I’d love one of our resident Trump fans to explain the non-collusion reason that the sanctions on Russia, overwhelmingly passed by Congress, are not being implemented by the White House.
Congress has passed its sanctions. Now let them enforce them!
I’m not trying to suggest that Trump is not under investigation. What I’m wondering is whether Trump got involved with someone who was currently under investigation (Manafort and/or Paige) and gets pulled into the investigation due to increased scrutiny after the dossier appears.
You seem to think otherwise but I don’t have an ulterior motive here. I’m not suggesting a link between Manafort and Clinton. My point is that the FBI is investigating Manafort for his dealings with the Podesta group before he was involved with the Trump campaign. The question I’m asking is whether Trump would have been investigated in the absence of the dossier. Was an investigation into Trump’s dealings with the Russians already underway before the dossier appears or does the investigation start afterwards?
I’m assuming that any dealings with Manafort would have caused the FBI to at least take a close look at Trump but I wonder if they are acting on unverified information obtained from a political oppo research piece paid for by his opponent in the election.
Maybe Putin really does have that pee pee tape 
Not likely, in my opinion. Both Manafort and Trump have ties to Russia that go back decades. Their own relationship dates back to the 80s. Manafort’s residence in Trump Tower was one floor down from Trump’s, and I’ve read various accounts of a very active back stair relationship between the two men, one based on hacked texts between Manafort’s two daughters, among others. Hack of Manafort’s daughters’ texts - Politico
The link I referenced is an interesting read.
I seriously doubt Trump’s involvement with Manafort was unwitting or inadvertent. YMMV, obviously.
I apologize if you feel I’ve attributed an ulterior motive to you. I haven’t. But I’m accustomed here to having my words misconstrued here in very unfavorable and unflattering ways, so that might come through. Again, I’m sorry if I made you feel that way.
Yes,Trump was already under investigation before the dossier showed up, and would have been investigated with or without ties to Manafort.
As has already been stated in this thread, the opposition research was paid for originally by an unknown Republican opponent in the Republican primary, not originally financed by the Dems. When Trump became the nominee, the Republican opponent dropped it. At that point, Dems understandably picked it up for their own opposition research. They were the opposition, so that shouldn’t be surprising. The Dems stopped paying for it in October 2016. Christopher Steele then went on to provide his work on the dossier gratis.
As I earlier said, there are only three categories into which the information contained in the dossier can go. Verified, unverified, and false. So far, all information has either been verified or remains unverified. To date, there is no known false information contained in the dossier. So why does it matter who paid for the dossier, which was merely a compendium of raw intelligence? I’m sure the FBI brought healthy skepticism to their examination of it.
Yes, you do keep saying this. But it’s a statement with very little value which is only correct if you squint at it from a certain angles.
[ol]
[li]Firstly, there have been many glaring mistakes in that dossier, which were commented on by the news media at the time. I suppose what you’re angling for is that the central and more substantive accusations have not been disproven, which is a lesser claim as regards what it says about the overall validity of the dossier.[/li][li]Second, we don’t really know what’s been disproved and shown to be false, since we’re not privy to what those investigating it may have found out. There may be quite a lot along those lines, for all we know.[/li][li]Third, what’s known to be false is frequently a subjective judgment and when a Trump-hating fanatic concludes that something is not known to be false, then that doesn’t say much. (E.g. all the evidence suggests that the dossier’s accusation that Trump-lawyer Cohen met with Russian officials in Prague is almost certainly false. But if you’re willing to believe that Cohen for some reason flew to a different European country and then travelled by land to Prague such that it wouldn’t show up on his passport, and if you jiggle the timeline a bit, then perhaps you can believe it. If you want to.)[/li][li]Fourth, very little of the dossier has been verified, and what has been is things that are - and were - known from other sources. To my knowledge there is little or nothing substantive which was initially gleaned from the dossier alone which turned out to be true.[/li][li]In general, the type of reasoning you employ here is illogical. No one is claiming that the entire dossier is completely concocted out of thin air. It’s well known that Steele has a good reputation and is a man with contacts in Russia. The issue is rather that he was passing along second and third hand info from anonymous paid informants. It’s the nature of this type of info that some of it is true and most is not, and that the more sensation type of info will generally fall into the latter category. Much like office gossip, which is what it most closely resembles. If responsible authorities investigating a serious matter heard some office gossip it would be worthwhile to investigate it, but it would be very silly for people to say - in parallel to what you’re doing - “some of the office gossip turned out to be true and none has conclusively turned out to be false so therefore all office gossip should be accepted at face value”.[/li][/ol]
FWIW, here’s Newsweek on Thirteen Things That Don’t Add Up in the Russia-Trump Intelligence Dossier
James Clapper: ‘Doesn’t Matter’ Who Paid For Dossier If It’s True
Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt. You were saying?
The same excellent point GrandWino made in his post #2670 that I originally QFT in post #2672. Thank you for making it again.
The dossier is useful only to the extent it is shown to be true. Otherwise, it’s just a rabbit hole for Trump supporters to try and distract from the very serious issues at hand: Russian interference in our elections, aided by the Trump campaign, meaning Trump himself.
Of far more importance is the link provided in FiveYearLurker’s post #2676: Trump Campaign Tried to Team Up with Julian Assange of WikiLeaks - Daily Beast
If true, that’s a provable attempt to conspire with a foreign agent to influence our elections, and demonstrates an intent to do just that.
(For those following along on the Steele dossier, please refer to Detail referenced on pages 10-11. I hope Mr. Steele didn’t misspell WikiLeaks, because that would invalidate the entire dossier!)
This seems like a rhetorical device to let you have the best of both worlds, and avoid being accused of overplaying your hand vis a vis the dossier.
Harp on the dossier non-stop, and if there’s something to it then it’s “useful” and all for the best, but if it doesn’t pan out then hey it’s “just a rabbit hole for Trump supporters …” and everyone who doesn’t want to be thus branded should cease talking about it (and turn attention to other more promising bases for anti-Trump CT speculation).
If I recall correctly, Cohen is said to have gone to some meeting in Europe, according to the Dossier, but unless he has a second passport under a false identity, this is verifiably false.
As has been noted, the Dossier is “raw Intel” - which is to say, gossip. It is valuable to intelligence officers as a set of things to investigate.
What is of value to us is the output of said investigation. Mueller’s findings and things which are otherwise confirmed to be true are what are worth something. Things which are verified, regardless of where they come from or what percentile of the original source proved true/false, has no bearing on the things which were proved true. True things are true. A text on the flat Earth theory - I.e. a verifiably wrong theory - doesn’t make the Earth stop existing because the work accepts the existence of the Earth.
Overall, you all are free to debate all you want but I suspect that there’s no value doing so unless you want to discuss specific claims in the original document rather than trying to cover the document as a lump sum.
The dossier had him in the Czech Republic in August. His passport has him in Italy in mid July. One doesn’t need a passport stamp to go from Italy to the Czech Republic because they’re both part of the EU. He could easily have been in the Czech Republic during that time frame only a few weeks earlier than the dossier suggests, and his passport wouldn’t look any different than it does.
Not saying this is what happened. But, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Right. But - as observed earlier - that’s why it’s invalid to make a big deal about the supposed notion that “To date, there is no known false information contained in the dossier.” Because even if it were true, it would only be so by means of this type of creative thinking, which renders it meaningless.
Not sure that figuring out a very simple way to attend a clandestine meeting without getting your passport stamped counts as “creative thinking”.
No, it does not render it meaningless, you just want people to think that because all you care about is deflection and obfuscation.
I don’t care if you respond, I just want anyone that’s reading the thread to have another reminder that you’re just carrying water for Trump for the entirety of this thread. No matter what comes out or what happens, doesn’t matter.
What made it veritably false? I hope you’re not referring to what Cohen himself offered as proof… A photo of the OUTSIDE of his passport.
You need to keep up.
nm oops
Where does that passport say that he didn’t enter thru italy, where he was, into czech? Would they have stamped his passport at the border? My understanding is that they would not have.
Which, again, proves nothing about whether he went to the Czech Republic.
And, again, any guess why those Russian sanctions, passed by Congress overwhelmingly, are being ignored? Any reasonable explanation for it?
I mentioned the possibility that he went through another country back in post #2686. At this point I was just commenting on GW’s triumphant claim that Cohen had only shown the outside of his passport.