William Barr: DOJ 'Reviewing The Conduct' Of The FBI's 2016 Russia Probe

Discussion in 'Current Events' started by icehole3, Apr 10, 2019.

  1. struth

    struth Well-Known Member

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    That there were rampant misdeeds. He’s the guy on MSNBC that tells you want to think
     
  2. Nemesis

    Nemesis Well-Known Member

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    Must be a trumper.
     
  3. Nemesis

    Nemesis Well-Known Member

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    You need to read the report.

    Buy a gross of kleenix before you start reading.
     
  4. jack4freedom

    jack4freedom Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Barr should appoint Rudy Giuliani and Sean Hannity as co council. DeepStateGate.....Can’t miss!!
     
  5. struth

    struth Well-Known Member

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    I did, I just missed that..can you point me to the page where he said their was a conspiracy?
     
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  6. jack4freedom

    jack4freedom Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I know. Mueller’s report confirmed that his whole investigation was a total witch hunt just like Sean Hannity has been saying all along. Trump has been totally vindicated. These libs are whack!
     
  7. superbadbrutha

    superbadbrutha Banned

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    That is what the report says. Take it up with Mueller.

    Well I don't watch MSNBC.
     
  8. Nemesis

    Nemesis Well-Known Member

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    Sure, you did.

    The strong evidence of (something like) collusion
    Although Attorney General William Barr said that there was “no collusion” in his press conference before the report’s release, Mueller is actually quite explicit that he did not address the question of “collusion.” This is because, to his mind, the term is not precise enough, nor does it fall within the ambit of what was essentially a criminal investigation.

    “Collusion is not a specific offense or theory of liability found in the United States Code, nor is it a term of art in federal criminal law,” Mueller writes. “For those reasons, the Office’s focus in analyzing questions of joint criminal liability was on conspiracy as defined in federal law.”

    So when Mueller concludes that he “did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities,” he is not saying that there is no evidence of “collusion” at all, in any sense. What he is saying is that there is insufficient evidence to prove that the Trump administration was directly involved in Russian crimes like stealing Clinton’s emails.

    But did the Trump campaign actively work with the Russian government to improve its electoral chances? If that’s the standard, then the report provides plenty of evidence to suggest the answer is yes.

    First, Russia repeatedly reached out to the Trump campaign to establish a connection to the Kremlin. “The Russian contacts consisted of business connections, offers of assistance to the Campaign, invitations for candidate Trump and Putin to meet in person, invitations for Campaign officials and representatives of the Russian government to meet, and policy positions seeking improved U.S.-Russian relations,” Mueller writes.

    Second, the Trump campaign was receptive — sometimes going beyond what was on offer from the Kremlin. Some of the examples of this are egregious.

    Take Manafort’s meetings with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian political consultant with a history of connections to the GRU intelligence agency. The FBI believed had links to the Kremlin, a view shared by Manafort’s right-hand man Gates. “Gates suspected that Kilimnik was a ‘spy,’ a view that he shared with Manafort,” Mueller writes.

    Yet despite Gates’s suspicions, Manafort repeatedly met with Kilimnik, worked with him to develop a pro-Russian Ukraine policy that Trump could implement if elected, and regularly shared polling data with him:

    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.

    It’s possible Paul Manafort was acting without the candidate’s knowledge, and you could argue that this shouldn’t really reflect on Trump. But it’s clear from the report that the president openly encouraged his campaign to reach out to Russians and work with them.

    During a late March meeting of Trump’s foreign policy advisers, Papadopoulos told Trump about his attempts to set up a meeting with Putin. This, per Mueller, went over quite well.

    “Papadopoulos and Campaign advisor J.D. Gordon — who told investigators in an interview that he had a ‘crystal clear’ recollection of the meeting — have stated that Trump was interested in and receptive to the idea of a meeting with Putin,” per the report. Papadopoulos worked diligently afterwards to try to set up such a meeting, but was foiled largely by scheduling issues.

    At times, Trump was clear about his interest in Russian electoral involvement. This passage about email hacking, for example, in which Trump calls on Russia to get Clinton’s emails, then tells his campaign to acquire them.

    After candidate Trump stated on July 27, 2016, that he hoped Russia would ‘find the 30,000 emails that are missing,’ Trump asked individuals affiliated with his Campaign to find the deleted Clinton emails. Michael Flynn — who would later serve as National Security Advisor in the Trump Administration — recalled that Trump made this request repeatedly, and Flynn subsequently contacted multiple people in an effort to obtain the emails.

    Russia had, in fact, already stolen the text of many Clinton campaign private emails by then — so Trump couldn’t be involved in that particular criminal conspiracy. But the fact that Trump signaled that he was open to working with the Russians is nonetheless telling.

    What “no collusion” gets wrong
    The report is littered with evidence Trump and his staff were open to Russian interference in the election. Mueller explicitly concludes that “the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian effort.”

    And there may very well be more evidence in the sections that are redacted.

    For example, Gates told Mueller about a conversation with Trump during a late summer 2016 car ride to LaGuardia in which “candidate Trump told Gates that more releases of damaging information would be coming” from WikiLeaks.

    Was Trump speculating? Or did he know that for sure, because of some kind of coordination with WikiLeaks (who was working with Russian agents to disseminate hacked Clinton material)? The section is heavily redacted, making it difficult to assess what’s actually going on.

    I want to be clear: I am not disputing Mueller’s conclusions on whether a crime was committed. Criminal conspiracy has a very particular legal definition, and Mueller is persuasive on why none of the activities detailed in the report constituted illegal “coordination” in a way that would run afoul of the statute.

    “We understood coordination to require an agreement — tacit or express — between the Trump Campaign and the Russian government on election interference. That requires more than the two parties taking actions that were informed by or responsive to the other’s actions or interests,” Mueller writes. “We applied the term coordination in that sense when stating in the report that the investigation did not establish that the Trump Campaign coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

    What the report finds is not clear-cut evidence of a quid-pro-quo. Instead, what we see is a series of bungled and abortive attempts to create ties between the two sides, a situation in which the Trump team and Russia worked to reach out to each other (and vice versa) without ever developing a formal arrangement to coordinate.

    Does that rise to the level of “collusion?” It’s a slippery term. But if “collusion” refers to a willingness to cooperate with Russian interference in the 2016 US election and actively taking steps to abet it, it seems to me that the Mueller report does in fact establish that it took place.

    But even if you find that definition too loose, the report’s message is not that there was nothing to worry about on the Trump-Russia front in 2016. Instead, it confirms that there were multiple shady connections between Trump and Russia, and that the president’s “no collusion” line is quite misleading. And at worst, the way it’s been presented suggests that the president and his attorney general are still actively trying to deceive the American people about what happened in 2016.
     
  9. struth

    struth Well-Known Member

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    Who’s words are those? Conspiracy is certainly a crime. Show me where in the mueller report he says there is a criminal conspiracy? What page?
     
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  10. HB Surfer

    HB Surfer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    You know what is missing in the report?

    HOW DID THIS WHOLE INVESTIGATION START? WHO BROKE WHAT LAW?

    We all know why it is missing. But, worry not good Americans, the DoJ/FBI and Obama Administration are going to be exposed before summer.
     
    Last edited: Apr 19, 2019
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  11. Mac-7

    Mac-7 Banned

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    I want the guy who beheaded Marie Antonette
     
  12. JakeStarkey

    JakeStarkey Well-Known Member

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  13. jack4freedom

    jack4freedom Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Out for blood, eh? Good luck with that.
     
  14. struth

    struth Well-Known Member

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  15. jack4freedom

    jack4freedom Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I bet all of these guys you have been trashing will be called to testify in public under oath in Congressional hearings anxious to clear their names. Most of them are already doing book tours thanks to Sean Hannity and other lying right wing blowhards. I saw McCabe yesterday. He did not seemed to be to concerned about fat ass Barr or the Donald. He’s waiting for his civil suit to hit the courts. You guys are living in a world of wild delusions. I think Obama is playing Pebble Beach today and Hillary has just cracked her third bottle of Chardonnay. I am sure they are all having nighmares about doughnut boy Barr...lol
     
  16. struth

    struth Well-Known Member

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    Please show me where in the report it says that....what page?
     
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  17. Hoosier8

    Hoosier8 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Sorry, I am not a democrat.
     
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  18. struth

    struth Well-Known Member

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    um they have all been called to testify in Congress, and under oath. There testimony is what has them in trouble. McCabe actually got fired by the FBI for committing perjury.
     
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  19. jack4freedom

    jack4freedom Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    He is contesting that firing as a political hatchet job and has said he did not perjur himself. I like the guy and think he was railroaded. We shall see.
     
  20. struth

    struth Well-Known Member

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  21. JakeStarkey

    JakeStarkey Well-Known Member

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    So you have no answer, OK.
     
  22. jack4freedom

    jack4freedom Well-Known Member Past Donor

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  23. struth

    struth Well-Known Member

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    It took 2 plus years for the left to do a hoax
     
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  24. struth

    struth Well-Known Member

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    I do.,. Stop using wiki as a source
     
  25. JakeStarkey

    JakeStarkey Well-Known Member

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    Nope, I will use what I want and point out how wrong you are.
     

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