Comrade Trump

[wapiti]

Mueller never said Russia's extensive efforts had no effect. Just go read it. He explains what they found they did. The election turned on a 70k total vote difference among the states of PA, WI, and MI, which is less than half a percent difference among the 13 million+ votes cast there. It wouldn't have taken much.

Whatever the effect may have been, I think we should still have a concern about another country hostile to the US screwing around in our political process. It should be more troubling if one of the candidates didn't care and actually even welcomed it -- even if it can't be proven he actively participated with them. If you read it, that's what the Mueller report says happened, regardless how Trump and Barr have mischaracterized it.

Hillary spent nearly a billion dollars to get elected. If that wasn't enough to counter the relative pittance that Russia spent or did, then that's on her.

Sure, it's troubling that Trump didn't really care about Russian meddling. It's equally troubling that Hillary hired a former British agent to dig up dirt on Trump and then leaked then leaked the complete work of fiction to the public. Without that, Russia-gate never would have gotten off the ground.

[Walter Sobchak]

Mueller never said Russia's extensive efforts had no effect. Just go read it. He explains what they found they did. The election turned on a 70k total vote difference among the states of PA, WI, and MI, which is half a percent difference among the 13 million+ votes cast there. It wouldn't have taken much.

It's amazing that you are still clinging to this dumb take, especially since (as wapiti notes) there’s no foreign interference in elections that begins to compare with domestic campaign funding. When compared the gobs of money spent on the 2016 campaign, the effect of Russian interference is undetectable.

[Uncle Ted]

It's amazing that you are still clinging to this dumb take, especially since (as wapiti notes) there’s no foreign interference in elections that begins to compare with domestic campaign funding. When compared the gobs of money spent on the 2016 campaign, the effect of Russian interference is undetectable.

But, but what about all those emails those Russian hackers gave to the wikileaks freak? That exposed all the evilness that the DNC and Clinton campaign was doing behind the scene and most likely lost Hillary the election. They had the right to keep their evil doings to themselves!

Speaking of Clinton emails... this looks interesting:

FBI found Hillary Clinton's emails in Obama White House, former top official says

A former top FBI official said a repository of Hillary Clinton's emails was obtained by the Obama White House.

As part of a court-ordered discovery related to Clinton’s unauthorized email server, Bill Priestap was asked by conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch to identify representatives of Clinton, her State Department staff, and government agencies from which “email repositories were obtained" by the FBI.

He divulged a nonexhaustive list, which included the Executive Office of the President.

Other people mentioned were former Clinton aides Cheryl Mills, Heather Samuelson, Jacob Sullivan, and Justin Cooper, former Clinton information technology staffer Bryan Pagliano, the State Department, Secret Service, and Washington-based law firm Williams and Connolly.

Priestep answered questions in writing and under oath as part of U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth's ruling earlier this year that discovery could commence examining the former secretary of state’s use of the server, encompassing Obama administration senior State Department officials, lawyers, and Clinton aides, as well as Priestap.
[...]
“This astonishing confirmation, made under oath by the FBI, shows that the Obama FBI had to go to President Obama’s White House office to find emails that Hillary Clinton tried to destroy or hide from the American people,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement. “No wonder Hillary Clinton has thus far skated — Barack Obama is implicated in her email scheme.”
[...]

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/n...-official-says

Well I'll be damned... the Russians must have hacked Hillary's private email server and gave her emails to Obama.

[BlueK]

Don McGahn and other former employees of the executive branch should go testify to Congress regardless of nutjob Trump says. McGahn especially wouldn't seem to have a good reason not to. Trump has already thrown him under the bus and he doesn't work in the White House anymore.

[wapiti]

Don McGahn and other former employees of the executive branch should go testify to Congress regardless of nutjob Trump says. McGahn especially wouldn't seem to have a good reason not to. Trump has already thrown him under the bus and he doesn't work in the White House anymore.

Ok. Someone help me out here. McGahn would testify that Trump told him to fire Mueller but he refused. Then Trump didn't fire Mueller. Is that supposed to be obstruction of justice?

[Uncle Ted]

Mods... Can we recycle this thread and just change the name to Comrade JO≡ rather than starting a new one?

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JO≡ was tough with the Ukrainians, however...

Joe Biden's 2020 Ukrainian nightmare: A closed probe is revived

Two years after leaving office, Joe Biden couldn’t resist the temptation last year to brag to an audience of foreign policy specialists about the time as vice president that he strong-armed Ukraine into firing its top prosecutor.

In his own words, with video cameras rolling, Biden described how he threatened Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in March 2016 that the Obama administration would pull $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees, sending the former Soviet republic toward insolvency, if it didn’t immediately fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.

“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion.’ I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’” Biden recalled telling Poroshenko.

“Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time,” Biden told the Council on Foreign Relations event, insisting that President Obama was in on the threat.

Interviews with a half-dozen senior Ukrainian officials confirm Biden’s account, though they claim the pressure was applied over several months in late 2015 and early 2016, not just six hours of one dramatic day. Whatever the case, Poroshenko and Ukraine’s parliament obliged by ending Shokin’s tenure as prosecutor. Shokin was facing steep criticism in Ukraine, and among some U.S. officials, for not bringing enough corruption prosecutions when he was fired.

But Ukrainian officials tell me there was one crucial piece of information that Biden must have known but didn’t mention to his audience: The prosecutor he got fired was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into the natural gas firm Burisma Holdings that employed Biden’s younger son, Hunter, as a board member.

U.S. banking records show Hunter Biden’s American-based firm, Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC, received regular transfers into one of its accounts — usually more than $166,000 a month — from Burisma from spring 2014 through fall 2015, during a period when Vice President Biden was the main U.S. official dealing with Ukraine and its tense relations with Russia.

The general prosecutor’s official file for the Burisma probe — shared with me by senior Ukrainian officials — shows prosecutors identified Hunter Biden, business partner Devon Archer and their firm, Rosemont Seneca, as potential recipients of money.
[...]

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-ho...obe-is-revived

[Commando]

lol yeah Trump's been so tough on Russia.

[BlueK]

Ok. Someone help me out here. McGahn would testify that Trump told him to fire Mueller but he refused. Then Trump didn't fire Mueller. Is that supposed to be obstruction of justice?

Yes, because the obstruction law is about intent to obstruct, not necessarily about being successful at it. Obviously, to prove intent there would have to be some steps taken to attempt it at least. For example, let's say you tried to hide, alter, or steal evidence from law enforcement investigating something. That would constitute obstruction even if you weren't successful at it and the cops got the evidence anyway.

Nixon wasn't ultimately successful at it either. They were going to impeach him based on trying to disrupt the investigation into Watergate both for trying to fire the prosecutor and for trying to order the CIA to obstruct the FBI in the investigation, which also failed.

[wapiti]

Yes, because the obstruction law is about intent to obstruct, not necessarily about being successful at it. Obviously, to prove intent there would have to be some steps taken to attempt it at least. For example, let's say you tried to hide, alter, or steal evidence from law enforcement investigating something. That would constitute obstruction even if you weren't successful at it and the cops got the evidence anyway.

Nixon wasn't ultimately successful at it either. They were going to impeach him based on trying to disrupt the investigation into Watergate both for trying to fire the prosecutor and for trying to order the CIA to obstruct the FBI in the investigation, which also failed.

OK. So Trump tells his attorney "Fire Mueller". McGahn says, "no, if I do that you might get in trouble for obstruction, I'm not going to do it." Then Trump, who was perfectly capable of either firing Mueller himself or finding someone else to do it, decides not to fire him.

Is that really the most robust case for obstruction?

[BlueK]

OK. So Trump tells his attorney "Fire Mueller". McGahn says, "no, if I do that you might get in trouble for obstruction, I'm not going to do it." Then Trump, who was perfectly capable of either firing Mueller himself or finding someone else to do it, decides not to fire him.

Is that really the most robust case for obstruction?

Legally it is, based on how the statute is written, and Mueller said as much. Barr disagreed, but then he's also the guy who wrote the 19 page memo to get this job by arguing his extreme theory that a president can't obstruct justice just because he's the President.

Ultimately this will be settled politically. I really don't care if Trump never serves time in jail over it. But I still think it's pretty crappy behavior from the chief executive, and one way or the other, for the good of the country he needs to go.

It's also a little hard to believe Trump supporters wouldn't care if someone like Obama had done the same thing.

[Uncle Ted]

The Obama administration (yes, Comrade Biden included) dropped the ball when it came to calling out the Russians interfering with our elections...

Rosenstein Calls Out Obama Admin For Failing to ‘Publicize’ Russian Election Interference

During a private speech Thursday evening, deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein lamented the Obama administration’s decision not to “publicize” Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 election.


Rosenstein, who oversaw special counsel Robert Mueller’s recently-concluded investigation into Russian election interference, suggested that the Obama administration did the public a disservice by not publicly revealing “the full story” of the Kremlin’s attempt to disrupt the election while adequate counter-measures could have been taken.


“Some critical decisions about the Russia investigation were made before I got there. The previous Administration chose not to publicize the full story about Russian computer hackers and social media trolls, and how they relate to a broader strategy to undermine America,” Rosenstein said during an address to the Public Servants Dinner of the Armenian Bar Association.


Rosenstein went on to criticize former FBI director James Comey for his decision to reveal the existence of a counterintelligence investigation into Russian election interference at the height of the 2016 campaign.
[...]

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/...-interference/

Putin and Biden... a couple of old comrades.

[wapiti]

Legally it is, based on how the statute is written, and Mueller said as much. Barr disagreed, but then he's also the guy who wrote the 19 page memo to get this job by arguing his extreme theory that a president can't obstruct justice just because he's the President.

Ultimately this will be settled politically. I really don't care if Trump never serves time in jail over it. But I still think it's pretty crappy behavior from the chief executive, and one way or the other, for the good of the country he needs to go.

It's also a little hard to believe Trump supporters wouldn't care if someone like Obama had done the same thing.

I think it's funny that I keep hearing Nader and other Dems say repeatedly that there is no doubt that Trump committed crimes and this appears to be the best they've got.

[Uncle Ted]

I think it's funny that I keep hearing Nader and other Dems say repeatedly that there is no doubt that Trump committed crimes and this appears to be the best they've got.

[Uncle Ted]

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Well, there goes the thing that JO≡ is most proud of... again.

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Something else to add to the list.

[Jeff Lebowski]

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Well, there goes the thing that JO≡ is most proud of... again.

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Something else to add to the list.

Ha. That list pretty much proves he is right. Weak stuff as usual, UT.