The Mueller Report thread

[*bfine32*]

(09-20-2019, 09:57 AM)Belsnickel Wrote: You're trying to compare a difference in opinion over what is best for the country with a person in office putting themselves over the good of the country. There is a reason I don't talk about other officials with whom I have disagreed like this. I may have different opinions on policy than them, but that is different than the self-serving nature of Trump.

Unless that person thinks them remaining in charge is what the country need/wants. No doubt Trump is a shitty person, but is removing him best for the country because he is?

[Belsnickel]

(09-20-2019, 12:09 PM)bfine32 Wrote: Unless that person thinks them remaining in charge is what the country need/wants. No doubt Trump is a shitty person, but is removing him best for the country because he is?

I'm not being hyperbolic here, that is the reasoning from every dictator/fascist/autocrat throughout world history.

As for whether removing him is best for the country, the investigation needs to happen out in the open. He needs to be exposed in a way no one can deny his corruption. The political willpower to do that doesn't exist in Congress right now, though, and that is the problem. Removing Trump is what is best for the country, but Trump is unfortunately what this country deserves right now.

[*bfine32*]

(09-20-2019, 12:27 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: I'm not being hyperbolic here, that is the reasoning from every dictator/fascist/autocrat throughout world history.

As for whether removing him is best for the country, the investigation needs to happen out in the open. He needs to be exposed in a way no one can deny his corruption. The political willpower to do that doesn't exist in Congress right now, though, and that is the problem. Removing Trump is what is best for the country, but Trump is unfortunately what this country deserves right now.

Of course you'd have to admit that's your opinion.

How many dictator/fascist/autocrat throughout world history is subject to re-election every 4 years? Just because you think you have a right to know everything doesn't mean you get to.


If Congress wants to do their job, then do their job and quit opining to the public. it creates too many "unofficial experts".

[Belsnickel]

(09-20-2019, 02:08 PM)bfine32 Wrote: Of course you'd have to admit that's your opinion.

True enough. Words like "best" do tend to lead to denote subjectivity. There is a lot of objective evidence, however, pointing to the more rapid degradation of our democratic society under Trump. That still does leave one to arrive at their own opinions on him.

(09-20-2019, 02:08 PM)bfine32 Wrote: How many dictator/fascist/autocrat throughout world history is subject to re-election every 4 years? Just because you think you have a right to know everything doesn't mean you get to.

How many of them started off in a role that they did have to be elected to before seizing power?

(09-20-2019, 02:08 PM)bfine32 Wrote: If Congress wants to do their job, then do their job and quit opining to the public. it creates too many "unofficial experts".

And this just speaks to what I have been saying about the lack of political willpower.

[*bfine32*]

(09-20-2019, 02:23 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: True enough. Words like "best" do tend to lead to denote subjectivity. There is a lot of objective evidence, however, pointing to the more rapid degradation of our democratic society under Trump. That still does leave one to arrive at their own opinions on him.


How many of them started off in a role that they did have to be elected to before seizing power?


And this just speaks to what I have been saying about the lack of political willpower.

Fair enough and if Trump tries to cancel the 2020 National Election, I'm right there with ya.

[GMDino]

Gonna throw this in here because it deals with Trump's potential/alleged crimes:

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/09/donald-trump-tax-returns-lawsuit

Quote:As you may or may not have heard, Donald Trump refused to release his tax returns while running for president, claiming, falsely, that an audit prevented him from doing so but that the public would see them just as soon as he got the green light. Two years and 242 days after moving into the White House that, of course, has not happened. Instead, Trump has sicced his Treasury secretary, attorney general, and various personal lawyers on anyone attempting to get their hands on the information, in a manner suggesting the details within could make a person look quite bad. Typically, Trump’s attorneys have argued that such requests, like the ones from various House committees, constitute “PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT” or supposedly lack “a legitimate legislative purpose.” On Thursday, though, they came up with a novel new argument: It’s illegal to investigate a sitting president for any crimes he may have committed.

In a lawsuit filed today against Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., who recently subpoenaed eight years of Trump’s tax returns to determine if the Trump Organization falsified business records relating to Stormy Daniels payments, the president’s lawyers claim such a request is unconstitutional because the founding fathers believed sitting presidents should not be subject to the criminal process. “The framers of our Constitution understood that state and local prosecutors would be tempted to criminally investigate the president to advance their own careers and to advance their political agendas,” the suit reads. “And they likewise understood that having to defend against these actions would distract the president from his constitutional duties.”


Strangely, actual legal experts aren’t entirely convinced of this argument. “Even assuming that the president cannot be indicted while in office, it does not follow that his business and associates are likewise immune from investigation,” Harry Sandick, a former federal prosecutor, told Bloomberg. “The complaint makes light of the idea that ruling in their favor would elevate the president above the law, but it certainly seems as if the president views himself as above the law.”

Vance, who agreed not to enforce the subpoena—issued to Trump’s longtime accounting firm Mazars USA—until a scheduled September 25 hearing, is investigating if executives at the Trump Organization filed false business records concerning hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who both claim to have had affairs with Trump, charges he, naturally, denies. The president’s former fixer, Michael Cohen, admitted to arranging the hush money payments and released audio of him discussing the Daniels payment with Trump.

Thursday’s lawsuit is just one of a handful of attempts by the president to keep his totally legit finances secret. He’s also sued to block House Democrats’ demands for his tax returns and is seeking a court order to stop Congress from obtaining his New York state returns, which a recently passed law allows them to do. Additionally, his legal team is challenging California’s new requirement that any presidential candidate must release their tax returns to get on the primary ballot. And he’s appealing orders by federal judges in Washington and New York that would let three House committees receive his records from Mazars, Capital One Financial, and Deutsche Bank, the latter of which reportedly has seen at least some of his taxes.


It’s almost as though someone has got something to hide!

[GMDino]

Oopsie...

Trump denied in writing and under oath to Mueller any recollection of ever discussing WikiLeaks with Stone or being aware of Stone discussing WikiLeaks with the campaign.

Gates testified he was in the car with Trump when he Trump talked to Stone about it. https://t.co/BEUPfCtyk2

— Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) November 12, 2019

 

[GMDino]

Roger Stone guilty on seven counts.

Countdown to the pardon starts now...

[GMDino]

(11-15-2019, 02:06 PM)GMDino Wrote: Roger Stone guilty on seven counts.

Countdown to the pardon starts now...

....A double standard like never seen before in the history of our Country?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 15, 2019

 

[GMDino]

aha!  They found an altered document in the FISA request!!!

Wait, it didn't alter the legal and factual basis for the application.  Ooops.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/inspector-generals-report-on-fbis-russia-probe-to-be-delivered-dec-9/2019/11/21/6d6d789e-0c70-11ea-8397-a955cd542d00_story.html

Quote:Justice Dept. inspector general’s draft Russia report finds FBI lawyer may have altered document


The Justice Department inspector general has found evidence that an FBI employee may have altered a document connected to court-approved surveillance of a former Trump campaign adviser, but has concluded that the conduct did not affect the overall validity of the surveillance application, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

The person under scrutiny is a low-level FBI lawyer who has since been forced out of the agency, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss material that has not yet been made public. They declined to identify the lawyer.


The allegation is contained in a draft of Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report analyzing the FBI’s Russia investigation, which witnesses have in recent weeks been allowed to review, people familiar with the matter said. The report is scheduled to be released publicly Dec. 9.

The employee was forced out of the FBI after the incident was discovered, two U.S. officials said. Horowitz found that the employee erroneously indicated he had documentation to back up a claim he had made in discussions with the Justice Department about the factual basis for the application. He then altered an email to back up that erroneous claim, they said.

That conduct did not alter Horowitz’s finding that the surveillance application of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page had a proper legal and factual basis, the officials said.

Horowitz has been exploring various aspects of the Russia probe but was focused in particular on applications the FBI filed with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to monitor Page’s electronic communications.

Attorney General Barr personally asked foreign officials to aid probe into CIA, FBI


The alleged alteration of a document by an FBI employee was first reported by CNN.

As it turns out, the attorney general took liberties in describing the results of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's investigation. (Joy Sharon Yi/The Washington Post)

Separately, Attorney General William P. Barr tapped U.S. Attorney John Durham to explore the origins of the FBI probe and U.S. intelligence agency activities aimed at the Trump campaign, and Durham is expected to pursue the allegation surrounding the altered document to see whether it constitutes a crime, people familiar with the matter said.



Durham’s work is expected to continue well after publication of the inspector general’s report.
A spokeswoman for the inspector general declined to comment, as did a spokeswoman for the FBI. A spokeswoman for the Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.

President Trump and fellow Republicans have been clamoring for the report’s release, particularly as House Democrats have held high-profile impeachment hearings this month.


Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the panel plans to hold a hearing with testimony from Horowitz on Dec. 11.

The inspector general has been investigating how the FBI pursued allegations of collusion and conspiracy between Trump associates and Russian agents during the 2016 election.

In recent weeks, key witnesses in the investigation have been called in to review and comment on sections of the report. The Washington Post reported last week that, unlike in previous inspector general reports, witnesses were told they could not submit written responses to the report, which remains a classified document. That raised alarms among some witnesses worried they would not be allowed to correct errors or misunderstandings in the report, according to people familiar with the matter.

After The Post’s report, the inspector general’s office clarified to witnesses that they would be allowed to submit written comments.

Democrats and Republicans have eagerly awaited release of the report, hopeful that the Justice Department’s internal watchdog will validate their views on the law enforcement investigation that dogged the first two years of Trump’s presidency.

Conservatives have alleged that a medley of wrongdoing occurred during the investigation, which was eventually taken over by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, and they are likely to seize on any criticism that Horowitz directs at those involved in the probe. Some Trump supporters have referred to the investigation as an attempted “coup.”

Mueller issued a lengthy report this year concluding there was insufficient evidence to support charges of conspiracy between any Trump associates and Russian agents. Mueller also elected not to decide whether the president had obstructed justice in the course of the inquiry, although Barr reviewed Mueller’s findings and concluded the president had not broken the law.

Democrats, meanwhile, are hopeful Horowitz will disprove various conspiracy theories that have been offered about the case and refute Trump’s assertion that Mueller’s probe was a “witch hunt” tainted by political bias against the president.

Correction: An earlier version of this story erroneously stated that the FBI employee being investigated for altering a document worked underneath former Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok. The employee was a low-level lawyer in the Office of General Counsel and did not report to the deputy assistant director.

[jj22]

The pre Thanksgiving dump just happened and it's a significant one.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/russia-inquiry-review-is-expected-to-undercut-trump-claim-of-fbi-spying/ar-BBXqMKh?&ocid=ientp

I hate to mock Trump supporters and defenders, but you guys have got to quit willingly getting conned. They got yall believing all these lies and then try to sneak the correction in when they think you aren't paying attention.

[GMDino]

House Dems are now using Ken Starr's argument against DOJ—just filed a letter telling the DC Cir that Starr's statement "[W]e are not a legislative chamber during these proceedings...We are in a court," contradicts DOJ's position on Mueller grand jury docs pic.twitter.com/1iwIQL4QRs

— Owen Barcala (@obarcala) January 28, 2020

 

[*michaelsean*]

(01-28-2020, 03:26 PM)GMDino Wrote:

House Dems are now using Ken Starr's argument against DOJ—just filed a letter telling the DC Cir that Starr's statement "[W]e are not a legislative chamber during these proceedings...We are in a court," contradicts DOJ's position on Mueller grand jury docs pic.twitter.com/1iwIQL4QRs

— Owen Barcala (@obarcala) January 28, 2020

 

Can you explain this to me more?  What was the DOJ arguing about?  

[GMDino]

(01-28-2020, 03:44 PM)michaelsean Wrote: Can you explain this to me more?  What was the DOJ arguing about?  

From the way I gather it the DOJ has resisted turning over materials because there is no trial that would require that...but the defense team wants to say this is a trial.

[*michaelsean*]

(01-28-2020, 04:21 PM)GMDino Wrote: From the way I gather it the DOJ has resisted turning over materials because there is no trial that would require that...but the defense team wants to say this is a trial.

You mean over to the House when they were holding the  impeachment hearings because I can't see the Senate requesting those.    

[GMDino]

(01-28-2020, 04:39 PM)michaelsean Wrote: You mean over to the House when they were holding the  impeachment hearings because I can't see the Senate requesting those.    

Correct, the House.

[GMDino]

A quick search doesn't show what was "lost" and there is no link in Trump's tweet.

I'm assuming it was on FOX but the only references were to more extreme "sources".

So now it is reported that, after destroying his life & the life of his wonderful family (and many others also), the FBI, working in conjunction with the Justice Department, has “lost” the records of General Michael Flynn. How convenient. I am strongly considering a Full Pardon!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 15, 2020

 

[Dill]

(03-15-2020, 04:43 PM)GMDino Wrote: A quick search doesn't show what was "lost" and there is no link in Trump's tweet.

I'm assuming it was on FOX but the only references were to more extreme "sources".

If he does pardon Flynn, that should help him lose in the fall.

[GMDino]

So there's this:

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/21/senate-intel-report-confirms-russia-aimed-to-help-trump-in-2016-198171

Quote:Senate Intel report confirms Russia aimed to help Trump in 2016
The report represents a confidence-booster to the country’s intelligence community at a time of great uncertainty.



The Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday reaffirmed its support for the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election with the goal of putting Donald Trump in the Oval Office.
Tuesday's bipartisan report, from a panel chaired by North Carolina Republican Richard Burr, undercuts Trump's years of efforts to portray allegations of Kremlin assistance to his campaign as a "hoax," driven by Democrats and a “deep state” embedded within the government bureaucracy.


The intelligence community’s initial January 2017 assessment of Moscow’s influence campaign included “specific intelligence reporting to support the assessment that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and the Russian government demonstrated a preference for candidate Trump,” the committee’s report says. The panel also found “specific intelligence” to support the conclusion that Putin “approved and directed aspects” of the Kremlin’s interference efforts.



Senators and committee aides examined everything from the sources and methods used for the intelligence-gathering, to the Kremlin’s actions itself. The 158-page report is heavily redacted, with dozens of pages blacked out entirely. But its final conclusions were unambiguous.

“The committee found no reason to dispute the intelligence community’s conclusions,” Burr said in a statement, adding that the intelligence community’s conclusions reflect “strong tradecraft” and “sound analytical reasoning.”

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the committee’s vice chairman, praised the intelligence agencies’ “unbiased and professional work,” and warned that there was “no reason to doubt that the Russians’ success in 2016 is leading them to try again in 2020.”

The panel's findings are in line with a previously issued bipartisan statement in which Senate Intelligence leaders endorsed the January 2017 assessment by the clandestine community. The newest conclusions come in the fourth of five reports the committee is releasing on Moscow’s interference in the 2016 campaign. The committee last month approved the report unanimously.

The report devotes “additional attention” to the disagreements among some intelligence agencies about the Russian government’s intentions in meddling in the 2016 campaign. The report states that “the analytic disagreement was reasonable, transparent, and openly debated among the agencies and analysts.”

It also notes that the committee interviewed officials involved in drafting the January 2017 assessment, which came out days before Trump's inauguration, and states that they were not subject to political pressure.


The January 2017 assessment found that “Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary [Hillary] Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments.”
Notably, according to the Senate’s report, the initial assessment did not include information from or citations based on former British spy Christopher Steele’s unverified dossier of claims about Trump’s relationship with Russia. It noted that the FBI’s senior leadership insisted, though, that the dossier be mentioned in an annex. The Steele dossier is expected to be addressed in the committee’s fifth and final report.

Beyond its possible political impact, the report represents a confidence-booster to the country’s intelligence community at a time of great uncertainty.

Trump has openly criticized the intelligence community’s work, both as a presidential candidate and as commander in chief. His fury has only intensified since its inspector general alerted Congress last year of a whistleblower complaint regarding the president’s posture toward Ukraine, a process that resulted in his impeachment.

The president is still rejecting intelligence officials' more recent warnings — delivered to lawmakers last month — that Russia is interfering in this year's election and that Moscow has a preference for Trump.

In February, the president replaced acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire with U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, who previously had not served in any U.S. intelligence agency. The change set off more personnel moves that prompted fears among career clandestine officials of a widespread loyalty purge — a suspicion that was heightened earlier this month when Trump fired Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community’s inspector general, who had first alerted the congressional intelligence committees about the whistleblower complaint.

The latest report from the Senate panel is an open rebuke to the House GOP’s report issued in early 2018, which faulted the intelligence community's assertion that Putin had developed a preference for a Trump victory in 2016. Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee said at the time that this conclusion was the result of “significant intelligence tradecraft failings that undermine confidence in the [assessment’s] judgments regarding Russian President Vladimir Putin's strategic objectives for disrupting the U.S. election.”


But Burr immediately spiked this conclusion, broadly hailing the intelligence community's tradecraft. The new report, too, dismisses the suggestion that the Putin findings were flawed.



“The committee found that reporting from multiple intelligence disciplines was used as evidence to support this analytic line, and that the analytic tradecraft was transparent,” according to the findings.


The Senate panel’s fifth and final installment in its exhaustive review of the 2016 interference is in the “editing stages,” a committee spokesperson said. The final product is expected to be around 950 pages long, according to sources familiar with the matter.


That report will focus on the counterintelligence aspects of the government’s Russia investigation, including allegations that Trump campaign officials coordinated with Russian operatives. Former special counsel Robert Mueller said last year that his probe “did not establish” such coordination.

The exact timing of the final release remains in flux with committee aides largely working from home due to the coronavirus pandemic. The panel’s work is almost exclusively conducted in a sensitive classified facility on Capitol Hill.

For some creative rightwing spin I'll share this link also:

https://thefederalist.com/2020/04/21/senate-intel-committee-still-running-interference-for-russia-collusion-nonsense/


[/url]

Quote:[url=https://thefederalist.com/2020/04/21/senate-intel-committee-still-running-interference-for-russia-collusion-nonsense/]Senate Intel Committee Still Running Interference For Russia Collusion Nonsense
The report is yet another reminder of how the committee helped Democrats and other critics of President Donald Trump perpetuate the now-debunked theory that Trump was a secret Russian agent.



A year after Special Counsel Robert Mueller concluded there was no evidence President Trump colluded with Russians to steal the 2016 election, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence issued its fourth of five reports in a slow-moving and muted investigation into the same matter. While the committee asserted in July 2018 that it agreed with a disputed Obama-era finding on Russia’s motivation for interfering in the 2016 presidential election, its highly redacted report on the intelligence community’s January 2017 claim was finally released Tuesday morning.


The report is yet another reminder of how the committee helped Democrats and other critics of President Donald Trump perpetuate the now-debunked theory that Trump was a secret Russian agent. The Senate’s Intelligence Committee is ostensibly chaired by Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican who is currently avoiding questions about why he dumped stocks after receiving private briefings about coronavirus threats.

In practice, the committee has largely been run by Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va. The committee’s major and perhaps only contribution to the Russia collusion storyline was to employ a high-level staffer tasked with handling classified information who was convicted of lying to the FBI about leaks of classified information to reporters he was having affairs with. Both Burr and Warner begged a judge to be lenient with their former employee. The judge sentenced him to two months in prison.

Tuesday’s committee report is at odds with the findings of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (at least when it was under the leadership of Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif.), which revealed significant malfeasance in how the intelligence community conducted its Russia collusion investigation beginning in 2016.

A sprawling year-and-a-half investigation by the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General corroborated all the major findings of the HPSCI report, including that intelligence community officials lied to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court, fabricated and doctored evidence in support of applications to spy on American citizens who volunteered for the Trump campaign, and even colluded with agents of sanctioned Russian oligarchs in their attempt to take down Trump. Here are those HPSCI reports on Russian active measures and the DOJ’s abuse of the FISA process.

Any piece that give Nunes any kind of credibility is barely worth reading, IMHO.

There is more at the link...lol.

[6andcounting]

(04-21-2020, 05:10 PM)GMDino Wrote: So there's this:

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/21/senate-intel-report-confirms-russia-aimed-to-help-trump-in-2016-198171




For some creative rightwing spin I'll share this link also:

https://thefederalist.com/2020/04/21/senate-intel-committee-still-running-interference-for-russia-collusion-nonsense/


[url=https://thefederalist.com/2020/04/21/senate-intel-committee-still-running-interference-for-russia-collusion-nonsense/][/url]


Any piece that give Nunes any kind of credibility is barely worth reading, IMHO.

There is more at the link...lol.

I love how the first sentence of each article are 100% factually correct, but are used to set opposing narratives about what happened.