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Originally posted by Fiver
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Maybe, but your opinion on Trump being an honest broker or not is irrelevant(no offence). It's what Trump can convince Ukrainian and Russian leadership to believe about him that is all important. I don't think it's coincidence that in the recent town hall Trump made a point to praise both Zelensky and Putin. It's what he does. If Trump thinks it will get him something in return he'd praise the devil himself. -
* Trump attempted to blackmail Zelensky over a political favour to him (investigation into Hunter Biden, Impeachment no. 1).
* Trump also suggested that "Crimea is Russian because everyone who lives there speaks Russian" (forgetting the fact that he himself speaks English. Or at least tries to).
* Trump also declared during the same G7 meeting that ""Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries in the world".
* All this while calling Putin "smart".
There is no sane person in the world who could assume Trump being an effective broker in this conflict.
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It was a silly move by Trump Jnr, but as is suggested in your post he probably has to take the meeting or preferably send a surrogate. You at least want to know what potential dirt there is on your opponent. It's politics 101.Originally posted by Svensson View Post
The shady character in Trump's orbit who had contacts with Russian officials; sure, how many characters in Clinton's, Obama's or Biden's respective team who had similar Russian contacts? I'm going to say hundreds of Russian contacts in each respective team. It's what political/international figures do, they hobnob with other international/political figures. Their worlds overlap. Your average foreign policy wonk will have contacts from many developed and important states. I also note the use of the words 'contacts' 'links' and 'acquaintances'. I have many acquaintances. I am not conspiring with them to commit illegal acts.
The fact is we now know the Obama team knew that Hillary was behind the Steele dossier. The FBI knew it, Biden knew it. Yet the private & public investigations into Trump still went ahead. Those in charge of the FBI investigation such as Strzok wrote in a text message 'we'll stop Trump becoming President'. Those in charge of the investigation were predisposed to believe the collusion allegations without doing due diligence. FISA requests were sent to the court with no mention that the information presented was opposition funded research.
The kicker for me personally was Comey, the Steele dossier and the media. Comey brings the dossier into an early meeting with President Trump but doesn't mention it specifically to him. The report just sits among a bunch of other papers. Two days later the Steele dossier makes headline news for the first time. Until then it had been swirling around as an unfounded rumour amongst media types. The story explodes in a very public manner. What had been rumoured for months is now given official sanction by James Comey himself. If I know my spooks this was a deliberate leak by the intelligence community to hobble the Trump Presidency.Comment
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As for comparing Bragg to Giuliani. Guliani's public role was far longer than Bragg's career so far. Giuliani has a far longer run in showing competence in both law and citywide politics. Guliani's convictions have generally held up, I think. Bragg's indictment of Trump will almost certainly result in acquittal. Trump may be found guilty in the initial trial but it's almost certain to be thrown out by a higher court, even if that court is ultimately SCOTUS.Comment
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unfortunately, there are too many inaccuracies and incorrect assumptions here for me to lt this stand unanswered. If that post is the bedrock of your understanding of what happened with the Trump collusion issue and FBI actions in 2016 on this issue.
Getting something of value from a foreign power in the context of an election is not politics 101, it is illegal. Opposition reseach is legal, accepting help from a foreign power, an adversary and not an ally no less, is (altogher now) ILLEGAL. Trump Junior knew that he was going to meet with a representative of the Russian government:Originally posted by jason_c View Post
From: Rob Goldstone To: Donald Trump Jr. June 3, 2016, 10:36 AM
Good morning
Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting.
The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.
May I ask, how DOES the Crown Prosecutor of Russia obtain "official documents" that presumably would otherwise NOT be available to DJT unless he was going to meet with him or a representative?
Can we conclude that Trump Junior was simply too stupid to understand the implications of this offer? Well, that's what the Mueller report concluded and that's about the bet possible outcome for the Trump campaign. That they were a bunch of muppets who didn't know what they were doing. The alternative is (and this is basically what I am alledging) is that they knew fully well that this is dodgy but didn't care because they were prepared to do ANYTHING to win the election.
Second problem: As with anything Donald Trump related, they start lying about the meeting. The day after the story broke, Don Jr. stated to the NY Times:
It was a short introductory meeting. I asked Jared [Kushner] and Paul [Manafort] to stop by. We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at that time and there was no follow up.
And then Trump Senior tweeted in 2018 when the found out that the issue was being investigated by Mueller:
This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics - and it went nowhere. I did not know about it!
So, to summarise,
1. Trump Junior met with representatives of the Russian government to obtain help in the election.
2. Trump knew that these people were Russian government.
3. Trump knew that this was illegal, hence the lies.
4. Because everyone was lying about what happened in that meeting, we don't know what happened in it.
5. Which btw, means that Trump Junior is probably still compromised now by the FSB.
Can we agree that the above is now generlally correct or is there anything that I have overlooked that might defend trump Junior here a little? Once we have come to an agreement on this, I am more than happy to move on to all the other statements that IMHO need corrections or context.
Cheers.Comment
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A Russian government attorney is not necessarily an agent or representative of the Russian government. People who work for governments can do things off their own backs. How can such a person obtain official documents? Easy. I have no security clearance, yet I can obtain 'official documents'. You can obtain 'official documents'. It all depends on the nature of the official documents. Sorry to go into Bill Clinton definition of 'is' territory. However, I will fully concede Trump Jr was stupid to personally attend this meeting.Originally posted by Svensson View Post
Meetings can be concerned with more than one subject. We know this group of Russian's were lobbying against the Maginsky Act. One part of the act concerned banning the adoption of Russian kids. Other Americans, including the journalist Matt Taibbi, were also roped into similar meetings with the same group, sometimes under false pretences. Yes, I can believe that Trump Jr thought he was getting dirt on Hillary, but the actual meeting turned into a lobbying attempt by this Russian citizen.
Oh, if we are going down the route of it being illegal for a campaign to benefit from a foreign power I point you in the direction of the DNC meeting with Ukrainian government officials who gave the DNC compromising info on Paul Manafort. This info was actually used. It became a big scandal surrounding Manafort during the campaign. What I am uncertain of here is whether the DNC would be labelled as part of the Clinton campaign. I do know their coordination will have been so tight you couldn't get a cigarette paper lodged between them.
Edit: I would also point to Christopher Steele's dossier. Steele is as foreign agent as it gets. He is usually touted as former agent in MI6. Unless that agent was sacked in utter disgrace I don't believe there is such a thing as a 'former MI6 agent'. British intelligence role in all this is murky as hell.
Last edited by jason_c; 05-23-2023, 12:23 PM.Comment
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rest assured that we will get to the Steele dossier soon enough. I also notice that there are no links in your post to substantiate any of your relevant claims. Do you have any?Originally posted by jason_c View Post
Cheers.Comment
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A bit on the DNC and Ukraine here. Not the easiest to read but it's discussed about two thirds into the article.Originally posted by Svensson View Post
Matt Taibbi discusses his meeting here, and links to an article in the Hill which discusses further meetings these Russians had whilst lobbying against the Magintsky Act.
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the article is a bit of good old "whataboutism" but what makes it worse is IMHO, the lack of detail. So the thrust is that Bill Clinton got half a million from some Russians to speak at a conference in Moscow. It's an obscene amount of money but the article gives no indication if this was common-place or what the going rate for a person the stature of Bill Clinton could have gotten. The next bit is that following the speech HRC "came out against the magnistsky act". there are no date, no links to statements or Policy initiatives in her compaign. The next problem is that the Magnitsky act is legislation in congress and a secretary of state (which clinton apparently was at the time, again, I did not find notice exact dates) has no influence on acts of congress. If they thought they could make the Magnitsky act go away by bribing Bill Clinton, then they have wasted thier cash.
Again, where is the crime here? If the author can not point to the crime behind all this then I will have to put it on the pile with the other "false equivalence" attempts over there. Muller laid out what the crime was in the trump tower meeting, he just thought that with the available evidence, he would have been unable to secure a conviction of Don Trump Jr.
This is impossible to disprove and at the same time, impossible for you to prove. Dare I say it, it is a wishful invention in order to normalise the hair-raising extent of the Trump team's collusion with anything russian. There is however an indication that the Mueller report tried to put the number of russian contacts into perspective by stating that the trump team had contact with the Internet Research Agency but that the Clinton campaign did not:Originally posted by jason_c View Post
"The investigation identified two different forms of connections between the IRA and members of the Trump Campaign. (The investigation identified no similar connections between the IRA and the Clinton Campaign.)"
Whereas the Senate report explicitily stated that the Manafort connections to Kilimnik were a grave counter-intelligence concern:
"The Committee found that Manafort's presence on the Campaign and proximity to Trump created opportunities for Russian intelligence services to exert influence over, and acquire confidential information on, the Trump Campaign. Taken as a whole, Manafort's highlevel access and willingness to share information with individuals closely affiliated with the Russian intelligence services, particularly Kilimnik and associates of Oleg Deripaska, represented a grave counterintelligence threat."
You continue to believe that the FBI had no business investigating these ongoings?Comment
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Thanks for your reply. Im not sure why you are posting about Moscow and the 500k. I didn't mention it. You asked me specifically for a link about my allegations in a previous post, one of which was the DNC and the Ukrainian govt. I posted the link where I got the info and said where in the article it was found. I thought the 500k and Moscow was sketchy myself, which is why I didn't bring it up.Originally posted by Svensson View Post
Sure, my claim about British intelligence is unproven and probably unprovable. Many American institutions are now corrupt(imo of course); the intelligence services, the DOJ, the IRS etc. They have become weaponised. Only last month on the day Matt Taibbi was testifying to a House subcommittee on the twitter files the IRS visited his home. The very same day. Again, imo US intelligence leant on British intelligence for dirt on Trump(or contracted the job out to British intelligence). The intelligence services of both countries have a close history, some glorious, some dubious.
The Senate report regarding Manafort: the specific words 'created opportunities...exert influence...closely affiliated...grave threat' are largely nothing terms. Is the report saying any of this actually happened? Or are they merely suggesting it 'created opportunities' for it to potentially happen? It's almost certainly the latter and therefore meaningless. If they are meaningless terms then they ought to have been meaningless to the FBI. However, we had a weaponised FBI whose career lackeys were looking to do a favour for what they expected to be an incoming Clinton administration.Comment
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Manafort was eventually ousted becasue becasue his name appeared over and over again in the black ledger that Victor Yanokovich held in his desk. Not becasue the Ukranian embassy gave some dirt to the Clinton campaign. The ledger was known since August 2015. The reporting of Manafort's name in it started after they realised that one of the people is now working in a US campaign and the story was broken by the NY Times in August 2016.
Manafort admitted to sharing internal polling data with Kilimnik who is considered a Russian intelligence asset (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-b2140727.html). What happens inside the FSB once that information is shared is largely a black box which can be diificult to penetrate (unless you get a professional on the job). Leverage does not always need to be used to be effective. The threat alone of using leverage can sometimes be enough to bend someone to your will. The reason I posted the quote from hte senate report was to show-case that the Trump-Russia connections were not innocent bread-and-butter contacts between presidential campaigns and other countries.
Cheers.Comment
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Crossfire Hurricane started JULY 31st 2016 but regarding the Steele dosier, "the FBI investigative team only received the Steele dossier in mid-September" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossf..._investigation)).Originally posted by jason_c View Post
Regarding the "Obama knew that Hillary was behind (not in front of?) the dossier: "On September 7, 2016, U.S. intelligence passed information to James Comey, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Peter Strzok, Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence that in late July 2016, John Brennan, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency at the time, had briefed President Barack Obama that U.S. intelligence had indications that Russian intelligence was alleging that U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had invented a plan for a scandal to link candidate Trump to Vladimir Putin, the DNC email hack, and Wikileaks’ release of the emails"
This is US intelligence, that Russian intelligence are saying that Clinton is inventing the scandal.
Are you suggesting that Obama should have said: "Oh, if this is Russian intelligence, then it must be true and I must do XYZ!". I would also note that this happened in July, a full two months before the FBI became aware of the Steele dosier, so the statement that "Obama knew that that Hillary was behind the Steele dossier" can not be true. At least not in July. Not in August and not in mid-september. In fact, it is unclear exactly (at least to me) when Obama was told that the DNC financed the Russian part of the Steele Dossier. The fact that the FBI knew that Clinton financed it is irrelevant because the investigation was lready well under way and the collusion was happening in plain sight ("Russia, if you are listening, please find the 30k emails").
What did you expect Obama to do? go to the FBI and say "You must stop this investigation becasue my former Secretary of state financed some supplementary information" or "Go put you best men on it"? Just because Trump did not respect the indepence of the DoJ, doesn't mean that Obama wasn't supposed to.
And if Obama knew, then so did Biden. He was the VP at the time for Christ's sake. Again, what did you want Biden to do? Are you so conditioned to try to implicate Joe Biden in anything and everything even if it makes no sense?
In any case, the investigation continued DESPITE Biden, Obama and the FBI knowing about the Clinton Steele connection and this was the right thing to happen because the Steele dossier was not relevant to the FBI investigation.
POOF!!!!
(sorry, that was the sound of the Durham report just going up in flames)
Cheers.Last edited by Svensson; 05-23-2023, 06:41 PM.Comment
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Again, we have 'considered a Russian intelligence asset'. What does this even mean? As far as I know Kilimnik has not been labelled as such by any US intelligence services.Originally posted by Svensson View PostComment
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"Kilimnik, who is assessed by the FBI to have ties to Russian Intelligence..."
You really wanna hang your hat on the difference between "having ties to" and "is"? And is there really such a difference? Last week you stated that Durham has proven that Russia Russia Russia was hoax. Now the "proof" that this was a hoax is whether the FSB payroll has an entry for one of the many people that the Trump campaign were sipping coffee with on a weekly basis? Or if that guy has "FSB officer" in his email signature?
And let's not get lost in the weeds here. My central allegation always was that Manafort shared internal polling data with an entity (Russian government/secret service/military, select as neccesary) that would ensure this polling data would be used by the Russian troll farms to continue helping Trump.
After having worked with russians and pro-russian Ukrainians for over a decade, he would have known exactly how these things are happening. And I would even go as far as saying that this is why he was hired by trump in the first place.Last edited by Svensson; 05-24-2023, 07:58 AM.Comment
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'Assessed to have ties to Russian intelligence'. Again, a word that could be significant or could be nothing. Note it doesn't say 'known asset' or 'known agent'? simply 'ties'. Ties is a word often thrown around to blacken someone's name. You know who else has 'ties' to the security services, 99% of people working on Capitol Hill and indeed the vast majority of those working for the Federal government within a 10 miles radius of DC. They will each have 'ties' to the US security services. However, they will not all be passing on secret information to these US security services.Originally posted by Svensson View Post"Kilimnik, who is assessed by the FBI to have ties to Russian Intelligence..."
You really wanna hang your hat on the difference between "having ties to" and "is"? And is there really such a difference? Last week you stated that Durham has proven that Russia Russia Russia was hoax. Now the "proof" that this was a hoax is whether the FSB payroll has an entry for one of the many people that the Trump campaign were sipping coffee with on a weekly basis? Or if that guy has "FSB officer" in his email signature?
And let's not get lost in the weeds here. My central allegation always was that Manafort shared internal polling data with an entity (Russian government/secret service/military, select as neccesary) that would ensure this polling data would be used by the Russian troll farms to continue helping Trump.
After having worked with russians and pro-russian Ukrainians for over a decade, he would have known exactly how these things are happening. And I would even go as far as saying that this is why he was hired by trump in the first place.
As for the troll farms I recommend you read this article.
Edit: I will reply to your Steele dossier post at some point.Comment
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