Russia Collusion Scandal (aka A Leftist fantasy)

thethe said:
They are colluding with the russuans so I suppose they are great!
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Well...

NRA, Russia and Trump: How 'dark money' is poisoning American democracy

The FBI is investigating the National Rifle Association to determine whether Russians illegally funneled money through the organization to help the Trump campaign.
Beyond Russian meddling, this allegation illustrates a problem of even broader scope in our political system.
 
I really don't know how you guys are keeping up with all of this. It feels like someone released the entire Game of Thrones book series by chapter, and out of order. I don't have the energy for it.
 
Considering how sophisticated and organized the social media manipulation was, it's quite a leap to say it had no effect on the outcome of the election. They went to a lot of trouble, researched voter rolls, targeted specific segments of the populace and who knows what else for some reason.

I'll bet there's a thick report in Putin's office detailing exactly how effective they think they were.
 
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I don't know if there's any way of knowing, and I certainly can't say, but a lot of the intent of both the hacks and the influence campaign centered on pulling disaffected Sanders voters away from HRC and toward 3rd party candidates. The margin in MI was 12K votes; Stein got 51K. I have to challenge the idea that it's just so ludicrous to imagine that it had an effect.

That's an important question in its own right, but the nut is still whether there was coordination with people connected to Trump. We're no closer to knowing that, but these indictments establish that they are prepared to prove that a criminal conspiracy existed and that there were unindicted co-conspirators involved in that crime. Who are those folks (both known and unknown to the GJ per the document), I wonder?
 
I personally think that Stein was just a useful tool, but her weirdly specific foreign policy thoughts wrt Russia--in a context where most leftist candidates are domestically focused--and cozy relationship with RT deserve some scrutiny, IMO.

As always, follow the money. Untold billions have fled Russia in recent years and I'd be shocked if substantial amounts haven't ended up in interesting places. I've always thought that the next Panama Papers-type expose will contain some nasty surprises across the political and societal spectrum.
 
Runnin said:
Considering how sophisticated and organized the social media manipulation was, it's quite a leap to say it had no effect on the outcome of the election. They went to a lot of trouble, researched voter rolls, targeted specific segments of the populace and who knows what else for some reason.

I'll bet there's a thick report in Putin's office detailing exactly how effective they think they were.
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They didn't spend money and expose their capabilities without having some goal.
 
There's not one chance in a million that Trump and his team didn't know about the Russian efforts. Can we now say that when Trump suddenly started using the phrase "fake news" last summer, it was from learning that the real fake news was coming from his Russian comrades? Not much of a jump.

The ugly and obvious fact -- Trump through his daily lying and cover running campaign for Putin, reveals his partnership with our longtime foe to simultaneously weaken the institutions American democracy and enrich himself. If that's not treasonous, I don't know what is.
 
Julio3000 said:
I personally think that Stein was just a useful tool, but her weirdly specific foreign policy thoughts wrt Russia--in a context where most leftist candidates are domestically focused--and cozy relationship with RT deserve some scrutiny, IMO.

As always, follow the money. Untold billions have fled Russia in recent years and I'd be shocked if substantial amounts haven't ended up in interesting places. I've always thought that the next Panama Papers-type expose will contain some nasty surprises across the political and societal spectrum.
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She was at the same dinner as Flynn if I recall correctly (I am intoxicated at the moment so could be wrong). If I remember right, she was at the same table as Putin too. I have always been curious about her relationship with Russia because of that dinner.
 
nothing is proven re quid pro quo...but the balance of evidence continues to tip toward more likely than not
 
Stein had a contributior relationship with RT. She was given tons of airtime and play because of that. I get the potentially entirely innocent explanation for it--a marginalized candidate capitalizing on an opportunity to get free exposure. It could be no more than that.

But I guess the relevant question is: was it truly free?

It's a total sideline discussion, but one that's always nagged at me.
 
it should be added that history will not be kind in its evaluation of Obama's response to this attack on our democratic processes...imo he choked...bigtime
 
nsacpi said:
nothing is proven re quid pro quo...but the balance of evidence continues to tip toward more likely than not
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I think the question is going to boil down to if there's evidence of a formal qpq, or was it merely done ad hoc and by inference. I've always thought that evidence of the former is unlikely to emerge. The three obvious possibilities to the contrary are (IMO) the Ukraine platform change, the firm embrace of the Wikileaks dumps, and the well-documented efforts early in the administration to roll back the Crimea sanctions.

I've thought that the best line for the WH/campaign to take was "hey, we're the victims here as much as the Democrats. The Russians executed a campaign to sow chaos and dissension among the American public during the election, and our campaign was directly targeted. Can you believe they even tried to recruit our low-level staffers? Nasty people."

By not taking this line immediately and forcefully, they made themselves look guilty af, regardless of whether or not they were.
 
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