You know, things might go better if some of us actually do some fact checking before posting, instead of repeating utter garbage from right-wing sources without doing any substantive research.
Things might also go better, if some of us were willing to say " Well, events have certainly proven me wrong. I’ll try to do a better job of analysis in the future." Instead of whining about how everyone picks on them.
…and when the utter garbage is shown to be utter garbage it would be a better look if the posters who spout said garbage actually came back and owned up to it. More likely said posters tend to slink away and avoid the thread like nothing ever happened. Not a good look IMHO.
At what point (if ever) do you declare the battle lost?
Heat death of the universe?
Only if Cosmic Smokey Bear pours water on it afterwards.
Moderating
Let’s not get too personal on this forum. If you want to attack the poster, y’all know where the Pit is.
No warnings, barely even a Note. A Mod Reminder, if you will, to keep the heat low.
The investigation is not over. I never claimed it was a slam dunk, and merely posted what the investigation was doing. It may turn out to be a total dud, but we can’t say until it is closed.
Okay, but that’s not really what I asked. I don’t think you ever thought it was a “slam dunk”, but from reading your posts in this thread you did seem to think it was very likely a legitimate investigation into real and significant wrongdoing. Do you still feel that way? Are you less confident that’s the case? Do you think the Sussman verdict was properly decided? If so, doesn’t it reveal a big weakness in Durham’s whole investigation, since this was the most significant finding so far?
I don’t think the facts are disputed, which is that Sussmann presented material that originated from the Hillary campaign without disclosing it. They just didn’t have the evidence to show that he was witholding ‘material’ information under the legal definition of what is or isn’t ‘material’.
But if the Hillary campaign was responsible for much of the ‘Russian collusion’ material that caused years of investigations, that’s still really bad. But I don’t know if Durham will be able to prove that at all, or prove that it was fake. We’ll know when it wraps up.
This presumes that the “Russia collusion” story was made up. If it wasn’t made up, then a campaign using it really isn’t wrongdoing in any sense.
Well, we kmow the Steele Dossier was largely bullshit, and that appears to have been commissioned by Fusion GPS working for the Hillary campaign. Also, the ‘Alfa Bank’ story, which was the subject of the Durham indictment, was manufactured by people working for Hillary.
The fact that Sussmann was found to be not guilty of lying in a way that affected the materiality of the information in no way absolves Hillary Clinton of orchestrating this in the first place. That remains to be seen.
From my reading the Steele dossier has been largely unverified, but I haven’t read that it’s been determined to be “largely bullshit”. Further, from what I’ve read, the dossier played no significant role in the intelligence community’s assessment of Russian activity during the 2016 campaign (which have been all-but-confirmed were meant to assist Trump), and was not the reason for the investigation into whether Trump colluded with Russia.
And even if it eventually is proven to be “largely bullshit”, that doesn’t mean it was wrong (much less illegal) for Hillary Clinton (or her campaign) to try and use the dossier for political advantage. It’s very unlikely she could have known it was “largely bullshit” at the time. Trump’s own behavior, including asking for Russian assistance publicly, made this a legitimate line of political attack.
EDIT: From your link:
"Still, other connections between Trump and Russia turned out to be true, as outlined in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report. For example, Trump campaign officials including Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort met with a group of Russians at Trump Tower on June 9, 2016, after Don Jr. had been told by an intermediary that they had dirt on Clinton that was “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”
Trump also publicly encouraged Russia to “find” Clinton’s missing emails."
To my understanding, opposition research is a standard component of large campaigns. Implying that it’s somehow nefarious is unreasonable.
From everything that Durham has discovered - and that Horowitz discovered before him - all indications still seem to say Team Clintons’ reports of criminal activity to the FBI came from a genuine belief, as a product of the opposition research, that there had been actual criminal activity on the part of Trump and his associates.
Once they had a belief in Trump’s criminality, it would be fairly reasonable to coordinate how that gets relayed to the FBI and who all knows it. If Hillary was managing the information flow, I don’t see that as particularly unreasonable. She was the boss of the opposition researchers and the campaign. But that’s a long distance from coming up with a con-game, paying people to perform roles in generating and propagating the con, choosing the FBI as your con’s target, and all in the aim of getting revenge on a guy that you hadn’t lost the election to, yet, and probably didn’t think you were actually going to lose to.
At what point, specifically, would you consider it to be “over”?
You realize the statute of limitations has long passed for anything Hillary allegedly did in the run up to the 2016 election, right? Unless you think they’re going to get her for murder?
And the big question remains — if the Steele dossier was some dirty trick Hillary orchestrated in the run-up to the 2016 election designed to help her win, why wasn’t it leaked BEFORE the election?
Steele always said the report was unverified intelligence that he estimated to be 70% correct, and that’s pretty much turned out to be true, even if the true stuff was the less sensational stuff. Even the most lascivious portion incorporated lots of true elements, he did spend the night at the Moscow hotel on the night in question and the Russians did attempt to arrange for five hookers to be sent to Trump’s room, it’s just that he was cockblocked by his body man Keith Schiller.
And I still contend that the presence of Paul Manafort, with his sordid history of rigging Ukrainian elections for Russian interests, in a high level position on a US Presidential campaign was, in and of itself, justification to open an FBI investigation and the FBI would’ve been negligent if they didn’t investigate it.
You know, when it ends. Just like the Mueller investigation. At some point the investigation will be closed, and a final report issued. Apparently, there is another trial coming in the fall:
Other than that, we don’t know because Durham hasn’t made it public. Maybe that will be the end, maybe not.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/31/politics/durham-whats-next/index.html
This is completely incorrect.
The research that Sussmann brought to the FBI did not originate with the Clinton campaign.
How is it possible that you are still so misinformed about this after it has been pointed out to you numerous times?
My understanding is that one of the reasons Hillary and others were named in the ‘speaking indictments’ was to stop the time clock on the Stature of Limitations.
It WAS. They tried very hard to get the media to report on it. It was just so shoddy that major newspapers wouldn’t run it. Perhaps they didn’t want to risk their reputations over this when they thought Trump,would lose anyway.
But some took the bait:
Then the election happened and Trump won. Then Buzzfeed ran a full story on it in January, giving other newspapers to report on it by reporting on the controversial Buzzfeed decision to report it.