Hillary Collusion with the Russians

Politics & Elections
61

The problem is that, in this case, Person B’s “P” (alleged collusion by the SecState & FBI to help Russia take America’s Uranium) is nothing like Person A’s “P” (alleged collusion by the Trump campaign with the Russians to help Trump win the election through shady activities such as hacking and direct coordination via Veselnitskaya).

The reasons why the two P’s are not the same is covered in the Snopes article, which explains why the SecState couldn’t do what she’s alleged to have done - she couldn’t approve or veto the uranium deal, therefore she couldn’t have had any quid-pro-quo going on - and also how the FBI was running a sting operation that eventually resulted in arrests and also uncovered an important new money laundering system.

Person A’s “P” is working with a foreign government to undermine American interests while boosting his self-interest.

Person B’s “P” is working with an American law enforcement department to expose a foreign government attempting to undermine American laws and interests.

If the P’s are different, the Conclusion’s will naturally be different as well.

62

No, that’s Q.

63

Because the Republicans are attempting to paint Rod Rosenstein, Andrew McCabe, and Robert Mueller as being corrupt agents of the Hildabeast, in order to undermine the current investigation of Donald Trump’s connections with Russia.

64

Then your false equivalence makes even less sense. You said -

**
The structure of the logic - which you may have vague memories of, from your “classes in rhetoric, logic, or critical thinking” - goes like this:

Person A: Since P therefore Q.
Person B: Here’s another example of P. Are you alleging Q in that instance too? If not, then your conditional proposition does not hold.
**

IF P = alleged collusion by the Trump campaign with the Russians to help Trump win the election through shady activities such as hacking and direct coordination via Veselnitskaya

THEN You need to have a comparable example of collusion between Hillary & FBI & Russia.
HOWEVER

You do not have a comparable example, as explained in the Snopes article, which explains a) that the allegations against Clinton’s quid-pro-quo are “unsubstantiated” and b) that the actions of the FBI personnel is explained by their ongoing and soon-to-be-successful criminal investigations.

THEREFORE The Q’s will naturally not be the same.

65

I could have sworn I just said that was Q, not P.

IOW, what in the world are you talking about?

66

Sorry. Got my P’s & Q’s crossed (that worked out nicely.) I’ll start over.

Let Q = alleged collusion by the Trump campaign with the Russians to help Trump win the election through shady activities such as hacking and direct coordination via Veselnitskaya

You claimed that, in a case of

Person A: Since P therefore Q.
Person B: Here’s another example of P. Are you alleging Q in that instance too? If not, then your conditional proposition does not hold.

  1. If Q = alleged collusion, the P is presumably the evidence from which one would draw the conclusion of collusion.

  2. You expect that Q (a conclusion) should be the same in both Person A & Person B’s IF/THEN statements - but that would only be true if the P’s (the evidence) are the same as well.

  3. IF Person A is talking about Donald, then there is plenty of P’s (evidence) that might support Q (collusion).

Some possible values of P that support a conclusion of Q for Person A, are:

a) a letter from a Russian agent suggesting a meeting between Don jr & a different Russian agent, as part of Russia’s ongoing effort to help Donald’s election campaign, and to which Don jr responded enthusiastically

b) Donald straight up asking Russian Hackers to get Hillary’s emails

c) Donald’s decades of financial and business arrangements with various Russian Friends of Vlad

d) the multiple attempts by Donad’s inner circle to establish unmonitored communications with Putin.

Etc. Granted that these are all currently unofficial, but there is a clear path of logic from the genuine events of P to Q in Person A argument.

HOWEVER!

  1. If Person B is talking about Hillary - then there are no real world events P that support a conclusion that Hillary colluded with the Russians & the FBI on the uranium deal.

This is explained in the Snopes article.

Suggested values of P for Person B are -

a) Many Russians contributed to the Clinton Foundation in exchange for Hillary’s putting through the Uranium deal.

This is a false value P, because of the following reasons spelled out in the Snopes article.

i) The donations were made before 2008, well before the Hillary became SecState
ii) the major donor sold off his stake years before the uranium deal went through, and years before Clinton was SEc State.
iii) Clinton, as SecState never had the power to veto or approve the Uranium deal. There’s no way that should could ever have fulfilled her side of the deal, which means no one would have given a sackful of quids to see it through.

Therefore the allegation that Clinton pushed the deal through in exchange for donations to the Foundation is false on the face of it.

  1. This is why the P values of Person A & Person B do not match. The possible P values for Person A are actual events that actually happened. The possible P value for Person B is an event that actually never happened.

  2. Because the values for P are different for the two Persons - one is true and one is false - the value for Q is not necessarily going to be the same.
    Shit I hope I got that all right. But item 6. is the key point.

67

Why would you say that? In the first sentence of my post I asserted that it’s a mistake to focus on Hillary, and when making the specific point we’re discussing here I said “under Obama”, as too in subsequent posts on the subject. As I’ve said previously, Hillary is (at this point) the weak link in the story, and people who insist on focusing on her role in order to undermine the entire story seem to be emphasizing rhetoric over substance.

You’re combining P & Q here.

In the case of Trump, P is, as I suggested in my initial post on the subject, “Trump-related contact with Russians, or apparent attempts to do things that are aligned with Russian interests”. Q would be Trump collusion with the Russians.

In the case of the Obama administration, P would be “Obama administration-related contact with Russians, or apparent attempts to do things that are aligned with Russian interests”. Q would be Obama collusion with the Russians.

In sum, if “contact with Russians, or apparent attempts to do things that are aligned with Russian interests” tends to happen even in the absence of “collusion with the Russians”, then that weakens the extent that “contact with Russians, or apparent attempts to do things that are aligned with Russian interests” can be used to infer “collusion with the Russians”.

All as stated above in more general terms.

Ah, but you say, “well in the case of Trump, we have, in addition to ‘contact with Russians, or apparent attempts to do things that are aligned with Russian interests’, also things like ‘Donald straight up asking Russian Hackers to get Hillary’s emails’”. That’s very nice. I don’t think much of those things either, but those are not the points I was addressing in my post. My post was about the significance of the new investigation into the uranium purchase, and the significance of this was - as I said - about what it implies about the connotations of “contact with Russians, or apparent attempts to do things that are aligned with Russian interests”. It does not have any significance at all as to “Donald straight up asking Russian Hackers to get Hillary’s emails”, so I didn’t mention that. But just because an investigation doesn’t have significance for one thing that doesn’t mean that it also doesn’t have significance for something else. So I commented on what it did have significance for. That is all.

68

Here is a meticulously (with cites galore) documented timeline of the uranium affair: Timeline: The Clintons, the Russians, and Uranium – HotAir for those actually interested.

69

Some of that stuff is very stretched. E.g. “Bill Clinton is paid $500,000 for a speech in Moscow by a Russian investment bank with ties to the Kremlin that assigned a buy rating to Uranium One stock.” (Though of course, the same can be said of much of the Trump stuff too.)

70

We’re a friend to your country. We hope you can outgrow your current government. You’re like a college friend who’s returned to her abusive ex, insisting that *this *time it’ll all work out.

71

“Obama collusion with the Russians” for what purpose?

72

Just forget it.

73

It should be noted that Russia didn’t invade the Ukraine until 2014. Before that point, doing business with Russia - so long as it was above-the-board business (i.e., not money laundering and not pay-to-play political bribery) - wouldn’t have been considered particularly questionable. Dealing with Russia is not, depending on time, place, and method, de facto a criminal act.

But ultimately, unless you have an argument that somehow the Clintons could have aided the deal in some way, which Snopes is saying that they couldn’t have, then there’s not much value to repeating the initial accusation - at least not on this website.

74

There’s the distraction factor. It keeps Trump supporters from paying attention to the Clusterfuck in The White House.

75

OTOH, Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, and Putin’s ambitions and approach have been known for some time. It’s not like the Ukraine issue arose out of the blue.

As above, I think the Clinton angle is weak, and the evidence to date does not support the notion that the Russians bought the approval with CF contributions. But suggesting that the HRC couldn’t have aided the deal (as you seem to be doing) is overstating it.

There’s sometimes a difference between what’s technically true and the way things actually work. The SoS is one of 9 (IIRC) people on the board which approved it, and that board couldn’t have blocked it anyway if Obama overrode them, all true. But it’s likely that not all members have equal influence. On this particular issue, where the issue is a national security (rather than economic) one, it would make sense if the SoS was more influential than the other members who might defer to her concerns if raised, and might carry additional influence with Obama as well. Focusing exclusively on the voting/authorizing power of the SoS as opposed to the broader influence that the office holds on that body and within the administration is a mistake IMO.

That said, there’s no evidence that she actually took any interest in the matter at all, from what I’ve seen. So at this point her involvement should not be the focus - if more evidence happens to come up at some point that could change, as always.

76

If the true odds are a million to one and I say they are two million to one, I have overstated the case. But at that range of improbability, the correction weighs less than a butterfly’s eyelash.

(The Hill, cited above)

Well, yes, all of them, fact be known. Your phrasing makes it sound slightly different. Might have been seventeen members and a vote of nine to eight. Wasn’t, though. It was unanimous, and I know you like the details all tied up neat. You’re welcome.

77

Good for the goose…

78

There’s actually evidence that Mrs. Clinton may have never sat in on, or even asked about, the committee’s business (from the Snopes article):

AFAIK there’s no evidence she even knew about the matter to have any or no interest in it.

It’s Benghazi 2.0!

79

I’ve suggested that other members might have deferred to the SoS on a matter which was primarily of national security concern. Your eagle eye may have missed that.

In addition, it’s worth noting that any single member of that group dissenting from approval would send the matter to the president.

Page 3: Front page | U.S. Department of the Treasury

80

Can we come stay on your couch for a while?