Of Trump, Russia, and tapps

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Of Trump, Russia, and tapps

Postby blehblah » Mon Mar 20, 2017 5:30 pm

I figured this is best split from the other Trump threads.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/nsa-knocks- ... -1.3331971


NSA knocks down WH claim of British spying

[...]

FBI Director James Comey confirmed Monday that the bureau is investigating possible links and co-ordination between Russia and associates of U.S. President Donald Trump as part of a broader probe of Russian interference in last year's presidential election.

The extraordinary revelation, and the first public confirmation of an investigation that began last summer, came at the outset of Comey's opening statement in a congressional hearing examining Russian meddling and possible connections between Moscow and Trump's campaign.

He acknowledged that the FBI does not ordinarily discuss ongoing investigations, but said he'd been authorized to do so given the extreme public interest in this case.


http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/wor ... e34346193/

FBI Director James Comey confirmed Monday that the bureau is investigating possible links and co-ordination between Russia and associates of President Donald Trump as part of a broader probe of Russian interference in last year’s presidential election.

The extraordinary revelation, and the first public confirmation of an investigation that began last summer, came at the outset of Comey’s opening statement in a congressional hearing examining Russian meddling and possible connections between Moscow and Trump’s campaign.
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Re: Of Trump, Russia, and tapps

Postby Cobra-D » Tue Mar 21, 2017 1:01 am

I guess during the hearing trump tweeted about the hearing annnd this happened....



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Re: Of Trump, Russia, and tapps

Postby Doodle Dee. Snickers » Tue Mar 21, 2017 6:19 am

After reading the comments in the NYT, I feel like I'm the only Clinton voter in America who feels bad for Comey and the onslaught of shitty no-win positions he's been put in. The 2016 election was like...the worst thing that could ever happen to law enforcement agencies and the DOJ as a whole. And now he has to sit there in front of Congress and field the president's fucking tweets. Ah well, at least Democrats will like him for another 6 months until it turns out there was nothing and then they want him exiled again.

Oh, and if you think a live fact-check of the POTUS' Twitter's tweets was the dumbest thing that happened in there, you don't know Congress. Here's a link where Comey had to explain the concept of a zero-sum game for a Congressman trying to use a football analogy to explain away Putin wanting Trump to win. He literally had to explain "When you want someone to win, you have to want someone to lose."

http://www.mediaite.com/online/james-comey-our-analysts-assessed-the-russians-wanted-trump-to-win-the-election/
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Re: Of Trump, Russia, and tapps

Postby IamNotCreepy » Tue Mar 21, 2017 1:49 pm

Doodle Dee. Snickers wrote:After reading the comments in the NYT, I feel like I'm the only Clinton voter in America who feels bad for Comey and the onslaught of shitty no-win positions he's been put in. The 2016 election was like...the worst thing that could ever happen to law enforcement agencies and the DOJ as a whole. And now he has to sit there in front of Congress and field the president's fucking tweets. Ah well, at least Democrats will like him for another 6 months until it turns out there was nothing and then they want him exiled again.

Oh, and if you think a live fact-check of the POTUS' Twitter's tweets was the dumbest thing that happened in there, you don't know Congress. Here's a link where Comey had to explain the concept of a zero-sum game for a Congressman trying to use a football analogy to explain away Putin wanting Trump to win. He literally had to explain "When you want someone to win, you have to want someone to lose."

http://www.mediaite.com/online/james-comey-our-analysts-assessed-the-russians-wanted-trump-to-win-the-election/


I agree. I honestly don't think he was acting from partisan motivations, but he was placed in a lose-lose situation.
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Re: Of Trump, Russia, and tapps

Postby blehblah » Tue Mar 21, 2017 3:59 pm

Comey was in an impossible position.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/comey-trum ... -1.4033178

A difference in Comey's mind was likely that Clinton's emails were now a matter of public record, said Gary Schmitt, co-director of the Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

"It would have been very strange for the bureau to deny an investigation was going on from the Clinton emails when there was all the slop on the table."

The investigation into Trump and his team's possible links to the Russian state, on the other hand, would likely have involved intelligence sourcing of confidential information, "which you would want to keep secret until sufficient facts have been gathered to either indict or not."

Like Swecker, John McLaughlin, a former deputy director of the CIA, rejects the premise that the current director would be compromised politically. He lays some blame on the part of former attorney general Loretta Lynch, who he believes should have tapped her deputy to take over the Clinton emails probe instead of passing it down to the FBI.

"It's easy to criticize him for what happened, but the truth is, he should never have been asked to take responsibility for the investigation," McLaughlin said.


On the other hand, if Lynch had handed it over to her deputy, the screaming would have been quite loud since the Republican stance is that the DoJ is politicized. You know, as opposed to Benghazi (which would never have been within the FBI's mandate, I know, but just sezzin).

I agree with the CBC article; there are two key takeaways:

Monday's hearing yielded other big takeaways. Comey and Admiral Mike Rogers, director of the National Security Agency, confirmed publicly for the first time that the FBI was investigating the Trump campaign's alleged ties with Russia, and whether there was any unlawful collusion. They also told the bipartisan committee there was no evidence to support Trump's unsubstantiated claims that the previous administration had wiretapped Trump Tower in Manhattan.


The investigation of the extent and purpose behind Russia's interaction with folks on team Trump will take time, and not much is likely to come-out publicly until conclusions can be drawn.

Meanwhile, Trump (via Spicer) isn't giving-up on the wiretap claim.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politi ... story.html

Now that members of Congress, British intelligence officials, and the FBI director have all publicly denied that former President Obama tapped President Trump’s phones during the election season, will Trump withdraw the claim?

“No,” White House Press Secretary told inquiring reporters on Monday.


At the same time, Flynn and Manfort have been retroactively demoted.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... spicer-fbi

During the briefing, Spicer sought to distance the Trump campaign from aides who have come under scrutiny for their contacts with Russia after they were the subject of a line of questioning during the House committee hearing. He dismissed Carter Page, an informal foreign policy adviser to Trump, and Roger Stone, a longtime Trump confidant, as “hangers on”.

“To look at some individual that was there for a short period of time or separately individuals who really didn’t play any role in the campaign and to suggest that those are the basis for anything is a bit ridiculous,” he added.

But Spicer’s claim that Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manger, had only played a “limited role for a very limited amount of time” drew immediate skepticism from the press corp. Manafort joined the Trump campaign in March 2016 before being promoted to campaign manager, and resigned amid scrutiny of his business dealings to pro-Russian leaders in Ukraine.

Spicer also called former national security adviser Michael Flynn a “volunteer of the campaign”. Flynn was an adviser to the Trump campaign and spoke on the first night of the 2016 Republican national convention before being appointed national security adviser once Trump won the election. He was forced to resign last month after misrepresenting his contacts with the Russian ambassador to Washington.


At this point, I'm figuring the Trump campaign and transition were probably not colluding with Russia, per se. People like Flynn and Manafort did have unusual interaction with agents (direct or otherwise) of Russia and/or Russian-centric interests, and they were part of the campaign, transition, and early administration. However, that now seems to be more a reflection of an astoundingly naive team desperately grasping to fill positions with minimal vetting in a scenario where they were frozen-out of standard GOP networks and the positions were viewed as toxic to the established who's-who.

In other words, some boneheads did some boneheaded things, and team Trump chose to do anything but call it what it is - and thereby cauterize the wound - and they are now trapped in an endless cycle of revelation/denial, and are dragging much of the GOP with them.

Whether Trump and team's bullshitting is willful or ignorant, the results of Russia's fiddling is likely giving Putin quite a chuckle. There is no scenario in which Putin doesn't score points here; he can sit-back and watch team Trump, along with the rest of the government, score own-goals all day long.
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Re: Of Trump, Russia, and tapps

Postby sunglasses » Tue Mar 21, 2017 4:45 pm

I am loving that the tweet was live fact checked.

Someone needs to get a handle on DJTs tweets before we go to war over them.
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Re: Of Trump, Russia, and tapps

Postby Windy » Tue Mar 21, 2017 5:11 pm

Are we still going on with these "Russia hacked our election" conspiracy theories?
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Re: Of Trump, Russia, and tapps

Postby cmsellers » Tue Mar 21, 2017 5:18 pm

IamNotCreepy wrote:I agree. I honestly don't think he was acting from partisan motivations, but he was placed in a lose-lose situation.

I think he knew that if there was anything to Hillary's emails and he waited that the Republicans would crucify him if they gained power, while Democrats would give him the benefit of the doubt despite the serious violation of precedent it represented. It was a lose-lose situation for him: violate precedent or risk losing his job due to partisan politics, but there was still clearly a right decision and a selfish one. He made the selfish one.
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Re: Of Trump, Russia, and tapps

Postby blehblah » Tue Mar 21, 2017 5:49 pm

Windy wrote:Are we still going on with these "Russia hacked our election" conspiracy theories?


It seems the FBI has been since July 2016.

Maybe give them a call and share your thoughts.

Comey: Jimbo here, what can I do for you?
Windy: Hey, Jimmy, man, I have information for you.
Comey: Who is this, and how did you get this number?
Windy: Shhh, little rabbit, I know things.
Comey: I'm going to hang-up now.
Windy: Before you do, you should know that I have one question about the "Russia hacked our election" conspiracy theories.
Comey: ...
Windy: Are we still going-on about all that, or what?
Comey: *click*
Windy: THE MATRIX HAS YOU!

Comey: Do we understand what to do, agent Smith?
Comey: Indeed, we do, agent Smith.
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Re: Of Trump, Russia, and tapps

Postby Windy » Tue Mar 21, 2017 6:03 pm

If the FBI thinks Russia hacked the elections why haven't they arrested Putin yet?
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Re: Of Trump, Russia, and tapps

Postby Learned Nand » Tue Mar 21, 2017 6:34 pm

Windy wrote:If the FBI thinks Russia hacked the elections why haven't they arrested Putin yet?

He's too strong from all the weightlifting of angry grizzly bears he does, so he just breaks out of the handcuffs every time.
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Re: Of Trump, Russia, and tapps

Postby blehblah » Wed Mar 22, 2017 9:45 pm

Sean Spicer dancing.



I'll let Spicer speak for the administration on Manafort and vetting.
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Re: Of Trump, Russia, and tapps

Postby Aquila89 » Thu Mar 23, 2017 3:01 pm

Devin Nunes, House Intelligence Chairman said that members of Trump's team may have been surveilled incidentally, when they communicated with foreign target of U.S. surveillance. This, as Nunes himself has said does not prove Trump's claim, that Obama personally ordered a wiretap of the phones at Trump Tower.

So Trump supporters (Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Breitbart, etc.) naturally declared that Trump has been vindicated. Bill Mitchell tweeted: ""Trump always ends up being right. It's almost a little freaky." Trump retweeted this. Yes, he claims to be infallible now.

What does it matter if Trump's bullshit is disproven? His supporters just latch on something vaguely similar to what he said and declare that he's always right about everything, forever.
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Re: Of Trump, Russia, and tapps

Postby cmsellers » Thu Mar 23, 2017 3:50 pm

The alternative is that they ignore the issue entirely and let the biased liberal lamestream media run with the whole "Trump's campaign was communicating with people on the FBI watchlists" thing. What would you do in Limbaugh's shoes?
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Re: Of Trump, Russia, and tapps

Postby Cobra-D » Thu Mar 23, 2017 5:07 pm

cmsellers wrote:The alternative is that they ignore the issue entirely and let the biased liberal lamestream media run with the whole "Trump's campaign was communicating with people on the FBI watchlists" thing. What would you do in Limbaugh's shoes?


Find a way to blame it on Clinton's emails.

and the jews.
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