nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
One more question to add: why would he violate his cooperation agreement with Mueller by lying about his interactions with Kilimnik.
Russia Collusion Scandal (aka A Leftist fantasy)
- Thread starter Runnin
- Start date
One more question to add: why would he violate his cooperation agreement with Mueller by lying about his interactions with Kilimnik.
Runnin
Well-known member
My interpretation of collusion is simply the secret scheming between 2 parties, but that doesn't matter. Here's a better definition, the one for criminal conspiracy:
"conspiracy—an agreement to achieve an illegal goal that can be based on either an explicit quid pro quo or a simple implicit understanding—is the actual legal concept that most closely matches the widely discussed idea of collusion. “To join a conspiracy, you need to know a general illegal purpose. You don’t have to know all the goals or the extent of it. It just has to be reasonably foreseeable. ...And then...you do something that helps to further those aims.”
.....
LINK
So where does this leave us, as far as evidence that Trump or his advisers implicitly entered into an agreement to illegally impair, obstruct, or defeat the lawful functioning of the United States government? If the relevant news reports and special counsel filings are accurate, we know:
• That the Trump Organization pursued a Moscow real estate deal during the 2016 presidential campaign.
• That while this pursuit was ongoing, a well-connected Russian individual successfully scheduled a meeting with Trump campaign officials by offering “incriminating” material about Hillary Clinton, then lobbied those Trump officials for sanctions relief despite not being registered as an agent of the Russian government.
• That the Trump campaign (and everyone else) then learned that Russian operatives may have hacked Democrats and distributed the hacked material with the intent of damaging the Clinton campaign.
• That Trump advisers subsequently discussed sanctions relief with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. and met with an individual with connections to the Russian government to discuss sanctions relief and pass on proprietary polling data.
• That Trump campaign officials attempted to use surreptitious back channels to learn more about the Clinton-related material that they knew had possibly been stolen by Russia.
• That Trump’s campaign and Trump himself celebrated the existence of the stolen material and called for more of it to be stolen.
According to Rocah, the former prosecutor, “either there are a lot of coincidences here all happening at once, or people around Trump were part of this conspiracy.” She cites Manafort’s willingness to meet with Kilimnik and Trump Jr./Manafort/Kushner’s willingness to meet with Veselnitskaya as particularly tangible signs of conspiratorial agreement. ....
.....Rocah also notes that while discussion of Trump’s exposure to potential obstruction of justice charges has generally revolved around what he might have done as president to prevent investigation of himself and his advisers, anything he did to obstruct the investigation of Russia’s actions could also count as a sign of participation in the country’s scheme—driving the getaway car, if you will. (Bear in mind that Trump repeatedly insisted in 2016 that Russia might not have been behind the hack even after his top advisers had already met with well-connected Russians trying to distribute incriminating material about Clinton.)
[my bold]
Last edited:
goldfly
<B>if my thought dreams could be seen</B>
haha
i'd call it silly to believe this but you are so far down the rabbit hole of crazy you actually believe this garbage
Runnin
Well-known member
The legal threshold for criminal conspiracy looks very low, given the vast circumstantial evidence already in the public.
FWIW, I think a lot of circumstantial evidence is more damning that one piece of seemingly irrefutable, smoking-gun evidence, which I think would actually be easier to say had been faked.
What still gets me is that Trump wrote a false statement and then let his son sign it. That to me is the very epitome of scumbaggery.
FWIW, I think a lot of circumstantial evidence is more damning that one piece of seemingly irrefutable, smoking-gun evidence, which I think would actually be easier to say had been faked.
What still gets me is that Trump wrote a false statement and then let his son sign it. That to me is the very epitome of scumbaggery.
goldfly
<B>if my thought dreams could be seen</B>
hey, the fbi following the steps of the constitution because they were looking into the president possibly being a foreign asset and has everyone going to jail for lying and hiding information to do with the case is proof of a coup d'état in the eyes of the brilliant mind of thethe
And the crime would be what, exactly?
Winning?
Or sharing internal polling data with a Russian dude?
Watching the gorilla channel?
You have a unique way of passing off pure, unadulterated conjecture as fact.
The legal threshold for criminal conspiracy ‘looks very low’?
Since when?
Julio3000
<B>A Chip Off the Old Rock</B>
I think one of the things that’s rather underplayed here is the fact that the administration, immediately upon taking office, began taking steps to lift the post-Crimea sanctions placed on Russia, to say nothing of the post-election sanctions. The Senate’s fast action and the public attention drawn to the Flynn/Kislyak conversations essentially ended this early effort.
It’s really that simple. Regardless of how formalized the collusion/conspiracy was, this fact alone demonstrates the “quo” in quid pro quo. The fact that it was unsuccessful shouldn’t obscure the fact that it happened.
So, regardless of how developed the purported conspiracy was, it’s a fact that the Trump campaign was apprised of Russia’s efforts to help them, and sought to offer sanctions relief.
It’s all there if you choose to see it.
It’s really that simple. Regardless of how formalized the collusion/conspiracy was, this fact alone demonstrates the “quo” in quid pro quo. The fact that it was unsuccessful shouldn’t obscure the fact that it happened.
So, regardless of how developed the purported conspiracy was, it’s a fact that the Trump campaign was apprised of Russia’s efforts to help them, and sought to offer sanctions relief.
It’s all there if you choose to see it.
25th amendment was only out into law because of Wilson. Not due to disagreement with policy.
There is no proof but its obvious. Believe us so we dont look ao obviously biased now that no real evidence of collusion has been found
What a scary precedence this has set whereby if you go against the policues of the orthodoxy you will have the full force of the fbi/cia/former administration try to remove a duly elected president from office.
Runnin
Well-known member
We shall see what crime or crimes they settle on. So many to choose from. Maybe it will be an avalanche of charges. I think they'll cut a deal with him - he refuses to run in 2020 and they don't prosecute him and his family.
The central problem here is justice. There's one set of laws for the rich and well connected and another set of laws for everyone else. If Obama had a fraction of the corruption or ugliness the GOP would've been in the streets.
Last edited:
Runnin
Well-known member
I don't think you know what the word "collusion" means.
Thats you bud....trump made his position well known to voters and he won. The previous administration didnt like that and tried to overthrow a democratically elected president.
25th amendment? What a joke.
Thats rich considering we know about the abuses during the HRC investigation.
50PoundHead
Hessmania Forever
Given my profession and the fact that I have contributed to legislators from both parties, I get on all kinds of email lists. Needless to say, I never contribute to the cockamamie causes that use this route, but I got my first email from the Roger Stone Defense Fund today and I am really tempted to send in one cent.
nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
One thing that has to be considered is that Trump could have come to his views on Russia/Ukraine/sanctions on principled policy grounds and still engaged in an illegal quid pro quo. If he and people in the campaign accepted and welcomed illegal assistance from the Russians based upon such policy considerations, the fact that such policy views have a principled basis does not make the coordination with the Russians (and their partner in crime WikiLeaks) legal. It is still an illegal conspiracy because they are helping others accomplish an illegal act.
The same can be said of accepting assistance from other foreign agents based upon their expectations of policy changes. I am thinking here of the efforts by Israelis/Saudis/other gulf Arabs to aid his election effort. Trump might have principled reasons to change policy with respect to Iran. And the Israelis and Arabs might have their reasons to hope for his victory because of that.
However, actions by foreign actors to influence the elections (by for example channeling contributions via Americans, or engaging in psy ops campaigns on social media) are illegal and to the extent the Trump campaign encouraged or coordinated with them in such actions that represents an illegal conspiracy.
This is something that I think we want to enforce against. Imagine for example in 1972 if McGovern colluded with Hanoi. He had principled policy reasons for wanting to change our Vietnam policy. And Hanoi had good reason to want him to win. And Hanoi might have tried to influence the elections. But I definitely think we would not want McGovern to be able to legally collude and coordinate with Hanoi in its efforts to influence the elections. We would not want it to be legal for his campaign manager to share internal polling with an intelligence agent from Hanoi in exchange for promoting a peace plan handed over by that agent. To the extent we can we need to use our laws to enforce against that sort of quid pro quo. If Hanoi and McGovern were also discussing a cut in a lucrative real estate transaction that makes the situation even more legally, politcally and morally clear.
Just to close the loop on this analogy. Imagine if also Hanoi was the party that provided the highly confidential documents on the war to the Times and Post and the Times and Post in turn discussed the contents and timing of the release with intermediaries acting on behalf of the McGovern campaign.
Last edited: