Donald Trump presidency discussion thread V

Cheerful Spring

batgoat wrote: »

Investigation can result in an investigation not being possible to fully complete. It's pretty disturbing if the president felt the need to obstruct an investigation, doing so indicates he felt the need to hide things.... I don't think they are going to impeach but what looks likely to come out now, is a damning reflection of the corruption in the White House. The president has not been exonerated and used the Attorney General to misrepresent the findings of the Mueller report.

For a person who sees conspiracies in everything, it's amazing that you don't see an issue in this.

Trump believed the investigation was a 'witch hunt' and turned out to be true in the end. I told you guys from the beginning this was all nonsense and there was no evidence Trump colluded with Russia. Going after him still after finding out he never colluded is nonsense. If he was guilty sure that's a different story. What are you going to charge him with when Muller found no evidence? Some people have lost their brains over this.

I believe in conspiracies with evidence backing them up. The reason I don't believe in Sandy hook or any other nonsense like is a false flag.

pjohnson

Cheerful Spring wrote: »

Trump believed the investigation was a 'witch hunt' and turned out to be true in the end. I told you guys from the beginning this was all nonsense and there was no evidence Trump colluded with Russia. Going after him still after finding out he never colluded is nonsense. If he was guilty sure that's a different story. What are you going to charge him with when Muller found no evidence? Some people have lost their brains over this.

I believe in conspiracies with evidence backing them up. The reason I don't believe in Sandy hook or any other nonsense like is a false flag.

I forgot you dont believe Sandy Hook yet believe most what Trump says.

Cheerful Spring

pjohnson wrote: »

I forgot you dont believe Sandy Hook yet believe most what Trump says.

Like what? I attacked Trump for pulling out of the Iran deal. I called him a closet racist and attacked him during his run for the presidency. I called him a racist for threatening to ban Muslims for a year. I raised issues back then before he became president. I even posted videos when he mocked a man with a disability. I have always attacked Trump when it was called for. My posts still exist you know and archived. I never supported Trump.

I supported Trump discussions with North Korea and thought the Russian collusion was a hoax. Other then this I don't support Trump.

Christy42

Cheerful Spring wrote: »

everlast75 wrote: »

Correct, but the Washington Post does. They report that those working on the case wrote interim reports sanitised enough for the public to see.

"Members of Mueller’s team have complained to close associates that the evidence they gathered on obstruction was alarming and significant.

“It was much more acute than Barr suggested,” said one person, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the subject’s sensitivity.

The New York Times first reported that some special counsel investigators feel that Barr did not adequately portray their findings.

Some members of the office were particularly disappointed that Barr did not release summary information the special counsel team had prepared, according to two people familiar with their reactions.

“There was immediate displeasure from the team when they saw how the attorney general had characterized their work instead,” according to one U.S. official briefed on the matter.


The Mueller team is reportedly saying it wrote summaries for each section, which it believed Barr could release immediately and without a need to redact. Instead, he chose to summarize the report almost completely in his own words and didn’t even include complete sentences from Mueller’s report."

The fact here is that there have been no reports from inside the Mueller team for the entire investigation. The fact that there are now murmurs should cause enough concern about how the process is being handled.

If Trump is innocent and did not collude with Russia and neither did his aides and this does not change. Then going after him for obstruction is nonsense. Trump was innocent of this crime in the first place and had every right to fight back.

It's weird the Democrats are trying to play the victim card when it's them who wasted taxpayers money and lost the battle. Muller found no evidence for collusion, end of story.

It time the Democrats move on from this and stop wasting time on it. Trump has enough bad qualities that you can pick apart. I always felt you find financial irregularities if you checked hard enough and would involve people that are currently protected. Trump is colluding with Israel and damaging the security of the United States. Trump was bailed out by Israeli donors in the past and there payback happening right now.

Errrr crimes were found and people put in jail. How was that a waste of money?

You point out financial irregularities which was part of what they found (stormy).

Being innocent does not allow you to obstruct justice. I mean it is confusing as to why you would but you most certainly do not have the right to actively hinder an investigation. Remember he also attacked them for going after Manafort (and for a time Cohen) who are both guilty and in jail.

batgoat

Christy42 wrote: »

Errrr crimes were found and people put in jail. How was that a waste of money?

You point out financial irregularities which was part of what they found (stormy).

Being innocent does not allow you to obstruct justice. I mean it is confusing as to why you would but you most certainly do not have the right to actively hinder an investigation. Remember he also attacked them for going after Manafort (and for a time Cohen) who are both guilty and in jail.

Also obstruction is with the intent of actively impeding an investigation so can result in failures to get a full picture of certain events.

Midlife

Cheerful Spring wrote: »

Like what? I attacked Trump for pulling out of the Iran deal. I called him a closet racist and attacked him during his run for the presidency. I called him a racist for threatening to ban Muslims for a year. I raised issues back then before he became president. I even posted videos when he mocked a man with a disability. I have always attacked Trump when it was called for. My posts still exist you know and archived. I never supported Trump.

I supported Trump discussions with North Korea and thought the Russian collusion was a hoax. Other then this I don't support Trump.

To be honest it seems like you just want to go against the established line.

If everyone here loved Trump, you'd be screaming collusion.

The Sandy Hook thing is messed up though. It's very hard to have any credibility in your opinion on anything after that.

Water John

Building an intelligence dossier is a standard practice, in diplomatic circles. It uses various sources and draws them together to conclude what is likely. No one looking at a dossier assumes it is 100% correct. It's a professional judgement by someone in that field as to what is likely.
Steele made no higher claim than that, but it set off alarm bells, and BTW confirmed another line being already pursued by American Intel.

Just release the sections prepared for the public by Mueller and his team and the redacting and detail can follow. But then it was always about who would get their narrative out first. That was the primary purpose of Barr's 4 page missive.

everlast75

Cheerful Spring wrote: »

If Trump is innocent and did not collude with Russia and neither did his aides and this does not change. Then going after him for obstruction is nonsense. Trump was innocent of this crime in the first place and had every right to fight back.

It's weird the Democrats are trying to play the victim card when it's them who wasted taxpayers money and lost the battle. Muller found no evidence for collusion, end of story.

It time the Democrats move on from this and stop wasting time on it. Trump has enough bad qualities that you can pick apart. I always felt you find financial irregularities if you checked hard enough and would involve people that are currently protected. Trump is colluding with Israel and damaging the security of the United States. Trump was bailed out by Israeli donors in the past and there payback happening right now.

Couple of things.

1) "fighting back"? Obstruction of Justice is a crime. Regardless of whether there was an underlying crime, obstruction is a crime.

2) how do you know there was no crime. *No one*, you or me, can say that until we see the report.

3) democrats didn't waste money because
a) Rod Rosenstein, a republican, appointed Mueller, a Republican and
b) thanks to asset forfeiture, they are running a profit thanks to Manafort. And that's not including the mystery company who is paying 50k a day!

4) its not "end of story". The report isn't in congresses hands, and Mueller is still working away

5) not believing Sandy Hook is pretty damn disgusting. I'm sorry, but that is messed up.

Cheerful Spring

Midlife wrote: »

To be honest it seems like you just want to go against the established line.

If everyone here loved Trump, you'd be screaming collusion.

The Sandy Hook thing is messed up though. It's very hard to have any credibility in your opinion on anything after that.

If you say so #

I believe the official version about Sandy Hook, if you did not read my sentence correctly?

everlast75

JRant wrote: »

There are still massive concerns over the dossier though. It was funded as part of a political campaign against an opponent and used the services of foreign spies. The whole debacle stinks to high heaven.
Whether it was or wasn't used as a basis of the investigation is secondary to how this was allowed to be used at all.

I'm not aware as to whether there was any law broken in using the dossier. Seriously.

If there was, then there should be ramifications.

Mind you, there should have been ramifications for trump jnr meeting russians and lying about it, but unfortunately nothing ever came of that. Funny the way no Trump supporter has any issue with that.

The dossier is a talking point for Trump apologists (not saying you are one).

The reality here is that an investigation was launched. You cannot tell whether a crime has been committed *until you investigate*. Otherwise there would obviously be no need for any such work.

If he is clean, there's no need to worry.

The investigation found as a matter of fact Russians interfered in the US election. What I find astounding is that the majority of the Reps don't give two **** about it.

JRant

Water John wrote: »

Building an intelligence dossier is a standard practice, in diplomatic circles. It uses various sources and draws them together to conclude what is likely. No one looking at a dossier assumes it is 100% correct. It's a professional judgement by someone in that field as to what is likely.
Steele made no higher claim than that, but it set off alarm bells, and BTW confirmed another line being already pursued by American Intel.

Just release the sections prepared for the public by Mueller and his team and the redacting and detail can follow. But then it was always about who would get their narrative out first. That was the primary purpose of Barr's 4 page missive.

But the Steele dossier was designed to dig up dirt on a political rival. That is completely different to an intelligence agency compiling a dossier for diplomatic reasons.

Nevermind releasing these so-called summaries prepared by Mueller's team, release the report and be done with it. Let everyone see what is in it rather than a he said / she said back and forth.

peddlelies

Water John wrote: »

Building an intelligence dossier is a standard practice, in diplomatic circles.

In 2020, if the Trump campaign pays for "opposition research" on his opponent and Trump's FBI use it to get spy warrants on the Dem front runners campaign, that would be normal?

Bruce Ohr's wife, he was number 4 in the justice department, worked for Fusion GPS and was handing off information to the Justice department, which only raises more questions. There's numerous texts talking about "Stopping Trump" and "Insurance policies" against Trump from the top heads in the FBI when all this was going on, the whole thing reeks to high heaven.

Cheerful Spring

everlast75 wrote: »

Couple of things.

1) "fighting back"? Obstruction of Justice is a crime. Regardless of whether there was an underlying crime, obstruction is a crime.

2) how do you know there was no crime. *No one*, you or me, can say that until we see the report.


Sure is if Trump was guilty of an actual crime. This should have been raised at the very beginning or leaked. It going to be next to impossible to bring a charge now against Trump for obstruction when he got cleared of collusion.

Trump did not stop Muller from investigating where the evidence for this. Trump ranting on twitter is not an obstruction of justice and there no evidence Trump told people to lie for him. Barr said he's going to release the report in April you swear he refused to and there some conspiracy.

Water John

Correct as to the origins of the dossier, but it gathered momentum and Steele was so concerned as to its contents, he personally made sure John McCain got a copy.

everlast75

peddlelies wrote: »

In 2020, if the Trump campaign pays for "opposition research" on his opponent and Trump's FBI use it to get spy warrants on the Dem front runners campaign, that would be normal?

Bruce Ohr's wife, who was number 4 in the justice department, worked for Fusion GPS, which only raises more questions. There's numerous texts talking about "Stopping Trump" and "Insurance policies" against Trump from the top heads in the FBI when all this was going on, the whole thing reeks to high heaven.

The Republicans had the House, Senate and WH and had two years to investigate and prosecute anyone responsible. Why did nought come of that? Heaven knows they tried!

Either they were incompetent or there was no "there there"

Lets give the Dems two years in the house and see what they find? Trump is already belly aching and they have only subpoena power for a couple of months

Midlife

Cheerful Spring wrote: »

If you say so #

I believe the official version about Sandy Hook, if you did not read my sentence correctly?

"I believe in conspiracies with evidence backing them up. The reason I don't believe in Sandy hook or any other nonsense like is a false flag."

I don't think it says what you ment it to say.

JRant

everlast75 wrote: »

I'm not aware as to whether there was any law broken in using the dossier. Seriously.

If there was, then there should be ramifications.

Mind you, there should have been ramifications for trump jnr meeting russians and lying about it, but unfortunately nothing ever came of that. Funny the way no Trump supporter has any issue with that.

The dossier is a talking point for Trump apologists (not saying you are one).

The reality here is that an investigation was launched. You cannot tell whether a crime has been committed *until you investigate*. Otherwise there would obviously be no need for any such work.

If he is clean, there's no need to worry.

The investigation found as a matter of fact Russians interfered in the US election. What I find astounding is that the majority of the Reps don't give two **** about it.

I don't know either but to me there appear to be questions that need answering. How did such a report make it's way to the top echelons of the US intelligence agencies and seemingly sway multiple investigations.

I agree with you on the rest as well by the way. Jnr most definitely has more questions to answer on that meeting. I also read somewhere that the meeting was set up by a member of the Fusion team, can't seem to find it now but will post if I do.

Isn't it remarkable that both this administration and the previous have failed to act sufficiently on known Russian interference during elections. How Trump stood on that stage with Putin and said he believed Putin was outrageous.

batgoat

Cheerful Spring wrote: »

Sure is if Trump was guilty of an actual crime. This should have been raised at the very beginning or leaked. It going to be next to impossible to bring a charge now against Trump for obstruction when he got cleared of collusion.

Trump did not stop Muller from investigating where the evidence for this. Trump ranting on twitter is not an obstruction of justice and there no evidence Trump told people to lie for him. Barr said he's going to release the report in April you swear he refused to and there some conspiracy.

I don't really think anyone is going to even bother trying to convict him of it. However you're assuming that his twitter behaviour is the limit to the extent of what has been going on. This seems pretty unlikely and based on the leaks from former Mueller staff, there is some pretty substantial evidence against him in the report.

One thing we do know is that what Barr presented a warped image of the reality. That's intentional.

JRant

peddlelies wrote: »

In 2020, if the Trump campaign pays for "opposition research" on his opponent and Trump's FBI use it to get spy warrants on the Dem front runners campaign, that would be normal?

Bruce Ohr's wife, he was number 4 in the justice department, worked for Fusion GPS and was handing off information to the Justice department, which only raises more questions. There's numerous texts talking about "Stopping Trump" and "Insurance policies" against Trump from the top heads in the FBI when all this was going on, the whole thing reeks to high heaven.

That would be my concern also, that this type of "research" by foreign entities become the norm. American politics is enough of a sess pool without going down that road.

Cheerful Spring

Midlife wrote: »

"I believe in conspiracies with evidence backing them up. The reason I don't believe in Sandy hook or any other nonsense like is a false flag."

I don't think it says what you ment it to say.

I said I don't believe Sandy Hook or any nonsense like is a false flag. Meaning I believe the official version.

There no evidence Sandy hook was a false flag. I looked into it and found nothing suspicious.

peddlelies

everlast75 wrote: »

Either they were incompetent or there was no "there there"

Over 25 DOJ/FBI officals were either demoted, fired or quit over the circumstances and subsequent investigations.

everlast75

Cheerful Spring wrote: »

Sure is if Trump was guilty of an actual crime. This should have been raised at the very beginning or leaked. It going to be next to impossible to bring a charge now against Trump for obstruction when he got cleared of collusion.

Trump did not stop Muller from investigating where the evidence for this. Trump ranting on twitter is not an obstruction of justice and there no evidence Trump told people to lie for him. Barr said he's going to release the report in April you swear he refused to and there some conspiracy.

You're all over the place here.

Take a step back.

"If trump was guilty of a crime, it should have been raised at the beginning".

How can you say he was guilty *without investigating*? He is entitled to due process.

Re - Guilty of obstruction. Criminally perhaps. But the Senate has a role in the form of impeachment. If there are "high crimes and misdemeanors" then they can impeach. Whether its politically wise to do so is irrelevant. They are entitled to make that decision. They are entitled to the report to establish what happened and act accordingly.

Where is the evidence that trump tried to stop the investigation? Its. In. The. Report. How many times does it need to be said?

Also there are facts within the public arena that indicate he did. He fired Comey. He had issues with Sessions recusing himself. He wanted to fire Mueller and only for McGahn he would have. He berated the investigation for 22 months. He berated Mueller. He dangled pardons. He made comments which could construed as witness tampering. But you know all this.

And again, within the public knowledge, Barr is not impartial. I believe that to be true. The memo he wrote, his evasive answers at his nomination hearing, his memo which gave Trump 2 days of full on media PR, the laughing at questions about releasing the report etc etc.

However, I doubt any of the above will get any traction with you.

everlast75

peddlelies wrote: »

Over 25 DOJ/FBI officals were either demoted, fired or quit over the circumstances and subsequent investigations.

Great! There's your justice.

Happy?

peddlelies

everlast75 wrote: »

Great! There's your justice.

Happy?

Will wait and see what Horrowitz IG report has to say about the investigation into the Trump campaign.

everlast75

JRant wrote: »

I don't know either but to me there appear to be questions that need answering. How did such a report make it's way to the top echelons of the US intelligence agencies and seemingly sway multiple investigations.

I agree with you on the rest as well by the way. Jnr most definitely has more questions to answer on that meeting. I also read somewhere that the meeting was set up by a member of the Fusion team, can't seem to find it now but will post if I do.

Isn't it remarkable that both this administration and the previous have failed to act sufficiently on known Russian interference during elections. How Trump stood on that stage with Putin and said he believed Putin was outrageous.

I'm glad we have found common ground.

And on one point, McCain gave the dossier to the FBI Another Republican. And Graham convinced him to. Another Republican.

The idea that this is all Democrats is utter nonsense.

And in relation to neither admin looking into it, there are multiple stories of Obama going to McConnell about it and McConnell threatening Obama to keep quiet about it.

JRant

everlast75 wrote: »

I'm glad we have found common ground.

And on one point, McCain gave the dossier to the FBI Another Republican. And Graham convinced him to. Another Republican.

The idea that this is all Democrats is utter nonsense.

And in relation to neither admin looking into it, there are multiple stories of Obama going to McConnell about it and McConnell threatening Obama to keep quiet about it.

I would be somewhat familiar with the logistics of how the report got into the FBI's hands. I'm more wondering how a clearly political document could be taken so seriously without being put through a rigous vetting first, which it doesn't appear to have.

Obama knew there was Russian interference and put some sanctions in place, but these never addressed the underlying issue. Trump was pretty much told on his first day of the job and about the only thing his administration have done is bring the heads on Social media in for a "chat" and next to nothing outside of that.

Both the Dems and Reps should be hopping mad and working together to put a stop to it but IMO the Steele dossier made this impossible. It's pitted one side against the other at the worst possible time.

I was glad the initial findings found no collusion, not for any admiration of Trump but more to do with the office of the president not being corrupted to such a degree. I genuinely believe it would have been an absolute catastrophe for the American people if that was true.

Cheerful Spring

everlast75 wrote: »

You're all over the place here.

Take a step back.

"If trump was guilty of a crime, it should have been raised at the beginning".

How can you say he was guilty *without investigating*? He is entitled to due process.

Re - Guilty of obstruction. Criminally perhaps. But the Senate has a role in the form of impeachment. If there are "high crimes and misdemeanors" then they can impeach. Whether its politically wise to do so is irrelevant. They are entitled to make that decision. They are entitled to the report to establish what happened and act accordingly.

Where is the evidence that trump tried to stop the investigation? Its. In. The. Report. How many times does it need to be said?

Also there are facts within the public arena that indicate he did. He fired Comey. He had issues with Sessions recusing himself. He wanted to fire Mueller and only for McGahn he would have. He berated the investigation for 22 months. He berated Mueller. He dangled pardons. He made comments which could construed as witness tampering. But you know all this.

And again, within the public knowledge, Barr is not impartial. I believe that to be true. The memo he wrote, his evasive answers at his nomination hearing, his memo which gave Trump 2 days of full on media PR, the laughing at questions about releasing the report etc etc.

However, I doubt any of the above will get any traction with you.

Tell that to CNN and MSBC who were 100 per positive Trump colluded with Putin and believed he was a spy. They did not wait for the investigation to be over and some of you guys had already established the facts before the muller report was out. There a changing of the narrative recently as if this never happened funny that. Your due process is hollow rhetoric. People were even banned on here for pointing this out and you guys ganged up on people for claiming there was no collusion.

It's in the report you hope? Can you be more specific or just hoping the obstruction charge is damaging and was hidden by Barr? If there nothing there what next for the Democrats?

Thargor

TomOnBoard wrote: »

I'm not so sure any of us would survive objective scrutiny of what we said 5 years ago... :rolleyes:

pjohnson wrote: »

I forgot you dont believe Sandy Hook yet believe most what Trump says.

Midlife wrote: »

To be honest it seems like you just want to go against the established line.

If everyone here loved Trump, you'd be screaming collusion.

The Sandy Hook thing is messed up though. It's very hard to have any credibility in your opinion on anything after that.

He thinks the Sandy Hook massacre was fake?

Cheerful Spring

Thargor wrote: »

He thinks the Sandy Hook massacre was fake?

You will not find one post from me claiming Sandy Hook was a false flag. I don't know what the first quote is about?

If someone claimed this 5 years ago was not me.

peddlelies

Grassley and Graham have sent this letter to Barr claiming Mueller's team misrepresented emails in court filings. The original letter was sent back in 2017. There's two main points and imo everyone should read this as it shows how things can be taken out of context.

Both instances are clear cut really. First one, Jist of what the SC presented is that Papadopoulos emails Manafort with the subject line "Request from Russia to meet with Mr Trump". Manafort forwards it to Rick Gates and writes Trump isn't doing these trips, and that it should be somebody low level in the campaign. The SC doesn't cite the rest of the email exchange, so it looks like Manafort wants to send someone "low level" to meet Putin or whoever not to draw any attention. That's what the media reported on.

However the part that was omitted is key. Gates responds back, "Agree, what If I get our correspondence coordinate to do it. This is the person responding to all email of non importance. It would be a general letter." Manafort responds "Good."

When looking at the SC portion it looks like they were going to send someone low level to Russia not to draw attention, but it's obvious when you look at the full context they regarded the request as low importance and sought lower level staff to decline.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Second instance -



They left out everything else. When you view the entire exchange in context you can see it's very misleading. The campaign supervisor cited was Sam Clovis. Papadopoulos didn't just inquire about the Russians, he wrote "the UK, Greek, Italian and even Russian Governments". Clovis declined and eventually went on to say



https://www.scribd.com/document/404946107/Grassley-Letter-to-Mueller#from_embed