# Trump associates may have coordinated with Russians, according to US officials **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [March 23, 2017, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-associates-may-have-coordinated-with-russians-according-to-us-officials/782799 "2017-03-23T00:28:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 185
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2018, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-associates-may-have-coordinated-with-russians-according-to-us-officials/782799/3684 "2018-01-28T01:54:29Z")
> [@Arizona\_Mike](#): > > I’m reading “Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign” by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, who enjoyed a lot more access to the movers and shapers inside Hillary’s campaign than Wolff probably ever did with the Trump White House, based on Hillary’s attempts to identofy the leakers in her campaign. Both authors obviously despise Trump, and when they began shadowing the campaign at the time Hillary was about to announce her intention to run, and through most of the campaign, it was considered ridiculous to suggest that Hillary would not be our next president, or even more ridiculous, that Donald Trump would be. > > I recommend it highly, especially if you are a member of a hierarchical, deeply dysfunctional organization, in which case you’ll find it fascinating and oddly familiar. While foreign interference in our elections isn’t something we desire, it’s probably important to bear in mind in this discussion that even if Russia had kept a scrupulous hands-off policy to the American election, Hillary would still have certainly gone down in flames. As others have said, the Russians didn’t use a mind-control ray on Hillary to keep her from campaigning in Wisconsin, to force her to collect obscene amounts of money at Hollywood and hedge-fund fundraisers while she was disparaging large numbers of the working class, or to attend one rally for every three Trump attended. As the authors of the book make clear, no one - and I mean no one - on her staff could get her to articulate a single reason why people should vote for her, except that she was a woman and wasn’t Donald Trump. That’s not the way you win an election. > > I lean towards the likelihood that Putin’s desire to screw with the American electoral process probably had fuck-all to do with elevating Trump to the presidency, instead being primarily motivated by punishing Hillary for her State Department’s own “collusion” (as he would see it) with his political rivals and providing covert financial support for rival political parties during the Russian elections. That, and her husband’s last minute pardon of Marc Rich, are more than enough motive to mess with us. > > The argument that Trump obstructed justice is a tricky one to try with the head of the executive branch, and I don’t know how that will play out for sure, but I doubt that there will be any evidence, or likelihood, that Trump colluded with Russia to try to influence the election. I think it is extremely unlikely that Russian propaganda efforts had any material effect on the election. Hillary’s own personality and organizational incompetence already doomed that. Hillary lost by the slimmest of margins in a handful of states, there isn’t one single thing you can blame her loss on but if one single thing had changed and gone her way she would be president. ---
**Author:** ![Arizona\_Mike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7cd45c/32.png) [@Arizona\_Mike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arizona_Mike)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2018, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-associates-may-have-coordinated-with-russians-according-to-us-officials/782799/3685 "2018-01-28T02:06:25Z")
> [@asahi](#): > > I don’t think Russian propaganda convinced people who were on the fence to vote for Trump, but I suspect it probably did persuade a fair number of Hillary voters to stay home on election night. It certainly was not the only factor - on that I agree. But it was a factor. That may well be the case. What do you think are the factors that make likely Hillary voters more easily duped? > [@](#): > > I do think it’s fair to say that Hillary was going to struggle considering that she was the epitome of an establishment candidate at a time when people were abandoning both political parties. Even had she won, she probably would have found it nearly impossible to govern against an obstructionist opposition party controlling both houses of congress. That’s also fair. Of course, the wild card in this election was an aging socialist candidate who looked like he combed his hair with an inflated balloon, but who nonetheless managed to claim the affection of a large number of potential Hillary voters both young and old. And who, it should be noted, honeymooned in the old USSR…not that it is at all likely that he was given marching orders to obstruct Hillary’s election by his formerly Soviet masters in the FSB. (I kid, of course. But if I wanted to find someone with actual ties to Russia who did a lot more to hurt Hillary’s chances than any number of supposed Macedonian server farms…I’d look toward _that guy_.) You had a probably sizable population of Democrats who stayed home because of their sympathies with Bernie and the way he was treated; Trump did not have an equivalent challenger. Maybe Ben Carson came closest, but not really. Hillary’s _anschluss_ of the DNR wasn’t illegal, but it was seen as sleazy and a typical ClintonWorld move by a lot of progressives, who saw her (as you suggest) as a corporate tool,a perception she did nothing to dispel. ---
**Author:** ![Arizona\_Mike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7cd45c/32.png) [@Arizona\_Mike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arizona_Mike)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2018, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-associates-may-have-coordinated-with-russians-according-to-us-officials/782799/3686 "2018-01-28T02:12:49Z")
> [@bobot](#): > > No it isn’t. Last November Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. The election was not the landslide Republicans like to believe it was. Since that election, Republicans have been losing state elections in places thought impossible. But, as even most Democrats admit, candidates compete by a known set of rules, and winning the popular vote is meaningless. How many potential Republican voters in the Red counties of California and New York declined to vote because they knew their vote would be essentially meaningless under the electoral system? Candidates choose where to devote finite resources and time to particular states because we operate under an agreed-upon set of rules. If the popular vote were the deciding factor, Trump would have acted differently. And might well have won, who knows. ---
**Author:** ![bobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobot/32/21622_2.png) [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2018, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-associates-may-have-coordinated-with-russians-according-to-us-officials/782799/3687 "2018-01-28T02:15:01Z")
I didn’t say the poular vote was the deciding factor. ---
**Author:** ![Arizona\_Mike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7cd45c/32.png) [@Arizona\_Mike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arizona_Mike)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2018, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-associates-may-have-coordinated-with-russians-according-to-us-officials/782799/3688 "2018-01-28T02:30:21Z")
> [@DigitalC](#): > > Hillary lost by the slimmest of margins in a handful of states, there isn’t one single thing you can blame her loss on but if one single thing had changed and gone her way she would be president. I doubt that. There wasn’t just one thing Hillary could have changed and won. The list of her fuck-ups is legion, and the entire gestalt probably doomed her. Did the Russians trick her into creating her own illegal, home-brewed email system? No, she did it because after reviewing EVERY email sent through her campaign’s server system during the previous campaign battle against Obama to look for “traitors” who may have communicated with Obama’s campaign or “unfriendly” media reporters, she realized how much information could be gained about the inner dealings of a campaign, and decided no one would be able to do the same to her. Did the Russians hypnotize her into lying about the cause of her physical collapse after the 9/11 memorial? As her former boss said, the problem isn’t the lie, it’s the cover-up, and it only reinforced her reputation for dishonesty (are other politicans, including the man who beat her, often dishonest? Of course. That’s what politicians _do_. She’s just spectacularly bad at it.) Did the Russians blackmail Bill Clinton into hamfistedly pushing his way onto Loretta Lynch’s jet at the Phoenix airport? That’s really the precipitating factor that led Lynch essentially recusing herself and letting Comey decide the prosecutability of the case, which undoubtedly hurt her before the election. You want to blame someone for that, don’t blame the Russians, blame Hillary for setting up a homebrewed, unsecure server system to avoid government-mandated transparency, blame Bubba for thinking he could schmooze Lynch, and maybe blame the ABC-15 television reporter who broke the story for having such good contacts with the tarmac air crew. (You could make a good case that he won the election for Trump.) I can go on and on, but there isn’t like a balanced scale of her fuckups vs. Trump’s fuckups, and they were equally balanced and if you remove one fuckup stick from her end of the scale, Trump’s load of fuckups would come crashing to the ground and Hillary would have won! The real world doesn’t work like that. And that argument also overlooks that Trump did a substantial number of boners, you should pardon the expression, just as Hillary did. If you start arguing that Hillary would have won if she had made just one less unearned error, we could argue that in the same world, the “grab them by the pussy” tape didn’t get released and Trump would have won the electoral _and_ the popular vote. ---
**Author:** ![Arizona\_Mike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7cd45c/32.png) [@Arizona\_Mike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arizona_Mike)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2018, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-associates-may-have-coordinated-with-russians-according-to-us-officials/782799/3689 "2018-01-28T02:59:53Z")
> [@Johnny\_Ace](#): > > You don’t ‘know’ that at all. Odd how the swing states that decided the election were also the ones targeted by Russia, isn’t it? Sure I do, as much as you claim to know the positions you hold. If Zuckerberg is correct (per CNN), about one quarter of the 3,000 Russian-bought ads were targeted to specific geographic locations namely two (out of many) battleground states, Wisconsin and Michigan. Facebook said of the ads that were geographically targeted “more ran in 2015 than 2016.” Trump didn’t even declare his candidacy until June, 2015, and throughout most of 2015, he was considered an outsider, vastly underfunded, clownish candidate, through most of 2015, even 2016 - hell, until election night. So you feel the Russians would devote considerable time and effort, not to mention _extreme political risk if uncovered_ - to try to sway the vote toward the least likely to win candidate? No. Not likely. What is likely is that they wanted to screw over Hillary (as I said) over her attempts to interfere in their own domestic elections, and probably the Marc Rich affair as well. But mostly the electoral collusion with the Russian opposition parties. Not that I find anything wrong with what Hillary (and Obama’s) State Department did. Our intelligence agencies interfere in foreign elections - all - the -fucking - time, Ace. Just as foreign governments other than Russia do to our elections, although perhaps with less brio than the Russians. (How many foreign leaders made quite clear during the election that they favored Hillary over Trump?) And why are you surprised when, having interfered in Russian elections, we experienced a major case of Blowback? That’s what happens, routinely when intelligence operations turn sour. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2018, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-associates-may-have-coordinated-with-russians-according-to-us-officials/782799/3690 "2018-01-28T03:17:59Z")
> [@Arizona\_Mike](#): > > Trump didn’t even declare his candidacy until June, 2015, and throughout most of 2015, he was considered an outsider, vastly underfunded, clownish candidate, through most of 2015, even 2016 - hell, until election night. So you feel the Russians would devote considerable time and effort, not to mention _extreme political risk if uncovered_ - to try to sway the vote toward the least likely to win candidate? > > No. Not likely. Uh, I think you are ignoring that the Russian plutocrats wanted nothing less than to see chaos in the USA, hence, they supported the candidate that would deliver on that. Even if it had turned to be a losing effort there was still a lot of bad blood generated to keep the chaos going, this time with never ending investigations against Hillary and their efforts just would had change focus, but still the efforts would be geared to the same result: Make the USA fall into chaos. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2018, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-associates-may-have-coordinated-with-russians-according-to-us-officials/782799/3691 "2018-01-28T03:18:57Z")
I can easily see my way clear to saying there was no direct collusion from Trump, or at least none he would recognize. He’s stupid, impulsive and a motormouth. Why would a cagey bee like Putin trust him? Why would he need to? Does Geppetto talk to Pinocchio? Whatever for? ---
**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:** [January 28, 2018, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-associates-may-have-coordinated-with-russians-according-to-us-officials/782799/3692 "2018-01-28T03:50:06Z")
> [@Arizona\_Mike](#): > > I lean towards the likelihood that Putin’s desire to screw with the American electoral process probably had fuck-all to do with elevating Trump to the presidency, instead being primarily motivated by punishing Hillary for her State Department’s own “collusion” (as he would see it) with his political rivals and providing covert financial support for rival political parties during the Russian elections. That, and her husband’s last minute pardon of Marc Rich, are more than enough motive to mess with us. I agree that the Russians, if they had any success, it was due more to Comey’s actions than their own but that fundamentally they probably had no significant effect on the result. However, it’s also the case that Nixon won his election without getting his hands on the psychology report his people were trying to steal. Nixon would have been impeached anyways. It’s also the case that if you go online looking for a hitman to kill your wife for you and, when you go to the meet, it’s actually the police there not a real hitman, you still go to jail. Successfully pulling off a crime, successfully meeting with criminals, successfully stealing an election, etc. are not prerequisites to committing a crime nor being impeached. I believe that the majority of the country is reasonably satisfied that Trump and his team believed that the Russians had illegally gained information about his opponent, that his team went to a meeting with the full hope that those people were Russian government agents who could give him those illegal goods. Whether those Russians were related to the Russian government or not, whether they had those illegal goods or not, and whether or not the product of that exchange would have turned the path of the election or not is completely irrelevant. Trump tried to purchase or receive illegally gained goods and did so in the hope of winning an election by use of those goods. We have reasonably conclusive proof that the current President did his damndest to commit a crime and to collude and to the extent that that didn’t happen, it had nothing to do with a lack of criminal intent or lack of furtherances in the aim of committing a criminal act. He planted the bomb in the mall, set the timer, and the timer didn’t go off. That doesn’t exonerate him of the attempt any more than if an earthquake caused the mall to collapse on itself 10 minutes later. The needlessness of the crime doesn’t, through some mystery magical means, exonerate that crime. The intent and the act of furtherance if the crime is criminal, regardless of how everything else plays out. ---
**Author:** ![jasg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f0a364/32.png) [@jasg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jasg)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2018, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-associates-may-have-coordinated-with-russians-according-to-us-officials/782799/3693 "2018-01-28T03:54:16Z")
> [@Arizona\_Mike](#): > > What do you think the Russians did to help him win the primaries? The same sorts of social media manipulation and disinformation they used during the campaign. The Trump-Russia connections go back [years](http://billmoyers.com/story/trump-russia-timeline/) and Putin seems to play a long game. ---
**Author:** ![Arizona\_Mike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7cd45c/32.png) [@Arizona\_Mike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arizona_Mike)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2018, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-associates-may-have-coordinated-with-russians-according-to-us-officials/782799/3694 "2018-01-28T05:49:54Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Uh, I think you are ignoring that the Russian plutocrats wanted nothing less than to see chaos in the USA, hence, they supported the candidate that would deliver on that. > > Even if it had turned to be a losing effort there was still a lot of bad blood generated to keep the chaos going, this time with never ending investigations against Hillary and their efforts just would had change focus, but still the efforts would be geared to the same result: Make the USA fall into chaos. By your logic, the evil plutocrats no doubt think they do a stunning job of running Russia, so if they want to destabilize America why would they want a fellow evil plutocrat in charge? Why wouldn’t they want a woman who had no singular positive achievements as either a senator or a Secretary of State, and was primarily known for being a First Lady who normalized her husband’s rapacious sexual activities if they wanted to destabilize us? ---
**Author:** ![Arizona\_Mike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7cd45c/32.png) [@Arizona\_Mike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arizona_Mike)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2018, 5:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-associates-may-have-coordinated-with-russians-according-to-us-officials/782799/3695 "2018-01-28T05:54:00Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > I agree that the Russians, if they had any success, it was due more to Comey’s actions than their own but that fundamentally they probably had no significant effect on the result. > > However, it’s also the case that Nixon won his election without getting his hands on the psychology report his people were trying to steal. Nixon would have been impeached anyways. > > It’s also the case that if you go online looking for a hitman to kill your wife for you and, when you go to the meet, it’s actually the police there not a real hitman, you still go to jail. > > Successfully pulling off a crime, successfully meeting with criminals, successfully stealing an election, etc. are not prerequisites to committing a crime nor being impeached. > > I believe that the majority of the country is reasonably satisfied that Trump and his team believed that the Russians had illegally gained information about his opponent, that his team went to a meeting with the full hope that those people were Russian government agents who could give him those illegal goods. > > Whether those Russians were related to the Russian government or not, whether they had those illegal goods or not, and whether or not the product of that exchange would have turned the path of the election or not is completely irrelevant. Trump tried to purchase or receive illegally gained goods and did so in the hope of winning an election by use of those goods. We have reasonably conclusive proof that the current President did his damndest to commit a crime and to collude and to the extent that that didn’t happen, it had nothing to do with a lack of criminal intent or lack of furtherances in the aim of committing a criminal act. > > He planted the bomb in the mall, set the timer, and the timer didn’t go off. That doesn’t exonerate him of the attempt any more than if an earthquake caused the mall to collapse on itself 10 minutes later. The needlessness of the crime doesn’t, through some mystery magical means, exonerate that crime. The intent and the act of furtherance if the crime is criminal, regardless of how everything else plays out. By that same argument, Hillary or her agents purchased information illegally obtained from Russian co-opted intelligence sources, who were being co-opted by the FSB to create chaos in the U.S. system by your own claims. I don’t think this majority of people you say exists don’t see an equivalency there. ---
**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:** [January 28, 2018, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-associates-may-have-coordinated-with-russians-according-to-us-officials/782799/3696 "2018-01-28T06:10:45Z")
> [@Arizona\_Mike](#): > > By that same argument, Hillary or her agents purchased information illegally obtained from Russian co-opted intelligence sources, who were being co-opted by the FSB to create chaos in the U.S. system by your own claims. I don’t think this majority of people you say exists don’t see an equivalency there. I don’t know what illegally obtained information you are referring to? But, if the Clinton camp committed a crime or sought to do so, then they should go to jail. It’s a really easy set of logic. That’s why we use rule of law to organize things. Did you commit or try to commit a crime? If yes, go to jail. If you are Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, the law don’t care. You still go to jail. Do you have an issue with this set of logic, or believe that I do? ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2018, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-associates-may-have-coordinated-with-russians-according-to-us-officials/782799/3697 "2018-01-28T07:00:42Z")
> [@Arizona\_Mike](#): > > By your logic, the evil plutocrats no doubt think they do a stunning job of running Russia, so if they want to destabilize America why would they want a fellow evil plutocrat in charge? Why wouldn’t they want a woman who had no singular positive achievements as either a senator or a Secretary of State, and was primarily known for being a First Lady who normalized her husband’s rapacious sexual activities if they wanted to destabilize us? More unfounded pap: [https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/09/carly-fiorina-debate-hillary-clintons-greatest-accomplishment-213157](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/09/carly-fiorina-debate-hillary-clintons-greatest-accomplishment-213157) And on top of that, missing the point spectacularly. Read it again, I already pointed that the Russians did not care much who won as long as they figured how to divide America more, and you also totally ignore that a Russian plutocrat does not care much about a well run nation, as long as they take their I’ll gotten gains to launder elsewhere. Trump was the plutocrat they knew how to deal with. Meaning that the Russians are going for plan A. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Ace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/6bbea6/32.png) [@Johnny\_Ace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Ace)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2018, 7:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-associates-may-have-coordinated-with-russians-according-to-us-officials/782799/3698 "2018-01-28T07:11:35Z")
> [@Arizona\_Mike](#): > > Sure I do, as much as you claim to know the positions you hold. Really? You know for certain that Russian interference had no effect? Something else funny…it only seems to be those from the right side of the aisle who ever claim this, based on exactly as many cites as I have provided in this paragraph. > [@](#): > > If Zuckerberg is correct (per CNN), about one quarter of the 3,000 Russian-bought ads were targeted to specific geographic locations namely two (out of many) battleground states, Wisconsin and Michigan. Facebook said of the ads that were geographically targeted “more ran in 2015 than 2016.” Trump didn’t even declare his candidacy until June, 2015, and throughout most of 2015, he was considered an outsider, vastly underfunded, clownish candidate, through most of 2015, even 2016 - hell, until election night. Correction: outsider, clownish, and vastly underfunded up to now and into the foreseeable future. > [@](#): > > So you feel the Russians would devote considerable time and effort, not to mention _extreme political risk if uncovered_ - to try to sway the vote toward the least likely to win candidate? > > No. Not likely. > > What is likely is that they wanted to screw over Hillary (as I said) over her attempts to interfere in their own domestic elections, and probably the Marc Rich affair as well. But mostly the electoral collusion with the Russian opposition parties. Yet another unsubstantiated claim and Fox News talking point. Actually, three unsubstantiated claims. > [@](#): > > Not that I find anything wrong with what Hillary (and Obama’s) State Department did. Our intelligence agencies interfere in foreign elections - all - the -fucking - time, Ace. Just as foreign governments other than Russia do to our elections, although perhaps with less brio than the Russians. (How many foreign leaders made quite clear during the election that they favored Hillary over Trump?) > > And why are you surprised when, having interfered in Russian elections, we experienced a major case of Blowback? That’s what happens, routinely when intelligence operations turn sour. This one’s a straw man that has been dispensed with every time it’s brought up, and, believe me, you’re nowhere near the first. What does American interference in other elections have to do with Russian interference in ours? Is that some sort of justification for what the Russians did? Or maybe we should just roll over and let them do it again? The point is there is no point. It has nothing to do with anything but distraction. ---
**Author:** ![PatrickLondon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/patricklondon/32/4422_2.png) [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2018, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-associates-may-have-coordinated-with-russians-according-to-us-officials/782799/3699 "2018-01-28T14:20:27Z")
Doesn’t it also make a difference whether outside involvement is open/covert or the opposite? There was massive US intervention to persuade Italian voters against the Communists in 1947, but everyone knew what they were doing and why and how. ---
**Author:** ![Fubaya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c2a13f/32.png) [@Fubaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fubaya)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2018, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-associates-may-have-coordinated-with-russians-according-to-us-officials/782799/3700 "2018-01-28T15:24:04Z")
> [@Arizona\_Mike](#): > > By that same argument, Hillary or her agents purchased information illegally obtained from Russian co-opted intelligence sources, who were being co-opted by the FSB to create chaos in the U.S. system by your own claims. Wow, that’s a heck of a claim that needs about four separate cites. I can’t even follow the logic of who “Russian co-opted intelligence sources, who were being co-opted by the FSB” is referring to. Steele? His contacts? The phrase makes zero sense for either. Something that’s always overlooked is that the dossier wasn’t written for the Clinton campaign. There was a contract between Steele and Fusion GPS for him to ask around and report what people told him. It was surely assumed that the information Steele gave to Fusion GPS would be used in whatever product Fusion GPS was creating for their client, but that’s a completely different product created under a different contract between Fusion and the law firm working for the Clinton campaign. Is an American book that has footnotes from to a British book that quotes a Russian considered a foreign book? ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2018, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-associates-may-have-coordinated-with-russians-according-to-us-officials/782799/3701 "2018-01-28T18:38:32Z")
> [@Arizona\_Mike](#): > > …Did the Russians blackmail Bill Clinton into hamfistedly pushing his way onto Loretta Lynch’s jet at the Phoenix airport?.. Lets just take this one little nugget. What are you talking about? Did Horndog Bill bully his way onto that airplane? Why? If he wanted to send a message to Ms Lynch, he could call. They know maybe a thousand people who know each other, any of them could serve as a conduit for covert communication, if that’s what he wanted. Adding a dash of spice to your argument? A fertile, or febrile, imagination at play? “…Hamfistedly pushing his way…” Well, OK. Sez who? ---
**Author:** ![Aspenglow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspenglow/32/76_2.png) [@Aspenglow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspenglow)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2018, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-associates-may-have-coordinated-with-russians-according-to-us-officials/782799/3702 "2018-01-28T20:01:40Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > [Deutsche Bank: A Global Bank for Oligarchs — American and Russian, Part 1 - WhoWhatWhy](https://whowhatwhy.org/2018/01/08/deutsche-bank-global-bank-oligarchs-american-russian-part-1/) > [Deutsche Bank: A Global Bank for Oligarchs — American & Russian, Part 2 - WhoWhatWhy](https://whowhatwhy.org/2018/01/15/deutsche-bank-global-bank-oligarchs-american-russian-part-2/) These were great. I look forward to the third installment. Thanks for posting the links. ---
**Author:** ![drad\_dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@drad\_dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drad_dog)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2018, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-associates-may-have-coordinated-with-russians-according-to-us-officials/782799/3703 "2018-01-28T21:00:45Z")
How many people do you know who say “I don’t like trump, but I couldn’t vote for Hillary” And you said “Are you on Facebook” and they say “yeah so what?” For me it’s three. I don’t think “Evil Hillary,” and the refusal to have serious adult thoughts about greater threats to democracy than hillary, exists without facebook and the russians. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-associates-may-have-coordinated-with-russians-according-to-us-officials/782799.md?page=184) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-associates-may-have-coordinated-with-russians-according-to-us-officials/782799.md?page=186)