House Democrats' Counter-Memo Released, Alleging Major Factual Inaccuracies (vox.com) 211
Long-time Slashdot reader Rei writes: Three weeks ago, on a party-line vote, the U.S. House Intelligence Committee voted to release a memo from committee chair and Trump transition team member Devin Nunes. The "Nunes Memo" alleged missteps by the FBI in seeking a FISA warrant against Trump aide Carter Page; a corresponding Democratic rebuttal memo was first blocked from simultaneous release by the committee, and subsequently the White House. Tonight, it has finally been released.
Among its many counterclaims: the Steele Dossier, only received in September, did not initiate surveilance of Page which began in July; the Steele dossier was only one, minor component of the FISA application, and only concerning Page's Moscow meetings; Steele's funding source and termination was disclosed in the application; and a number of other "distortions and misrepresentations that are contradicted by the underlying classified documents". Perhaps most seriously, it accuses Nunes of having never read the FISA application which his memo criticized.
Vox argues the memo proves that no one was misled when the surveillance was authorized. "The FBI clearly states right there in the FISA application that they believe Steele was hired to find dirt on Trump... After the Schiff memo was released on Saturday, House Republicans released a document rebutting its core claims. Their response to this damning citation is -- and I am not making this up -- that the vital line in which the FBI discloses the information about Steele was 'buried in a footnote.'"
Among its many counterclaims: the Steele Dossier, only received in September, did not initiate surveilance of Page which began in July; the Steele dossier was only one, minor component of the FISA application, and only concerning Page's Moscow meetings; Steele's funding source and termination was disclosed in the application; and a number of other "distortions and misrepresentations that are contradicted by the underlying classified documents". Perhaps most seriously, it accuses Nunes of having never read the FISA application which his memo criticized.
Vox argues the memo proves that no one was misled when the surveillance was authorized. "The FBI clearly states right there in the FISA application that they believe Steele was hired to find dirt on Trump... After the Schiff memo was released on Saturday, House Republicans released a document rebutting its core claims. Their response to this damning citation is -- and I am not making this up -- that the vital line in which the FBI discloses the information about Steele was 'buried in a footnote.'"
How is this news for nerds? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is political mudslinging, not news for nerds.
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Political mudslinging is news for nerds now.
Just go to Gizmodo.com if you don't believe me. For a tech blog it seems like every other blog post is a "I Hate Donald Trump" Story,
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The news for nerds is that the normies/pod-people are really, really illogical.
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At this point, everything seems to have been infected by the cancer of politics/social justice/etc.
It has infected even once sacrosanct common-ground pastimes like comic books, sports, videogames, etc. You can't even watch a football game anymore without some sports commentator or athlete jumping in to tell you how they feel about Donald Trump or the latest social cause of the week. You can't read a comic book where the lead character doesn't remind you on every other page they they're a strong lesbian-lati
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We get it - you are scared of people around you, and want a safe space where your preconceptions of the world are not challenged, and you can turn a blind eye to systematic failures of a society which purports to be perfect.
You poor little snowflake.
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That's the sad part about this whole thing: this is the Legislative branch, exercising its oversight of the FISA court which it established. They found abuses; they are now addressing those abuses. That the Executive branch is resisting tooth and nail and telling the Legislative branch that they are not under democratic control, that is the real scandal here. The attitude seems to be, "We'll do whatever the hell we want, and if you try to tell us no, we have six ways from Sunday of getting back at you."
I can't see a single thing in that reply that merits inclusion on a "news for nerds" tech site, or in the original article for that matter.
Re: How is this news for nerds? (Score:1, Informative)
The dossier was initiated and paid for by Republicans as part of their opposition research. After Trump won the nomination Republicans dropped it. Then Democrats started funding it as part of their opposition research. Digging up dirt on your opponent normal and unremarkable. The results of that research were the only thing noteworthy.
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Negative, that is fake news. Fusion GPS was contacted by a GOP member (Washington Free Beacon) for opposition research. The Steele Dossier was separate. There were two separate work contracts for Fusion GPS. The media / DNC are pushing that narrative, but it's flat out wrong. The GOP didn't ask for the Steele Dossier, they asked for separate Opposition Research. The DNC / HRC campaign started the Steele Dossier.
Robert Mueller found such strong evidence of Trump colluding with Russia that he decided to chas
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Did you actually bother to read the memo? If Congress approved a war based upon a paragraph and a couple of bullet points, the failure of oversight again, falls on the Congress.
The are Article One in the Republic.
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All right all right, I'll adapt the parent's claim just for you: "The research conducted for the dossier was initiated and paid for by Republicans as part of their opposition research." Really though, you should be able to figure this stuff out for yourself.
Re:How is this news for nerds? (Score:4, Informative)
The DNC/Clinton machine paid for the Steele Dossier which was used as justification for FISA warrant to spy on the opposition campaign.
It was used as a supporting piece of evidence, not the entire basis for the warrant request.
Hillary masked her purchase through two legal proxies (one of whom pled the fifth in a deposition) and hired a foreign spy as part of gathering the intel.
A foreign spy as in a formally recognized British expert in Russian affairs? Maybe she should have hired some guy named Curveball?
This is big stuff, Watergate big, I mean using Oppo Research to spy on people in the middle of an election. Watergate was just a third-rate burglary. This is 50 times what that was.
Bullshit.
Nothing about this warrant allowed for the spying of the Trump campaign and I would appreciate it if you would stop making shit up. As to this being worse than Watergate, it's pretty obvious that you have no idea what you're talking about. Watergate wasn't a "third-rate burglary" it was a clandestine operation meant to steal the opposition's plans as well as bug the Democratic Party's headquarters - but if you need to bend the facts to make your case, the truth isn't going to stop you.
This is no longer some pie-in-the-sky conspiracy. There is massive evidence, including statements from the co-conspirators, that highlights this exact operation in detail.
And yet, you supply nothing to support this conspiracy theory. Imagine that!
It is almost certain that the FBI used the dossier to get FISA court warrants to spy on Trump associates, meaning it used the opposition research of the party in power to convince a court to let it spy on the candidate of the other party - likely without telling the court of the dossier's political link.
More bullshit.
It not almost certain or any other kind of certain that this warrant was used to spy on the Trump campaign. The truth is, once Flynn was caught speaking to the Russian ambassador and discussing a quid pro quo deal, tapping the Trump phone lines became a legal and responsible action for law enforcement to take.
This goes well beyond basic criminality. We're getting into serious sedition, high crimes, and treason territory here.
Agreed, once Flynn promised the Russians he would get the sanctions lifted in return, for (what did he get again?) we passed the threshold to hit sedition, high crimes, and treason. Making a deal with the "Empire of evil" to influence an American election is treason of the highest order.
The FBI and NSA aren't "accidentally losing" hundreds of text messages and emails because nothing is at stake.
Keep flinging the bullshit, comrade, none of it is sticking to the wall. Even better, Mueller is closing the noose.
Did you know Manafort worked for the Podesta Group in helping seal up the Uranium One deal, and the Podestas worked directly with the Russian government to do it?
How about we let the liberals at Fox News [youtube.com] explain the Uranium One deal to you before you embarrass yourself any further.
Re:How is this news for nerds? (Score:4, Informative)
Steele Dossier which was used as justification for FISA warrant to spy on the opposition campaign
As has been publish widely but you choose to ignore, there was other justification, specifically George Papadopoulos's drunken leak and the fact that carter page himself bragging that he was an advisor to the Kremlin. [time.com]
It would be a dereliction of duty for the FBI to not spy on a political campaign that is a riddled with Russian intermediaries as this one. We don't even have all the facts yet and we've had 3 people plead guilty to lying to the FBI about these Russian contacts, including the deputy campaign chairman and the man who became the national security advisor. The campaign chairman is up to his eyeballs in debt to a Russian oligarch.
However, there may be something to this Uranium one thing, we'll see.
Also, I believe they found those missing texts.
Yay! Political junk talk on Slashdot (Score:1, Insightful)
This isn't news for nerds, nor stuff that matters.
There isn't even a "right" or "wrong". It's just political junk talk for people who are into that sort of thing.
Total rubbish. Even a crappy Google or Bitcoin article would be better than this horse plop.
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This is political mudslinging, not news for nerds.
Oh, there is a lot that nerds, especially non-US ones can learn from this . . . "news".
I hate to use the word "news" these days, because doing immediately implies that it is fake. There is no "real" news these days. Everything is adulterated by political disinformation campaigns to the point of being useless. If you tossed current news stories into an AI box trained to identify news as "fake" or "real" . . . the AI box would respond with a twist on the Wolfang Pauli quote:
"That's not "real" news! It'
Daily Kos (a.k.a. Vox) mudslinging (Score:2, Informative)
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Ad hominem. Try to attack the news, not the person giving it. If it's so biased and broken as you claim, that should be easy.
Neither memo should be released (Score:1)
1. Nunes Mk II memo (he tried the same thing this time last year) tipped off the Moscow spies as to the dates of the warrants for their surveillance. He did this right before indictments, and clearly was politically trying to save Trump. That memo should never have been released.
2. Democrats releasing the contradictory information, what did they expect? Of course Trump would redact it to bits to cover his ass. Again it should never have been released.
What should happen now is a FISA warrant should be issued
it accuses Nunes of having never read the FISA app (Score:5, Funny)
Nunes never read the referenced document? I wonder if Nunes is a slashdot poster.
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You mean this Trey Gowdy [politico.com]?
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Before now, I’ve strongly disliked Nunez - but now I’m warming to him a little.
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You didn’t read my sig, I take it. Oh well, it’s a bad joke if it has to be explained...
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Yes, the FBI, that famously Democratic institution (pop quiz: identify the last Democratic director of the FBI). Getting their warrant signed off by four judges - two appointed by George W. Bush, one by George H.W. Bush, and one by Reagan, in that bastion of li
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That is just misdirection Nunes was part of a committee, they could only pick one guy to read it and the committee decided the best guy to read it, he then analysed it for the committee.
Gowdy was the only republican to read the FISA applications. IOW Gowdy is the only source Nunes has for his claims. Gowdy does not assert the same claims as Nunes' memo.
So Nunes asserts claims for which he has no source. Claims that have now been refuted by actual facts.
They played a game of semantics. The Nunes memo claimed that the FISA court has not been informed that the Clinton campaign was (part of) the funding behind the research that led to the Steele dossier.
That is technically correct. Only now we
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Once again GOP cherry picks and distorts the facts (Score:1, Insightful)
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Replying to myself to add:
Case in point: a point by point rebuttal of the Democrat memo by the House Intelligence Committee: https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/democrat_memo_charge_and_response.pdf
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Actually, as far as I can tell both memos are factual. The Nunes memo is simply playing games around the facts. It claimed that the FISA court was not notified that the dossier had been prepared by Steele, working for Fusion GPS, to dig up dirt on Republicans. The Democrat memo claims that the FBI redacted actual names and used arbitrary designations, and disclosed everything relevant that way. The Nunes memo also claims that a certain news article didn't corroborate the dossier, and never actually cla
Re:Sounds like old news to me. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah. It's almost as if the President was obstructing the release of information from one side in a corrupt attempt at self-preservation.
#MAGA
Mueller Ain't Goin' Away
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Are you honestly trying to say that Schiff, who is the ranking democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, wouldn't know exactly what type of information would get redacted? Pull the other one, it's got bells on. If the redacted information was information that shouldn't have been redacted Schiffy would be howling from the rooftops about the redactions. He's not, which means every piece of redacted info in that memo which he demanded be released was there solely to provide cover for useful idiots like you
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I don't really get this (btw I'm not a US citizen). Is it just because you don't like the decisions he makes? Or is it because he doesn't act as bureaucratic as the typical candidate? The way I see it is he bullshits as much as any other politician, but I feel far more confident when Trump says something that he isn't straight up lyi
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Maybe because he's dangerous and not doing anything with any competence? It's not a question of even liking his position or not - he can't keep his position straight over the course of hours, let alone a presidency.
The glee is in seeing a dangerous idiot who campaigned to be not corrupt being nailed to the wall by the corruption they encourage.
Judging by the memos, it seems the republicans are hell-bent on misrepresenting what happened. The judges involved are all right-leaning and appointed by republican
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Further: Even if they included Page's response to Steele's leaks published by Yahoo instead of using the Yahoo to corroborate Steele ( someone RTFM for me...is that part of the GOP claim rebutted?) that's still smells like fruit of the forbidden tree to me. If the cops are investigating you for something and leak to the press that you've done all sorts of crazy shit, then use your public denials as grounds for a warrant to search your house...that wouldn't hold water at trial, would it?
From page 7 of the Democratic memo (emphasis in the original):
In its Court filings, DOJ made proper use of news coverage. The Majority falsely claims that the FISA materials "relied heavily" on a September 23, 2016 Yahoo! News article by Michael Isikoff and that this article "does not corroborate the Steele Dossier because it is derived from information leaked by Steele himself." In fact, DOJ referenced Isikoff's article, alongside another article the Majority fails to mention, not to provide separate corroboration for Steele's reporting, but instead to inform the Court of Page's public denial of his suspected meetings in Moscow, which Page also echoed in a September 25, 2016 letter to FBI Director Comey. [remainder of paragraph is redacted.]
It was Steele, not the FBI or DOJ, who leaked Page's story to the press. Steele was fired by the FBI in October 2016 because of that. Is any subsequent investigation of Page fruit from a poison tree? I'd say no. Keep in mind that Page had been on the FBI's radar (and in FISA warrants) for a long time before Steele leaked anything to the press.
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Is any subsequent investigation of Page fruit from a poison tree? I'd say no.
If I were playing devil's advocate, I might press against that point. If Page's letter is dated Sept 25 in reply to a published news article dated Sept 23, then you could make the case the letter and the article are one and the same. Meaning Steele leaked, and Page denied once in public and once in the letter. We'd need the full FISA filing to understanding the reasoning for seeking the warrant and the extent to which public denials triggered by the leak that wasn't known to originate from the dossier was a
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I see where you're going with this, but I think your argument depends entirely on whether the granting of the FISA renewal was because of Page's denial of the Moscow meetings. I think it's pretty clear it wasn't -- the DOJ simply disclosed it, without making it part of their argument for the warrant. Besides, it doesn't pass the smell-test. How could a denial of an activity possibly be grounds for investigating someone about it?
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So like I said...that part's not as bad as Nunes pumped it up to be, but the Dems aren't exactly knocking it out of the park in the other direction from what I see. The next point is noted som
Re: Sounds like old news to me. (Score:2)
Re: Sounds like old news to me. (Score:2)
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The wiretapping was based on legal warrants, and predated the mention of the Steele dossier. There's no way Page is going to be able to overturn those warrants, so the wiretapping evidence is admissible.
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Why is this such an issue now, though? Where were all these shrill voices proclaiming this guy's innocence when others were in front of these courts? It seems rather convenient to decry the system when "your guy" is being hammered by it.
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I wish they'd back off the Russia stuff (Score:2, Informative)
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Clintonâ(TM)s team spent a whopping $1 billion on the election in all â" about twice what Donald Trumpâ(TM)s campaign spent. Clinton spent $72 million on television ads in the final weeks alone
Next time she should hire those Russians who apparently spend $100K on FB ads which swung the election. She'd save 99.9% of her cash and additionally have won the election instead of losing it.
If the Dems are interested I'll set up a call with my buddy Subtle Dmitri and he'll hand over his entire arsenal of social media memes.
Including "Buff Bernie", "Satan : I win if Clinton wins, Jesus : not if I can help it" and "Not My President"
http://www.nydailynews.com/new... [nydailynews.com]
Actually it looks like the Dems are alread
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The DNC claim they told her those states were competitive and she ignored them
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
I guess in lieu of agreement on that both she and they have decided to blame it on Russia.
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She didn't "ignore" them, it was quite deliberate. One of the themes that emerges from Shattered (the book of the Clinton campaign) is that the Clinton operation didn't want to make a strong play for working-class white voters in swing states. The Clintonites thought these voters were disposable.
Leftist whites wanted to be rid of the culturally conservative, economically liberal, working-class white voters whom Democrats had always represented. Upper-middle-class whites were embarrassed by these people.
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That's an interesting idea but I honestly don't think Hillary is as smart as that. She badly wanted to be POTUS and if she could have sucked up to those working class white voters to get elected and then shafted them once she was in power she'd have done it.
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https://www.washingtontimes.co... [washingtontimes.com]
For reasons yet to be explained, she chose to put her campaign into the hands of a youngish technocrat, appropriately named Mook, whose faith lay in "data analytics," and whose computer-generated analyses apparently helped convince her that her victory depended on appealing primarily to several distinct constituencies - women, blacks, academics and gender-challenged people.
As for the deplorables, those white working men and women once thought of by Democrats as the heart and sinew of their party, they could be taken for granted; and despite warnings from seasoned politicians like her husband, who read the volatile national political mood, they were.
There's a horrible plausibility to this.
Trump wishes that, too. As do the Russians (nt) (Score:3)
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Maybe this will cheer you up. The Russians are brining back political commisars. [realcleardefense.com]
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The Democrats gutted welfare at the same time they exploded the prison population, called black people 'super predators', at the same time they did NAFTA. Then they deregulated Wall Street, which crashed the economy within 10 years. That's what Democrats did. Democrats did things that Ronald Reagan could only dream about, in his wet dreams. George HW Bush couldn't pass NAFTA. It took Bill Clinton to do it. Bill Clinton gave the cover to the other corporate Democrats to go along with it. That was the be
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At the time NAFTA was put in place, the Republicans held both houses of congress with a veto-proof supermajority. Strike one!
AC, you whiffed it yourself. NAFTA was passed in November 1993 [wikipedia.org]. That was the 103rd Congress, and it was held firmly by the Democrats [wikipedia.org]. In fact, the "GOP revolution" in 1995 was partly because of NAFTA passage. You're flat-out wrong, Bill Clinton had a strong majority of DEMOCRATS controlling the Senate and House, and NAFTA sailed through with their support. I won't even get into your claim about "veto-proof supermajority" which hasn't existed in Congress for decades.
The Democrats deregulated Wall Street? Seriously? Man, you are so full of it that not even the Russians would pay you to post that level of bullshit. Strike two!
Second whiff again, AC! Over 75% of [wikipedia.org]
Re:I wish they'd back off the Russia stuff (Score:5, Insightful)
and do more actual policy. The right wing corporate Dems seem to be trying to use this to try and win voters back without actually implementing populist policy (Medicare for All, universal college, a New New Deal, $15 min wage, ending the 8 wars, etc, etc). It's not going to work. Maybe if they were as good a fearmongering as the Republicans are, but they're not. Instead we're gonna get another 4 years of Trump + Republican Congress. Probably another big market crash out of all the deregulation that's going on right now.
The problem is ignoring the Russia stuff meant that Russia was able to wage a largely unopposed disinformation and propaganda campaign during the US election. And they potentially even colluded with and compromised members of the current administration.
The Dems need to expose and confront the Russian activities, especially since the GOP is more likely to cover it up than risk losing an election.
Trump won for two reasons. First, Hilary took victory for granted and didn't campaign in the swing states (she always was an arrogant bitch).
No argument that Clinton was a terrible campaigner but the two major email hacks (not to mention all the astroturfing) almost certainly had a large effect relative to the margin of victory.
But moreoever Trump ran as a left wing populist. He promised Health Care for all, Jobs for all, good pay for all. He promised the government wouldn't just stand idle while the working class got slapped around by the Invisible Hand. Sure, he lied through his teeth.
And if it weren't for the massive Russian smear campaign voters might have cared about the fact he was obviously lying.
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I am sick of Russia crap, I think most people are sick of it. Also if the Dems win and get 60 seats they would impeach Trump, they just need to get the numbers they would decide what to impeach him for after the vote.
They seem to have lost having any identity that is not just Anti Trump.
Trump is Arrogant, rude, speaks his mind, and wrong on pl
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Sane constitutionalist Supreme Court Justice
Gorsich isn't horrible, and I'll give Trump props for choosing a person for a position who ISN'T riddled with corruption and impropriety for once.
lowest unemployment in half century
Which has nothing to do with Trump, and continues the trend from the Obama administration. I swear, ultra-Trump-loyalists seem to paint the economy of 2016 as a hellhole.
the defeat of ISIS
This happened under Obama's watch, thank you. ISIS had lost the vast majority of the territory before Trump's 2017 inauguration.
a stock market boon that benefits all
Again, look at a graph over time of the stock market. Notice a huge
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So a Supreme court Justice and a tax break. You must be happy.
I'm not so happy with the tax break, because it's a giveaway with no revenue. It sure as hell isn't paying for itself, it's just a cost being passed to our kids, just like we're paying off the excesses of 30 years ago. I can't believe I appreciate the 'tax and spend' label given to the Democrats, because the current Republican mantra is "spend and go into debt." Seems like you get a shit sandwich with either.
I would add to that list Recognizing Jerusalem as the capital.
I would not. He got absolutely nothing for it. We get a ton of blowback, but they guy didn't get any
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i'd say on the jerusalem thing... what we got out of it is that the world didn't end. the arab world didn't explode into violence. it was recognition of the reality on the ground, and the reality was that nobody fucking cared if the US recognized jerusalem or not, not our allies, and barely a peep out of our enemies. the palestinians fumed a bit, but the sky didn't come crashing down.
think there was a survey recently, and the majority of the middle east would rather cozy up to israel than to iran. that.
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But moreoever Trump ran as a left wing populist. He promised Health Care for all, Jobs for all, good pay for all.
Nonsense. Trump ran as the blowhard know-it-all, holding court and solving all the world’s problems from his usual barstool down at the local watering hole... and it worked.
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Trump ran as a plain populist. Left, right... he takes those as convenience dictates. He's been more right-wing on most issues because that's what it takes to be a Republican, but his message is as simple as can be: "Vote for me, because I promise to make the world a better place for you, even if that means screwing over everyone else."
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Trump won for two reasons. First, Hilary took victory for granted and didn't campaign in the swing states (she always was an arrogant bitch). But moreoever Trump ran as a left wing populist. He promised Health Care for all, Jobs for all, good pay for all. He promised the government wouldn't just stand idle while the working class got slapped around by the Invisible Hand. Sure, he lied through his teeth.
Nobody will go after a politician for lying because that's what they do. Fraud is SOP. But they can go after him for collusion with a foreign power, which is not SOP. In fact, it is on the border of treason. If it's with an enemy, it is treason. Russia is not our enemy, but they're not really our ally, either. It's close enough to treason to make right-wingers uncomfortable, which is why they (you) have to keep doubling down on supporting Trump. If you admit that Trump is a shitheel, you have to admit that
Mueller Time (Score:5, Interesting)
Twenty-two indictments so far. Five convictions, and counting.
Over 100 Trump officials who have been unable to pass FBI background checks, including the President's son-in-law.
It took over 2 years for the Watergate investigation to nail Nixon. Special Prosecutor Mueller's been at it only 10 months.
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None of which is about Collusion with Russia to affect the election.
Re:Mueller Time (Score:5, Insightful)
The indictments of the 16 Russian people and organizations are exactly about collusion. They were all about building a conspiracy case.
I'm old enough to remember when Republicans said, "There were crimes committed, but President Nixon knew nothing about it!"
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The indictments of the 16 Russian people and organizations are exactly about collusion.
Ahahahahaha, no. That's the complete [former] Russian population of 4chan. They're just a bunch of autistic trolls.
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Watch 5-8 years from now all the charges will be thrown out for illegal searches and prosecutor misconduct, just like in all the Enron cases.
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Indictments of twitter trolls, downright laughable.
Have you noticed how many members of Trump's administration have already pled guilty and are now working with Mueller? Those are not twitter trolls. Those are people close to trump, working under his authority and direction.
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Have you noticed how many members of Trump's administration have already pled guilty and are now working with Mueller?
Please list them. Not former campaign staffers who where fired by Trump for unethical dealings, but people who are or were members of the administration.
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I'm old enough to remember when Republicans said, "There were crimes committed, but President Nixon knew nothing about it!"
The question is, are you intelligent enough to see that that's a completely ridiculous comparison? The two situations have nothing to do with one another. Never mind your carefully avoiding the fact that the indictments of the Russians was explicitly accompanied by them telling you that nobody worked with them, wittingly. Which conspiracy is it that you're alleging that involves nobody actually working with the people indicted? You're also, in your indictment count, including indictments that have exactly
Re:Mueller Time (Score:4, Insightful)
Neither option looks very good for them:
1. Trump worked with Russian intelligence to gain an advantage in the election.
or
2. Trump's campaign worked with Russian intelligence, but Trump himself was kept in the dark about what his own campaign was doing.
Trump's response so far has been to divert the issue: He claims that all the evidence against him is fabricated by a conspiracy within the FBI - and not only he he not working with Russia,but Hillary is a Russian secret agent charged with stealing the country's uranium.
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Dude they had no ties whatsoever. They even admitted in the indictments! My god you people are relentless.
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Neither of those things is true. Flynn's guilty plea is still there and in force, and the new judge on the Flynn case has clarified his request and completely debunked the news that turned up in the alt-right media last week.
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Neither of those things is true. Flynn's guilty plea is still there and in force, and the new judge on the Flynn case has clarified his request and completely debunked the news that turned up in the alt-right media last week.
Not what happened. The plea is in-force, but the new judge that replaced the previous one because of a CoI demanded that the muller investigation produce the exculpatory evidence in the case that by law they were required to produce. Instead of doing that and continuing to stonewall this judge, they then opened another indictment in another jurisdiction(aka judge shopping) about 30mi outside of DC, effectively to have him fight two cases on two different fronts. The guy is basically bankrupt from fightin
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Then why don't you explain to everybody why the judge has demanded exculpatory evidence be presented and the FBI is stonewalling.
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It's all explained in the link I provided earlier. I'll put it here again. The judge's clerk used outdated boilerplate text to file the original "Brady order" in the case. It has since been refiled and the judge has clarified. If the FBI were "stonewalling", the judge would have already thrown the case out. Flynn has plead guilty and his guilty plea stands. He is cooperating
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That's not what's happening in the case though. The washington post article is factually wrong, this wasn't caused by the clerk. This shouldn't be a surprise that he article is wrong either, since most reporters on legal matters haven't spent even 1 day in a law 101 class. If you did you'd also already know why this is happening. This was caused by new evidence being discovered by the defense and the FBI refusing to turn it over as required by law so the defendant can have a *complete defense*. The FBI
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The Wall Street Journal has confirmed, as has Ken White over at Popehat. The filing has nothing to do wiht "new evidence being discovered by the defense". You have been lied to by the Trump dead-enders at The Federalist.
In other news, 30 people in the Trump administration, including the President's son-in-law, have lost their security clearance because they couldn't pass a background check, that same son-in-law got loans tota
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https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
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Those Russians that got indicted will never be tried because Russia won't extradite them.
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
None of those charged are in custody, according to Peter Carr, a spokesman for the special counselâ(TM)s office. Russia does not allow its citizens to be extradited to the United States to face trial, so it is unlikely the individuals will be turned over, but the indictment probably will prevent them from traveling outside Russia.
So the only point indicting them was so it looked like the investigation was going somewhere and people like you could say "22 indictments so far" instead of "9 indictments so far".
Still look what Rosenstein said when it happened :
https://www.realclearpolitics.... [realclearpolitics.com]
Now, there is no allegation in this indictment that any American was a knowing participant in this illegal activity. There is no allegation in the indictment that the charged conduct altered the outcome of the 2016 election.
I.e. you can't use the indictment of a bunch of Russians, in Russia who posed as Americans to attack Trump.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
They don't have to be tried. The indictments form the outline of conspiracy charges against people in the US who can be charged.
Notice the part that says, "this indictment"? There have been new indictments coming every few days now. New guilty pleas. New Trump officials (and former Trump officials) coo
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Notice the part that says, "this indictment"? There have been new indictments coming every few days now. New guilty pleas. New Trump officials (and former Trump officials) cooperating with Mueller.
Yeah and you know what they stem from? From when Muller was working for the Podesta group(the guy who ran Hillary's Campaign). AKA this is what is called a fishing expedition. Because Muller didn't/failed to properly disclose, and the people had no knowledge they can be indicted because "ignorance of the law is no excuse" unless you're Hillary Clinton with your own private email server and you've got buddies inside the agency who can 'shift' the wording on memo's to make it far less serious. Or Loretta L [judicialwatch.org]
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Quite a successful fishing expedition, I'd say. Already five convictions and 22-plus indictments. Rick Gates was just convicted of crimes committed while he was in the White House, a little over three weeks ago. Even the President himself now has his lawyers trying to negotiate a way that he can avoid speaking directly to Mueller. Unfortunately, there's no way for Trump to avoid speaking to a grand jury.
Re: Mueller Time (Score:2)
I suppose you could get them for breaking campaign finance law.
Then again Hillary broke campaign finance law by using her law firm as a proxy to pay Steele.
http://thehill.com/opinion/cam... [thehill.com]
Re:Mueller Time (Score:5, Interesting)
Manafort hasn't been convicted yet, and the indictment unsealed this week have a lot to do with Trump. Manafort was in deep in debt to some very dangerous Russians and tried to help them in their war with the Ukraine while he was Trump's campaign manager. And THEN he had the RNC change their party platform making it more friendly to Russia. And then had his flunky Rick Gates commit bank fraud to try to get out from under.
So, two possibilities: either 1) Trump had to know all this was going on, or 2) Trump had no clue about the guy he hired to chair his campaign and that's even worse because those are the kinds of useful idiots the Russians love to cultivate.
I realize you guys will defend Trump to the last breath, because if he goes down, it shakes your entire worldview. But Trump is already the administration with the most indictments and convictions and officials resigning in disgrace in history. He's crooked and he's losing his mojo.
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You know who Manafort was working for when he did all that dodgy Ukranian shit? The Podesta Group! That's right, the same one! You can't make this shit up, people. Here's the smoking gun [imgur.com]. Manafort was campaign manager for a couple of months because he had convention experience. The Podesta Group was hired by Paul Manafort on behalf of foreign clients because the company was perceived to have a direct line to powerful politicians, like Hillary Clinton.
The chairman of one major presidential campaign [youtube.com]
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No, they are not "all for process crimes". Money laundering is not a process crime. Bank fraud is not a process crime.
Do you know another way to describe a "process crime"? A crime.
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You have no idea what you're talking about.
Watergate was about Nixon using illegal means to sabotage the Democratic Presidential campaigns, including helping a lightweight get nominated. Fudging some warrant applications is small potatoes compared to that, assuming the fudging did happen.
It appears that the FBI and DoJ provided the appropriate information to the FISA court. Heck, by the things the Nunes memo didn't say, it was obvious that the FBI investigation was clean and professional.
The Left,
The stupid party versus the evil party (Score:2, Troll)
Tell me again how great democracy is, when we all know that people in groups have trouble coming up with coherent answers to any question more complex than "what restaurant should we go to for lunch?" Clearly the Left is trying to conceal the fact that they launched a politically-motivated investigation, sort of like how they used the IRS to suppress Right-wing groups.
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The Steele investigation was politically motivated. What's wrong with that? It was presented to the FISA court, and the court was informed that the information was from a politically motivated investigation. The court could take that into account. Just because someone has ulterior motives doesn't make what they find necessarily untrue.
As far as I can tell, what happened with the IRS was that it was hit with lots of right-wing groups claiming non-profit status and not looking like they were legally no
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My understanding is that only one person on the committee was allowed to see the FISA documentation. So how does Schiff make claims about the contents of the documentation and substantiate those claims? That rather damages the thrust if his memo. He then cites some statements by people, themselves under suspicion for wrongdoing in the FBI, to justify a collection of other claims.
{^_^}
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Your understanding is wrong.
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And that's a) counter to the established facts, and b) now discredited based on the contents of this new memo.
Having read both, it's pretty impressive how terribly written and sloppy Nunes' was, and how decently well written and comprehensive this one is. Given the lack of detail in Nunes', it seems pretty clear that his was the more creatively cherry-picked of the two.
I'm honestly a little confused why Nunes would produce such obvious garbage. Didn't think the other side would get a rebuttal, or figured it
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The FBI *did* include information about the political motivation of the Steele dossier
"was likely looking for information" is not the same as "was hired by Candidate #2"