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 Post subject: Re: Trump and Russia
PostPosted: Mon May 21, 2018 12:03 pm 
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RangerDave wrote:
Rynar wrote:
RangerDave wrote:
For the sake of argument, assume for a moment that, in the middle of a Presidential campaign, the FBI obtains what it in good faith believes to be credible intelligence that a hostile foreign government is attempting to influence the outcome of the election in favor of one of the candidates by, among other things, hacking the emails of the other candidate's campaign, planting stories in the media, and attempting to coordinate with members of their preferred candidate's campaign staff. In an ideal world, how do you think the FBI, DOJ, CIA, and sitting Presidential Administration should handle that? And how would that differ from what was actually done in the Trump/Clinton election?


That's not what happened though. You're going to be told, at first, that's what happened by those desperately trying to control the narrative because the alternative involves them swinging from nooses.

What will materialize is that this whole fiasco started because the Obama Administration was accessing raw 702 SIGINT to spy on their political opponents and create leverage, and when they were caught doing it by Mike Rodgers, who demanded an explaination, they concocted the Russian narrative in the hopes it would throw the election for Clinton and none of this would ever be exposed. It went into hyperdrive because she lost, and they were unprepared. She was never suppsed to lose.


You're avoiding the question by assuming the underlying premise for the investigation was bogus, thus tainting everything that came after. I'm asking you to assume, just for the sake of discussion, that the underlying premise was legit. If that were the case, how would/should the investigation play out differently?


Dave, I'm not avoiding your hypothetical. I'm openly declaring that your hypothetical is not what happened.


But let's do this for the sake of argument: the role of the FBI is not to provide campaign oversight In fact, the FBI has no oversight told prescribed to it. Further, our system of government is built on the foundational requirement that the government itself must follow the law. Even it really doesn't like Donald Trump.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump and Russia
PostPosted: Mon May 21, 2018 12:14 pm 
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Rynar wrote:
But let's do this for the sake of argument: the role of the FBI is not to provide campaign oversight In fact, the FBI has no oversight told prescribed to it. Further, our system of government is built on the foundational requirement that the government itself must follow the law. Even it really doesn't like Donald Trump.


Ok, so your view is that the FBI should not - indeed, legally cannot - conduct an investigation of members of a campaign staff during an election? And that applies to both counterintelligence and criminal investigations?


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 Post subject: Re: Trump and Russia
PostPosted: Mon May 21, 2018 12:36 pm 
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RangerDave wrote:
Rynar wrote:
But let's do this for the sake of argument: the role of the FBI is not to provide campaign oversight In fact, the FBI has no oversight told prescribed to it. Further, our system of government is built on the foundational requirement that the government itself must follow the law. Even it really doesn't like Donald Trump.


Ok, so your view is that the FBI should not - indeed, legally cannot - conduct an investigation of members of a campaign staff during an election? And that applies to both counterintelligence and criminal investigations?


The FBI can, working on credible intelligence, investigate potential crimes, by going through the prescribed process.

It cannot assume, or worse invent, crime and stage sham investigations for the purpose of rigging federal elections and destabilize the Executive to initiate palace coups.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump and Russia
PostPosted: Mon May 21, 2018 1:11 pm 
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Rynar wrote:
The FBI can, working on credible intelligence, investigate potential crimes, by going through the prescribed process.

It cannot assume, or worse invent, crime and stage sham investigations for the purpose of rigging federal elections and destabilize the Executive to initiate palace coups.


You keep going back to the baseline presumption that the initial foundation for the investigation was a sham. I'm asking you to reverse that presumption for just a moment and tell me how an investigation with a proper foundation would be conducted differently. If it helps, imagine some parallel universe in which none of the players from this reality were involved, and it was just a generic Presidential Administration that received credible intelligence of potential espionage and/or criminal activity involving members of one of the campaign's staff and proceeded to conduct an entirely proper and unbiased investigation of it. How would that investigation look different from the Trump/Russia investigation? What would the Parallel Universe FBI do differently - e.g., would it refrain from using confidential informants or seeking FISA warrants partly on the basis of oppo research from the rival campaign? Or put another way, apart from allegedly having a corrupt intent, how did the real world investigation of Trump/Russia fail to go through the prescribed processes?


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 Post subject: Re: Trump and Russia
PostPosted: Mon May 21, 2018 1:34 pm 
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Rynar wrote:
It cannot assume, or worse invent, crime and stage sham investigations for the purpose of rigging federal elections and destabilize the Executive to initiate palace coups.


Actually man, this is the US government... it does anything it wants, regardless of what it can or cannot assume. They have done it well before our time, they will do it after we are dead. And the problem is not ideologies, it is those in power desiring to retain said power.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump and Russia
PostPosted: Mon May 21, 2018 4:01 pm 
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RangerDave wrote:
Rynar wrote:
The FBI can, working on credible intelligence, investigate potential crimes, by going through the prescribed process.

It cannot assume, or worse invent, crime and stage sham investigations for the purpose of rigging federal elections and destabilize the Executive to initiate palace coups.


You keep going back to the baseline presumption that the initial foundation for the investigation was a sham. I'm asking you to reverse that presumption for just a moment and tell me how an investigation with a proper foundation would be conducted differently. If it helps, imagine some parallel universe in which none of the players from this reality were involved, and it was just a generic Presidential Administration that received credible intelligence of potential espionage and/or criminal activity involving members of one of the campaign's staff and proceeded to conduct an entirely proper and unbiased investigation of it. How would that investigation look different from the Trump/Russia investigation? What would the Parallel Universe FBI do differently - e.g., would it refrain from using confidential informants or seeking FISA warrants partly on the basis of oppo research from the rival campaign? Or put another way, apart from allegedly having a corrupt intent, how did the real world investigation of Trump/Russia fail to go through the prescribed processes?


It looks like the President is keen to answer your question. "I"s being dotted, "T"s being crossed.

https://mobile.twitter.com/NBCPolitics/status/998663825942597633


"JUST IN: White House releases statement on President Trump's meeting with Deputy AG Rosenstein, Director of National Intelligence Coats and FBI Director Wray."

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19 Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. 20 There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump and Russia
PostPosted: Tue May 22, 2018 10:24 am 
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RangerDave wrote:
You keep going back to the baseline presumption that the initial foundation for the investigation was a sham. I'm asking you to reverse that presumption for just a moment and tell me how an investigation with a proper foundation would be conducted differently. If it helps, imagine some parallel universe in which none of the players from this reality were involved, and it was just a generic Presidential Administration that received credible intelligence of potential espionage and/or criminal activity involving members of one of the campaign's staff and proceeded to conduct an entirely proper and unbiased investigation of it. How would that investigation look different from the Trump/Russia investigation? What would the Parallel Universe FBI do differently - e.g., would it refrain from using confidential informants or seeking FISA warrants partly on the basis of oppo research from the rival campaign? Or put another way, apart from allegedly having a corrupt intent, how did the real world investigation of Trump/Russia fail to go through the prescribed processes?


Andrew McCarthy has explained all this in painstaking detail on National Review, and since it is spread over months of articles I will not link individual ones because it's a lot of work and any one of them will only present part of the picture. He is, however, an experienced federal prosecutor, definitely knows what he is talking about, and speaks about specific legal concepts from a matter-of-fact standpoint. He also began from a "Never Trump" perspective (I will remind you that TNR published an issue with precisely that title and offers authors with precisely that viewpoint) on the assumption that the FBI would not be seeking warrants and investigating from such incredibly flimsy intelligence.

Moreover, Rynar has made a minor error of terminology. The problem arises (in a large part, although not exclusively) from the FBI's use of its counterintelligence function to begin an investigation into US persons. When Rynar says "based on intelligence", that should, in fact, refer to "reasonable suspicion" because the FBI is allowed to do all sorts of things in conducting counterintelligence that it absolutely is not permitted to with regard to US persons. "Reasonable suspicion" means "of a specific crime" and so far, no such crime has been articulated. Those indicted or pled to so far have been process crimes relating to the investigation itself, or were committed long before Trump's campaign even began and had nothing to do with it. "Collusion" was never a crime; it merely sounded like one to the ill-informed, nor would be "talking to Russian people" or "getting dirt on them from Hillary Clinton" - if it was, then production of the "dossier", relied upon by those same investigative agencies also constituted collusion, produced as it was by a British spy.

Unless, of course, collusion is A-OK when it's done with the British (by Democrats) but not with Russians (by Republicans) which would be a novel Federal statute indeed.

In other words, no credible intelligence was ever received, except insofar as the "Salacious and unverified" (Jim Comey's words) intelligence was read by the FBI, other intelligence agencies, and continues to be read by the left and the press as credible only because of an idea that "Well, Trump must have been up to something because he is Trump." Even if "credible intelligence" was received, that's part of the counterintelligence function, and that cannot be used - in any way - to circumvent requirements for criminal prosecution, including the requirement for a specific crime to have been committed. Intelligence that a US person did something that isn't illegal - regardless whether it should be illegal - is not a justification for an investigation regardless of whether highly-placed Justice Department or intelligence community people like it or not.

This is, of course, in contrast to the email situation which A) involved an actual crime for which people have actually been prosecuted (not a statute with a laughable history like the Logan Act) B) was not found by use of the coutnerintelligence function and C) which was excused through equally egregious departures from norms, except in the other direction with profligate offers of immunity for no real reason and a total failure to seize and properly secure physical evidence.

Part of the underlying problem here is a subtle, unarticulated belief by the Left is that all investigations and allegations of wrongdoing are to be ultimately controlled by sympathetic-to-the-left bureaucrats (even if the bureaucrats themselves are perhaps even center-right) and to be judged through the lens of the left. If Hillary Clinton is being investigated it must be a right wing conspiracy because she's female and a Democrat and all it takes to dispel it are repeated postings of idiotic "but her emails" memes by internet personalities and enough skeptical questioning by ostensibly sincere media anchors to drive it away. Meanwhile, any investigation of Trump must be legitimate and if it only continues something eventually will be found (never mind that this reasoning is for any investigation) because he's Trump. Even if the IG or OPR for the DOJ/FBI find actual impropriety, that is simply ignored and dismissed because the narrative simply cannot be allowed to be compromised in any way, much like Kanye West mysteriously is not a black man now because he might damage the narrative.

The really alarming part of all this is not the potential consequences for Trump; it's that if allowed to continue, no Republican president will ever be elected again without a constant investigation and impeachment threat. If the evidence against Trump is sufficient to justify this nonsense, any suspicion against any elected official ever is sufficient. The only thing protecting Democrats will be the embedded bureaucratic sympathy to them - and when Republican targets are no longer to be found, moderate Democrats will be next and the criteria will march ever-leftward.

The real culprit, of course, is the media. Democratic politicians are spoiled and lazy from a sympathetic media and the ability to fluff off any criticism from "conservative media"; Republicans are too habituated to handling the media with kid gloves. Democrat voters are not challenged in their ridiculous belief of being better informed and educated; Republican voters find it too easy to insulate themselves in a growing right-oriented media as well. The problem here is the idea that freedom of the press is there to protect the dominance of major media corporations. For all the complaints about corporate personhood, those complaints disappear quite rapidly when the large media titans begin pretending they are some sort of protection for democracy.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump and Russia
PostPosted: Tue May 22, 2018 10:29 am 
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darksiege wrote:
Rynar wrote:
It cannot assume, or worse invent, crime and stage sham investigations for the purpose of rigging federal elections and destabilize the Executive to initiate palace coups.


Actually man, this is the US government... it does anything it wants, regardless of what it can or cannot assume. They have done it well before our time, they will do it after we are dead. And the problem is not ideologies, it is those in power desiring to retain said power.


What it does do says nothing about what it should do or be doing, and the fact that it does do certain things does not mean we ought to continue to allow that sort of thing.

The people who absolutely trust that the FBI is honest, trustworthy, and doing the right thing are the same ones that ridiculed the much-more-well-founded investigation of Hillary's mishandling government records and classified information, and who regularly denigrate law enforcement in general based largely on the bare assertions of people supposedly victimized.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump and Russia
PostPosted: Tue May 22, 2018 10:57 am 
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The timelines are vitally important to understanding what happened/is happening:

http://thefederalist.com/2018/05/21/bre ... tails-cnn/

Andrew McCabe sure seemed to have a deep understanding of exactly what CNN knew of Trump's dossier briefing before CNN reported on it.

And timelines again:

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news ... ery-months

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But now comes word of the FBI informant, described in various accounts as a retired American professor living in England. The Washington Post reported that, "The professor's interactions with Trump advisers began a few weeks before the opening of the investigation, when Page met the professor at the British symposium."

A few weeks before the opening of the investigation — those are the words that have raised eyebrows among Hill investigators. If it was before the investigation, then what was an FBI informant doing gathering undercover information when there was not yet an investigation?


Are we all seeing it yet?

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 Post subject: Re: Trump and Russia
PostPosted: Tue May 22, 2018 11:21 am 
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Diamondeye wrote:
... if allowed to continue, no Republican president will ever be elected again without a constant investigation and impeachment threat.

Only 2 presidents in the last 50 years or so weren't investigated for impeachment, and they served a single term (or less). One democrat, one republican.

I blame Nixon. Then again, everybody blames Nixon for everything, so I feel pretty safe in doing so.

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PostPosted: Tue May 22, 2018 12:02 pm 
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Is having an informant illegal? As long as not wiretapping. I mean trump has a long history of shady deals.


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PostPosted: Tue May 22, 2018 1:04 pm 
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TheRiov wrote:
Is having an informant illegal?

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

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PostPosted: Tue May 22, 2018 2:18 pm 
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I claim zero expertise here but use of informants is regularly used to obtain warrants. So their use it seems doesn’t require it.

https://oig.justice.gov/special/0509/chapter3.htm


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PostPosted: Tue May 22, 2018 2:34 pm 
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TheRiov wrote:
Is having an informant illegal? As long as not wiretapping. I mean trump has a long history of shady deals.


Inserting an informant because "lol shady deals" is, indeed, improper; generalized suspicion of Trump because he is Trump, or Republicans because you just think they're like that is not legally defensible as a justification. That is not the same as a person, completely unprompted, bringing credible information to law enforcement - and "completely unprompted" and "Credible information" do not include political opposition research products, they do not include using counterintelligence powers to obtain that information (the informant needs to be a law enforcement source, not a counterintelligence source) nor do they include leading a judge to believe that such information is, in fact, credible when it is not - the not having been attested to in sworn testimony by the head of the agency in question.

Like I said, Andrew McCarthy has laid all this out in detail, and there is a lot more to it than "informant = A OK!! :thumbs: ". He has months of writing that started out as "lol the FBI wouldn't be that stupid" evolving into "uh, looks like I was wrong, they really were that stupid." He has also not been shy about pointing out where legal jeopardy might still exist for the President and his associates either. - but in every instance so far, something new has been revealed to further compromise that legal vulnerability.

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PostPosted: Tue May 22, 2018 3:15 pm 
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TheRiov wrote:
Is having an informant illegal? As long as not wiretapping. I mean trump has a long history of shady deals.


They certainly can, assuming they have a warrant.

The trick is, the warrant must be legally obtained. The warrants obtained were not done so legally as evidenced by the rapidly shifting timelines which keep undercuttung the veracity of those forwarding them.

Currently coming to light is the fact that Stefan Halper had begun to infiltrate the Trump Campaign prior to when the FBI claims to have started it's investigation.. Before.

How can that be logically reconciled with the proper channels of initiating an investigation? Multiple times the timeline given for the investigation by the FBI has been blown up.

There's a reason for this.

Are we all seeing it yet?

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 Post subject: Re: Re:
PostPosted: Tue May 22, 2018 3:24 pm 
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Diamondeye wrote:
TheRiov wrote:
Is having an informant illegal? As long as not wiretapping. I mean trump has a long history of shady deals.


Inserting an informant because "lol shady deals" is, indeed, improper; generalized suspicion of Trump because he is Trump, or Republicans because you just think they're like that is not legally defensible as a justification. That is not the same as a person, completely unprompted, bringing credible information to law enforcement - and "completely unprompted" and "Credible information" do not include political opposition research products, they do not include using counterintelligence powers to obtain that information (the informant needs to be a law enforcement source, not a counterintelligence source) nor do they include leading a judge to believe that such information is, in fact, credible when it is not - the not having been attested to in sworn testimony by the head of the agency in question.

Like I said, Andrew McCarthy has laid all this out in detail, and there is a lot more to it than "informant = A OK!! :thumbs: ". He has months of writing that started out as "lol the FBI wouldn't be that stupid" evolving into "uh, looks like I was wrong, they really were that stupid." He has also not been shy about pointing out where legal jeopardy might still exist for the President and his associates either. - but in every instance so far, something new has been revealed to further compromise that legal vulnerability.


It's not that they were stupid, it's that they were rushed, and as a result got exceptionally sloppy. They got sloppy because Mike Rodgers caught them accessing raw SIGINT, without warrants, in order to create leverage over their political opponents, and he demanded legal justification. They then hastily concocted the Russian Narrative for backwards justification (they had to because they were caught committing treason) in order to frame Candidate Trump to throw the election for Hillary, who would bury the acts. When she lost, everything went into hyperdrive in an attempt to delegitimize Trump and get him out of office.


And understand that the SIGINT was not just during the campaign and not just on the candidates (yes, candidates, not just Trump) not yet in office. Sitting members of Congress and the Senate. Members of the Supreme Court.

Think John Roberts vote in favor of the Constitutionality of the ACA.

That's where this is heading, and then it will go even deeper.

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19 Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. 20 There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump and Russia
PostPosted: Wed May 23, 2018 4:31 pm 
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Diamondeye wrote:
What it does do says nothing about what it should do or be doing, and the fact that it does do certain things does not mean we ought to continue to allow that sort of thing.


I am nitpicking the language only. He said they cannot. And... they should not but they do, which means they very much can. I have nothing even remotely useful to contribute to the discussion otherwise.

/shrug

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PostPosted: Wed May 23, 2018 5:34 pm 
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I personally do not have a problem with the use of CI's in this case. Were this Hillary Clinton we were talking about, I would expect an investigation there too. Based on the evidence we've seen thus far, I mostly feel this is dragging out in the hope of catching Trump in a process-related crime as a result of the investigations rather than any actual original wrong-doing.

I guess it seems to me Trump could declassify a lot of things that would give us a lot more information as to the conduct of the FBI. But he isn't. I suspect this has less to do with his actually having done something wrong (because we'd probably have some fruit from the investigation already) than making more info available would undermine the narrative he and Republicans are pushing of a deep-state hit on Mr. Trump.

At the same time though, the leaks coming out of the FBI are indisputably ridiculous and these are likely Democrat, or more specifically, Obama hold-overs trying to cause chaos.

The FBI also should have their feet held to the fire with respect to the kid-gloves they treated Clinton with in explaining away her crime and letting her walk away untouched.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump and Russia
PostPosted: Thu May 24, 2018 7:31 am 
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Taskiss wrote:
Diamondeye wrote:
... if allowed to continue, no Republican president will ever be elected again without a constant investigation and impeachment threat.

Only 2 presidents in the last 50 years or so weren't investigated for impeachment, and they served a single term (or less). One democrat, one republican.

I blame Nixon. Then again, everybody blames Nixon for everything, so I feel pretty safe in doing so.


The constitutional issues with Mueller as special counsel are basically never going to come up because that would be bad politics. The Senate voted 98-2 to approve the Russia probe, and the fact that no actual crime was being investigated was just as apparent then.


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 Post subject: Re: Trump and Russia
PostPosted: Thu May 24, 2018 8:45 am 
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Diamondeye wrote:
Andrew McCarthy has explained all this in painstaking detail on National Review, and since it is spread over months of articles I will not link individual ones because it's a lot of work and any one of them will only present part of the picture.

Yeah, I read McCarthy's pieces on this pretty regularly, and I agree that he's a highly knowledgeable and experienced legal commentator on the subject, but it's important to bear in mind that he's writing as an advocate rather than a neutral analyst. That doesn't mean he's a partisan hack - as you note, he often does point out areas where Trump has some legal exposure - but he's definitely trying to persuade readers that the investigation was/is improper and presenting factual and legal arguments that support that position. I find it's helpful to read other knowledgeable and experienced legal commentators that disagree with his position on this to see where the holes in his arguments are and how a similarly persuasive argument can be made in the other direction on the basis of the same facts and laws.

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The problem arises (in a large part, although not exclusively) from the FBI's use of its counterintelligence function to begin an investigation into US persons. When Rynar says "based on intelligence", that should, in fact, refer to "reasonable suspicion" because the FBI is allowed to do all sorts of things in conducting counterintelligence that it absolutely is not permitted to with regard to US persons.

I agree that there's a problematic blurring of the lines between intelligence investigations and criminal investigations generally - the whole concept of FISA courts granting secret warrants to surveil American citizens is incredibly dangerous and open to abuse - but there's been a bipartisan effort to deliberately weaken those walls for decades now, particularly after 9/11. When the procedures were being used mainly to spy on, detain, and deport Muslim Americans suspected of terrorist ties on the basis of secret intel, however, no one cared. It's possible even those weakened procedures were bypassed here, or that they were followed correctly but for improper purposes, or that good faith investigators began with reasonable suspicion then fell victim to confirmation bias and investigatory/prosecutorial momentum, or that this is all exactly how it's designed to work and the public is just now paying attention enough to realize it. My view is that we don't actually have enough information to form a solid conclusion yet, but that giving the public a peek behind the curtain in a case that flips the usual partisan script is a good thing. If the upshot of this whole thing is that Trump walks and the FISA process gets reformed, I'm good with that.

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In other words, no credible intelligence was ever received, except insofar as the "Salacious and unverified" (Jim Comey's words) intelligence was read by the FBI, other intelligence agencies, and continues to be read by the left and the press as credible only because of an idea that "Well, Trump must have been up to something because he is Trump."

This I disagree with. From what we know, I think there was sufficient justification for an investigation even without the Steele Dossier (incidentally, Comey didn't say it was "salacious and unverified" in whole; he was only referring to a couple of specific parts and he's repeatedly said that other parts were in fact corroborated). See, for example, David French's article from National Review yesterday on the non-Steele bases for an investigation. In fact McCarthy himself wrote an article yesterday intended to undermine the FBI/DOJ timeline on when their investigation began, but which inadvertently supports the argument that the investigation began on the basis of pre-Dossier intel regarding the activities of certain Trump staffers. Here are some relevant passages:

The real origination story begins in the early spring of 2016 — long before Page went to Russia and long before the U.S. government was notified about Papadopoulos’s boozy conversation with Downer....It turns out that, in “late spring” 2016, the FBI’s then-director James Comey briefed the principals of the National Security Council on “the Page information.”...So, what exactly was “the Page information”? Well, we know that Page, an Annapolis alumnus and former naval intelligence officer, is . . . well, he’s a knucklehead. He is a Russia apologist...[who] blames American provocations for bad relations with the Kremlin and advocates, instead, a policy of appeasing the Putin regime. Page, who has also been an investment banker, has also had business ties to Gazprom, the Kremlin-controlled energy behemoth. Most importantly, we know that Page was one of several American businessmen whom Russian intelligence operatives attempted to recruit in 2013. Yet, the main reason we know that is that Page cooperated with the FBI and the Justice Department in the prosecution of the Russian operatives.

...What would have been the reason for Lynch, Comey, and McCabe to discuss Carter Page? Well, on March 21, 2016 — i.e., early spring — the Trump campaign announced the candidate’s foreign-policy advisory team. Trump had been spurned by the Republican foreign-policy clerisy and was under pressure to show that he had some advisers. So the campaign hastily put out a list of five little-known figures, including Page....Another source of consternation: On March 29, just a few days after Page was announced as a foreign-policy adviser, Paul Manafort joined the Trump campaign. Manafort and his partner, Richard Gates (who also joined the Trump campaign), had been on the FBI’s radar over political-consultant work they’d done for many years for a Kremlin-backed political party in Ukraine — the party deeply enmeshed in Russian aggression against that former Soviet satellite state.

In discussing Page, one of the things Lynch, Comey, and McCabe discussed was the possibility of providing the Trump campaign with a “defensive briefing.” This would be a meeting with a senior campaign official to put the campaign on notice of potential Russian efforts to compromise someone — Page — within the campaign....Was the interview of Page [in March 2016] a reaction to his joining the Trump campaign? Was it an effort to gauge whether Page was still a recruitment target? Was it a substitute for giving the campaign a defensive briefing, or a preparatory step in anticipation of possibly giving such a briefing? We don’t know. But here is what we can surmise. Carter Page and Paul Manafort joined the Trump campaign in early spring, and the FBI was concerned about their possible ties to Russia. These were not trifling concerns, but they did not come close to suggesting a Trump-Russia espionage conspiracy against the 2016 election.

These FBI concerns resulted in a briefing of the Obama NSC by the FBI sometime in “late spring.” I suspect the “late spring” may turn out to be an earlier part of spring than most people might suppose — like maybe shortly after Page joined the Trump campaign. There are many different ways the Obama administration could have reacted to the news that Page and Manafort had joined the Trump campaign. It could have given the campaign a defensive briefing. It could have continued interviewing Page, with whom the FBI had longstanding lines of communication. It could have interviewed Manafort. It could have conducted a formal interview with George Papadopoulos rather than approaching him with a spy who asked him loaded questions about Russia’s possession of Democratic-party emails.

Instead of doing some or all of those things, the Obama administration chose to look at the Trump campaign as a likely co-conspirator of Russia — either because Obama officials inflated the flimsy evidence, or because they thought it could be an effective political attack on the opposition party’s likely candidate. From the “late spring” on, every report of Trump-Russia ties, no matter how unlikely and uncorroborated, was presumed to be proof of a traitorous arrangement. And every detail that could be spun into Trump-campaign awareness of Russian hacking, no matter how tenuous, was viewed in the worst possible light.

In short, Trump assembled a foreign policy team that included several individuals on the FBI's radar for questionable links to the Russian government, including one who had previously been actively recruited by Russian intelligence and had thus been on the FBI's radar years. This was worrisome enough to trigger an NSC meeting on the subject. Then, in rapid succession over the ensuing months, we got the Page meeting in London, the reports from the Australian ambassador, Trump's son and senior campaign staff taking a meeting with a liason for the Russian government expressly for the purpose of getting dirt on Clinton, the DNC server being hacked by Russian-linked WikiLeaks, Trump intervening at the Republican convention to soften the platform on Russia, public recognition of the fact that a lot of Trump's business was financed by Russian oligarchs, etc., etc. In light of all of that, it strikes me as an entirely reasonable basis for a counterintelligence investigation and, to the extent reasonable suspicion could be established, FISA warrants targeting American citizens under the current law. No need for any nefarious explanation for any of it. Just a legitimate investigation that may or may not have been pursued over-zealously for either partisan reasons or simply because of run of the mill momentum and confirmation bias.


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PostPosted: Thu May 24, 2018 9:23 am 
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Screeling wrote:
I personally do not have a problem with the use of CI's in this case. Were this Hillary Clinton we were talking about, I would expect an investigation there too. Based on the evidence we've seen thus far, I mostly feel this is dragging out in the hope of catching Trump in a process-related crime as a result of the investigations rather than any actual original wrong-doing.

I guess it seems to me Trump could declassify a lot of things that would give us a lot more information as to the conduct of the FBI. But he isn't. I suspect this has less to do with his actually having done something wrong (because we'd probably have some fruit from the investigation already) than making more info available would undermine the narrative he and Republicans are pushing of a deep-state hit on Mr. Trump.

At the same time though, the leaks coming out of the FBI are indisputably ridiculous and these are likely Democrat, or more specifically, Obama hold-overs trying to cause chaos.

The FBI also should have their feet held to the fire with respect to the kid-gloves they treated Clinton with in explaining away her crime and letting her walk away untouched.

He isn't declassifying because he's not playing politics. He's seeking criminal convictions, as you'll soon see.

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PostPosted: Thu May 24, 2018 11:53 am 
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Rynar wrote:
He isn't declassifying because he's not playing politics. He's seeking criminal convictions, as you'll soon see.

Man, you really believe the whole "drain the swamp" thing, eh? What in Trump's character or history suggests to you that he's a committed reformer or even gives the tiniest sh*t about anything beyond his own ego and narrow self-interest? It seems plainly obvious to me that he's the same amoral, faux-tough, crass, loudmouthed, thuggish, mob-adjacent, NYC real estate developer he's always been. Do I think he's some Manchurian Candidate, on the Kremlin's payroll or under their thumb? No, of course not. I just think he's doing what he's always done - blowing a lot of smoke, puffing himself up, lining his own pockets, and more than happy to leave someone else holding the bag at the end of the day. That's "winning" in Trump's mind. I really can't see any hint of the "drain the swamp" reformer that some of his supporters seem to think he is.


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PostPosted: Thu May 24, 2018 1:17 pm 
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RangerDave wrote:
Rynar wrote:
He isn't declassifying because he's not playing politics. He's seeking criminal convictions, as you'll soon see.

Man, you really believe the whole "drain the swamp" thing, eh? What in Trump's character or history suggests to you that he's a committed reformer or even gives the tiniest sh*t about anything beyond his own ego and narrow self-interest? It seems plainly obvious to me that he's the same amoral, faux-tough, crass, loudmouthed, thuggish, mob-adjacent, NYC real estate developer he's always been. Do I think he's some Manchurian Candidate, on the Kremlin's payroll or under their thumb? No, of course not. I just think he's doing what he's always done - blowing a lot of smoke, puffing himself up, lining his own pockets, and more than happy to leave someone else holding the bag at the end of the day. That's "winning" in Trump's mind. I really can't see any hint of the "drain the swamp" reformer that some of his supporters seem to think he is.


Because I have a source I trust implicitly (a good friend) who has been imbedded with MI for about two years working as an investigative journalist who has confirmed for me that President Trump was actively recruited to run for President by high ranking members of the military intelligence community to this exact purpose.

The DIA has been knee deep in this since 2014 when they uncovered the snakes' nest Trump is ferreting out. Trump was chosen specifically for his ability to take punch after punch, and return fire in a way which no one is the political community could. He's also a member of the financial elite which means he couldn't be bought by the individuals being ferreted (many if whom are international), and because while he rubbed elbows with the elites, he wasn't one of them and didn't partake in their "esoteric proclivities".

I'll let you in on something else: had Trump not won, and the federal election had been successfully rigged; the DIA had been watching the whole time, and there was a real chance there was going to be a military coup in our country in an attempt to restore the Republic.

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19 Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. 20 There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.

Ezekiel 23:19-20 


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PostPosted: Thu May 24, 2018 1:21 pm 
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Am I the only one that finds Trump's foreign policy way more concerning than the Russia ****? I stopped paying attention to the Russia **** almost a year ago when it was clear impeachment wasn't even going to be attempted. That's the only reason the investigation even exists in the first place, because there's no actual crime to charge Trump with.

Meanwhile, in addition to what's happening in North Korea, Trump's team literally just went to China and demanded they start paying us $100 billion a year and actually give us veto power over certain types of laws. Not in exchange for anything, just or else. Also his plan to slash prescription drug prices mostly boils down to, "I'm going to force Europe to pay for it."


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PostPosted: Thu May 24, 2018 1:30 pm 
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Rynar wrote:
Because I have a source I trust implicitly (a good friend) who has been imbedded with MI for about two years working as an investigative journalist who has confirmed for me that President Trump was actively recruited to run for President by high ranking members of the military intelligence community to this exact purpose.

The DIA has been knee deep in this since 2014 when they uncovered the snakes' nest Trump is ferreting out. Trump was chosen specifically for his ability to take punch after punch, and return fire in a way which no one is the political community could. He's also a member of the financial elite which means he couldn't be bought by the individuals being ferreted (many if whom are international), and because while he rubbed elbows with the elites, he wasn't one of them and didn't partake in their "esoteric proclivities".

I'll let you in on something else: had Trump not won, and the federal election had been successfully rigged; the DIA had been watching the whole time, and there was a real chance there was going to be a military coup in our country in an attempt to restore the Republic.


This is beyond ridiculous. You need the rank and file on your side to execute a military coup, and if whatever information you have is sufficient to convince them, why wouldn't it convince everyone else?


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