Rolf Mowatt-Larssen served for 23 years in the CIA including in posts overseas. He was also the chief of intelligence and counterintelligence at the Department of Energy, with responsibility for safeguarding our nuclear stockpile. He probably knows what he’s talking about when he discusses spycraft.
I feel like his grasp of the cast of characters involved here could be a little stronger, and that would only improve what looks like some pretty solid analysis. Overall, I think he’s got the basics right. The Russians were looking to cash in on an already friendly relationship with Trump, but they were cautious and used this meeting as a way to test out how far they could go. After the meeting was concluded, they probably looked carefully for any signs that it had been reported and when they discovered that the whole thing had been covered up, they had a lot of freedom of action. They immediately went ahead with plans to leak the DNC documents. They negotiated a change in the Republican Party platform. Soon after, they watched in enjoyment as Trump denied any meetings or relationship with them, which gave them extra leverage. Thereafter, they always had the option of threatening to reveal that Trump (and his surrogates) had been lying.
I believe, although cannot prove, that they had sent Manafort to Trump with a hard offer to refuse. Manafort would work on his delegate count for no pay. Michael Flynn was already compromised because he hadn’t notified the Pentagon that he was taking tens of thousands of dollars from the Kremlin to make appearances on the Russian Today (RT) network and badmouth the Obama administration. The Trump campaign was therefore compromised six ways to Sunday by the time the summer had begun.
There’s a much longer list of characters who might have compromised themselves. Carter Page was let go because his activities were too obvious. Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, has all kinds of relationships with pro-Russian Ukrainians and may have had secret meetings with Russians in Eastern Europe. Michael Caputo actually worked for the Kremlin in the 1990s. Boris Epshteyn was born in Moscow and toes their line. There’s the whole Felix Sater element that no one should ever forget. Trump’s foul-mouthed lawyer Marc Kasowitz also has represented Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and Sberbank, Russia’s largest state-owned bank.
I feel like I’m only scratching the surface here, because there are others who were only loosely affiliated with the campaign who were clearly in contact with the Russians seeking and receiving everything from Clinton’s private emails to hacked Democratic and state voter files.
The overall picture is clear. Russia wanted Trump to win and Trump wanted Russia’s help. The collusion was explicit, some of it is well-documented, and the defense is now that anybody would have done the same.
Awwwww….your link to Rolf Mowatt-Larssen’s article goes to the Washington Post. It figures. Spooks talking in a spooked-up newspaper. I refuse to pay their firewall…they have enough money already. I won’t use Amazon, either. I pay the NY Times for info because…well, because I live in NYC and there is a lot of local news that demands my attention. I consume the NY Times’s political and international news with a wary eye…my “Judith Miller” eye…because once burned, twice shy. A hundred times burned? More? Forever shy!!!
So…could you (or someone else) post some quotes from this article? I looked him up.
A career spook.
Wow!!!
I cannot wait to see what he to say!!! “The George W. Bush Award for Excellence in Counterterrorism!!!” Impressive!!! Gorge W. Bush!!! Before or after 9/11, I wonder. I’d like to hear his take on torture and Abu Ghraib, while I’m at it.
AG
P.S. He is a highly accomplished, high-level, highly rewarded professional liar. That’s his gig. He’s good at it. Slick like a motherfucker!!! I will believe nothing he says. On principle.
“…Consider the following thought experiment:
If someone…anyone who might actually have access to real information, no matter from what country that information originated…approached you personally, centerfielddj, and said that they had seriously damaging info regarding Trump, would you not take a look at it or at least refer them to the proper authorities? (If indeed there remain any “proper authorities” in the PostFactual version of the U.S.)
Of course you would.
You are anti-Trump…”.
by Arthur Gilroy (arthurgilroy<at>earthlink.net) on Sat Jul 15th, 2017 at 05:42:09 AM EST
No, I would not, Arthur.
BooMan would not.
None of us anti-Trumpers at the Pond would.
You’re flying solo on this one, buddy.
You delusionally believe information stolen by a foreign adversary from any political opponent would be presented completely, openly and honestly to us.
You delusionally believe that there would never come a moment when the foreign adversary would come to collect our debt to them.
We know better.
You can feel free to continue to partner with Trump and the Russian Federation. You’ll keep the fans you have, and the rest of us will continue to view you as a hostile person, a cautionary tale.
I wrote:
You answered:
You wouldn’t?
I would.
Anybody who really cares about this country who is offered evidence of criminal activities on the part of any powerful political figure would be more than willing to look through it.
Evidence on Trump, the Clintons or anyone else.
I would be interested to hear your take on the Chris Steele “Dodgy Dossier” thing against Trump. So far you have avoided comment.
I don’t blame you. It is the other shoe dropping from the other foot.
The foot you favor.
I only favor the Good Foot, myself.
Wherever and whenever it comes down.
AG
Please, please go away.
Full of shit, arrogant and deaf is no way to go through life.
How can you verify that the foreign adversary is not deceiving you with their propagandistic information?
If the propaganda helps you win the election and you kept your coordination with the foreign adversary secret during the campaign, how do you defend the national interest when the foreign adversary comes to collect your debt to them?
The Clinton campaign didn’t dwell on the Steele dossier at all. Details of the Steele dossier weren’t discussed until days before the election. The Clinton campaign treated it as unproven, as it was. The Clinton campaign didn’t coordinate over a series of many months with a foreign adversary to micro-target the dissemination of propaganda.
These false equivalencies of yours are revelatory. You simply can’t stand in good faith against critiques of your position here.
Here’s a thought Arthur. Trump has all but admitted our loud that he wanted the Russians to hack Clinton’s e mails. Now if Trump, in his wisdom, decides to give back one of those compounds or lessen the sanctions on Russia is that a quid pro quo? Cause if it is, we got the bastard.
The White House is seeking to work with Speaker Ryan to scuttle the additional sanctions against Russia passed nearly unanimously by the Senate. We’re already there, as if the anti-NATO, anti-EU actions and rhetoric weren’t already substantial evidence of a debt being repaid in real time.
Does it require an act of congress to lower the sanctions or an executive order? If congress do you think they can pass it?
Current sanctions against Russian Federation interests were established by Congressional action. Another legislative act of Congress would be required to reduce or eliminate them.
The return of U.S. compounds which were taken from Russian diplomats last December could be accomplished unilaterally by the Trump Administration. I am uncertain if Congress could pass a law to prevent it. Anyone know?
Above from yesterday LATimes about raising sanctions on Russia. Take a look. It implies Trump can unilaterally reduce sanctions.
Thanks.
As I understand this situation, It appears the Russians are threatening some retaliation recently for Obama taking their compounds. Trump was ready to give them back earlier this year. Now it seems Trump (prolly on advice of counsel?) thinks it would be wiser to do it with congressional agreement which could be hard to come by.
you don’t even have to know the spy game to know that you don’t willingly open yourself up to blackmail.
Yes, the WaPo is a spook newspaper and therefore defacto we can’t care what they say. Meanwhile, Sy Hersh been hanging out with Russian spooks, as he takes the Russian line on every foreign policy development during the Obama era and continuing into the Trump one. He’s also easily deceived:
This post is a perfect example of the New McCarthyism.
Seymour Hersh is one of the few successful investigative journalists to attempt to tell the American people about the crimes of their government. He broke story after story…My Lai, Abu Ghraib and many more.
He did not investigate other countries because he had his hands full with this one.
He tells it as he sees it. He has been doing so for 50 years. Now he’s suddenly some sort of Russian puppet? My Lai and Abu Ghraib happened. Russia had no dog in those fights.
So now “…he takes the Russian line on every foreign policy development during the Obama era and continuing into the Trump one?”
He’s some kind of Russian puppet?
Get real.
ASG
Remember when a group of deeply stupid people coined this term in an attempt to discredit anyone who took the claims Russian interference in the election seriously? Remember how those deeply stupid people would gleefully smear anyone who examined the evidence as irrationally hostile warmongers looking for an excuse to go to war with Russia?
And then it turned out that the people you were trying to discredit were right, and the deeply stupid people were wrong?
You’d think this would produce some humility. At the least, you’d think nobody could be stupid enough to keep using the term.
But here we are.
Your opinion of Sy Hersh is evidently preserved in 1990’s amber.
Dude went off the rails during Bush administration.
No Booman. It is you who has gone “off the rails.” Hersh was writing great stuff in important media during Butch II’s reign.
You could look it up, as Casey Stengel used to say. For starters, his Abu Ghraib articles in the New Yorker appeared right in the middle of the Bush II years…2004. he ccontinued writing about Iraq and Iran for a number of years.
Of course, the phrase “The US government denied these allegations” appears as a badge of honor in many of the reviews of his stories.
I personally believe that his bin Laden story is what permanently turned the PermaGov mass media against him. He was OK…tolerated, at least…when he was criticizing neocons, but to allege that the whole bin Laden assassination story as fed us by the Obama administration was a crock of shit went beyond the pale. From then on he was persona non grata as far as the major U.S. media were concerned. Too close to the UniParty, PermaGov truth of the matter. Too close to the bone.
You have bought into this. I am sorry to see it. I well remember when you had no truck with the Intelligence folks and heir ongoing hustles.
No more.
Too bad.
AG
Good God, you’re on a rage bender to-day.
This is a helluva record you’re piling up. We’ll be able to look back on where people were when Trump tested us all. This stuff you’re contributing here will age poorly.
Maybe.
Or maybe not.
We shall see once all of the bullshit has hit the fan.
All of it, including the PermaGov conniving.
I give it a year, maybe less…
So far I personally have “aged” quite well.
We’ll see when it’s all over.
Won’t we.
Right now?
I give it about 2 to1 that the PermaGov gets rid of Trump…one way or another… and Pence plays ball.
The center holds, once again.
Ever more frayed, though.
Eventually it’s gonna break.
Too many lies.
Watch.,
AG
There are much worse things than the pre-Trump status quo, as the President is richly exhibiting to us all.
The big giveaway to me is that Trump stands foursquare against most of the values Arthur claims as most dear to him, yet he roots for Trump to succeed in overturning our government anyway. It really is “one revolution is exactly the same as another” to him. That appears to me to be past naïveté and identifies him as insincere. He’s not truly in solidarity with others, only with those who sign on fully with his idiosyncratic vision. All others are targets for various levels of dismissiveness and abuse.
As an older white man, AG will not be made to bear the burden of the revolutionary future vision for the United States shared by Trump and Putin. Nice and comfy Arthur will remain relative to those people and communities targeted by Trump, here and around the world.
Arthur will protest this characterization, but it is categorically true. If it were not he would not stubbornly and angrily hang onto his delusions.
Its all the same, and if its not all the same, its much worse, and if its not much worse its the sole cause of all evil.
There must be some level of understanding in AG that makes him realize many of the claims he makes are silly.
Its not reason, he is impermeable to that. Maybe its the knowledge that nothing in essence can be known for sure, and ofcourse its difficult, but at the same time he can project it onto anything that is in the way, a perfect rejection, nothing is sure, anything is possible. So its easy for him to just stick to “i know the truth, you are stupid, if you dont get it you are even dumber than i thought”
I can totally see what he likes about Trump.
You are unreachable.
So it goes.
AG
He went crazy and you just thought it was cutting edge.
He kept on being honest and you thought he was crazy.
Or…you switched sides.
I’ve been here a long while, Bpoman.
I do not recognize you anymore.
AG
You are in near full disagreement with BooMan now. Yet you suckle at the teat of his political blog and depend on it to provide you an audience. Paddling over to the diaries gives you your best chance to avoid the reponses you’re earning here on the front page comment threads.
Please observe what is going on here. You’re not reaching anyone new, you’re testing the good will of the many who disagree with you, and a couple of your former supporters have dropped away.
I’m not sure what you believe you’re contributing to the community at this point. And you don’t seem to be enjoying your participation here; you sound miserable. Maybe factually challenged rageathons provide you a form of pleasure a la Trump. Your constant position-taking prevents us from knowing you well enough to comprehend the correct answer to that.
You ask what I believe I am contributing to the community at this point.
I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Any day now.
Aaaaany day now…
I stay here for the same reason that I stay in this devolved country, centerfield.
Hoping against hope that an awakening will begin.
AG
Unfortunately, Arthur has become one of the people who is seeking to catch the shoes and propagandize Americans into believing shoes are not dropping. He demands that Americans go to sleep while the extremely illiberal Russian Federation attempts to remake the United States in their image.
Here’s how thoroughly Arthur has become bamboozled: he’s not just dismissing who delivered the help to the Trump campaign, he’s dismissing the fact that the information that was chopped up and deceptively presented to damage the progressive movement was stolen. Arthur has become warped, morally stunted, misshapen by his hatreds.
Would it be wrong if Trump’s campaign conspired with a foreign adversary to make maximum propagandistic use of deceitfully presented information, information stolen from supporters of their political opponents?
No, it would be right, Arthur says. No second thoughts, even after having observed all Trump and his crew have wrought.
Arthur would love to have his personal information stolen, sifted through, and selectively and deceptively disseminated in a public campaign. A sophisticated, malicious effort of that sort would paint quite the horrible picture of him. Arthur’s private and professional pursuits could be restricted and altered, in whatever ways a thieving propagandist with significant resources chose.
No, it would be right, Arthur says.
I sense Arthur will bring the “if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear” defense. The morally rotten position of despots and their enablers throughout history.
Arthur wants Trump to persevere and succeed on his own terms, even though he now knows what the President has in mind for the nation. Arthur has made this point over and over and over and over and over and over again. He can protest that claim; we can read his stuff and determine that the claim is valid.
You write:
No I am one of the people who are seeking to make the American people realize that the shoes dropping from both sides of this competition are full of shit.
More two-dimensional arguments from you will change nothing as far as I am concerned. The Permanent Government of the U.S. and its current enemies…Russia, the Trumpists…are in a competition to decide who controls us. I refuse to be controlled. To the death, if necessary.
Bet on it.
AG
No grappling with the happy approval of the use of stolen information in a political campaign.
No consideration of one of the implications of that happy approval: how that technique, sufficiently and ruthlessly resourced, could be used to target and destroy you, another one you love, a politician you admire, anyone.
A powerful person’s or system’s capacity to control you, to shove you around as they will, is near complete. Your freedom must be defended by maintenance of a set of societal and legal rules which grant you your presumption of freedom from control. You callously assume your privileged status under the Trump Administration and their Russian enablers, willfully ignorant of the many Americans and global citizens whose abilities to avoid becoming controlled are much more threatened than yours at this political moment.
Stunted, misshapen, blinded by your eternally fixed take on the world.
You write:
And who do you expect to grant us this freedom from control and constant surveillance? Who is going to maintain that trust?
The NSA?
The CIA?
The other entities that are attacking Trump?
A picture is worth a thousand words.
In your quite understandable revulsion for Trump you have allowed yourself to be Judas-goated right into the surveillance masters’ clutches.
Two wrongs do not make a right.
Say the Deep State is successful in getting rid of Trump.
Where are you then?
Right here.
AG
You’re on autopilot now. You’ve posted all this before. It’s utterly unresponsive to the issues you’re being asked to respond to today, on this thread.
You are justifying stealing on a large scale. For a man who constantly claims the right to pronounce moral judgments on others, it’s a peculiar stance to take.
i am not on autopilot. I am learning as I go.
One thing I have learned recently comes from the recent NY Times series called Russia’s Dark Arts.
It describes…in great detail…the methods that Russia has used to skew public opinion both in its own population and in other countries. I believe it to be fairly accurate except in one area…an area of omission that is very plain once you think about it.
There is no mention of the equivalent system in use in the U.S. or any other NATO countries, although its results are plain sight in the NY Times and every other major mass media outlet every day. The recent, very effective use of social media is merely the latest version of this mind control system. It has driven itself so far down into the subconsciousness of most U.S.-ians that they cannot see it even when it is pointed out. The willful blindness of many of the people on this used-to-be progressive website is just another indication of how powerful it really is.
Operation Mockingbird was just the start….it was amateur city compared to what is happening now.
You, centerfield, have either been snared by these efforts or you are a witting participant in its control activities. I do not care, one way or another. Everything that you say here is biased towards the Deep State. Whether you are an amateur, a deluded idiot or a professional, I will continue to oppose your efforts to drive this blog towards the center.
if I fail, I fail.
I do keep trying.
AG
You justify stealing and propaganda if it serves your interests. You’ve done that here on this thread. All this other folderol is desperate evasion of your own responsibilities. You’ll post literally anything in your attempts to evade accountability.
I know you don’t want this blog in the center. You want this community to internalize and accept your radical right wing rhetoric.
It’s always a hoot when the LaRouchites try to write up their irritable mental gestures as if they resembled ideas. The enormous gaping holes between premises and conclusions papered over with pop-psychedelic “nothing is real” babble and, as always, “you’re all ignorant sheeple! …or maybe one of them“.
Oh my God, yes, AG is LaRouchian is his rhetorical style; I hadn’t thought of that before. He doesn’t focus on all the subjects the LaRouchies do, but he’s similarly circular in his argumentative methods and, like them, uses images to alienate the broader public.
It’s like a signaling device: if you are one of the few on the left who love photographs meant to denigrate and ridicule elected leaders from the Democratic Party, then you’re in their little club. Everyone else is repelled. It’s a flawed way to try to build an electorally viable movement.
Meanwhile, Arthur continues to avoid defending his enthusiastic endorsement of the use of stolen communications to attack political enemies.
The Wikipedia entry that AG links to is interesting. People have been finding serious problems with his work l since his reporting for decades. Yet he’s done some of the best journalism we’ve seen. He wrote regularly for the New Yorker through 2012.
When did he go crazy? What happened? Some of his stuff is truly nuts: JFK’s bigamy, for example. But that was in ’97.
First of all, JFK was a serial sexual cheater. I neither know nor care about a previous marriage. It would be totally in character for that family to use any means at their disposal to maintain its rise from bootleggers to true political power. Remember Chappaquiddick and poor Rosemary’s fate when she acted a little too…strange…for popular consumption.
Secondly, you write;
I believe that his reporting got too good. Organized character assassination is a mainstay of the intelligence forces, always and everywhere. You must ask this question: Who are “the people” who had a major part in the decline of his U.S. reputation?
The non-personing of people whose work threatens the Deep State is common and very effective.
AG
The JFK/Marilyn Hoax
http://www.newsweek.com/jfk-marilyn-hoax-174044
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?/topic/6779-the-posthumous-assassination-of-jfk/
When Newsweek and ABC come down on the same side as dean of JFK researchers Jim Di Eugenio, we need to pay attention.
Arthur will pursue any digressive discussion to avoid dealing directly and in good faith with the moral, political and logical consequences of his support for the Trump campaign’s open willingness to collude with the Russian Federation’s propagandistic interference in our 2016 election.
When finally cornered, Arthur will attempt to defend it. But he’ll do so in his hostile, lengthily digressive way.
That he’ll defend it at all is remarkable. He has a right to do so here.
So he should cut the shit, defend the indefensible, and get the community responses he gets. This babble is tiresome and evasive.
A side note: if you use Chrome as your browser, right click on a WP link, choose “Open link in incognito window” and you bypass the firewall.
Using “collusion” in that meaning means that Hillary Clinton “colluded” with Goldman-Sachs because clearly G-S wanted Clinton to win and Clinton wanted G-S’s help.
And yes, I consider G-S a greater threat to the American people than Russia or Putin, although they are threats as well.
That is a step too far. Russia’s government is a criminal organization that steals and kills to keep,power and enrich themselves It is a blight on humanity and the Russian people. You may not like GS and I can understand that, but they simply don’t measure up,to,Russia on the evil scale IMO.
I understand why you are saying that but I don’t agree. Russia is an external sovereign nation – Goldman Sachs has its tentacles into multiple layers of the United States.
Neither entity has shown the slightest interest in any effort to the provide for the common good of the people of the United States.
Unlike Goldman Sachs, Russia possesses nuclear and other major weaponry, a police force, the judiciary, penal system and other governmental agencies, an extensive intelligence service, and a willingness to abuse the powers given to them by these and other exercises of mass state power.
Corporations aspire to gain powers that States possess.
All very, very good points, however I am not convinced.
I’d like it submit this article as an exhibit on my side of the argument.
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/08/goldman-sachs-trial-aleynikov/
After living through the Cold War it would seem to me that Mutual Deterrence works. So I don’t agree that major weaponry is on the table. Nor do I agree that any of the other organizations internal to Russia really matter – how do they influence the US? That leaves the Russian IC.
Yes they matter but the are countered by worlds’ biggest military-industrial complex committed to ensuring they do not matter.
On the other hand Goldman Sachs is protected by the Supreme Court.
I am willing to be convinced but right now I am not.
Except Russia is a nuclear armed mafia. Sort of an order of magnitude worse than the fuckers at GS.
They’re a nuclear-armed Mafia implacably opposed to th US imperialist hegemon, which excuses a lot, for some people it excuses everything.
Is GS implacably opposed th US imperialist hegemon?
Huh? Huh?
Got you there!
True. However. Bombs. Military. Don’t got them. GS prolly doesn’t give a shit so long as the money is good.
Oh, Davis, this is top grade snark. The laugh comes in handy today.
If there are conservatives, and neo-conservatives, and liberals, and neo-liberals, why shouldn’t there be tankies, and neo-tankies?
Yeah, why not!
LOL
So is Donald Trump implacably opposed to revived Soviet empire? I don’t think so, because now open for business with running dogs of capitalism — ka-ching!
It is illegal for a campaign to coordinate with a foreign person. The question is not GS but if there was any coordination between Clinton and Ukraine.
I don’t think that’s the central issue.
Rather, Goldman Sachs colluding with politicians is par for the course. It sucks, but it’s nothing new. It operates within the American system, which is wide open to let it operate. We have survived (?) this for decades. We have to fight it, but it’s hardly new, and all things being equal, it will be here Trump or no Trump, Russia or no Russia. Plenty of Goldman Sachs veterans are working for Trump.
People here have also minimized the Russian thing as just another foreign country meddling in our affairs, again, through collusion with American business and sometimes foreign policy interests. Sure, like Turkey, China, Saudi Arabia, Israel, etc., etc.
As someone stated here some time back in a memorable phrase, “the U.S.A. is not a democracy, it’s an auction.”
All that being said, Russia introduces two new factors that are particularly alarming. (1) Russia has both the ability and the desire to do us great harm on the world scene — and when I say “us” I mean all of us — too easily forgotten is Russia’s role as the world center of fascism, white supremacism, and Xian chauvinism; and (2) They are doing this through a U.S. presidential election, through one of our two major political parties (as a whole), and now through a sitting president and his entire administration. And we know that Trump has no interest as president other than his own financial priorities and doesn;t even know how to spell “constitution”.
So I’m not going to artificially heighten the contrast by pretending everything has been wonderful up to now, that the CIA and Goldman Sachs, etc. are benevolent forces in American life, etc. The truth about Trump and Russia is bad enough, and anyone who can’t see that needs to get their priorities straight.
As far as the IC, my attitude is, let them do something good for once. For the moment anyway, they are the only ones who have both the will and the resources. Later, hopefully, congress and the courts will finish the job.
Let me add a few things to your post. It is illegal to solicit money or things of value from a foreign government.
There is some disagreement on the application or that quote. Here is an LA Times article.
But it does appear the young man is in some legal jeopardy. From the same article:
Overall I think he jumped the shark.
And yet Trump appointed quite a few former Goldman Sachs employees to posts in his administration who will no doubt pursue policies good for GS.
So, if these people are instrumental in ending Dodd-Frank, which the GOP plans to do, are you unable to connect the line between Putin helping Trump win an election and the resulting GS-friendly legislation?
Clinton ran on strengthening the Dodd-Frank laws, and she would not have nominated Mnuchin. The omissions here are tantamount to lying.
They often find many creative ways to avoid defending their positions in good faith.
Did Goldman-Sachs “help” Hillary in her election campaign? Did G-S share opposition research, release hacked private emails, target groups of voters with fake news bots?
G-S paid Hillary to give a speech. The parallel, if there is one, would be RT paying Flynn to give a speech. But Flynn was paid by a hostile foreign government. So even that modest parallel falls apart.
I’m not even sure it would be illegal for GS to help Clinton, they are not a foreign government. But there is a question of whether or not Ukraine or foreign persons there helped her. Does anyone have knowledge of any wrongdoing there?
When Booman posted the story of the $230 million, I thought at last we were going to catch one of them with their fingers in the pie. Alas that has not happened- yet. Before we drag one or more of them away towards the hangmans noose, someone is going to have to prove a quid pro quo,or find a rat. Putin anyone?
Otherwise, maybe they are right. We have a nothing burger, at least nothing that Trump’s pals in congress will do anything about. I thought, and still do, that they have an obstruction of justice case in firing Comey or violation of the emoulumemts clause but they went nowhere– at least not yet.
I think we are sneaking up on it, as Booman posts his research and analysis here. However, collusion is not a crime by itself. It is only a word. Failing this we have to live with this idiot for maybe all eight years and a Supreme Court at 7 to 2 and so on and on, when the idiot in chief walks away.
Feeling a little depressed. Close but not close enough for me.
It’s true that the on-going investigation may not produce evidence of anything prosecutable but the Russia story has been far from nothing. There’s a political narrative to be made that covers Trump’s incompetence, personal corruption, and his associations with Putin. It’s already helped dragged down his favorables.
I doubt he will be impeached but this narrative will help with the 2018 and 2020 election cycles.
We could be a gnat’s ass away from getting the bastard. Time will tell.
The public investigations by the Congressional committees and Mueller’s independent investigative crew are conducting many of their hearings and gatherings of testimony and other evidence in secret. These investigations have subpoena power, and will continue to have it.
For all we know, the investigative teams may already have cooperating witnesses.
The tightness of Mueller’s team in avoiding leaking their investigative actions and strategies is something we should admire and appreciate. We lack information from them, but that doesn’t mean their investigation is stymied.
I join you in being impatient, but deciding we may never have the goods because we haven’t frog-marched anyone days after the revelation of the Trump Jr. email exchange is the place Trump and Republicans wants your head to be. Don’t acquiesce to their attempts to move the goalposts on you.
We have continually witnessed the dropping of shoe after heavier shoe. And those are just the shoes which have been discovered through journalistic pursuits which lack the power to compel cooperation from individuals or organizations.
Upcoming shoes are likely to be even heavier.
Oh no. We need to stay on the trail. As I said above, I think we are close and Mueller, as you say, has info we do not.
Yes, and for all we know they still have found no evidence of any wrongdoing.
You are not supposed to be allowed to make an assertion with no evidence to support it, and then use that as proof of something else that you assert. That’s been happening a lot since November.
Regarding the public investigations, we don’t know what we don’t know. But we know that there are people such as Flynn who have already offered to make a deal, and he has been on radio silence for quite a while now.
Regarding the journalistic investigations, I sense a trend. There has been one spectacular revelation after another of wrongdoing. At this point, it is hard to believe that there is nothing more to be discovered.
Regarding the public investigations, we don’t know what we don’t know. But we know that there are people such as Flynn who have already offered to make a deal, and he has been completely silent for quite a while now.
Regarding the journalistic investigations, I sense a trend. There has been one spectacular revelation after another of wrongdoing. At this point, it is hard to believe that there is nothing more to be discovered.
A year after the Iraq Way many Republicans believe Saddam was in on 9/11. Why is anyone surprised that Republicans don’t believe or excuse this.
Republicans DO NOT CARE about this – and unless they do Trump isn’t going anywhere.
Goes without saying that Trump has been doing business with the Russians for a very very long time, going back to the casino days. He has first-hand experience many times over with the insider oligarchs and what they expect from a relationship. His defense isn’t ignorance, it’s complicity that was caught.
Lots of Americans did lots of business with lots of Russians, some of whom are thugs, cheats, and crooks. Some of them might even be intelligence agents. Do you think every Massey-Ferguson tractor salesman in Russia is what he presents himself as? Anyway, in general from about 1990 until November, 2016, nobody in America except the guys in the FBI Counterintelligence Unit, worried about whether or not the Russian lawyer you hired to fix a traffic ticket was a spy. Speaking of which, why did Loretta Lynch authorize a special authorization for this lady lawyer to enter the U.S. to assist in a court case? She reportedly does not speak English? Her visa expired in January? Why has she not been thrown in a for-profit detention center until she could be deported back to Mother Russia? But getting back to my point, for twenty years nobody thought there was anything wrong with meeting Russians or doing business with them. The last nine months have been very weird, and getting weirder. Frankly, as somebody who remembers 2002-3 very well, I think this is preparation for a rush to war.
Oh, OK, Procopius, you’re going to engage in thoroughly bad faith argumentation. Sorry for engaging you upthread; I misunderstood you.
The “if we do our duty we are rushing to war” talking point is cartoonish bullshit.
A rush to war? Idiotic scare-mongering from people who actually believe investigations of interference by the Russians to help Trump win the elections means that some want a war with Russia.
Paul Begala said so, so there.
“The overall picture is clear. Russia wanted Trump to win and Trump wanted Russia’s help. The collusion was explicit, some of it is well-documented…”
At this point it would take a special level of willful ignorance or partisan hysteria (on either side) to not agree with that statement. The Russians themselves are on record having made statements to the effect that they wanted Trump to win. And Trump has made a myriad of public statements, many of them unwittingly, calling on Russia to help him with the election. And there is a smorgasbord of circumstantial evidence, “smoking guns” of the quality that prosecutors trying criminal cases routinely present to juries and win. There is clearly motive and opportunity.
Just for the record, here’s how Websters defines collusion:
“Secret agreement or cooperation especially for an illegal or deceitful purpose”
Secret agreement or cooperation? Check. They met secretly with the Russians on at least one occasion that we know of for the purpose of gaining their cooperation with their campaign. They say they didn’t get anything, but given all the lies that’s been told about this meeting, let alone all the others, would you believe them?
The Trump Jr. emails CLEARLY document explicit collusion. Daddy Trump implicitly documents by saying “everybody would have taken the meeting.” The lies that have been told thus far cast doubt on everything the Trump camp has said to try to minimize the meeting. And the excuse that Fredo Trump was just too damned dumb to know what he was doing and therefore could not possibly be “colluding” doesn’t square with what collusion is.
At the end of the day, this is speculation as far as what charges may be brought; we don’t know, since Mueller’s shop has been thus far masterful in controlling leaks. This doesn’t mean that they’re not looking at a lot of this same information and answering the questions the rest of us don’t have answers to at the moment. But to insist that these are nothing burgers that would be of no interest to the special counsel and that the premature cries of “no evidence of collusion” is not grist for evidence leading to charges is nonsensical.
. . . couldn’t decipher your meaning here:
(And no, it wasn’t just the subject-verb disagreement [i.e., ” . . . cries . . . is . . . ” — ack!] that got in the way of making sense of that.)
That was clumsily written. What I was trying to say is that the Trump spox repeat ad nauseum “no evidence of collusion” and expect that by virtue of them saying that it is to be taken as a fact. Similar to when Trump says he asked Putin if the Russians meddled in the election and when he says “no” then that becomes a fact as well.
Let’s add proven collusion to
Which was all known and documented prior to the vote.
Plus general all around scumbag bully and white trash who inherited his money and extremely likely an international money launderer.
It’s hard to see what will move the religious bigots, the teabagging morans, or the 1% who are expecting their tax cuts.
I just heard Kurt Eichenwald on Am Joy. He had a hell of a rant and said we are at war with Russia, worse than 9/11. They attacked us, U.K. And Netherlands, et. al. And, here’s a surprise, Faux News is,peddling the propaganda. Seems it is all Obama’s and Hillary’s fault.
This Trump guy has got to go.