StrangeSox

sorry I guess I just take it more seriously when there's direct evidence of the President's own son, son-in-law and campaign manager eagerly and willingly going to a meeting to collude with Russian agents representing themselves as working on behalf of the Russian government to get Trump elected. This is such a large and high profile case. Why would you expect them to just start throwing out piecemeal indictments before they've finished anyway?

Something to consider with all of the "then why haven't they indicted!" deflection is that Nixon wasn't ever actually charged with a crime, but he stilled resigned in disgrace and was threatened with impeachment.

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Sep 21, 2017 -> 12:31 PM) 1) If he admitted to the clear and obvious federal crime, there would be an indictment. That's all i'm saying. Mueller hasn't yet, despite his investigation, which to me is telling. But yes, it absolutely could come later, i just don't think it's a clear cut case. He may be dumb but his lawyers are not and the lawyers gave him the ok to release those emails. BTW he only tweeted them out because the NYT contacted his team for comment before they were going to publish them. Trump Jr's team asked for 30 minutes (or something like that) to respond and then released them themselves. There wasn't anything noble or forthcoming about it.

Law Firm Faces Questions for Ukraine Work With Manafort

It's not circumstantial evidence. It's explicitly a meeting to discuss the Russian government's help to get Trump elected, and they eagerly went to it. They never reported this meeting, and then when initially reported, lied multiple times about what the meeting was about and who was there. I'm honestly not sure how you can even get a more explicit example of evidence of willingness and desire to collude.

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Sep 21, 2017 -> 12:42 PM) If so that's really short-sighted on their part. Trump was riding a wave a year before the election that showed the country was divided. And being divided isn't anything new, by the way. It's been their MO globally for awhile. Weaker west means a relatively stronger Russia. Russia's economy is actually in really, really bad shape and day to day life in parts of the country is brutal.

You're not denying that something could be there, you're just setting an impossibly high standard for ever believing it. I'm sorry that you think betraying your own country in exchange for political favors is something that is normal and acceptable. That's what this is--discussions to undermine and change US policy in exchange for political help from a foreign government.

Putin's MO is to sow chaos and discord. He helped Trump not exactly with the expectation that he would actually win but in an attempt to grow political divisions and make America look dumb for even considering electing Trump. There was earlier reporting that around mid-October they switched from "undermine and damage Clinton as much as possible to weaken her as she takes office" to "holy lol Trump could actually win."

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Sep 21, 2017 -> 12:31 PM) 1) If he admitted to the clear and obvious federal crime, there would be an indictment. That's all i'm saying. Mueller hasn't yet, despite his investigation, which to me is telling. But yes, it absolutely could come later, i just don't think it's a clear cut case. He may be dumb but his lawyers are not and the lawyers gave him the ok to release those emails. 2) Yes, it's difficult, and yes, there's no question Russia tried to and did meddle in the election. But the key is whether the Trump campaign was actively and knowingly in on it. That's the part to me that has not been proven. Even the meeting regarding dirt on Hillary isn't sufficient proof of that. It's showing some shadiness going down for sure, but not straight up collusion. Manafort's notes are the clearest evidence of any exchange and it's not totally conclusive yet because they're jumbled notes on a piece of paper in close proximity. I'm not making up my mind. I'm imploring you all to do the same. You've already concluded what you believe is true with limited and incomplete evidence. 1) Trump's legal team hasn't looked particularly bright so far. You've also got a weird standard here. Every week or so we get another small leak from Mueller's investigation about subpeonas, additional high-profile lawyers being added, more and more things they're looking into. If you're potentially trying to bring down the President of the United States, you're going to make sure you case is 100% absolutely air tight. "They didn't immediately indict" seems pretty nonsensical. 2) The Trump campaign eagerly met with a foreign agent representing themselves as working for and with the Russian government in order to discuss damaging political information on Clinton. You haven't made up your mind, but you're deflecting and minimizing everything as much as possible.

QUOTE (whitesoxfan99 @ Sep 21, 2017 -> 12:28 PM) Considering his reactions to people who criticize him I believe Trump cares a lot about what people think about him. He called Schumer and Pelosi up the morning after their negotiation/deal to gush about all of the positive media coverage. He gets two, TWO! briefings a day filled exclusively with positive press stories about himself. Of course he cares. Either way, it doesn't really matter because there was tons of reporting at the time about what he wanted to do on the Russian sanctions bill, and he's had plenty of "whataboutism" deflection for any criticism of Putin or Russia.

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QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Sep 21, 2017 -> 11:18 AM) What about the twitter bots? Even Russian media is saying that is true. And with all the contact between Russia and the Trump campaign, the question would have to be why? Why did they want Trump elected? What's in it for them? Trump is America first, is he not? And why so much contact? And why all the denials? And why all the changing of security clearance forms after "fake news" reported on these meetings these people you want running the country couldn't remember? That's important, too. Why do we have so many different denials and stories from them? How many different people have had multiple meetings they haven't disclosed and have had to change their stories on it multiple times? Just with the Trump Jr/Kushner/Manafort collusion story, we had three or four separate statements, allegedly directed by Trump himself, that completely changed the story each time as more and more information was published.

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Sep 21, 2017 -> 10:58 AM) The media came out and said he committed a clear crime and yet no charges have been brought. It's a pretty clear cut case if true, so where's the indictment? Regardless, that still doesn't get us to the meddling that you all are claiming. At best you have Manafort asking for RNC contributions in exchange for sanction relief (illegal), but that's not "meddling" with the election system in the ways that are being alleged. People are talking about interference and influence in our election via collaboration with foreign governments, not necessarily and only actual election/vote tampering. Meeting with foreign government agents to coordinate transfer of information in exchange for favorable treatment from the information as well as being complicit in that foreign government's propaganda campaign to directly influence our elections should be a big deal, but this is a pretty good example of how the average Republican will react. Nothing short of Trump on camera saying "I am colluding with you illegally Mr. Putin" will count,and even then probably not.

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Part of Wisconsin's Foxconn deal is giving them preferential treatment in the state courts. Love our economic system where public institutions are held hostage to capital interests. http://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politic...find/684418001/

PR faces 4-6 months before power is fully restored https://www.nbcnews.com/news/weather/hurric...sm_npd_nn_tw_ma

Cops Urge Harassment Of Pizza Shop After Owner Criticizes Their Tactics http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/chris-...4b087fdf509c322

Unless you're talking about the police entrapping someone, I don't think it matters whether Russian agents acting on behalf of the Russian government (or presenting themselves as such) approached the Trump team or the Trump team approached them first. And as far as what they were getting in return for that information, that's where the whole sanctions/adoption discussion comes into play. Russia has been trying to get those repealed for a while now, and setting up a meeting to discuss information on your political opponent from the Russian government as well as adoption restrictions has crystal clear implications. QUOTE (CrimsonWeltall @ Sep 21, 2017 -> 09:45 AM) If you're waiting for a video to get leaked of Trump and Putin signing a document titled "Collusion Contract", that's probably not going to happen. This is why Congress will never do anything and Republicans will never abandon him over this. Hell, they'd probably make excuses even if we did have that.

QUOTE (illinilaw08 @ Sep 21, 2017 -> 09:41 AM) What we do have proof of is that the meeting came about because the Russian party was promising dirt on Hillary Clinton. That's pretty black and white in the e-mail. Whether that reaches Trump himself is obviously very up for debate. And what was actually discussed in the meeting is also obviously unknown. But Trump, Jr.'s intent in taking the meeting was very clearly to get damaging info on Hillary Clinton from the Russians (or at least from this one Russian). And they presented the information explicitly as part of the Russian government's efforts to help Trump. Something in Manafort's notes from that meeting seem to refer to political contributions, possibly to the RNC, as well.

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Sep 21, 2017 -> 09:36 AM) Legally this is also very different. There's no proof of that (yet). I don't know how much more explicit you can get. Goldstone offered Trump Jr. information that was "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump," and Trump Jr. said "I love it." They knew they were dealing with foreign agents representing themselves as providing information as part of the Russian government's efforts.

Meeting with foreign agents specifically and explicitly to obtain damaging information on your political opponents seems different in nature from a US media company releasing recordings of one of the candidates.

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Sep 21, 2017 -> 09:00 AM) Link? He had a meeting with someone who ended up being a known representative of the government. I don't buy he was meeting with someone about adoption, but I don't think there's any proof as to what they talked about and whether it was about specific actions in regards to the election. These are all greedy, corrupt mother f***ers, and I'd believe it was about business before the election 100 times out of 100. the initial email was very clearly stating that it was about dirt on Clinton, to which Trump Jr. responded "I love it!" There's no plausible deniability about going into a meeting to discuss damaging information on your political opponents and also sanctions that the Russian government has been upset about and lobbying against for awhile. The implications there are 100% clear. We're talking about the scenario where enough information comes out that we are reasonably certain, not what is publicly known right now.

That's a solid response. There's zero winning in the scenario. You take out every possible bit of additional offense they have once a launch is detected and verified as quickly as you can. There's no reason to commit genocide by nuking Pyongyang or something, though.

Donald Trump Jr literally tweeted out proof that they at least attempted to collude with Russians to influence the election. Today a story on manafort came out that he offered to brief one of putting close allies on the inner details of the campaign. His idiot son in law tried to set up a communications channel that the intelligence community wouldn't be aware of through the Russian embassy. That stuff is all wapo nyt wsj etc reporting, not Reddit conspiracy nonsense.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 20, 2017 -> 04:49 PM) I think it's worth noting how strategic the leaks have been. It wasn't leaked that Manafort was under surveillance since 2014 until yesterday when, at the same time, it was leaked that indictments are coming for him. They also leaked that there was a FISA warrant, so anything taped is actually admissible in court. This sure looks like a person who is running an investigation trying to make it publicly known that they have his conversations on tape so that the people on the other side of those conversations knows they are implicated in a counterintelligence operation and can face charges if they do not cooperate. That wasn't leaked at all until yesterday. I do think though that Donald Trump was told back in February, and that may have contributed to the "Obama wiretapped me!" claim on twitter. Entirely plausible that they did intercept some of his communications...legally, with a FISA warrant, and anything Donald Trump said in those conversations would be similarly admissible in court. They've also highlighted their growing financial crimes expertise and their cooperation with NY AG Schneiderman. This is potentially important because the President's pardon powers only apply to federal crimes.