smr wrote:
Gcomeau, show me the money on Russian Collusion. Oh wait you can't. Show me the hard evidence that is going to change America's mind!
Like I said smr.... they knew you wouldn't actually read the report.
Thanks for proving my point. Because that report has nearly 200 pages detailing collusion. Would you like some excerpts? How about we start with this:
In late July 2016, soon after WikiLeaks's first release of stolen documents, a foreign government contacted the FBI about a May 2016 encounter with Trump Campaign foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos. Papadopoulos had suggested to a representative of that foreign government that the Trump Campaign had received indications from the Russian government that it could assist the Campaign through the anonymous release of information damaging to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. That information prompted the FBI on July 31, 2016, to open an investigation into whether individuals associated with the Trump Campaign were coordinating with the Russian government in its interference activities.
The counter intelligence investigation into the Trump Campaign links to Russia was NOT started because of the Steele Dossier (which, btw, comes out of this report looking pretty damned good). It had already started, because allied intelligence services were throwing up warning flags about shady shit they were seeing with Russia and Trump Campaign personnel. As you have been repeatedly told, and repeatedly ignored.
The IRA later used social media accounts and interest groups to sow discord in the U.S. political system through what it termed "information warfare." The campaign evolved from a generalized program designed in 2014 and 2015 to undermine the U.S . electoral system, to a targeted operation that by early 2016 favored candidate Trump and disparaged candidate Clinton. The IRA' s operation also included the purchase of political advertisements on social media in the names of U.S. persons and entities, as well as the staging of political rallies inside the United States.
Just so we're clear, the Russian efforts were directed to HELP TRUMP WIN. And they tried hard. That is not a point that is under debate. They were not "really colluding with the Democrats" or whatever other insane conspiracy theory the right is currently clinging to.
At the same time that the IRA operation began to focus ·on supporting candidate Trump in early 2016, the Russian government employed a second form of interference: cyber intrusions (hacking) and releases of hacked materials damaging to the Clinton Campaign. The Russian intelligence service known as the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Army (GRU) carried out these operations.
This was not just some random Russian hackers. This was a Russian Military Intelligence cyber warfare operation directed against the US election system.
The presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump ("Trump Campaign" or "Campaign") showed interest in WikiLeaks 's releases of documents and welcomed their otential to damage candidate Clinton. Beginning in June 2016, REDACTED forecast to senior Campaign officials that WikiLeaks would release information damaging to candidate Clinton. WikiLeaks's first release came in July 2016. Around the same time, candidate Trump announced that he hoped Russia would recover emails described as missing from a private server used by Clinton when she was Secretary of State (he later said that he was speaking sarcastically). REDACTED WikiLeaks began releasing Podesta ' s stolen emails on October 7, 2016, less than one hour after a U.S. media outlet released video considered damaging to candidate Trump.
The Trump Campaign had advance knowledge that the release of the stolen materials was coming. They were in communication with those involved in the dissemination activity at a minimum. And the dissemination of those materials was timed to benefit Trump's campaign.
Summer 2016. Russian outreach to the Trump Campaign continued into the summer of 2016, as candidate Trump was becoming the presumptive Republican nominee for President. On June 9, 2016, for example, a Russian lawyer met with senior Trump Campaign officials Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and campaign chairman Paul Manafort to deliver what the email proposing the meeting had described as "official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary." The materials were offered to Trump Jr. as "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump." The written communications setting up the meeting showed that the Campaign anticipated receiving information from Russia that could assist candidate Trump's electoral prospects, but the Russian lawyer's presentation did not provide such information.
The Trump Tower meeting, which as has been pointed out to you repeatedly is collusion ALL BY ITSELF. It is the Russian government saying "hey we want to illicitly help your campaign" and the Trump Campaign saying "YAY! We would love that, let's talk!"
And then actually taking the meeting. That is NOT OK.
Separately, on August 2, 2016 , Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort met in New York City with his long-time business associate Konstantin Kilimnik, who the FBI assesses to have ties to Russian intelligence. Kilimnik requested the meeting to deliver in person a peace plan for Ukraine that Manafort acknowledged to the Special Counsel's Office was a "backdoor" way for Russia to control part of eastern Ukraine; both men believed the plan would require candidate Trump 's assent to succeed (were he to be elected President). They also discussed the status of the Trump Campaign and Manafort's strategy for winning Democratic votes in Midwestern states. Months before that meeting, Manafort had caused internal polling data to be shared with Kilimnik, and the sharing continued for some period of time after their August meeting.
So a Russian Intelligence asset delivered a plan to the Trump Campaign Chairman that involves Russia seizing control of eastern Ukraine with Trump's assistance, and Manafort hands back detailed proprietary campaign intel on the election strategy for getting Trump into the presidency and what battleground states are critical to the Russian intelligence asset while at that very moment Russia is running an operation trying to swing the election to Trump.
Yeah, that's totally innocent and not collusion at all right smr?
(Oh, did I mention that in another part of the report Mueller details that Manafort's job when he worked for Depiraska was installing friendly politicians in foreign countries?)
In approximately 2005, Manafort began working for Deripaska, a Russian oligarch who has a global empire involving aluminum and power companies and who is closely aligned with Vladimir Putin. A memorandum describing work that Manafort performed for Deripaska in 2005 regarding the post-Soviet republics referenced the need to brief the Kremlin and the benefits that the work could confer on "the Putin Government." Gates described the work Manafort did for Deripaska as "political risk insurance ," and explained that Deripaska used Manafort to install friendly political officials in countries where Deripaska had business interests.
(Moving out of material in the report for a moment, hey remember when the Trump admin pushed through the lifting of sanctions on Deripaska's businesses over the objections of Democrats and Republicans alike?)
https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/27/politics ... index.html
Treasury Department lifts sanctions on three Russian firms with ties to Oleg Deripaska
...Earlier this month, the Republican-controlled Senate failed to get the 60 votes needed to move a resolution to stop the lifting of the sanctions with 57 voting in favor and 42 opposed. The House passed its own resolution 362-53 -- a tally that included a majority of Republicans.
Back to the report...
On October 7, 2016, the media released video of candidate Trump speaking in graphic terms about women years earlier, which was considered damaging to his candidacy. Less than an hour later, WikiLeaks made its second release: thousands of John Podesta 's emails that had been stolen by the GRU in late March 2016. The FBI and other U.S. government institutions were at the time continuing their investigation of suspected Russian government efforts to interfere in the presidential election. That same day, October 7, the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint public statement "that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations ." Those "thefts" and the "disclosures " of the hacked materials through online platforms such as WikiLeaks, the statement continued, "are intended to interfere with the US election process."
Again, the stolen material leaks from the Russians were being coordinated to help and protect Trump.
Kirill Dmitriev, the chief executive officer of Russia's sovereign wealth fund, was among the Russians who tried to make contact with the incoming administration. In early December , a business associate steered Dmitriev to Erik Prince, a supporter of the Trump Campaign and an associate of senior Trump advisor Steve Bannon. Dmitriev and Prince later met face-to-face in January 2017 in the Seychelles and discussed U.S.-Russia relations. During the same period , another business associate introduced Dmitriev to a friend of Jared Kushner who had not served on the Campaign or the Transition Team. Dmitriev and Kushner's friend collaborated on a short written reconciliation plan for the United States and Russia, which Dmitriev implied had been cleared through Putin. The friend gave that proposal to Kushner before the inauguration , and Kushner later gave copies to Bannon and incoming Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
Prince lied his ass off about this meeting to Congress. You can see why. And Kushner is in this up to his neck too. There's plenty of other stuff about him in this report.
On May 17, 2017, Acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed the Special Counsel and authorized him to conduct the investigation that Corney had confirmed in his congressional testimony, as well as matters arising directly from the investigation , and any other matters within the scope of 28 C.F.R. § 600.4(a), which generally covers efforts to interfere with or obstruct the investigation.
President Trump reacted negatively to the Specia l Counsel's appointment. He told advisors that it was the end of his presidency, sought to have Attorney General Jefferson (Jeff) Sessions unrecuse from the Russia investigation and to have the Special Counsel removed, and engaged in efforts to curtail the Special Counsel's investigation and prevent the disclosure of evidence to it, including through public and private contacts with potential witnesses.
THAT'S OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE. (Which, if you had bothered reading the report, you would know Trump had not been indicted on only because DOJ guidelines don't ALLOW prosecutors to indict sitting presidents so Mueller wrote up this nice detailed report for Congress. But then Barr lied his ass off about what the report said in the hopes people like you would never listen to anything else after that.
(And smr... innocent people don't think someone being appointed to investigate their conduct means "the end of my presidency".)
And as for the finding on collusion, the report did not clear the campaign on that either. It did NOT find that the campaign had not engaged in a criminal conspiracy with the Russians. What it found was that it was unable to assemble enough evidence of that conspiracy to be confident it could meet the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard at trial. In part because:
Third, the investigation established that several individuals affiliated with the Trump Campaign lied to the Office, and to Congress, about their interactions with Russian-affiliated individuals and related matters. Those lies materially impaired the investigation of Russian election interference.
...
Further, the Office learned that some of the individuals we interviewed or whose conduct we investigated-including some associated with the Trump Campaign---deleted relevant communications or communicated during the relevant period using applications that feature encryption or that do not provide for long-term retention of data or communications records. In such cases, the Office was not able to corroborate witness statements through comparison to contemporaneous communications or fully question witnesses about statements that appeared inconsistent with other known facts.
Accordingly, while this report embodies factual and legal determinations that the Office believes to be accurate and complete to the greatest extent possible, given these identified gaps, the Office cannot rule out the possibility that the unavailable information would shed additional light on (or cast in a new light) the events described in the report.
People around Trump repeatedly lied to prosecutors about their Russia interactions, and withheld and destroyed evidence to impede the investigation. Which is why the report does NOT say there was "no collusion". It addresses a very specific narrow legal question about whether all the evidence they had of collusion would be enough to meet the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard in a criminal trial of a specific criminal conspiracy to assist the Russians in their election interference.
And Mueller thought it would come up short. That is a LONG way away from "no collusion". There is collusion freaking EVERYWHERE in this report. I just provided a few choice highlights.
(And Mueller clearly does NOT think the obstruction of justice evidence comes up short, that entire section is clearly written for Congress to consider for impeachment. Not that the GOP in the senate have the integrity to impeach no matter what the evidence says. if Trump wasn't a sitting president that the DoJ does not allow the indictment of he would be charged already. On this AND the felony campaign finance violations we already know he committed.)
READ. THE. REPORT.