The 2016 Presidential Election Trainwreck

[Color Me Badd Fan]

so his campaign manager colluding with Russia isn't important?

What collusion are we talking about, the meeting with the Russian lawyer? Manafort was out of the campaign by August 2016. They were fishing for opposition research.

Compare that to the WaPo story. The DNC, Hillary and the FBI funded the dossier which was then used to justify a warrant to tap phones of a political campaign.

[Uncle Ted]

Manafort at least was definitely colluding. But it's hard to get the Trumpologists to commit to what a definition of colluding is.

How about (1) paying the Ruskies directly or indirectly money? Or (2) having the Ruskies pay you directly or indirectly?

For #2 the Ruskies paid Hillary indirectly by contributing to her fam-damn-ly foundation. And they directly paid Bill when he gave a speech for them.

For #1, the dust still hasn't settled yet on the "likely fictitious dossier".

What trail of money do we have for Drumpf and his camp? Or do the Ruskies just screw with elections for the fun of it?

[Walter Sobchak]

Can someone explain the significance of the story? I assume every campaign conducts opposition research. Did Fusion pay or otherwise collude with the Russians for their info?

Here is a good article about the dossier from Marcy Wheeler (emptywheel on twitter). She is no Trump fan, but no fan of the Dems either:

Reasons Why Dems Have Been Fucking Stupid On The Steele Dossier, A LONG ESSAY

I have zero doubt that the Russians attempted to influence the election. I think it likely Robert Mueller will eventually show evidence that senior people in Trump’s camp attempted to and may have coordinated with people working for Russia, and people more tangential to the campaign sought out Russians for help. I think if the full story of the Russian involvement in the election comes out, it will be worse than what people currently imagine.

I also think Trump opponents have made a really grave error in investing so much in the Steele dossier. That’s true because, from the start, there were some real provenance questions about it, as leaked. Those questions have only grown, as I’ll explain below. The dossier was always way behind ongoing reporting on the hack-and-leak, meaning it is utterly useless for one of the most important parts of last year’s tampering. The dossier provides Trump officials a really easy way to rebut claims of involvement, even when (such as with Michael Cohen) there is ample other evidence to suggest inappropriate ties with Russia. Most importantly, the dossier is not needed for the most common reason people cling to it, to provide a framework to understand Trump’s compromise by Russia. By late January, WaPo’s reporting did a far better job of that, with the advantage that it generally proceeded from events with more public demonstrable proof. And (again, given the abundance of other evidence) there’s no reason to believe the Mueller investigation depends on it.

But because Trump opponents have clung to the damn dossier for months, like a baby’s blanket, hoping for a pee tape, it allows Trump, Republicans, and Russians to engage in lawfare and other means to discredit the dossier as if discrediting the dossier will make the pile of other incriminating evidence disappear.

[much more]

To sum up:

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[BlueK]

What collusion are we talking about, the meeting with the Russian lawyer? Manafort was out of the campaign by August 2016. They were fishing for opposition research.

Compare that to the WaPo story. The DNC, Hillary and the FBI funded the dossier which was then used to justify a warrant to tap phones of a political campaign.

Sharing campaign information to a close associate to Putin to whom he owed a boatload of money, in exchange for having the debt forgiven. It's not "proven" yet beyond any doubt with the info the public has so far. I get that.

But who cares. Ultimately even if all of this is proven with him or anyone else associated with Trump it will mean nothing to the Trump people. People on Fox already months ago started making the argument that collusion even if true, isn't/wouldn't be a big deal.

Trump sucks as a president and that's all that should matter. And republicans who can't keep him in line or can't get anything done deserve to lose in 2018.

[PaloAltoCougar]

...

Compare that to the WaPo story. The DNC, Hillary and the FBI funded the dossier which was then used to justify a warrant to tap phones of a political campaign.

Which WaPo story? The one that says "Trump's allegation of FBI payments is still dubious"?

[Commando]

Sharing campaign information to a close associate to Putin to whom he owed a boatload of money, in exchange for having the debt forgiven. It's not "proven" yet beyond any doubt with the info the public has so far. I get that.

But who cares. Ultimately even if all of this is proven with him or anyone else associated with Trump it will mean nothing to the Trump people. People on Fox already months ago started making the argument that collusion even if true, isn't/wouldn't be a big deal.

Trump sucks as a president and that's all that should matter. And republicans who can't keep him in line or can't get anything done deserve to lose in 2018.

2016 is the first time I voted Democratic in the presidential election, even though I'm registered as an Independent. I normally will vote for the candidate who makes the most sense, or, lacking information on that person, the one less likely to be a huge douche. I hate Trump so much I hope every Republican in the country loses their seat- just in case they were thinking about voting for any part of Trump's agenda to show party solidarity.

[BlueK]

How about (1) paying the Ruskies directly or indirectly money? Or (2) having the Ruskies pay you directly or indirectly?

For #2 the Ruskies paid Hillary indirectly by contributing to her fam-damn-ly foundation. And they directly paid Bill when he gave a speech for them.

For #1, the dust still hasn't settled yet on the "likely fictitious dossier".

What trail of money do we have for Drumpf and his camp? Or do the Ruskies just screw with elections for the fun of it?

Direct payments. Cool. I suppose indirect with some money laundering layovers wouldn't qualify. And I'm pretty sure Robert Mueller is following the money trail now. Also, by answering the question you've self identified as a Trumpologist, since that's who I said didn't like to give a definition of collusion. Thanks for answering.

[creekster]

Which WaPo story? The one that says "Trump's allegation of FBI payments is still dubious"?

I am not sure what point you're making here. Are you playing the "It is no big deal what the DNC apparently did because Trump is so much worse" game? In a normal environment, we would all be disappointed that Hilary and the DNC paid for the sort of crap that was in the dossier. The choice to secure the dossier was embarrassing, the promotion of the more dubious morsels of information in the dossier undermine all credibility and the months of lying about their role in securing the dossier is improper and makes one wonder if this is even worse than it appears. As it turns out, they did so while campaigning against a guy who may be the most uncouth, embarrassing and incompetent national political figure in the history of the country. And even if Trump did collude (and I doubt that he did so directly or criminally, although some of this associates very likely did some pretty crappy things) I am not sure that this makes Hilary's conduct any less improper. As many have said many times, both of these candidates are disgusting. A pox on them and all of us for being complicit in allowing them to end up as the two major candidates.

[Uncle Ted]

Direct payments. Cool. I suppose indirect with some money laundering layovers wouldn't qualify. And I'm pretty sure Robert Mueller is following the money trail now. Also, by answering the question you've self identified as a Trumpologist, since that's who I said didn't like to give a definition of collusion. Thanks for answering.

Oh yeah... thanks for reminding me about the Pedesta lobbying group:

No One Mentions That The Russian Trail Leads To Democratic Lobbyists
[...]
The media’s focus on Trump’s Russian connections ignores the much more extensive and lucrative business relationships of top Democrats with Kremlin-associated oligarchs and companies. Thanks to the Panama Papers, we know that the Podesta Group (founded by John Podesta’s brother, Tony) lobbied for Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank. “Sberbank is the Kremlin, they don’t do anything major without Putin’s go-ahead, and they don’t tell him ‘no’ either,” explained a retired senior U.S. intelligence official. According to a Reuters report, Tony Podesta was “among the high-profile lobbyists registered to represent organizations backing Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich.” Among these was the European Center, which paid Podesta $900,000 for his lobbying.

That’s not all: The busy Podesta Group also represented Uranium One, a uranium company acquired by the Russian government which received approval from Hillary Clinton’s State Department to mine for uranium in the U.S. and gave Russia twenty percent control of US uranium. The New York Times reported Uranium One’s chairman, Frank Guistra, made significant donations to the Clinton Foundation, and Bill Clinton was paid $500,000 for one speech from a Russian investment bank that has “links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock.” Notably, Frank Giustra, the Clinton Foundation’s largest and most controversial donor, does not appear anywhere in Clinton’s “non-private” emails. It is possible that the emails of such key donors were automatically scrubbed to protect the Clinton Foundation.

That’s still not all: Rep. John Conyers (D., Mich.) read Kremlin propaganda into the Congressional Record, referring to Ukrainian militia as “repulsive Neo Nazis” in denying Ukrainian forces ManPad weapons. Conyers floor speech was surely a notable success of some Kremlin lobbyist.
[...]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulrod.../#6263aeb23991

$900K of Ruskies' money for the Podesta bothers... Not bad. How much did Manafort get?

Yes, Mueller seems to be on this money trail as well...

Special counsel Robert Mueller is now investigating a top Democratic lobbyist
Tony Podesta, the brother of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair, is under scrutiny in the expanding Russia investigation.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation on Russian interference has a new subject: well-known Democratic lobbyist Tony Podesta.


According to Tom Winter and Julia Ainsley of NBC News, an inquiry by Mueller’s team into foreign work by Trump’s former campaign chair Paul Manafort has now expanded to include the foreign work of Podesta and his firm, the Podesta Group.


This part of the investigation has no specific connection to the question of Russian interference in the 2016 campaign. Instead, it’s about work done by several Washington operatives for pro-Russian Ukrainians a few years earlier.


Specifically, both Podesta’s and Manafort’s firms represented a Ukrainian nonprofit group — the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine — between 2012 and 2014. This group was attempting to improve the image of the Ukrainian regime at the time, which was pro-Russian and under scrutiny for its treatment of their domestic opposition.
[...]

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...-investigation

[Color Me Badd Fan]

Which WaPo story? The one that says "Trump's allegation of FBI payments is still dubious"?

Oh sorry, I misspoke. The FBI didn't pay Steele, they just reimbursed him for some expenses. Nevermind.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/28/politi...ses/index.html

[PaloAltoCougar]

I am not sure what point you're making here. Are you playing the "It is no big deal what the DNC apparently did because Trump is so much worse" game? In a normal environment, we would all be disappointed that Hilary and the DNC paid for the sort of crap that was in the dossier. The choice to secure the dossier was embarrassing, the promotion of the more dubious morsels of information in the dossier undermine all credibility and the months of lying about their role in securing the dossier is improper and makes one wonder if this is even worse than it appears. As it turns out, they did so while campaigning against a guy who may be the most uncouth, embarrassing and incompetent national political figure in the history of the country. And even if Trump did collude (and I doubt that he did so directly or criminally, although some of this associates very likely did some pretty crappy things) I am not sure that this makes Hilary's conduct any less improper. As many have said many times, both of these candidates are disgusting. A pox on them and all of us for being complicit in allowing them to end up as the two major candidates.

My point wasn't intended as a vindication of the DNC or Hillary, but was simply to note that the cited article contradicts, rather than supports, the Trump theory that the FBI funded the dossier.

[Jeff Lebowski]

David Burge is hilarious.

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[Uncle Ted]

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[Walter Sobchak]

To Bernie, Please forgive us. Love, Donna.

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[creekster]

To Bernie, Please forgive us. Love, Donna.

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That’s a good read. I expect the republicans have their own issues, but that just shows how corrupt and manipulative Clinton is. This article has less to do with saying sorry to Bernie than it does with Brazile trying to resurrect her reputation and simultaneously unhitch the democratic wagon from Clinton’s fallen star. Go away Clinton. They don’t want you anymore.