Long story, short - No one is changing their minds about this any of this at this point. There is a very legit argument to make that the FBI and the IC overreached on the investigation into the Trump Campaign and Admin and that the leadership of those agencies or the POTUS should have step in and ended it once they did their due diligence and realized there was no there, there. Instead they kept pushing and pushing and crossed a line with the FISA Court application. However, I do not think this Trump team is going to be able to make that argument in a manner that people will listen to. Just realize that the audience for this is likely not the wider public but members of the Democratic National Security Community. The Trump Admin is telling them that they will not put up with them trying to do anything similar in the future.
It's splitting hairs to say nobody went to jail because of anything to do with Russia when they did for lying to either the FBI or Congress as part of the probe into Russia. Here's a breakdown of indictments and cases in Mueller's probe And if you have links to any stories where media sites were reporting the dossier as fact I'd be happy to check them out. My recollection is that reporting from any of the reputable media sites presented it as it was - unverified intelligence from a historically reputable source that was being taken seriously from an investigative standpoint, as it should have been. We should know as a country if we elected a president who is compromised by a foreign country, especially one of our biggest adversaries.
No, it is not splitting hairs. Weissmann was trying to use the threat of being convicted of a FARA violation or lying to the FBI as threat to try and get the people he thought were guilty to confess to working with Russia. When in fact, none of them had actually been working with Russia. The people who try and say that is not important that no one was actually convicted of working with Russia, are completely missing the point. I'm not going to go back and look because I do not really care enough anymore at this point. But I would recommend looking at Natasha Bernstrand's reporting. A ton of reporters and MSNBC hosts used the fact Steele was a former MI6 Officer like it was the gold standard for intel reporting.
You doubt CNN? I'm shocked. https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/18/politics/steele-dossier-reckoning "The central allegations, that Trump conspired with the Kremlin to win the 2016 election and that Russia had compromising information on him, were given a veneer of credibility because they originated from a retired British spy, Christopher Steele, who had a solid reputation. But five years later, the credibility of the dossier has significantly diminished." If it hadn't been reported credible when it first came out why would CNN report 5 years later that the credibility had diminished?
But Trump Jr did meet with Russia. Manafort gave Russia internal polling which you would only do if you were looking for their help in targeting specific areas of voters. They knew Russia was behind the hack of Hillary's teams emails and called for them to be released. These are all extremely troubling and worthy of investigation. To now pretend like the investigations were fabricated and unfounded is BS to distract from the current scandal and cater to the people who had already long ago mentally decided that everything related to Russia was a hoax.
Don, Jr., Manafort and Kushner met with the Russians at Trump Tower with the hope of getting information that could damage Hilary Clinton. Trump, Sr then lied about the purpose of the meeting. The Mueller Report concluded that the Trump team colluded with the Russians, but collusion was not a crime.
Trump Jr meet with a female Russian lawyer that had also been working with Fusion GPS. Manafort did not give polling data to Kilimnik, who worked for his firm, to get Russian help with targeting voters. That is one of the crazier CT that is still clinging to life. FYI, the Embassy staff in Kyiv worked with Kilimnik a lot and knew exactly who he was. These things were worth of investigation. That could have happened very quickly and quietly. The thing is that there was no real there, there. The IC had zero reporting on any of this. If it was really happening, there would have been a ton of collection on it. But there wasn't. The principals of the agencies knew that and yet they kept trying to will something into existence and you could say they took steps to do that.
And what was the result of that meeting? What did each side get out of it? My whole point is that the Trump Campaign was too incompetent to collude with the Russians, and even if they managed to figure out how, the US IC would have been aware of it immediately. They would not have to rely on a private investigator on a budget of $400k to find out about it.
The Mueller report, if I recall correctly, determined that the Trumpsters colluded with the Russians, but they were too dumb to have entered into a conspiracy with the Russians, (the latter of which would have been a crime).
Certainly it was well-covered that the FBI didn't follow its own rules regards to FISA application. I know you've been following this more closely than I have. Gabbard claimed new information, new evidence that the Obama admin manufactured false intelligence. What is it?
I cannot really tell from the articles. From what they seem to be saying is that the Obama Admin knew Russia was not actually able to get into electronic voting infrastructure. But no one ever really suggested that they did. This seems to be refuting a claim that no one really made. The only thing I can think of is the polling that YouGov did that showed a majority of Democrats thought that Russia was able to change vote totals. I did follow this closely so I'm more than a little mystified about what these documents are suppose to show.
I think that comes down to what your definition of "collusion" is. And I think we need to be honest that Mueller was not really in charge of that investigation. It was Andrew Weismann. That became clear when Mueller actually had to testify. Weismann was not happy about Trump actually winning and wanted to do everything he could to kneecap the Trump Admin. The thing I keep pointing out is that there was no real intelligence collected that showed any sustained communications between the Trump Campaign and the Russians. The last three years has shown that the IC can tell what Russia's intentions are pretty well. If four FISA warrants did not turn up anything, you have to admit there was nothing there. Again, I do not think it was likely from a lack of trying but more about the Trump Campaigns' incompetence.
I am pretty sure that the report specifically stated that there was collusion. That was the terminology used in the report.
That's what I got out of it, too. It seems like they're trying to claim "see, Obama knew the Russians weren't trying to change votes, so clearly the whole Russian thing was a hoax." Even though Obama never made that claim. And that was my point. You've folks who so partisan and gullible that as long as a politician on their side of the aisle says it, they'll accept it as fact. Even if they don't really understand it.
I think you are making a very good point. It is clear that both sides are still in their own bubble when it comes to this issue. They each have their own belief system about what happened and there seems to be very little overlap between the two. I guess that this is the Trump Admin speaking to the people in their side's bubble.
