Based upon what evidence? Surely nothing that any of those investigations actually turned up, because, as you know, they didn’t.
A humorous take on the story from the New Yorker’s Andy Borowitz
It’s very hard to know what the investigation was based on, because no one with any authority has addressed this in a comprehensive manner. The original media spin (IIRC) was that it was the dossier, then it was Papadopoulus blabbing to a Australian diplomat, now it seems that the earliest interest (in the form of this informant) predated the diplomat.
What adds to the suspicion is that both the dossier and the Australian diplomat have connections to Clinton/DNC.
In the particular case of the latest incident, much of the detail is very unclear as it’s an emerging story. But one thing that struck some people as odd is the fierce resistance on the part of the FBI and DOJ to releasing his identity on security grounds, when that person turns out to have been pretty well known as a long time intelligence-connected guy. This suggests that the FBI/DOJ were covering for something, and deepens suspicion of what that might be.
Of note: I don’t know if anyone is claiming that the FBI investigation was done “for partisan campaign advantage”, but even if people are claiming that, that’s not the sole relevant claim. The more reasonable claim, ISTM, is that it was undertaken by deep state people who were fiercely opposed to Trump and therefore predisposed on that basiss to find grounds for investigation even if that would not have spurred an investigation by unbiased people.
All that said, it’s also true that Trump gave investigators a lot to hang him with. I’m not sure how much, though. I suspect that if you investigated any campaign - and associates of the campaign, and their various business dealings - with the thoroughness that Trump is being investigated, that you could probably find a lot of wrongdoing their as well. Trump is probably worse than most, though (in part because of his businessman background) and certainly his instincts in dealing with the investigation are rather like those of Brer Rabbit in dealing with the tar baby.
There’s a guy around the corner from me who used to invest a lot in Atlantic City real estate. I heard this story from his next-door-neighbor.
One time he got word that Trump was planning on buying land near his casino and putting up a big residential housing development (feeling that he had a built-in market). So he figured out the only location that made sense for this, and bought up the land himself. Then he hired an architect and lawyers, and had plans approved for a 520 unit development. Then he turned around and tried to sell it to Trump for $30M.
Now he appreciated that this was a very high offer (and he would have been OK with settling for $5M). But he assumed that Trump would turn around and make him a lowball counter-offer, and they would commence to negotiate. Instead, Trump blew him off entirely. And next thing he knew, he was informed by the zoning board that his variance had been revoked.
Right, because his involvement in a humanitarian effort with the Clintons must mean that there was a conspiracy to plant a story involving Trump, a man who, at the very least, has been under investigation by the IRS since Dubya was President (and probably even before that).
Because the FBI is always forthcoming about the identities of its confidential informants, especially those with intelligence ties, even to Congress?
The second you mention ‘deep state’ seriously you get relegated to the dustbin of tin foil hats, birtherism, and little green men from Mars.
In other words, it’s perfectly credible that his being investigated had nothing whatsoever to do with Bubba dropping a word in the ear of the diplomat, or some campaign associate with a high-level FBI agent. But then it’ll get stretched to how the $25M was a slush-fund payment to the diplomat for, what, planting a story about a low-level Trump campaign staffer?
I find this quote instructive, from that article (bolding mine):
No, no bias there. Not ‘fingers,’ but ‘tentacles.’ Yet another straw to grasp at to perpetuate the myth of “they (the They they) must be out to get him for political reasons” to attack the credibility of the very organization that is investigating him. Not that he’s a sleaze who’s left his trail of slime pretty much wherever he’s gone.
Remember when Republicans were the party of law and order? Now they’re the party of attacking law and order.
Let’s see, there’s Bob and Liddy Dole. Mitch McConnell and Elaine Chao. Who else is there?
…
The thing the Trump apologists seem to be banking on is that everybody involved in investigating Russian interference in the election is, by virtue of working for the government, either affiliated with a political party or was appointed/hired by somebody affiliated with a political party. Once you’ve cast that wide a net, everybody involved is somehow “biased” and not credible.
But the truth is that these people are not biased against Trump; they are used to working with and for politicians of lots of different stripes, only some of whom they liked and agreed with.
But they are biased against disloyalty to America. Cooperating, even casually, with Russian interference with the election is showing utter contempt for this country.
Are those allegations coming from the same people who say that say that Trump’s connections to agents of the Russian government were totally innocent?
Not done for partisan advantage, but done by people who were opposed to Trump. What’s the difference?
The first means that there was a specific intention to use the investigation as a means of harming Trump and/or his campaign.
The second means that there was no conscious thought of harming Trump specifically and a genuine concern about potential harm to the country, but that the attitude in the relevant agencies was so suspicious of and antipathetic to Trump that there was an overreaction.
Hold the phone.
You don’t know if anyone is claiming that the investigation was done “for partisan campaign advantage”?
:dubious:
Are you serious here?
And this club of biased, deep state people include:
- The Republican-appointed head of the FBI
- Several FISA judges, appointed both by Republicans and Democrats
- The Australian Ambassador to the UK
- A former MI-6 secret agent
- A former Nixon adviser turned academic
- Two FBI agents having an affair who seemed to dislike all politicians
- The Republican Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee
- And presumably many, many more.
So what we have here is a deep state with ties throughout all branches of government, as well as our closest allies, all engaged in some kind of common effort to frame Trump for things his campaign never did…
Or there’s a legitimate question that Trump’s campaign was crooked.
I think the latter explanation is about ten million times more plausible than the first.
Of course, this spin on the events ignores the widely reported point that McConnell explicitly told Obama that if Obama mentioned it in public, Mcconnell would blow it up as a campaign ploy. Then, when the Obama Administration encouraged Congress to look into any (not naming Russia or Putin) outside efforts to mess with the election, McConnell sat on the request, only posting a watered down description of what was known more than three weeks after it was discussed in Congressional/POTUS meetings.
Here’s a pretty good piece from GQ with a nice kerfuffle timline…
Spygate: How Right-Wing Media Creates a Conspiracy Theory Out of Thin Air
Only if by “political couple”, you mean couples where both spouses are politicians. Those are pretty rare. But the couple of Donald and Melania (or Donald and Ivana, or Donald and Marla) is shadier, because Donald Trump alone is shadier than both Clintons combined.
We get to a point where “shady” loses all meaning, its like saying Dr Mengele had a poor bedside manner.
So, F-P, what do you have to say about GQ’s heavily cited piece?
Then you are also aware that Obama was well aware that some Russians were trying to interfere in U.S. elections and failed/refused to notify the voting public.
Newt and Bird Lady Gingrich (although I don’t really know what political role, if any, Bird Lady ever played, so they may not count).
I suppose one could write an interesting drama about Trump being unable to deflect the one charge of which he was actually innocent, like a comics story I recall where Batman found out that the Joker was framed the one time the court said “screw the insanity defense; fry his ass”.
Nope. You don’t get to just repeat the same nonsense; you have to eat your spinach by addressing the rebuttals first.
Are you really trying to posit that if a police officer with a warrant to search the garage for a stolen car stumbles over a dead body, he is supposed to ignore it as unrelated to the original criminal investigation?
James Clapper, Obama’s errand boy, admits to spying on The View.