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~~The Mueller Investigation: Season 2~~


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7 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

I can confirm that 35X at DCA is the worst gate at any US airport.

 

I can confirm Mueller seems to be handling this shitty gate like a goddamn pro and Don Jr. looks like he's calling airlines to whine like a baby about why there aren't sexy stewardesses he can perv on (recently divorced!) at all times on all planes. :p 

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14 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

I can confirm that 35X at DCA is the worst gate at any US airport.

 

I can also confirm. It's doubly awful because if you're using it there's a very high probability you're flying somewhere fucking terrible like Alabama so you have to sit there knowing it's not like your misery is any closer to ending once you get on the plane.

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1 hour ago, CitizenVectron said:

Trump's defense has entered the end-game: Yeah maybe there was collusion, but there is no law against that:

 

 

I'll admit, what pisses me off the most about this tweet is not necessarily Giuliani's idiotic comments. That's par for the course. 

 

It's the fact that it has a Play button on it but it isn't a goddamn video! :angry:

 

 

 

:p 

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Looks like this is coordinated: http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/conservatives-start-suggesting-colluding-russia-isnt-so-bad

 

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How do you know when the seriousness of the Russia scandal has intensified? When Donald Trump’s allies discover it’s time to move the goal posts again.

Take, for example, National Review’s Andrew McCarthy arguing on Fox News last week that there’s nothing necessarily wrong with the president’s political operation possibly having turned to a foreign adversary to help win an American election.

 

“Look, I don’t think that it’s bad if campaigns are turning to foreign governments for dirt. It’s not collusion, it’s not something that’s impeachable, it’s icky. But that’s what this is.”

A day later, The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway wrote, “I don’t have a problem [with] getting dirt on election opponents from foreigners.” She added that relying on the Steele dossier is effectively the same thing.

 

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson quickly endorsed the line, telling his viewers, “Nobody is claiming that any information changed hands, though, even if it did, so what?” [Update: Rudy Giuliani went even further this morning. See below.]

 

This may have been inevitable, but that doesn’t make the new talking point any less pitiful.

 

First, if receiving campaign assistance from foreign adversaries is perfectly kosher, why has Trump invested so much time and energy lying about it? If the underlying accusation is effectively meaningless, why didn’t the president adopt this line months ago?

 

Second, those who constantly feel the need to move the goalposts are nearly always the folks losing an argument. The original line from Trump World and its allies was that Russia didn’t attack our elections. The evolution soon followed: OK, maybe Russia did attack, but the Trump campaign wasn’t in communication with our adversaries during their attack. OK, maybe they were in communication, but their talks had nothing to do with the campaign. OK, maybe Team Trump did talk to our adversaries about the campaign during their attack, but is that really so bad?

 

 

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As for the comparison between the Steele dossier and the Russian attack, this is so embarrassingly weak, I’m a little surprised the right would take the line seriously. There’s a qualitative difference between a research firm relying on sources to put together an oppo report and a foreign government using military intelligence officers to illegally steal materials and weaponize them in the hopes of putting an ally in power.

 

Those who see these two activities as identical simply are either deeply confused or they aren’t arguing in good faith.

 

Update: Though the line from Trump World for months has been that there was “no collusion,” as the Washington Post reported, Rudy Giuliani adopteda very different posture this morning. “I don’t even know if that’s a crime — colluding with Russians,” Giuliani said on CNN. “Hacking is the crime. The president didn’t hack. He didn’t pay for the hacking.”

 

He added on Fox: “I have been sitting here looking in the federal code trying to find collusion as a crime. Collusion is not a crime.”

 

Pretty soon the lines will be "better a traitor than a liberal," and "I'm glad the Russians interfered and stopped Clinton!"

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2 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

Has anyone actually, definitively provided an answer as to whether "collusion" (as opposed to "conspiracy") is a crime?

 

It's just semantics, is it not?  It's like saying "drinking and driving" is not a crime, therefor my client isn't guilty of it. But it is possible he is guilty of driving under the influence of intoxicants.

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5 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

Has anyone actually, definitively provided an answer as to whether "collusion" (as opposed to "conspiracy") is a crime?

 

When the topic at hand concerns stolen materials and security breaches, that seems like a distinction without a difference.

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Just now, Chris- said:

When the topic at hand concerns stolen materials and security breaches, that seems like a distinction without a difference.

 

It seems like it doesn't even matter that it involved foreign nationals. It seems like Trumpworld is panicking over a pretty basic combination of this very-probable-seeming combination of facts: Trump knew about the meeting beforehand, and Trump knew that the purpose of the meeting was to obtain stolen documents. IANAL but I'm pretty sure that's literally all you need to rope in co-conspirators on RICO charges.

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Also, regarding how the specific word "collusion" entered the conversation: https://www.lawfareblog.com/where-heck-did-term-collusion-come

 

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On July 22, 2016, Wikileaks released more than 19,000 emails from top members of the Democratic National Committee. Two days after the release, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook told CNN that, according to “experts,” Russian state actors had stolen the emails from the DNC and were releasing them through Wikileaks “for the purpose of actually helping Donald Trump.” 

 

Mook did not use the word “collusion,” but the press, in reporting his comments, did. Within the hour, in an article timestamped at 9:55 a.m., the Washington Examiner reported that Paul Manafort and Donald Trump Jr, had responded to Mook’s allegations and “vigorously denied any kind of collusion between Trump Sr. and the Russian president.” (To be clear, Manafort denied “any ties” between Putin and the Trump campaign, and Donald Trump Jr. criticized Mook for “lie after lie.” Neither one of them mentioned “collusion.”) Ninety minutes later, at 11:27 a.m., ABC News repeated what it termed Mook’s “allegation of collusion between the campaign and Russia.” And three hours later, at approximately 12:35 p.m., Bernie Sanders’s campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, told CNN’s Jake Tapper, “If there was some kind of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence or Russian hackers, that clearly has to be dealt with.”

 

From there it was off to the races. Over the next two weeks, the word “collusion” was used hundreds of times by politicians like Martin O’Malley and media personalities such as Trevor Noah.

 

The term caught on, I think, because it captured the general suspicion that the campaign was somehow in on the hack or knowingly benefiting from it while carefully eliding the fact that no tangible evidence had yet emerged tying the Trump campaign to the Kremlin. (Remember that news of the Trump Tower meeting and other contacts between the campaign and Russian actors had not yet become public.)

 

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1 hour ago, CitizenVectron said:

Looks like this is coordinated: http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/conservatives-start-suggesting-colluding-russia-isnt-so-bad

 

 

 

Pretty soon the lines will be "better a traitor than a liberal," and "I'm glad the Russians interfered and stopped Clinton!"

 

That's actually already started amongst hardcore Trump supporters... remember Putin's approval ratings have gone UP in the Republican party.

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I understood it to be a Constitutional issue.

 

And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

 

But there's plenty of weaseling one can do with how that's phrased.

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Remember when Giuliani walked back his insistence that Trump did not pressure Comey to take it easy on Flynn in the past few days? It might be because Mueller now has a WH memo and testimony indicating that that is exactly what Trump did: https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/07/31/what-trump-knew-and-when-he-knew-it/

 

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Previously undisclosed evidence in the possession of Special Counsel Robert Mueller—including highly confidential White House records and testimony by some of President Trump’s own top aides—provides some of the strongest evidence to date implicating the president of the United States in an obstruction of justice. Several people who have reviewed a portion of this evidence say that, based on what they know, they believe it is now all but inevitable that the special counsel will complete a confidential report presenting evidence that President Trump violated the law. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the special counsel’s work, would then decide on turning over that report to Congress for the House of Representatives to consider whether to instigate impeachment proceedings.

 

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I have learned that a confidential White House memorandum, which is in the special counsel’s possession, explicitly states that when Trump pressured Comey he had just been told by two of his top aides—his then chief of staff Reince Priebus and his White House counsel Don McGahn—that Flynn was under criminal investigation. This memo, the existence of which I first disclosed in December in Foreign Policy, was, as one source described it to me, “a timeline of events [in the White House] leading up to Flynn’s resignation.” It was dated February 15, 2017, and was prepared by McGahn two days after Flynn’s forced resignation and one day after Trump’s meeting with Comey.

 

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During my reporting, I was allowed to read the memo in its entirety, as well as other, underlying White House records quoted in the memo, such as notes and memos written by McGahn and other senior administration officials. My reporting for this story is also based on interviews with a dozen former and current White House officials, attorneys who have interacted with Mueller’s team of investigators, and witnesses questioned by Mueller’s investigators.

 

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The memo’s own statement that Trump was indeed told that Flynn was under FBI investigation was, in turn, based in part on contemporaneous notes written by Reince Priebus after discussing the matter with the president, as well as McGahn’s recollections to his staff about what he personally had told Trump, according to other records I was able to review. Moreover, people familiar with the matter have told me that both Priebus and McGahn have confirmed in separate interviews with the special counsel that they had told Trump that Flynn was under investigation by the FBI before he met with Comey.

 

Trump's lawyers have previously denied that Trump knew that Flynn was under investigation at the time that he instructed Comey to go easy on him, and that Flynn had lied to the FBI.

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