail by lying and straight up obstruction. Sorry if I worded that poorly. Thanks for your totally unnecessary accusation of authoritarian tendencies – it was very helpful to our conversation. Why not just ask if that’s what I meant?
I think that question was already answered above:
The underlying premises of his entire argument are fundamentally flawed anyway, and 4) is outright ludicrous. Mueller didn’t carry out his investigation by “spying” in any meaningful way, the Mueller investigation was notoriously leakproof and the imaginary “Trump-hating spook” is part of the wider paranoid fantasy.
Meanwhile, the Mueller report contained substantive descriptions and evidence of multiple interactions between the Trump campaign and high-level Russian individuals, and six Trump associates were literally convicted of felony perjury for hiding their meetings with Russians. This is what certain people consider “no evidence”.
I didn’t realize that the conflation was a mistake. I’ve seen it done several times, so I thought it was worth it to point out here.
Thank you for specifying where we disagree. For me, I see these political actors as clownishly incompetent. All sorts of personal communications have surfaced that point to a high level of incompetence being pervasive in the American political class.
They are not careful with their communications. If I was to make a claim that Obama was involved in a Putin conspiracy, I would have more hard evidence than you have with Trump. That hot-mic event where he implied that he would change his position on Russia after the voters had a chance to evaluate his position on Russia was the hard evidence Russia hawks are looking for with Trump.
No I don’t think Obama was engaged in a conspiracy with Russia. The point is that if I made the same claims that Trump haters make about another politician the claims would be considered a conspiracy theory.
Never said Mueller did the spying. A bold-faced mischaracterizarion.
Never said there were leaks from Mueller. Another …misinterpretation.
John Brennan is just one Trump-hating spook. He is certainly convinced of a conspiracy, if he had evidence it would be out. I’m sure there are others working under Trump that would love to hammer him. Probably the same with all presidents. They simply have found nothing, despite much effort.
Evidence of interactions is not evidence of collusion/conspiracy/coordination/collaboration/cooperation. Mueller agrees.
If I made the same claims about you that others made about Harold Shipman, that would be considered a ridiculous conspiracy theory. But Shipman was still actually guilty of the things he was accused of.
Key thing missing is evidence. There has been no hard evidence brought forth. What we have are meetings and innuendo.
Perhaps if you’d stop mashing together the “spying” accusations with the Mueller investigation, others wouldn’t assume you were treating them as one and the same.
To be clear - which “they” are we talking about now? Mueller? Brennan? Shadowy faceless Deep State figures? Again - clarity of writing is your friend.
I mean, the Mueller investigation certainly found multiple attempts to obstruct the investigation. They found evidence of campaign funding violations. They found sufficient evidence to indict and convict several key members of Trump’s campaign staff and other close associates.
As for Brennan, your portrayal of his motives appears to also be a “mischaracterization”. You treat Brennan as if his opposition to Trump and his actions was due to his innate hatred of Trump, rather than his hatred of Trump arising from Trump’s actions. This is the same argument that Trump attempted to make against a judge in California, claiming that the judge must hold a grudge against Trump because Trump had repeatedly insulted him first. It’s a fundamentally flawed argument.
But it was evidence of Russian interference in the election, which is what Mueller and his team were actually investigating. Another mischaracterization.
And what we have are meetings and innuendo and documentation and communications and testimony. Courts don’t hand out perjury convictions for “innuendo”.
That’s not what you said. Now you’re spreading a false narrative about what you wrote. Please stop doing that.
I’m just going to assume that you’re gaslighting at this point and not looking for an actual discussion. Nothing you’re saying makes any sense at this point.
There is absolute 100% proof that this occurred. We had proof that this occurred before the Mueller report was released and there are numerous instances detailed in the Mueller report.
Reasonable and informed person indeed.
Just one example.