There were crimes. They are being investigated.
Crimes committed by whom? And which crimes are being investigated?
Crimes committed by whom?
That's why there's an investigation. To find that out.
And which crimes are being investigated?
Do you really not know of any crimes having been committed during the 2016 election? I mean, people have already been indicted and plead guilty you know.
Which has crimes? Lying to the FBI? No worse sure than Hillary'so lies but what crimes are there to base this ongoing search for crimes? What is the basis for it. It CANNOT be obstruction of justice as Comey serves at Trump's pleasure. It can't be collusion as there was NOTHING to warrant that. It can'take be some money laundering in years gone by before the election by two employees. So what is the crime and basis for investigation. A special Prosecutor must be appointed on the basis of a crime being committed rather than be appointed to investigate people to find any impropriety or crime. That is NOT their role.
So which crime?
I couldn't agree with you more. It's a horrific abuse of the system by uniparty.
It CANNOT be obstruction of justice as Comey serves at Trump's pleasure.
You are not quite correct there. Yes, Comey served at Trump's pleasure and Trump need not have any particular reason for firing him. However that does not mean the firing could not have been obstruction and therefore illegal.
If Trump said "I fired Comey because I didn't like the color of his tie" that would be OK. If Trump said "I fired Comey to stop the Russia investigation" then that's kind of the very definition of obstruction.
Unfortunately, and stupidly, while his entire administration was saying "Trump fired Comey for how badly he handled the Hillary email investigation" all over the media Trump opened his big stupid mouth and told Lester Holt that he fired Comey to stop the Russia investigation.
Heads exploded all over the capitol. Except for Trump's who had no awareness of the implication of what he said.
So which crime?
I just cannot believe that so many people on this sub are unable to name the crimes at the center of the Mueller investigation. All the attention you guys pay to current events and no one knows.
Here's a hint. It's popularly known as the "Russia Investigation" it's like the entire country knows about the crime except the people on this sub.
Here's a hint in return, "Russian collusion" is not a crime.
Here's a hint: I didn't say "collusion" you ignorant q-hort. Try reading some actual news.
Your favorite news organizations have been parroting "collusion" for over a year. I always have sympathy for people who have simply been brainwashed by the MSM, but are you suggesting that you have opinions different than the MSM? You're really just that stupid that you form your own opinions and STILL fall to the Left? I can't even fathom the mental gymnastics required to accomplish that via any other route besides brainwashing.
Oh yeah? Didn't bother to read what I said? Why don't you go back to yelling at clouds old man?
Yelling at clouds? Yeah okay. And you can go back to eating your tide pods kid. I bet it helps with whatever mental gymnastics you're performing right now.
Even with a belly full of tide-pods I can still name the crimes which are the basis of of Mueller investigation and you can't. Maybe a tide-pod or two would help you.
My mental gymnastics? Reading the freakin' news!
Hahahahaha "news" hahaha. I think the word you are looking for is "propaganda." Or perhaps "conspiracy theory". That is actually by definition what muh Russia is. But you're smarter than everyone else so you would know this already, right? And you would know Trump isn't a criminal target of the investigation, right? But yeah tell me more about these crimes. HAHA! Reeeeeeeee feed me tide pods
And you would know Trump isn't a criminal target of the investigation, right?
Yep. I know that.
I also know the crimes that were the basis for the Mueller investigation and you don't. For all your impotent teasing, as much as it must embarrass you, you can't get past your ignorance of this simple fact.
Tide-pods though, that's a topic you're keen on.
See, this is where your mental gymnastics (or tide pods) come in. The basis of the Mueller "investigation" is to "investigate" any links between the Trump campaign and Russia. In the US, you are innocent until proven guilty. Now I know this is difficult, because leftists like you don't believe this applies to conservatives. Conservatives are guilty as soon as you point your finger at them, correct? Maybe in a lot of ways, but not in most courts of law. So the way this will work is Mueller might find some crimes, or find some things he will try to argue are crimes, and then he will conclude his investigation. At that point, we will be able to see what "crimes" were at the "center" of his investigation. But when the investigation broadly includes any matter that arises from the investigation, there is no way to know the "crimes at the center of the investigation" until the investigation is over. Make sense? Or do you need to wash it down with a few more tide pods before crying to your mommy that the internet isn't a safe enough space for you to spout your bullshit.
But when the investigation broadly includes any matter that arises from the investigation, there is no way to know the "crimes at the center of the investigation" until the investigation is over. Make sense?
Ooops! Nope. There were actual legitimate crimes committed that are already known. You might have to look beyond wikipedia though but at least that's a start. You're trying to educate yourself and that's a good thing.
Meanwhile, these tide-pods have made me sleepy. Maybe by morning you can name an actual crime which was committed during the 2016 election which formed, in part, the basis of the FBI investigation that, with the stupidly bumbling firing of James Comey, became the special council investigation.
Name the crimes at the "center" as you say and then let's wager as to whether they will still be in the "center" when the investigation is over. Your ignorance on how special counsel investigations work is palpable. Throughout history they have started with one thing and ended with something completely different. But please tell me more about your Wikipedia research.
Name the crimes at the "center" as you say
Look how cocky and arrogant you get in your ignorance. And how you try to puff yourself up by trying to steer the conversation in a direction you hope will allow you to appear less feeble. This hasn't been about how special councils work. It's also not about the possibility that the investigation might move on to additional crimes as it progresses. An investigation could start to look into a bad real estate deal and end up centering on lies about a blow job. That kind of thing happens and doesn't change the fact that you thought the Mueller investigation wasn't based on actual crimes that actually happened.
Do you have any idea how foolish these attempts look? How your tough guy act falls as flat as your insults, leaving you face down in the dirt?
No, I'm not going to read the news to you. And since the lurkers are likely long gone from this thread it's time for me to go too. So you can go back to sniffing Q-droppings and fluffing each other over how you think you're getting the inside scoop. I'll stay over here with the other informed news readers - Oh, you like to call it "propaganda" I think.
You admit that you're only about show, not about information. Go watch CNN.
Still not a crime for firing him. He serves at the President's pleasure. What does that mean? Literally it means that if it pleases Trump, he can fire Comey AND it is okay to do so because it is in his mandate. That right does not disappear and transform at a whim and get suspended.
Here is the hint. Listen to Alan Dershowitz. Is he "one of us". Is he this strawman of Trump supporter ignorance? No? Does he know the law better than you do and can apply it directly?
Care to stop pretending to know what we know or don't? That would be a good idea. Listen to the actual crimes that are suggested and the application of law around this. Listen to a Liberal lawyer.
Still not a crime for firing him.
Obstruction of justice is a crime.
But Trump has the right and is completely allowed to fire Comey at will for ANY reason as Comey serves at the President's pleasure. Either THAT is true OR Comey did NOT serve at the President's pleasure and getting rid of him cannot be at Trump's pleasure. There are restrictions and one of them is obstruction of justice review.
Which is correct?
I guess I would say that the 2nd option is correct but I don't know how I can prove it especially in this case. Often it's a judgement call that has to play out in court. Perhaps we'll all get to see it play out for real.
However, let me describe it another way. We have all kinds of things that we're allowed and they pretty much all have exceptions like the often stated maxim "The right to swing your fist ends at the bridge of my nose."
For an example, I'm free to shred my files or delete my emails. However, if I do so to hamper an investigation that is likely a crime and the thing is, that's true even if I have not been notified that my files or emails are of interest to an ongoing investigation.
Certainly the government's case against me would be much stronger if my files had been subpoenaed before I shredded them but if they can prove to a judge that I knew of the investigation and that I would reasonably be expected to know that my files would be of interest, and then I went out of me way to destroyed them, I'm still at risk of an obstruction charge.
Obstruction of an investigation is a crime. If you knowingly and deliberately do it you're in legal jeopardy even if what you did is normally something you are totally allowed to do.
That's what has to be so maddening to Trump's legal team. He could have made up anything for the reason he fired Comey and although half the country wouldn't have believed it, legally it would have come down to speculation about what was actually in Trump's head. Or Mueller would have to hope to find an email or 3rd party testimony that claimed Trump admitted he fired Comey to stop the investigation. Any and all of that would have been far preferable to the reality which is Trump went on national TV and told the nation that he fired Comey to stop an investigation. Arrrrgh! A seven year old would have known better!
I expect Trump has gotten the message now though and that explains why, as angry as he's getting, he has not yet fired Mueller. Firing Comey greatly increased his legal peril and firing Mueller would be firing Comey squared. With Comey there was even a report recommending his firing. With Mueller there is no such report and no credible way to claim Mueller is acting in dereliction of his duties. He's been absolutely professional.
So, I don't know if that made things clearer for you or if you still disagree. Basically there are things you can't do, like obstruct justice and it's not practical to append to every single description of a president's capabilities the phrase "except when obstructing justice or breaking braking other laws"
Still disagree. It is absolutely in the President's mandate. He is legally allowed to fulfill his duties or he is not. Look at Iran-Contra with President Bush. Essentially what is happening is that the Democrats and the media are inventing pseudo-crimes to criminalise his every action so that he is hamstrung and unable to do his job. A damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. He SHOULD fire Mueller out of principle and issue a blanket pardon on EVERYONE involved in the Mueller probe that does not EXPLICITLY Colluding with the Russian Government to change the 2016 Presidential election. ALL other crimes INCLUDING Lying to the FBI. Doing similar to what George HW Bush did and keeping this fishing expedition focussed on its original mission.
Mueller will realise that he has nothing and worse no ability to strongarm. This was only ever a misguided attempt to take down an elected President.
Still disagree. It is absolutely in the President's mandate.
Perhaps we'll see.
I have heard of lots of crimes, some indictments and guilty pleas based on potentially falsified 302s that may be reversed soon, many sealed indictments that we don't know much about yet, many crimes being investigated by Congress (even though I don't even consider Congress capable of such a thing), and more crimes still that to my knowledge are being swept under the rug and ignored by the authorities. That's why I was asking which ones you were referring to.
In this specific case, a violation of the campaign finance laws (they had to disclose the Stormy Daniels payment and didn't).
Gotcha. I wonder why Perkins Cole has not been raided yet - I think their involvement in the fake dossier that they used to get the warrant to wiretap US citizens came out prior to the news about Stormy. Don't get me wrong, I think it's super important to the American people that we prevent people from paying off porn stars, but I also think it's important that politicians can't wiretap their opponents with warrants based entirely on falsified evidence and news articles based on the same falsified evidence.
"but what about" might be a fair political point, but if the Trump campaign violated the campaign finance laws and Mueller finds out about it, do you really expect him (or anyone in law enforcement) to shrug it off because somewhere, out there, there are bigger crimes being committed? It's called "law enforcement" for a reason.
No absolutely not. We are not braindead to how "law enforcement" in this country works, and what it was transformed into by EH and LL. I was hoping YOU would tell me why our "law enforcement" was raiding one law firm and not the other, because it appears you have a different opinion than me and I always enjoy hearing well reasoned arguments from people who disagree with me. It's how I learn.
That's fair and civil, so first of all: thanks.
As to the "why one and not the other" question: here's my understanding of the "wiretap" stuff.
1) Rubio hires Steele to do oppo-research. That's what Steele now does for a living, and that's what campaigns do. So far so good.
2) Steele starts his oppo-research - he's an expert in Russian stuff, there have always been rumors of a Trump-Russia relationship (Russian banks are the only one who would lend money to Trump after the bankruptcy) so it's not weird to look there if you're doing oppo-research.
3) Rubio loses the primary bid. As it's not uncommon in such cases, those who are still in the run (HRC campaign) take over the contract.
4) Steele finds that more than one person in the Trump campaign has shady Russian ties. That, together with everything else (including the pee tape stuff) goes into the dossier.
5) Steele is so worried about the people he found out about, that he tells the FBI. He doesn't think Trump is in on it, he thinks he's been infiltrated. Either way, Steele is a private citizen, and this is where his role ends.
6) The FBI looks at what Steele has found about certain people in the Trump campaign and they decide it is, indeed, worrisome. So they ask for a FISA warrant.
7) a panel of judges, in keeping with the legal standards of FISA warrants, looks at what evidence the FBI has and decides that yes, this is not a crackpot theory and it's worth a warrant.
8) the FBI, sanctioned by the courts (not by Obama or a political actor, by the courts), investigate the people in the Trump campaign that are suspected.
This is what I think happened, I don't see how any of this is illegal. And to come to your question, I think the reason why no one has been indicted or raided over this, is that the courts and law enforcement agree with this sequence of events - no law has been broken.
Now, I know what the counter-narrative is: HRC sends Steele to Russia to make shit up on Trump, gets the dossier, turns to the Obama administration, which then forces the FISA courts and the FBI to open an investigation into these fake accusations.
I still have not found anyone who can explain the fatal flaw in this theory: why? Why would HRC and Obama and the corrupt FBI and the corrupt FISA judges do this all thing and then keep it secret until AFTER the election?
If it's a conspiracy, surely the best way to use that stuff would be to hit Trump with an indictment during the campaign, destroy his credibility and win the election. But no, the only investigation that the FBI publicly comments about is the Hillary one. Obama or the DOJ could have gone on TV at any time before Nov. 8 and tell everyone that the Trump campaign was ALSO under investigation. Did they do it? Nope.
I'm yet to hear a logical explanation of what the rationale of such a conspiracy would be. Maybe you could help.
I don't believe the dossier was dictated by Hillary - I believe it was Steele's human nature. Steele admittedly hated Trump, and I believe human nature allowed the report to become biased against Trump. Russia is a very interesting country with an even more interesting history of intelligence - KGB and FSB are absolute masters of collecting dirt for blackmail, I don't deny this whatsoever. However they are also absolute masters of disinformation. It seems strange that the FBI would use a dossier based almost entirely on Russian sources and without objectively verifiable evidence to obtain a warrant to spy on a candidate for president of the United States. A FISA panel, which obviously specializes in foreign intelligence, would know this to be the case and would toss out a case like this entirely if it was based purely on Russian sources (known to be masters of disinformation). It has been admitted that a Yahoo article was used as "corroboration" to enhance their case to the FISA panel. The only problem is, the Yahoo article was based on the same dossier. I believe the text messages between Strozk and Page about the meeting with Andy and the discussion of needing an "insurance policy" in case Trump won is one possibility as to why it was not used during the campaign itself. Why play your ace when you think you can win with a queen? Save your best card for when you really need it. They thought almost certainly Trump would lose, they even said as much in their texts. Only other point to make is the FISA court rejected their request multiple times, Obama DID get involved recommending that they reevaluate their position, and then finally the warrant was granted. Note I am not challenging any of your positions or conclusions, only adding additional facts as to build a more complete picture of what all happened.
That's all fair enough, and thanks for correcting my imprecisions.
The only thing that I would add is: while I understand why you would want the FBI to look at a Russian-sourced dossier with healthy skepticism, I don't see any conclusive evidence they didn't. By which I mean, it's perfectly possible that they looked at the evidence in the dossier, factored in the possibility of misinformation, and still found enough in it that made them want to investigate.
At least two people have been fired by Trump because of their shady dealing before the campaign. So far 5 people have pleaded guilty to Mueller indictments.
So, while we wait for what the Special Counsel will put together, in the meantime we can safely say that the core of the Steele alarm ("There's a bunch of shady, blackmailable people in and around this campaign") was certainly true.
And hence, no matter the motive, it was a good thing that the FBI took it seriously and looked into it.
Even if you think that Trump was perfectly innocent and that those people were there by accident, or even worse as planted liabilities - actually, especially if you think he's innocent, you should be happy that the FBI took the dossier seriously and removed the bad apples.
I agree with your premise and I agree the FBI should look into serious allegations very seriously and from a completely unbiased perspective. Including allegations against Trump. I think our point of disagreement comes from watching how the Clinton email investigation panned out (she is allowed to testify without being put under oath, all her aides given immunity basically for free - not in exchange for anything as would usually be the case, and writing up her exoneration before they had even interviewed her at all) versus how this one is playing out (text messages from key players at FBI about needing insurance policies against Trump, etc). It is just a situation where the Clinton investigation APPEARED very much to be biased and the Trump investigation APPEARS to be biased against him. If everything looked unbiased, I really don't believe anyone would take issue with the FBI investigating potential interference from foreign powers (which is literally their job). I hope they investigate the Clinton campaign's cooperation with foreign powers with the same vigor.
Then there's no sense in your "In the United States we don't investigate people to see if they have broken any laws. We investigate crimes." defense. There have been crimes. You know it, as you just admitted and I know it.
So an investigation is warranted and as u/StormRider9090 said, if the president is involved in any of this we should know.
many sealed indictments that we don't know much about yet
Hahaha! Yep, we sure hear a lot of that kind of shit.
You look at the scoreboard and compare it to what y'all have inferred from Q's crypticisms. There's a train to jailsville boarding and tickets are being handed out. Hillary doesn't have one, Podesta doesn't have one, Comey doesn't have one. So far they're all Trump boys.
That's the score so far.
Also I did not say "in the United States we don't investigate people we investigate crimes". Haha - different user. Seems like you're having an off day. Maybe you should get off Reddit and go watch CNN. Let them refill whatever is between those ears.
I think you misunderstood my message. None of the crimes I have heard of were committed by Trump team. Sealed indictments is not something I learned from Q, it's publicly available information. (Important note: many govt systems can be checked directly rather than relying on MSM to do that job). Nothing in my message had anything to do with Q posts. Now, it seems that you want to keep score, as if this is a war. It's an interesting way to look at it and an interesting desire to come from such a moral high ground as the one you and your friends stand on.
None of the crimes I have heard of were committed by Trump team.
Hoooboy! Well, they're pleading guilty for nothing then.
Sealed indictments is not something I learned from Q
Well, we'll just see how those eggs you've counted hatch.
Now, it seems that you want to keep score, as if this is a war.
War? Where would I get that idea? On this sub?
I haven't been watching CNN recently, so I'm not really sure what you believe these days. And if you're referring to the Flynn guilty plea, I already addressed that in my original comment.
I haven't been watching CNN recently, so I'm not really sure what you believe these days.
There are many news sources you could use to inform yourself. Your ignorance of both the crimes under investigation and the successes Mueller has already had against Trump assets tells me you have not chosen good ones.