Sound The TRUMPets! A Thread for Presidential Pondering 2016-2020(?)

Started by kishnevi, November 09, 2016, 06:04:39 PM

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drogulus

Quote from: BasilValentine on March 25, 2019, 06:24:08 AM
Once again, I think we should wait to read the Mueller report before speculating about its political significance, or the significance of Barr's summary. This summary of the evidence for conspiracy raises more questions than it answers:



     The best I can come up with given present knowledge is that if you're looking for a "hub and spokes" TrumPutin conspiracy Trump isn't the hub, Putin is.

     This answers important questions, why everyone is lying about Russia, and why Trump isn't found to be the mastermind. Everyone has strong ties to agents of Putin or Putin himself, Trump included.

     Trump is the most important spoke, but still a spoke. Putin looked for people to corrupt, found a bunch of them over the years and used them, they glommed onto Trump on their own because wouldn't you? Trump glommed onto them because having honest people around him would be dangerous.
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SimonNZ

Trump hints at payback for 'evil' enemies over Mueller report

""There's a lot of people out there that have done some very, very evil things, very bad things," Mr Trump said, "I would say treasonous things, against our country."

"And hopefully people that have done such harm to our country, we've gone through a period of really bad things happening.

"Those people will certainly be looked at, I've been looking at them for a long time.

"And I'm saying, 'why haven't they been looked at?' They lied to Congress - many of them, you know who they are - they've' done so many evil things."

Mr Trump did not name the alleged culprits.

He added: "It was a false narrative, it was terrible thing, we can never let this happen to another president again, I can tell you that. I say it very strongly."

Ghost of Baron Scarpia

The big mystery, if Trump wasn't guilty, why did he act so guilty?

There certainly were some unsavory contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russians seeking to influence the election. Roger Stone's interaction with Wikileaks being perhaps the most flagrant example. But if Trump and his campaign didn't conspire with the Russians why did he send up such a huge red flag by firing Comey? It didn't occur to him that federal investigations aren't rigged, and that if he didn't break the law they would investigate and not find anything?

At this point, I just hope that the Mueller report get released.

drogulus

Quote from: Ghost of Baron Scarpia on March 25, 2019, 10:56:15 AM
The big mystery, if Trump wasn't guilty, why did he act so guilty?



     Trump needed to protect Putin and everyone around himself. If he didn't all the things he is guilty of would come out. His business would be ruined, his family in jeopardy, he'd be Bela Lugosi waiting for Plan 9.
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SimonNZ

Quote from: JBS on March 24, 2019, 05:29:59 PM
Obstruction was never really chargeable in this case. It would have required knowing what Trump was thinking at the time, and mindreaders are not allowed to give evidence.

I've been thinking about this response and I don't understand your reasoning. Could you elaborate? Why do you define it as misreading when it's demonstrated elsewhere by lawyers every day?

A lot of what is define as obstructing seems to me pretty visible.  And even if there was no collusion he can still be motivated to obstruct through fear of what other of his criminality was unearthed in the process.

Ghost of Baron Scarpia

Quote from: SimonNZ on March 25, 2019, 04:09:25 PM
I've been thinking about this response and I don't understand your reasoning. Could you elaborate? Why do you define it as misreading when it's demonstrated elsewhere by lawyers every day?

A lot of what is define as obstructing seems to me pretty visible.  And even if there was no collusion he can still be motivated to obstruct through fear of what other of his criminality was unearthed in the process.

It would be chargeable if there was reliable information that Trump told a trusted associate - "I had to fire Comey otherwise he would have found out about the conspiracy with Russia." One could imagine that someone would have reported something along those lines to Mueller's investigators. Apparently not.

The weird thing about this case is that Trump essentially confessed to obstruction in comments to the press and in tweets. "I was thinking about the Russia thing when I fired Comey," "This will take a lot or pressure off me." Bizarrely, the fact that he was so open about it suggests he thought he was doing nothing wrong. Is it obstruction if he says "I fired the investigator because he was investigating me and I already know I'm innocent" and he actually is innocent?

I guess you could still say he was obstructing justice in the prosecution of Manafort and Flynn. I wonder what the actual Mueller report says about that.

SimonNZ

But there's also witness tampering and a variety of other clearly visible factors.

And surely obstruction is often judged by actions taken rather than statements?

drogulus

Quote from: Ghost of Baron Scarpia on March 25, 2019, 04:15:48 PM
It would be chargeable if there was reliable information that Trump told a trusted associate - "I had to fire Comey otherwise he would have found out about the conspiracy with Russia."

     He fired Comey about Russia, just as he said, but it wasn't about a conspiracy to rig the election, it was about everything else an investigation into Trump and Russia would uncover. Putin owns him and that is why he is colluding to protect everyone involved in a conspiracy that he never led. He is "exonerated" from that. Benjamin Wittes writing in Lawfare in January was right that the obstruction is the collusion. Of course that allows Barr to address the question of obstruction narrowly as concerning a Trump led conspiracy and ignore the clear evidence of obstruction and witness tampering on behalf of people he doesn't want to talk. He's protecting his "protector", Putin, because he fears what Putin might do if he doesn't.

     What if the Obstruction Was the Collusion? On the New York Times's Latest Bombshell

     
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arpeggio

Just because my taxes went down by 11% does in mean that the new law is good.  My sons taxes went up.

I do not mind paying taxes.  Sometimes I do not mind what my tax money pays for.

For example, all of us bear a responsibility for taking care of our veterans.  Organizations like Wounded Warriors should not have to exist.  We can send our young men and women to find endless wars but once they return, too bad.  Taking care of them is socialism.  I wonder how many corporations who have benefited from their sacrifices pay no taxes.

SimonNZ

Republicans block U.S. Senate Democrats' move on making Mueller report public

" U.S. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell on Monday blocked a second attempt by Democrats to pass a measure aimed at prodding the Justice Department to release to the public Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Earlier this month, the House of Representatives voted 420-0 in favor of making the report public, with no Republican opposition. On Sunday, Attorney General William Barr informed Congress that Mueller had concluded that President Donald Trump's campaign did not collude with Russia to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.

"There is no good reason not to make the report public," Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said. McConnell, noting that it took nearly two years for Mueller to conduct his investigation, said, "It's not unreasonable to give the special counsel and the Justice Department just a little time to complete their review in a professional and responsible manner." The legislation does not set a deadline for the release of the report, and merely expresses Congress' desire that it should be made publicly available."

SimonNZ

Seth Abramson pulls apart the Barr memo

including:

10/ "Coordination" is far broader than "conspiracy," as a) it comes from counterintelligence—and thus includes far more conduct than the criminal system would recognize as problematic, and b) it has a broad lay meaning on par with "collusion"—not a narrow statute like Conspiracy.

11/ But note too that Mueller's appointment letter tasked him with fully investigating "any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation"—for instance if Mueller found insufficient evidence to charge Conspiracy but found evidence of Bribery, he could pursue it."

12/ Conspiracy requires an *agreement* of some kind—a "meeting of the minds"—with an illegal purpose, then an *act in furtherance* of the agreement to achieve an illegal end. The end needn't be achieved, but some agreement—here, with "the Russian government"—*would* be necessary.

13/ Here's the key point on this: As Mueller began his work, *no one in America was accusing Trump of engaging in a covert illegal agreement with a Russian government entity*. Not the IRA, not the GRU, not the FSB. *Nor had Trump done that*. Which is why he immediately denied it.

14/ Trump found the one type of collusion he *hadn't* engaged in—a covert, before-the-fact agreement (Conspiracy) with the IRA or GRU to (respectively) use psy-ops on or hack America—and denied it. Unfortunately, that was a small part of the "coordination" Mueller was looking at.

15/ What Trump *was* being accused of—and which he couldn't deny, because, as we already know from public evidence, *he definitely did it*—was allowing his foreign policy on Russian sanctions to be the product of Bribery (one of two enumerated impeachable offenses, with Treason).

16/ The Trump Tower Moscow-for-sanctions relief quid pro quo Trump was accused of was *never* chargeable as Conspiracy—it would be Bribery or maybe Aiding and Abetting (After the Fact) Russian interference by agreeing to unilaterally pay Putin trillions, and thus encouraging him.


drogulus

     Barr managed to get in the first word on what the Mueller report will show, when no one else has seen it. He tells us that Trump didn't direct a conspiracy to help Russia hack the election, nor did he obstruct an investigation into a compaign-Russia hacking conspiracy. Anyone operating from the assumption that this was what the Russia probe was about got it wrong.

     We should have kept in mind what the Russia probe was really about from the time Comey launched it. It's about Russian interference in the 2016 election, a national security investigation, and any crimes that were committed that the investigation would uncover.  The Barr letter about a Trump led conspiracy or obstruction into a probe of that conspiracy answers a question Barr would prefer to answer. Since a great deal of what Mueller has found came in the form of indictments, guilty pleas and convictions, we can expect that when we learn what the report says, it will fill in more detail about questions Barr didn't address. This reminds me of the way the stock market reacts to a flashy news event, an "inflection point". For a few days it dominates discussion (deficit reaches largest number in arithmetic!!), then things go back to trend.
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drogulus

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Karl Henning

Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

drogulus


     
Quote from: BasilValentine on March 26, 2019, 08:10:27 AM
That's a title for the ages! "Famous Idiot."  :laugh:

     It's kind of unfair to Hassett and Kudlow. They're famous, too.
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SimonNZ

Devin Nunes' cow has just noted that Kellyanne Conway, who replaced a guy going to prison for cheating, lying, stealing and sharing data with Russians, has made the statement "The idea that any of us, and me as campaign manager, would cheat, steal, lie, cut corners, talk to Russians, was an insult from the beginning."

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SimonNZ

Mueller grand jury 'continuing robustly,' prosecutor says

"During a brief open hearing Wednesday, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court, Beryl Howell, pressed Goodhand to say if the grand jury Mueller had been using in the case remained active.
"It is continuing," the prosecutor replied. "It's continuing robustly."
The fact the grand jury is continuing its work adds a new wrinkle to the Mueller probe, which Attorney General William Barr announced on Friday was finished."