The Mueller Report. BREAKING NEWS: AG’s Summary Report Released. NO COLLUSION!

[row_33]

11 minutes ago, McGee Return TD said:

 

Right.. what a bummer than he uses discussion on a discussion board rather than snark.

 

Although we disagree, I appreciate Rhino explaining his positions.

 

Rhino takes the time to research and answer.

 

We've gone over this every day since Trump won in November 2016, 3 or 4 on here post constantly with the same thing and wasting everyone's time....

[leh-nerd skin-erd]

2 minutes ago, McGee Return TD said:

 

Right.. what a bummer than he uses discussion on a discussion board rather than snark.

 

Although we disagree, I appreciate Rhino explaining his positions.

You read that as snark?  Not her style, but to be fair he's written the equivalent of "War and Peace" on this subject, but unlike that wuss Tolstoy, DR went on and wrote the prequel , sequel and personally worked up the genealogy of all the players outlined through the new millennium.  So, literally, to reply with detail = patient man. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Warcodered]

16 hours ago, Deranged Rhino said:

 

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/341788-exclusive-doj-let-russian-lawyer-into-us-before-she-met-with-trump

 

Her work on the Magnistiky act was done in coordination and cooperation with Fusion GPS: 

"Fusion GPS says it had no involvement in the meeting although it did work on a lawsuit that involved Veselnitskaya for more than two years."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/josh-rogin/wp/2017/07/11/inside-the-link-between-the-russian-lawyer-who-met-donald-trump-jr-and-the-trump-dossier/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.c3464c2d6889

 

he second line of evidence reframing the Trump Tower meeting -- after the Ohr-Steele-Simpson correspondence – was first reported in June by RealClearInvestigations. It shows that, starting in March 2016, FBI confidential sources and other figures associated with Western intelligence services and the Clinton campaign approached the Trump team promising damaging information on Clinton. The Trump Tower meeting appears to have been the most successful of these approaches, since it was the one instance where the Trump campaign signaled it was willing to receive incriminating information on its opponent.

 

These two strands of evidence – the DOJ’s collaboration with Clinton-paid researchers and efforts to connect the Trump campaign to Russia – came together in midtown Manhattan on June 9, 2016 at Trump Tower.

 

At the center of it all was Fusion GPS, which had two clients whose interests were served by the Trump Tower meeting: the Russians and the Clinton campaign.

 

Nonetheless, Simpson also testified that he had no knowledge of the meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and others until it was reported a year later. There is reason to doubt that account.

 

In fact, the Russian lawyer at the center of the meeting, Natalia Veselnitskaya, was his client.

 

She has publicly stated that she used talking points developed by Simpson for the Russian government in that discussion. Kremlin officials also posted the allegations on the Prosecutor General’s website, and shared them with visiting U.S. congressional delegations.

In addition, Simpson has testified that he had dinner with Veselnitskaya the night before the meeting and the night after.

(snip)

Veselnitskaya hired Simpson in spring 2014 for work that lasted, according to Simpson’s Senate testimony, until “mid to late 2016.”

 

Fusion GPS assisted Veselnitskaya -- representing Pyotr Katsyv and his son Denis, both Kremlin-tied businessmen -- in her campaign to repeal U.S. legislation sanctioning Russian officials under the 2012 Magnitsky Act, which was named for Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian corruption whistleblower who died in police custody.  Simpson, sources told RealClearInvestigations, was tasked with running a smear campaign against the driving force behind those sanctions, Chicago-born financier William Browder, who had employed Magnitsky.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2018/08/13/trump_tower_meeting_looks_increasingly_like_a_setup.html

 

(Again, this is real evidence, not speculation. Congressional testimony is the source, it's linked in the article.)

 

 

* See above links -- source is Glenn Simpson's testimony before Congress. 

* See above links -- same source.

* On April 19th Obama met with Mary Jacoby, Glenn Simpson's wife, in the oval office in an unplanned/unannounced meeting.

 

Within hours of that meeting, Fusion GPS is officially hired by Perkins Coie

Elias and his law firm, Perkins Coie, retained the company in April 2016 on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the DNC. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/clinton-campaign-dnc-paid-for-research-that-led-to-russia-dossier/2017/10/24/226fabf0-b8e4-11e7-a908-a3470754bbb9_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.d26122365d18

 

This was prompted by Admiral Mike Rogers, head of the NSA, discovering illegal access/searches on NSA servers by private government contractors and FBI agents working inside two DOJ departments without proper warrants. Rogers not only shut down the program, he was demanding legal explanations for 702 abuses. Fusion GPS was retained to explain away these abuses by generating probable cause regarding Trump and Russia. Page 82-85 lay it out: https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/icotr/51117/2016_Cert_FISC_Memo_Opin_Order_Apr_2017.pdf

 

Again these are facts, not speculations. Backed by Congressional testimony, White House visitor logs, employment histories, and official government reports from the FISC and DNI. 

 

 

 

This is the irony which you haven't quite caught up with yet. 

 

Walk this out: 

* Clinton hired Fusion GPS, officially to do "oppo research" on Trump for her campaign.

(I've covered the real reason they were hired, but it's the same end goal: Clinton hired Fusion GPS to help her win an election.) 

* Fusion GPS then hires a foreign spy, Christopher Steele, to find dirt on Trump/Russia. In order to accomplish that goal, Christopher Steele paid Russian intelligence assets through two different cut outs (Fusion GPS and Perkins Coie) on behalf of Clinton's campaign for disinformation to spread about her opponent. 

 

That's a fact. That happened. 

 

And that's Clinton not just meeting with Russians, but paying for them for dirt. 

 

So, again, I ask you, does your moral outrage go deep enough to be appalled at the actual collusion/conspiracy with a "hostile/adversarial" foreign nation? 

 

 

It's all above. Read all those articles in full. Read the links. Read the sources. 

 

Every single person in that meeting not named Trump or Kushner had direct ties to Clinton or Fusion GPS. The translator used in the meeting was Hillary's personal translator while she was at State (that's not an accident). Manafort worked with Podesta for decades (and I believe him to be a plant). And NV worked with Glenn Simpson and Fusion GPS for years. 

 

The entire meeting was created for optics. To create enough media coverage/stories about how it appears to be crooked so the Clinton campaign could use it against Trump in the final months of the election and so the FBI could generate a circular intel loop of reporting which they then used to create a predicate for their FISA requests on Carter Page and others. 

 

It was a set up. 

 

 

So are you trying to say the Trump tower meeting was a trap set up by Clinton/Fusion GPS to make it look like Trump was trying to get help from Russian agents, and they did that by pretending to be Russian agents?

[Tiberius]

1 minute ago, Warcodered said:

So are you trying to say the Trump tower meeting was a trap set up by Clinton/Fusion GPS to make it look like Trump was trying to get help from Russian agents, and they did that by pretending to be Russian agents?

And no one found out about this until after the election so why would they have done this? Could not have been done to win the election or they would have released the info BEFORE the election. 

 

Tangled webs...,

[Buffalo_Gal]

33 minutes ago, leh-nerd skin-erd said:

You read that as snark?  Not her style, but to be fair he's written the equivalent of "War and Peace" on this subject, but unlike that wuss Tolstoy, DR went on and wrote the prequel , sequel and personally worked up the genealogy of all the players outlined through the new millennium.  So, literally, to reply with detail = patient man. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If the question is was I being snarky in my comment to @Deranged Rhino, the answer is no. Definitely not.  He has the patience of a saint answering all these questions - that have maybe a smidge of a nuisance - in depth and in good faith.   I could not do it.

These people who are trying to "trip him up" (on a f-ing discussion board, for Pete sake!) or to paint X, Y, and Z as not what was truly said/found/happened in the madness of the last three years drive me crazy. Real, thought-provoking questions? Welcome, please, and thank you! Stupid whataboutisms? Just go away already.  Clearly, I need a drink. Or a nap. Probably both, and in that order. 

Edited April 24, 2019 by Buffalo_Gal

[3rdnlng]

17 minutes ago, McGee Return TD said:

 

Right.. what a bummer than he uses discussion on a discussion board rather than snark.

 

Although we disagree, I appreciate Rhino explaining his positions.

Listen, many of us here are pretty knowledgeable regarding what's been going on for the last two years or so as it pertains to the Russian probe nonsense. I'd venture to guess that we know more than the average newsperson reporting on it. We owe a lot of this knowledge to DR who has been all over this since it started. On many, many occasions we've had people show up here who think they can debate this topic with the board when they don't knowjackshit other than what Don Lemon has told them. That's the scenario that gets you a collective eyeroll from most posters here.

 

There's another scenario that makes us just want to give you the middle finger and put you on ignore. You've come to a football board and immediately find it's political forum and make your first posts there? That's just not very believable. Odds are that you are a former poster that has been banned and are here to just disrupt the threads. Prove me wrong by going back and reading through the pertinent threads and gain some knowledge and then start posting. I for one have no desire to be your tutor.

[row_33]

everyone gets 53 strikes at the plate around here

 

some are still at the plate after 53,000

 

[Deranged Rhino]

37 minutes ago, Warcodered said:

So are you trying to say the Trump tower meeting was a trap set up by Clinton/Fusion GPS to make it look like Trump was trying to get help from Russian agents, and they did that by pretending to be Russian agents?

 

That isn't what I'm trying to say, that's what happened. It didn't just happen at Trump Tower, it happened over and over again to the campaign.

 

That conversation George Popadopolous had with Alexander Downer at the wine bar? That was a trap, designed to engineer probable cause for the CI investigation. Downer is a major Clinton Foundation donor, has direct ties to British intelligence (as well as Australian) -- and changed his story twice along the way. 

 

It didn't stop with Downer. Stephan Halper approached (and offered to pay) G-Pop and Carter Page both to come talk to him about Russia.

 

Joseph Mifsud, who has been incorrectly labeled by the media and the Mueller report as a "Russian" asset, is not one. He's a western intel source/officer who started talking to G-Pap at the same time Halper and Downer were circling.

 

The way it worked was simple: the FBI/CIA/MI6 sends in undercover informants (spies) to dangle a piece of tempting bait to vulnerable members of the Trump campaign. Just having the conversation is enough to generate cause for warrants so long as it was not revealed to the court that said undercover informants were working on behalf of the FBI and/or Fusion GPS.  

 

 

33 minutes ago, Tiberius said:

And no one found out about this until after the election so why would they have done this? Could not have been done to win the election or they would have released the info BEFORE the election. 

 

Tangled webs...,

 

They released information about it right before the election, October 31st 2016. This was their October Surprise. 

 

It just didn't work. 

 

Then, when it didn't work, it became the platform from which they launched the coup attempt.

Edited April 24, 2019 by Deranged Rhino

[leh-nerd skin-erd]

8 minutes ago, Buffalo_Gal said:

If the question is was I being snarky in my comment to @Deranged Rhino, the answer is no. Definitely not.  He has the patience of a saint answering all these questions - that have maybe a smidge of a nuisance - in depth and in good faith.   I could not do it.

These people get who are trying to "trip him up" (on a f-ing discussion board, for Pete sake!) or to paint X, Y, and Z as not what was truly said/found/happened in the madness of the last three years drive me crazy. Real, thought-provoking questions? Welcome, please, and thank you! Stupid whataboutisms? Just go away already.  Clearly, I need a drink. Or a nap. Probably both, and in that order. 

While you may well be on your way to being a whiskey boozing alchy narcoleptic per paragraph 2, I still would not classify your reply as snarky.  Regardless, Greg is patient indeed. 

 

 

[Deranged Rhino]

 

Reminder above (it's topics we've covered but worth considering in light of the morning's conversation about entrapment)

[Tiberius]

14 minutes ago, Deranged Rhino said:

 

That isn't what I'm trying to say, that's what happened. It didn't just happen at Trump Tower, it happened over and over again to the campaign.

 

That conversation George Popadopolous had with Alexander Downer at the wine bar? That was a trap, designed to engineer probable cause for the CI investigation. Downer is a major Clinton Foundation donor, has direct ties to British intelligence (as well as Australian) -- and changed his story twice along the way. 

 

It didn't stop with Downer. Stephan Halper approached (and offered to pay) G-Pop and Carter Page both to come talk to him about Russia.

 

Joseph Mifsud, who has been incorrectly labeled by the media and the Mueller report as a "Russian" asset, is not one. He's a western intel source/officer who started talking to G-Pap at the same time Halper and Downer were circling.

 

The way it worked was simple: the FBI/CIA/MI6 sends in undercover informants (spies) to dangle a piece of tempting bait to vulnerable members of the Trump campaign. Just having the conversation is enough to generate cause for warrants so long as it was not revealed to the court that said undercover informants were working on behalf of the FBI and/or Fusion GPS.  

 

 

 

They released information about it right before the election, October 31st 2016. This was their October Surprise. 

 

It just didn't work. 

 

Then, when it didn't work, it became the platform from which they launched the coup attempt.

No one found out about the meeting until the summer of 2017 and that's when Trump started lying about it, making up false statements etc.

[Warcodered]

34 minutes ago, Deranged Rhino said:

 

That isn't what I'm trying to say, that's what happened. It didn't just happen at Trump Tower, it happened over and over again to the campaign.

 

That conversation George Popadopolous had with Alexander Downer at the wine bar? That was a trap, designed to engineer probable cause for the CI investigation. Downer is a major Clinton Foundation donor, has direct ties to British intelligence (as well as Australian) -- and changed his story twice along the way. 

 

It didn't stop with Downer. Stephan Halper approached (and offered to pay) G-Pop and Carter Page both to come talk to him about Russia.

 

Joseph Mifsud, who has been incorrectly labeled by the media and the Mueller report as a "Russian" asset, is not one. He's a western intel source/officer who started talking to G-Pap at the same time Halper and Downer were circling.

 

The way it worked was simple: the FBI/CIA/MI6 sends in undercover informants (spies) to dangle a piece of tempting bait to vulnerable members of the Trump campaign. Just having the conversation is enough to generate cause for warrants so long as it was not revealed to the court that said undercover informants were working on behalf of the FBI and/or Fusion GPS.  

 

 

 

They released information about it right before the election, October 31st 2016. This was their October Surprise. 

 

It just didn't work. 

 

Then, when it didn't work, it became the platform from which they launched the coup attempt.

Right I probably won't agree with you on that but let's assume that's true. It would be terrible and something should be done about it, but how does that exonerate the people that took that meeting? I mean if you go out and try to hire a hit man your not in the clear because he turned out to be an under cover cop or even just some random dude someone paid to pretend to be a hit man. You'd still of tried to hire a hit man. People's intentions matter whether they're competent enough to pull it off or not.

[Deranged Rhino]

3 minutes ago, Warcodered said:

Right I probably won't agree with you on that but let's assume that's true.

 

It is true. It's not a matter of opinion. It's a fact that these people reached out to Trump campaign officials on behalf of the FBI/CIA/MI6 and Fusion GPS. It's proven in multiple Congressional testimonies as well as employment records and history.

 

It's also a fact these encounters were then leaked to the media in order to create the circular intel loop which was then used by the FBI/DOJ to bolster their chances of getting legal justification to spy on the campaign in the fall of 2016.

 

It was a very slick operation: dirty up a Trump campaign member through innuendo about meeting with shady intel assets -- all the while omitting that said assets were western/American based not Russian. No one can challenge those claims, because they were first unnamed sources citing unknown methods in the pages of the NYT and WaPo -- and if someone did dig up the connections, the DOJ would block its release (as we saw happen over and over again while the GOP ran the intel committee) because exposing the name of Halper, Mifsud, or Downer as US assets would expose "sources and methods". 

 

It was always a coup. Always.  

 

4 minutes ago, Warcodered said:

 It would be terrible and something should be done about it, but how does that exonerate the people that took that meeting? 

 

Taking the meeting is not a crime. Taking the meeting is not a criminal act in way shape or form, even if they were really meeting with Russians. That's important to remember and keep in mind. It may not be something to be proud of doing, but it's in no way illegal. 

 

Additionally, most "meetings" weren't planned events but "chance" encounters in public or at events the participants were invited to which had nothing to do with getting dirt or meeting Russians (Downer at the bar with P-Dop, Halper approaching Page at a conference et al). 

 

So while it might look shady to take those meetings, when it's framed as a meeting with Russian spooks, the reality is not quite as sinister from the Trump campaign POV. They weren't meeting with Russians, or asking to in most cases, they were meeting with western intelligence officials/spies working to entrap them.  

 

The only way these meetings would even be problematic is if they were made on the basis of getting illegal dirt. None of them were framed that way. 

 

7 minutes ago, Warcodered said:

I mean if you go out and try to hire a hit man your not in the clear because he turned out to be an under cover cop or even just some random dude someone paid to pretend to be a hit man. You'd still of tried to hire a hit man. People's intentions matter whether they're competent enough to pull it off or not.

 

One is not like the other. Yes, intent matters. But every campaign in history would meet with whomever they could when it comes to collecting oppo research. The meetings aren't illegal. The only reason they're an issue is because of the propaganda campaign that was waged to equate Russia as being a hostile adversary when in 2016 they were no such thing.

 

Had, for example, Trump Tower come together because Goldstone told Jr that he wanted to Don to meet a Russian who hacked into Hillary's emails - yes, that would be bad. Still not a crime (unless said emails were given over in the meeting) but bad.

 

But that's not how any of these incidents came together. They were all vague promises of dirt - which is SOP in campaigning and is always followed up on by members of any given campaign. 

[McGee Return TD]

2 hours ago, 3rdnlng said:

Listen, many of us here are pretty knowledgeable regarding what's been going on for the last two years or so as it pertains to the Russian probe nonsense. I'd venture to guess that we know more than the average newsperson reporting on it. We owe a lot of this knowledge to DR who has been all over this since it started. On many, many occasions we've had people show up here who think they can debate this topic with the board when they don't knowjackshit other than what Don Lemon has told them. That's the scenario that gets you a collective eyeroll from most posters here.

 

There's another scenario that makes us just want to give you the middle finger and put you on ignore. You've come to a football board and immediately find it's political forum and make your first posts there? That's just not very believable. Odds are that you are a former poster that has been banned and are here to just disrupt the threads. Prove me wrong by going back and reading through the pertinent threads and gain some knowledge and then start posting. I for one have no desire to be your tutor.

 

I for one have no desire to prove a thing to you 

Edited April 24, 2019 by McGee Return TD

[3rdnlng]

11 minutes ago, McGee Return TD said:

 

I for one have no desire to prove a thing to you 

 

[TakeYouToTasker]

14 minutes ago, McGee Return TD said:

I for one have no desire to prove a thing to you 

 

The entire purpose of argument/discussion is first to vet the merits of your case against counter argument in order to test it’s validity, and then to be persuasive with it if it proves logical and valid.

 

If that’s not your purpose than what is?

[Deranged Rhino]

21 minutes ago, McGee Return TD said:

 

I for one have no desire to prove a thing to you 

 

I do appreciate new voices down here, and in case you are truly new and not a new screenname of someone from the past, I hope you stick around down here.  

 

The place has a learning curve as to the personalities that populate the dungeon. And there are some really smart, good posters who will try to test your mettle in order to ferret out your opinions/beliefs -- but if you can weather that storm you'll likely find this place has a lot of interesting conversations/topics. 

 

 

[McGee Return TD]

43 minutes ago, TakeYouToTasker said:

 

The entire purpose of argument/discussion is first to vet the merits of your case against counter argument in order to test it’s validity, and then to be persuasive with it if it proves logical and valid.

 

If that’s not your purpose than what is?

 

I like to take in the opinions of how people got to their particular point of view in order to learn something. Perhaps I'll learn something about the topic, something about the person I am speaking to, or connect the discussion to something I have learned in the past. Because of inherent biases (in all of us), I have little interest in persuading anyone to take my exact viewpoint on something. as my viewpoint, no matter how persuasive, is never going to be seen the same way between us. I have little interest in winning or losing an argument/discussion because it does not matter. What matters is learning something and using that learned something to better my own or someone elses life, no matter how infinitely small that betterment is.

 

[TakeYouToTasker]

21 minutes ago, McGee Return TD said:

 

I like to take in the opinions of how people got to their particular point of view in order to learn something. Perhaps I'll learn something about the topic, something about the person I am speaking to, or connect the discussion to something I have learned in the past. Because of inherent biases (in all of us), I have little interest in persuading anyone to take my exact viewpoint on something. as my viewpoint, no matter how persuasive, is never going to be seen the same way between us. I have little interest in winning or losing an argument/discussion because it does not matter. What matters is learning something and using that learned something to better my own or someone elses life, no matter how infinitely small that betterment is.

 

 

The purpose of argument is to determine what is correct, while the purpose of debate is to win.

 

 

[/dev/null]

3 minutes ago, TakeYouToTasker said:

 

The purpose of argument is to determine what is correct, while the purpose of debate is to win.