# The Durham indictments prosecuting fake Trump 'collusion' **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [September 23, 2021, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215 "2021-09-23T20:11:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Lance\_Turbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lance_turbo/32/6156_2.png) [@Lance\_Turbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lance_Turbo)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2021, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215/122 "2021-11-04T19:44:12Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > The first person to be indicted was a lawyer for Perkins-Coie who worked directly for Clinton, and who billed Clinton directly for peddling the fake Alfa Bank shit, including billing her for the time spent hawking bullshit to the FBI and CIA, where he lied about Clinton’s involvement. But that indictment is a fairy tale. Also your change of topic from the Danchenko story, which exculpates Clinton, is noted. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2021, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215/123 "2021-11-04T19:45:31Z")
Considering the incredible weakness of the first indictment, according to Lawfare, I’m inclined to yawn and ignore this as a nothing story until we actually see a trial (or plea bargain), much less a conviction. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2021, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215/124 "2021-11-04T19:45:34Z")
My understanding is that the stuff in the dossier that was true was already public kmowledge, and the more salacious stuff was false or unproven. This is how disinformation works: You put in enough true stuff to make it sound credible, then ‘salt’ it woth the unprovable fake stuff that does the damage. This is the argument the left has used now that much of the information on the Hunter Biden laptop has been proven true: That no matter how much is true, it could still be salted with disinformation. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2021, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215/125 "2021-11-04T19:46:57Z")
LOL to hear the Hunter laptop shit again. This is gonna be like the birth certificate all over again, isn’t it? Maybe a laptop existed! Maybe Hunter talked about business! Sure, nothing is proven, much less even anything unlawful, but still… Stop the presses! ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2021, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215/126 "2021-11-04T19:53:41Z")
> [@Buck\_Godot](#): > > Also I’d be interested in a cite that the Steele dossier was debunked. It was always presented as being raw intelligence not the gospel truth. For example I don’t think that the salacious golden showers incident in the hotel room was ever treated as anything more than a rumor. But last I heard, all the claims of the dossier fall either into the category of corroborated with additional independent evidence, or a category of unverified but not proven to be false. I’ve never quite had time to do it but the Horowitz report, as I recall, had a list of items in the Steele Report that he had been allowed to examine the investigative history of. If you remove that list from Steele, anything that remains would be stuff that either the FBI confirmed or that they used secret means to try and validate. That still doesn’t tell you what’s true or false but it reduces it down. Whatever is there is _more_ likely to be true then the rest. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2021, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215/127 "2021-11-04T20:07:11Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > LOL to hear the Hunter laptop shit again. This is gonna be like the birth certificate all over again, isn’t it? > > Maybe a laptop existed! Maybe Hunter talked about business! Sure, nothing is proven, much less even anything unlawful, but still… Stop the presses! The laptop does exist. It’s incontrovertible. No one in the Biden Administration, or Hunter himself, has denied that it’s his laptop. The contents that have been made public have been confirmed by other people, including people who produced copies of the same emails. Including other governments. This includes the infamous emails discussing setting up deals with a foreign government for millions with “10% for the big guy” - who at least one person on the Email chain, Tony Bobulinski who was present for those meetings, said refers to Joe Biden. And he said it under oath. Joe Biden has said that he has nothing to do with Hunter’s business dealings and has never met the people involved. Except one of the confirmed Emails to Hunter was a foreign business associate thanking him for setting uo a meeting with his father. Another Email has Hunter complaining that he does all the work getting money for the family but Dad takes a big cut just because he has the connections. So yes, the Hunter Biden laptop is real, and at least worthy of a serious investigation. There’s a hell of a lot more corroboration of that already than there ever was for the Steele Dossier, and that kicked off two years of a special prosecutor and endless hyperventilating in the liberal press. Rachel Maddow built an audience out of it. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2021, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215/128 "2021-11-04T20:09:57Z")
Lol at this cite free gibberish. It’s tabloid crap - rumor and innuendo and nothing more. It’s just sad, and amusing, that so many still fall for this kind of crap. ---
**Author:** ![Lance\_Turbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lance_turbo/32/6156_2.png) [@Lance\_Turbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lance_Turbo)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2021, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215/129 "2021-11-04T20:12:03Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > It’s just sad, and amusing, that so many still fall for this kind of crap. The phrase ‘tragic gullibility’ comes to mind. ---
**Author:** ![Ann\_Hedonia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ann_hedonia/32/319_2.png) [@Ann\_Hedonia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ann_Hedonia)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2021, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215/130 "2021-11-04T20:46:26Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > > [@iiandyiiii](#): > > > > LOL to hear the Hunter laptop shit again. This is gonna be like the birth certificate all over again, isn’t it? > > > > Maybe a laptop existed! Maybe Hunter talked about business! Sure, nothing is proven, much less even anything unlawful, but still… Stop the presses! > > Another Email has Hunter complaining that he does all the work getting money for the family but Dad takes a big cut just because he has the connections. That’s a new one on me. Please give me a cite, I can’t find one anywhere. I read the emails in referenced to Ukraine about Hunter and “the big guy”. Except I read the whole thing, not just the part the NY Post highlighted in yellow. If you read the whole thing, there were references to the 2014 Ukrainian elections being the most important event in the life of “the big guy”. From that. I concluded that “the big guy” was the oligarch that owned Burisma and not Joe Biden. Michael Bender at the Wall Street Journal took a meeting with the Trump campaign, he was interested in researching and covering the story. But the campaign would not give him access to all the materials they had, such as the full text of all the emails. All they were willing to give him was a cherry-picked selection that backed up their story. He thought he was being played, and totally backed off when, immediately after the meeting, Trump tweeted that the WSJ was working on a story that would bring down Joe Biden. He speaks extensively of this episode in his book on the 2020 election, trying to counter the false narrative that there was a media coverup. And Bobulinski isn’t credible, and his statements under oath are about as credible as the statement under oath from the person that witnessed a Biden Harris bus full of people in Biden-Harris t-shirts filling out trash bags full of ballots while directly outside of a facility where votes were being counted. The problem with Bobulinski’s evidence is that while he has messages of conversations talking about holding back money for “the big guy” that he claims was Joe Biden - neither Joe or Jim (Joe’s brother, who had business dealing with Hunter) or Hunter Biden was a party to any of these conversations and no money changed hands. Also, reporters that have seen this so-called evidence in context have doubts about “the big guy” being Joe Biden, and I believe one said that there is other context to suggest that he is Chinese national. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2021, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215/131 "2021-11-04T20:56:31Z")
> [@Lance\_Turbo](#): > > The phrase ‘tragic gullibility’ comes to mind The phrase “willful gullibility” comes to mine. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2021, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215/132 "2021-11-04T20:57:33Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > one of the confirmed Emails to Hunter was a foreign business associate thanking him for setting uo a meeting with his father. Another Email has Hunter complaining that he does all the work getting money for the family but Dad takes a big cut just because he has the connections. In general, I agree with you that it’s disingenuous to ignore the laptop now that the contents have been verified. It’s wrong, though, to say that people should have paid attention to it before that point. Giuliani did go to Ukraine, did meet with Russian intelligence officers there, and did skip out on handing what he was given to Congress when Graham told him to not bring anything that he’d gotten from Russia. And while the items that you detail are, in a vacuum, worrisome, the general consensus of everyone in the government left and right, intelligence agent or not, seems to be that Biden is a “good guy who you can trust”. And yes, I’m quite willing to back that with cites. This isn’t to say that we should just give Biden a pass - by all means, people can and do fool others about their integrity on large scales, sometimes - but you would need better evidence than this to prove it. If Biden has three meetings a day with people who want to meet with him about some topic that they want Congress to do something about, after a few decades it’s going to be safe to say that he’s not going to remember practically any of them. If Hunter talked to a new assistant for Biden, got her to accept the meeting, then Joe might not even know that he was meeting with someone who came from his son. We would need more detail. As for the other, to me it just reads like we’re hearing Hunter’s view of the world. People give his dad all this money and, try as he might to cash in on it, he can’t hardly get anything. If financial records come in showing that something was happening then we’re talking but, again, we would need more details about the specific situation and need some way to remove Hunter’s slant on the subject. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2021, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215/133 "2021-11-04T21:29:41Z")
I agree. I said there is enough information to spark a real investigation, not that it’s all definitively true. That’s what investigations are for. It will never happen, though. Merrick Garland will not investigate, and Biden’s political career will be done after his term, so there will be no political advantage to revisiting his past. ---
**Author:** ![Lance\_Turbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lance_turbo/32/6156_2.png) [@Lance\_Turbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lance_Turbo)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2021, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215/134 "2021-11-04T21:35:46Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > It will never happen, though. It definitely already happened. > Image of Hunter Biden statement from December 2020 viewable if you click into the Tweet. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2021, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215/135 "2021-11-04T21:37:59Z")
Yes, that’s a US attorney in Delaware, before Biden was sworn in and Merrick Garland appointed AG. And this is a tax investigation, and it’s not clear it has anything to do with the laptop, influence peddling, etc. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2021, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215/136 "2021-11-04T21:53:32Z")
So what, you want a witch hunt or something? ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2021, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215/137 "2021-11-04T21:54:10Z")
What’s to investigate? The existence of a laptop? Nebulous emails (which may or may not even be legitimate) with no specifics? Some random dude saying the Bidens are corrupt? Real investigators are busy, and real investigations require actual evidence a crime was committed. Not rumor and innuendo. ---
**Author:** ![Ann\_Hedonia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ann_hedonia/32/319_2.png) [@Ann\_Hedonia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ann_Hedonia)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2021, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215/138 "2021-11-04T22:21:39Z")
Don’t forget, Trump was in office when this computer was found, and Barr was running the DOJ. He could’ve appointed a special prosecutor before he left office, but he didn’t. I suspect it’s simply because that when the full text of all the communications is viewed in context, there’s absolutely nothing there to investigate. I don’t know, because AFAICT, no one has ever released all the communications in their entirety- only cherry-picked selections. And I suspect there’s a reason for that. I’ve followed plenty of scandals that involved email chains that were either leaked or released under a FOIA request, and I’ve always seen the full text of every email - it can be boring af to review these documents, as there are always multiple copies of each message. When all I’m “allowed” to see are the highlighted sections someone with an agenda wants me to see, that’s not journalism, that’s propaganda. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2021, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215/139 "2021-11-04T23:34:13Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > It will never happen, though. Merrick Garland will not investigate, and Biden’s political career will be done after his term, so there will be no political advantage to revisiting his past. To my awareness, the Special Counsel - be that Mueller or Durham - cannot issue warrants, cannot indict, and cannot prosecute without the okay of the AG (or deputy AG in Mueller’s case, since Sessions recused). Garland has approved the Sussman investigation, the Danchenko investigation, and he’s approved the criminal investigations of Hunter that are currently and still underway. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2021, 11:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215/140 "2021-11-05T11:13:04Z")
And the neat thing is that no matter what’s on Hunter Biden’s laptop, it still won’t mean that the Trump campaign wasn’t heavily supported by Russia with the campaign’s knowledge. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2021, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-durham-indictments-prosecuting-fake-trump-collusion/951215/141 "2021-11-05T13:33:23Z")
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