Thanks for sharing, I enjoyed your sermon a lot.
Will You Accept the Findings of the Muller Probe?
- Thread starter Gameface
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Thanks for sharing, I enjoyed your sermon a lot.
Even if I were to form a personal opinion of the political bias of CNN, Fox News, or any other network, my very first duty to myself, as a skeptic, would be to question that judgment. I don't defend CNN, I remark on what a carefully considered attempt to measure it objectively has concluded about the types of bias you see on CNN. I trust people who carefully sort out bias more than my own opinion, just as I trust scientists on science. English professors on English, etc. I certainly never claimed to be a CNN watcher.
When I said I would accept the result of the Mueller report, I meant it. The Mueller report says there was no criminal conspiracy between the Trump team and Russia regarding the 2016 elections, and I accept that. It even details that in some cases, there was an attempt at conspiracy that was foiled by incompetence, and thus criminal conduct was avoided, and I accept that.
That said, we have had dozens of indictments on various charges, and no reason to think the indictments are false, so by any reasonable standard the Mueller investigation was a success.
I occasionally hear tidbits from some liberal blogs (Dispatches from the Culture Wars, Pharyngula, etc.). They also have not been assuming there would indictments of Trump. In fact, Brayton was convinced there would be no such indictments from very early on.
Feel free to dig in.
Undoubtedly, as it was made by humans. What biases stood out to you?
Archie Moses
Well-Known Member
I don't really admit this to anyone, but I too, read yahoo and have for the better part of 15 years. It's definitely not my news source I use to get informed. haha It's more like, "I'm bored and have some time to surf or I can't sleep" and want to see what's going on. They post a lot of garbage tabloid stuff, but I guess it's interesting enough I keep coming back.
The thing I've noticed with Yahoo is there are a **** ton of racist people who comment on their articles. I suppose this is because a lot of old, white people read this cause it was one of the first internet news sources. Sometimes, I just read the comments and shake my head. It's worse than YouTube comments.
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Archie Moses
Well-Known Member
Damn, Kicky you got get with the times. If you're going to post something like this, you better be giving a: TL;DR version of it too.
hehepeepeecaca
Archie Moses
Well-Known Member
You seem to have been confused. The Papadopoulos braggadocio was offered as evidence that there will be no charges from Barr's investigation of the FBI investigation in 2016, not as evidence of Russian dirt.
Archie Moses
Well-Known Member
I saw this post and then tried to catch up on the thread's comments. I see Kicky's book comment and assumed that's what you meant by sermon. Then I keep reading and, lo and behold, Kicky posts a video of him giving a legit sermon. I have it playing in my other tab and can't help but feel a sense of pride that I know that dude (from here.) Good guy.
I'm not the only one whose first glance told them this was Disneyland, was I?
Joe Bagadonuts
Well-Known Member
Your description of the Ukraine situation is interesting and very similar to my experiences in Prague shortly after the wall came down. Everyone wanted to talk about their experiences. Everyone loved America. We lodged in a makeshift bed and breakfast where we stayed up until 2 AM every night talking to the owners and their friends about what they'd been through and their dreams for the future. I became less confident in your narrative when you claimed that you know that there was collusion because of information that you've collected that Mueller was apparently unable to. Based on past posts I believe that you are at least as liberally biased as I am conservatively biased, so the fact that your ultimate conclusions favor the liberal narrative is not at all surprising to me.
A couple of things here:
First, you're moving the goalposts. Your claim was that some deep conspiracy against Trump was going to be unleashed that pointed the finger at Comey et al as the genesis of the Russia investigation. My point was that the inciting event is clearly defined: it's Papadopoulos talking to the Australian's while plastered. I don't have to win that collusion actually existed (although it did) in order to demonstrate that Papadopoulos is the "first in time" event that starts the investigation. The entire conspiracy theory involving corrupt motives falls apart when you just put the events on a linear timeline.
Second, the answer to the question your are asking is pretty clearly yes.
The Trump campaign's foreign policy team was pretty lightly staffed. Papadopoulos was plainly involved at a pretty high level. Trump himself tweeted a photo of Papadopoulos at a high level meeting with Trump on foreign policy.
So the drunken blurting story is about 1) a high level trump foreign policy advisor; 2) with specific knowledge about the Russian hacking of the DNC and its contents; and 3) advance knowledge that the information would be used to Trump's benefit.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out why that looks collusive and why it triggered an investigation.
That WAS the TL;DR! If you want the FULL version we gotta go back to the formation of Russian identity with Yaroslav the Wise. You see, the Mongolian horde was in total control over a series of disparate slavic principalities....
Here's the full maiden with the "Disneyland" garden clock in one corner. It's really a pretty cool place. The revolutionary spirit is in the air.
https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipO0ZcxuiY1kYYf5pSz4irX6amevU70g9m3yDvem
"The requested URL was not found on this server."
The Mueller report is nearly 450 pages long, and portions of it that are related to counterintelligence have been blacked out. I'm not certain the pieces of information I'm referring to were totally ignored by Mueller, all I know is that there are certain names I would expect to see in a full counterintelligence investigation that are not listed. We do know that there's a parallel counterintelligence investigation that has occurred (and the day we see the Counterintelligence file on Trump is sure to be something interesting) and it's possible that information was handled outside of the narrow context of a conspiracy analysis.
For example here's an English translation from a (very good) Russian newspaper about one of the key figures in any informed collusion story: Sergey Prikhodko. This guy is totally absent in the public version of the Mueller report.
https://meduza.io/en/feature/2018/02/16/the-man-with-the-golden-shoes
The best version of the "collusion" story runs through intermediaries like Prikhodko and Deripaska. The narrow "Trump campaign/conspiracy/Russian state" doesn't capture that path. It's outside the scope of what Mueller was doing.
There's some other odds and ends that would make this path harder to investigate. One of the key witnesses ended up in a Thai prison under what were clearly politically motivated charges, and wasn't released until she agreed to surrender her tapes of Deripaska talking about the American election. There's practical reasons why Mueller can't go interview her in a third party custody while she's charged with something else, particularly when it's outside the scope of narrowly defined conspiracy.
This is a BIG and complex topic that doesn't lend itself well to soundbite debate. At the end of the day my opinions about what happened with Russia are my own and the product of a LOT of independent work. They aren't derived by reading liberal blogs and you do yourself a disservice by dividing conclusions up into "liberal" and "conservative" that way.
For what it's worth, I found his name 4 times in the searchable NY Times version of the report, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/18/us/politics/mueller-report-document.html.
From Vol. 1, pg 78:
Second, like Cohen, Trump received and turned down an invitation to the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. In late December 2015, Mira Duma — a contact of Ivanka Trump’s from the fashion industry — first passed along invitations for Ivanka Trump and candidate Trump from Sergei Prikhodko, a Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation.377 On January 14, 2016, Rhona Graff sent an email to Duma stating that Trump was “honored to be asked to participate in the highly prestigious” Forum event, but that he would “have to decline” the invitation given his “very grueling and full travel schedule” as a presidential candidate.378 Graff
From Vol. 1, pg 79
It does not appear that Graff prepared that note immediately. According to written answers from President Trump,380 Graff received an email from Deputy Prime Minister Prikhodko on March 17, 2016, again inviting Trump to participate in the 2016 Forum in St. Petersburg.381 Two weeks later, on March 31, 2016, Graff prepared for Trump’s signature a two-paragraph letter declining the invitation.382 The letter stated that Trump’s “schedule has become extremely demanding” because of the presidential campaign, that he “already ha[d] several commitments in the United States” for the time of the Forum, but that he otherwise “would have gladly given every consideration to attending such an important event.”383 Graff forwarded the letter to another executive assistant at the Trump Organization with instructions to print the document on letterhead for Trump to sign.
From Appendix B-9
Prikhodko, Sergei
First deputy head of the Russian Government Office and former Russian deputy prime minister. In January 2016, he invited candidate Trump to the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.
From Appendix C-22
Response to Question IV, Part (e)
I do not recall being told during the campaign of efforts by Russian officials to meet with me or with senior members of my campaign. In the process of preparing to respond to these questions, I became aware that on March 17, 2016, my assistant at the Trump Organization, Rhona Graff, received an email from a Sergei Prikhodko, who identified himself as Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, Foundation Roscongress, inviting me to participate in the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum to be held in June 2016. The documents show that Ms. Graff prepared for my signature a brief response declining the invitation. I understand these documents already have been produced to you.
I stand corrected.
When I was looking for stuff in the Mueller report related to this thread several weeks ago I was looking for descriptions of specific meetings on yachts, with reference to Alexey Navalny, a Belorussian escort, and a few other details. I had forgotten about these passing references to Prikhodko and the St. Petersburg event. Turns out there's a lot to keep track of.
When I was looking for stuff in the Mueller report related to this thread several weeks ago I was looking for descriptions of specific meetings on yachts, with reference to Alexey Navalny, a Belorussian escort, and a few other details. I had forgotten about these passing references to Prikhodko and the St. Petersburg event. Turns out there's a lot to keep track of.
Why do we need CNN to tell us what we see him say on TV and read on his juvenile tweets every day.
I think we’ve forgotten how professional our past presidents behaved. I remember when Howard Dean was deemed unfit when he got a little excited and let out a scream. Now we are living in a country run by a person with elementary school maturity level. My daughter saw trump on tv and she said “what is wrong with him, Dad?” She doesn’t need CNN to report what she sees with her own two eyes and hears with her ears.
I see. I can see why Papadopoulos having knowledge of something and blurting out about it is suspicious. In his findings, Mueller concluded that since the Trump campaign did not actually participate in the hacking or the planning, they were not complicit. Interference from Russia happened. A group in Russia didn't like Hillary, but their actions did not require or involve help from the Trump campaign for it to take place. That's why collusion wasn't actionable.
So you're misrepresenting the findings now.
Mueller did not conclude that the Trump campaign was not "complicit." In fact, he concludes in the first few pages that the Trump campaign expected it would benefit from the Russian activities. What it determined was that there no was conspiracy or coordination with the Russian government (a key distinction here, since that would not include intermediaries like Deripaska).
There's no doubt that the Trump campaign welcomed and encouraged Russian help with the campaign. They did so publicly. ("Russia if you're listening....")
"Collusion" isn't a legal term. That's why it wasn't actionable.
At the end of the day in order for there to be a prosecutable conspiracy or coordination claim there would have had to be an actual agreement between the Russian Government and Trump. I don't think anyone believed that investigators were going to turn up a document that said "in exchange for hacking the Dems, I Donald J. Trump, promise favorable policy, please don't release the pee pee tape." But that's what the criminal standard effectively required.
The plausible theory of the case is and always has been that Trump traded more favorable foreign policy, specifically on sanctions and Ukraine, in exchange for help during the campaign and personal financial benefits. That's what Russia expected to receive in return for their efforts. And those promises were implicit or made through intermediaries. It doesn't take a genius to guess what Trump's intentions on Russia were: he notably refused to criticize Putin during the primary debate process - even lying about times he supposedly met him in the Green room for a television show.
If you're fine with selling foreign policy that way I guess that's your political preference. But hiding behind a defense of "it's all above board as long as Trump's campaign didn't personally direct the hacking of the DNC" is an incredibly weak sauce argument.
Mueller did not conclude that the Trump campaign was not "complicit." In fact, he concludes in the first few pages that the Trump campaign expected it would benefit from the Russian activities. What it determined was that there no was conspiracy or coordination with the Russian government (a key distinction here, since that would not include intermediaries like Deripaska).
There's no doubt that the Trump campaign welcomed and encouraged Russian help with the campaign. They did so publicly. ("Russia if you're listening....")
"Collusion" isn't a legal term. That's why it wasn't actionable.
At the end of the day in order for there to be a prosecutable conspiracy or coordination claim there would have had to be an actual agreement between the Russian Government and Trump. I don't think anyone believed that investigators were going to turn up a document that said "in exchange for hacking the Dems, I Donald J. Trump, promise favorable policy, please don't release the pee pee tape." But that's what the criminal standard effectively required.
The plausible theory of the case is and always has been that Trump traded more favorable foreign policy, specifically on sanctions and Ukraine, in exchange for help during the campaign and personal financial benefits. That's what Russia expected to receive in return for their efforts. And those promises were implicit or made through intermediaries. It doesn't take a genius to guess what Trump's intentions on Russia were: he notably refused to criticize Putin during the primary debate process - even lying about times he supposedly met him in the Green room for a television show.
If you're fine with selling foreign policy that way I guess that's your political preference. But hiding behind a defense of "it's all above board as long as Trump's campaign didn't personally direct the hacking of the DNC" is an incredibly weak sauce argument.