The Durham indictments prosecuting fake Trump 'collusion'

Politics & Elections
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John Durham’s summary of the Mueller report in his closing argument:

Director Mueller, a patriotic American, the former director of the FBI, concludes there’s no evidence of collusion here or conspiracy.

The actual Mueller report specifically stated that it wouldn’t say anything one way or the about collusion.

As an initial matter, this Office evaluated potentially criminal conduct that involved the collective action of multiple individuals not under the rubric of “collusion,” but through the lens of conspiracy law. […] For that reason, this Office’s focus in resolving the question of joint criminal liability was on conspiracy as defined in federal law, not the commonly discussed term “collusion.”

However, several of the interactions between people involved with the Trump campaign and people associated the Russian effort to interfere with the 2016 elections for Trump’s benefit easily satisfy the common, every day definition of collusion.

Also the actual Mueller report pointed out while he didn’t find enough evidence to charge anyone with conspiracy or coordination, that doesn’t mean there was no evidence of conspiracy or coordination.

Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities. […] A statement that the investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts.

So we can look at the statement from Durham’s closing argument…

Director Mueller, a patriotic American, the former director of the FBI, concludes there’s no evidence of collusion here or conspiracy.

… and correct that to a true statement.

While director Mueller, a patriotic American, the former director of the FBI, showed us that there was collusion, which is not a crime, and found evidence of conspiracy and coordination, which are crimes, he concluded that there was not enough evidence conspiracy and coordination to charge anyone with those crimes.

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It is consistent outcomes in cases like these, that when presented with actual facts and evidence, juries usually do the right thing. It gives me hope that our judicial system can hold – even in the face of massive brainwashing of a significant percentage of our citizens.

It’s why I have confidence Trump can be tried. And even convicted.

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A few years, a ton of hype, and over $4 million dollars spent for one misdemeanor conviction.

So, now that the investigation is done, and all the cases resolved, do you have any parting thoughts @Sam_Stone? Did you learn anything valuable?

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“I have seen several analyses”
“I have also heard”
“so I’ve been told”

Sam declined to reveal these sources when asked directly, but I am curious if he still relies on these sources that have so badly misled him.

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According to some AA individual (and not Einstein): Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

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The strange thing is the willingness of so many people to believe there was a corrupt conspiracy to “get Trump,” rather than the much more likely explanation that Trump is a corrupt and incompetent fool.

Occam’s razor, Ockham’s razor, or Ocham’s razor (Latin: novacula Occami), also known as the principle of parsimony or the law of parsimony (Latin: lex parsimoniae), is the problem-solving principle that “entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity”.[1][2] It is generally understood in the sense that with competing theories or explanations, the simpler one, for example a model with fewer parameters, is to be preferred.

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Exactly.

It is 100% certain that there was collusion.
It is 100% certain that there was evidence of conspiracy and coordination.
It is 100% certain that there was evidence of obstruction.

There were some inaccuracies in Trump-Russia reporting and such, but that does not wipe away the above.

There is no Russia-hoax. Russian interference was real, and Trump campaign connections to it were real.

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You’d think we could agree on the easiest spelling.

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The simplest spelling is most likely to be correct.

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One more thing that is hilarious about Durham’s failures in these two cases.

Durham, through his indictments and other filings, has been trying to sell the story that the FBI was the victim of crimes perpetrated by Sussmann and Danchenko. He’s been at this for almost a full year.

But now Durham, and Bill Barr on Fox News today, are trying to get us to believe that the FBI was corrupt in their handling of this investigation and not the victims of a crime.

The unfunny thing is…

Durham is going to write a report and a Republican controlled house is going to use the fanciful conspiracy theories therein to launch investigation after investigation. It will be the new Benghazi.

We won’t be done with this for maybe a decade and Sam will stay in, “We’ll soon see,” mode until then and probably beyond. :frowning:

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Someone should be along anytime now to tell us that the ONLY reason this failed is because the FBI/DOJ/CIA/IRS/PTA/SPCA, etc. are corrupt and that is why this is the result.

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I believe that the closest thing to a nefarious incident that anyone has demonstrated was the FBI attorney (Kevin Clinesmith) who edited the CIA liaison’s email to say that she understood that the CIA said that Carter Page’s connection to them was not as a paid informant.

From what I could tell, reading about the meaning of the “digraph” that the CIA assigned to Page, that interpretation is probably correct. Page was someone who agents could approach and admit that they were agents of the CIA, while asking him questions. There’s no indication that the digraph had any greater meaning than that. My take is that Page was understood to be a useful idiot who would do anything for anyone, if it let him feel like he was immersed in global spycraft. There was no need to employ him, he’d tell everyone everything, for free, if only he could interact with them. Page is a spy groupie.

It’s very possible that Clinesmith made the edit of of a simple brainfart, to edit for clarity and not to manufacture evidence, but decided to plead guilt because it is factually clear that he edited someone else’s email and that, that is wrong to do.

Maybe he had nefarious intent. I haven’t seen any indication of that.

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And don’t forget that the reason the CIA had contact with Page was that he WAS a source for a couple of Russian spies in 2013 and he got caught up in the US government surveillance of those spies.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/02/03/carter-page-nunes-memo-216934/

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We know why he did it. It was laziness. Clinesmith added the words to the email to avoid writing out a much longer explanation. He believed that the information he was conveying was true and he took a shortcut to convince his boss of that.

“Sir, at the time, I believed that the information I was providing in the email was accurate but I am agreeing that the information I entered into the email was not originally there and I inserted that information,” Clinesmith said.

Clinesmith, in internal messages, indicated that he believed Page was a “subsource” but never a source, and when a superior asked whether he had it in writing, Clinesmith forwarded an email from a CIA liaison but added his own words to it to underscore his view that Page was “not a source.”

Source.

That said, the Horowitz report said that there was probable cause to surveil Page and the Clinesmith incident was in support of the renewal of the warrant, not the original warrant. Page was already under surveillance when Clinesmith did his thing and we’d never even know of his involvement if he did the extra work or found some other way to make his point. The renewal probably would have gone through even if Page was a source.

Clinesmith wasn’t politically motivated and what he did, which is definitely a crime that he is guilty of, had essentially no measurable effect on Crossfire Hurricane or any other investigation into Trump.

And Clinesmith is all they have.

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One more thing on Carter Page.

Many people thought Carter Page was a Russian asset (e.g. see the article linked in Ann’s latest post).

One of the people who thought that at one time was none other than Carter Page himself.

Over the past half year, I have had the privilege to serve as an informal advisor to the staff of the Kremlin in preparation for their Presidency of the G-20 Summit next month, where energy issues will be a prominent point on the agenda.

Source.

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Better than that:

Legal definition of a foreign agent: 22 U.S. Code § 611 - Definitions | U.S. Code | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute

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The GOP are already claiming that - Jim Jordan was tweeting away about this yesterday.

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To be fair, we did learn from the Sussmann trial that the Alfa bank/Trump org server data anomaly, that Sussmann brought to the FBI to give them a heads up before the story hit the press, was never properly investigated or explained by the FBI.

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Gosh, this would make one wonder why Trump and Trump’s FBI didn’t investigate the obviously exculpatory Alfa Bank information that would blow the Russian case wide open and exonerate Trump!

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And here come the sanctions.

Charles Dolan, one of 29 defendants, in Trump’s frivolous RICO lawsuit sent a warning letter to Trump lawyers that a bunch of stuff in their lawsuit about him was false and they should amend the complaint and leave him out of it or they would seek rule 11 sanctions.

Trump lawyers submitted an amended complaint almost a month later but the stuff in it about Dolan was essentially the same.

Here’s the what the judge had to say: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.610157/gov.uscourts.flsd.610157.284.0.pdf

Some quotes…

Every claim was frivolous, most barred by settled, well-established existing law. These were political grievances masquerading as legal claims. This cannot be attributed to incompetent lawyering. It was a deliberate use of the judicial system to pursue a political agenda.

The pleadings in this case contained factual allegations that were either knowingly false or made in reckless disregard for the truth.

And in closing, the judge pretty much says the Trump lawyers should be disbarred.

The rule of law is undermined by the toxic combination of political fundraising with legal fees paid by political action committees, reckless and factually untrue statements by lawyers at rallies and in the media, and efforts to advance a political narrative through lawsuits without factual basis or any cognizable legal theory. Lawyers are enabling this behavior and I am pessimistic that Rule 11 alone can effectively stem this abuse. Aspects may be beyond the purview of the judiciary, requiring attention of the Bar and disciplinary authorities.

Several Trump lawyers are on the hook for this ($66k) including Alina Habba who goes on TV a lot and is involved in the Mar-a-Lago case as both a lawyer and possibly a defendant. And there’s more bad news on the way for them… Dolan is one of 29 defendants in the RICO lawsuit.

What mistake did they make? The relied heavily on the Durham indictments of Sussmann and Dancheko (primarily the Danchenko indictment regarding Dolan), and stuck with that even when it was shown that the Durham indictments were fairy tales.

Why am I posting this in this thread? Well it did come up in @Ann_Hedonia’s post I quoted. On top of that they made essentially the same claims about Dolan that the OP did in this thread.

That shit wasn’t true. It was obvious it wasn’t true at the time. And now lawyers are getting sanctioned for pretending it was true in legal filings.