First charges filed in Mueller investigation (merged)

[NolaAuTiger 3,295]

39 minutes ago, Bigbens42 said:

This will be really unpopular here, but honestly, I don't see what this nothingburger is all about. Its hard for me to see any Trump ties to Russia. I mean, except for the Flynn thing and the Manafort thing and the Tillerson thing and the Sessions thing and the Kushner thing and the Wray thing and the Morgan, Lewis, & Bockius "Russian Law Firm of the Year" thing and the Carter Page thing and the Roger Stone thing and the 198 Million voter records thing and the Felix Sater thing and the Boris Ephsteyn thing and the Rosneft thing and the Gazprom thing and the Sergey Gorkov banker thing and the Azerbaijan thing and the “I love Putin” thing and the Donald Trump, Jr. thing and the Lavrov thing and the Kislyak thing and the Oval Office thing and the Gingrich/Kislyak phone calls thing and the Russian Business Interests thing and the Emoluments Clause thing and the Alex Schnaider thing and the hack of the DNC thing and the Guccifer 2.0 thing and the Mike Pence “I don’t know anything” thing and the Russians mysteriously dying thing and Trump’s public request to Russia to hack Hillary’s email thing and the Trump house sale for $100 million at the bottom of the housing bust to the Russian fertilizer king thing and the Russian fertilizer king’s plane showing up in Concord, NC during Trump rally campaign thing and the Nunes sudden flight to the White House in the night thing and the Nunes personal investments in the Russian winery thing and the Cyprus bank thing and Trump not releasing his tax returns thing and the Republican Party’s rejection of an amendment to require Trump to show his taxes thing and the election hacking thing and the GOP platform change to the Ukraine thing and the Steele Dossier thing and the Sally Yates can’t testify thing and the intelligence community’s investigative reports thing and the Trump reassurance that the Russian connection is all “fake news” thing and the Chaffetz not willing to start an investigation thing and the Chaffetz suddenly deciding to go back to private life in the middle of an investigation thing and the appointment of Pam Bondi who was bribed by Trump in the Trump University scandal appointed to head the investigation thing and the alfa-bank thing and the VEB thing and the The White House going into full-on cover-up mode, refusing to turn over the documents related to the hiring and subsequent firing of Flynn thing and the Chaffetz and White House blaming the poor vetting of Flynn on Obama thing and the Poland and British intelligence gave information regarding the hacking back in 2015 to Paul Ryan and he didn't do anything thing and the Agent M16 following the money thing and the Trump team KNEW about Flynn's involvement but hired him anyway thing and the let’s fire Comey thing and the let's fire Mueller too thing and the Election night Russian trademark gifts thing and the Russian diplomatic compound electronic equipment destruction thing and the let’s give back the diplomatic compounds back to the Russians thing and the let’s back away from Cuba thing and the Jr. met with Russians thing and now Trump's secret second meeting with Putin thing.

Ahh, so much "dirt," still no collusion. Must really be frustrating. 

Just a phony dossier and charges that disappointed.

[wdefromtx 3,159]

1 minute ago, Bigbens42 said:

Pence would be a relief at this point. 

He is certainly an upgrade from Trump (not too high a bar), and no worse than the other swamp creatures.

[AUDub 11,131]

7 minutes ago, NolaAuTiger said:

Ahh, so much "dirt," still no collusion. Must really be frustrating. 

Enough dirt to warrant an investigation, baw. Where it takes us remains to be seen

[NolaAuTiger 3,295]

2 minutes ago, Bigbens42 said:

Enough dirt to warrant an investigation, baw. Where it takes us remains to be seen

Taken us to crimes that pre-date Trump. Exposed a liar. That's about it. Trump no closer to liability. Baw

[AUDub 11,131]

13 minutes ago, wdefromtx said:

He is certainly an upgrade from Trump (not too high a bar), and no worse than the other swamp creatures.

I mean, I disagree with just about everything he stands for, being a liberal. But you at least know he won't bomb Algeria on a whim. 

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

5 minutes ago, NolaAuTiger said:

Got it. Anything in defense of Trump is unintellectual. Kind of like articles that support him. Thx Brad

Yeah, that's not how this works.  Saying things like "kind of like election night" with no real purpose behind it is unintellectual.  Debate the facts, provide links, etc all day long.  Hell, just read the rules for this forum.  Then we can debate with conservatives and liberals, but I've gotten to where I stay away from Smack Talk so that I can avoid this type of junk.

Also, this isn't the forum for "articles that support" someone.  This is a forum for more unbiased news coverage, and if you provide links, they need to be from reputable sources.  Or else yeah, people will you call you out on it.

Basically, don't crap in the punch bowl man.  Others here already like the taste of the punch.

[wdefromtx 3,159]

6 minutes ago, Bigbens42 said:

I mean, I disagree with just about everything he stands for, being a liberal. But you at least know he won't bomb Algeria on a whim. 

Liberal, conservative politicians.................they are all pretty much the same these days.  Corrupt and self serving DC elite.

 

With the choices we had between Hillary and Trump, I thought the best scenario would be Trump gets elected and then impeached and we'd at least have Pence and not a moody toddler at the helm. 

[NolaAuTiger 3,295]

10 minutes ago, Brad_ATX said:

But you'll also notice that several of the more vocal Trump supporters on this board actually stay away from the Serious Political Thread, because facts matter here.

Because the more vocal Trump supporters can't back assertions with facts. Got it. Thanks. 

 

Election pic and quote just to pull some feathers. That's all. Will save for subforum now on

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

Back to the topic at hand.  I think one of the most compelling things people are overlooking, especially those arguing that this was all for nothing, is that the special counsel's office has specifically stated that these indictments and the Pap plea deal are actually just the beginning.  From the plea deal itself:

"The criminal justice interest being vindicated here is there's a large-scale ongoing investigation of which this case is a small part."

If I was anyone connected to the campaign, that one sentence would have me worried.

[homersapien 11,353]

16 minutes ago, NolaAuTiger said:

Because the more vocal Trump supporters can't back assertions with facts. Got it. Thanks. 

 

Election pic and quote just to pull some feathers. That's all. Will save for subforum now on

Exactly.

[SaltyTiger 7,763]

1 hour ago, wdefromtx said:

Liberal, conservative politicians.................they are all pretty much the same these days.  Corrupt and self serving DC elite.

 

With the choices we had between Hillary and Trump, I thought the best scenario would be Trump gets elected and then impeached and we'd at least have Pence and not a moody toddler at the helm. 

Do we have a "moody toddler at the helm"? Was he going to be impeached and removed in your mind? For what?

[SaltyTiger 7,763]

49 minutes ago, NolaAuTiger said:

Because the more vocal Trump supporters can't back assertions with facts. Got it. Thanks. 

 

Election pic and quote just to pull some feathers. That's all. Will save for subforum now on

Some of the more vocal Trump supporters probably believe the entire Trump /collusion story is a side show and no facts to offer.

[NolaAuTiger 3,295]

41 minutes ago, homersapien said:

Exactly.

Notwithstanding election posts, doesn't change the fact that still no closer to collusion.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/453244/manafort-indictment-no-signs-trump-russia-collusion

From President Trump’s perspective, the indictment is a boon from which he can claim that the special counsel has no actionable collusion case. It appears to reaffirm former FBI director James Comey’s multiple assurances that Trump is not a suspect. And, to the extent it looks like an attempt to play prosecutorial hardball with Manafort, the president can continue to portray himself as the victim of a witch hunt.

 

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

34 minutes ago, NolaAuTiger said:

Notwithstanding election posts, doesn't change the fact that still no closer to collusion.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/453244/manafort-indictment-no-signs-trump-russia-collusion

From President Trump’s perspective, the indictment is a boon from which he can claim that the special counsel has no actionable collusion case. It appears to reaffirm former FBI director James Comey’s multiple assurances that Trump is not a suspect. And, to the extent it looks like an attempt to play prosecutorial hardball with Manafort, the president can continue to portray himself as the victim of a witch hunt.

 

This only focuses on Manafort, whom many legal experts have come out and said is the minor news in yesterday's announcement.  In fact, those experts are focusing more and more on Pap.  I posted a long comment earlier with some links and words directly from the plea deal and would love your response to it.  In particular, this part:

Pap's guilty plea (not indictment) shows that he lied about his original version of events where he said he had no contact with Russia.  The correct version from his guilty plea are as follows, directly from the plea agreement.  It shows that Pap was contacted by Russians after he became a player within the campaign, not before.  That's very important as Trump has maintained that the campaign did not collude.  Trump himself may have plausible deniability, but there's certainly some evidence of potential campaign collusion, especially because Pap reached out with this information to high-level campaign officials who told him to explore the possibility if it was feasible.

[NolaAuTiger 3,295]

4 minutes ago, Brad_ATX said:

This only focuses on Manafort, whom many legal experts have come out and said is the minor news in yesterday's announcement.  In fact, those experts are focusing more and more on Pap.  I posted a long comment earlier with some links and words directly from the plea deal and would love your response to it.  In particular, this part:

Pap's guilty plea (not indictment) shows that he lied about his original version of events where he said he had no contact with Russia.  The correct version from his guilty plea are as follows, directly from the plea agreement.  It shows that Pap was contacted by Russians after he became a player within the campaign, not before.  That's very important as Trump has maintained that the campaign did not collude.  Trump himself may have plausible deniability, but there's certainly some evidence of potential campaign collusion, especially because Pap reached out with this information to high-level campaign officials who told him to explore the possibility if it was feasible.

Pap screwed up. I am not denying that. However, even if manager afforded Pap discretion to "explore the possibility," that doesn't equate to collusion. Pap is in trouble because he lied. To my understanding, Trump team rejected Paps efforts of setting up meeting. 

[AUFAN78 3,889]

That this turned partisan an non-objective was predictable. IIWII 

But for the interested non-partisan few and the aforementioned, I present side B.

Enjoy at your own peril.

http://hopelesslypartisan.com/the-paragraphs-of-the-day-203/

http://hopelesslypartisan.com/the-today-show-disgrace/

http://hopelesslypartisan.com/the-papadopoulos-nothingburger-cont/

http://hopelesslypartisan.com/the-papadopoulos-indictment/

http://hopelesslypartisan.com/the-manafort-indictment-and-podesta-dissolution/

[NolaAuTiger 3,295]

13 minutes ago, AUFAN78 said:

That this turned partisan an non-objective was predictable. IIWII 

But for the interested non-partisan few and the aforementioned, I present side B.

Enjoy at your own peril.

http://hopelesslypartisan.com/the-paragraphs-of-the-day-203/

http://hopelesslypartisan.com/the-today-show-disgrace/

http://hopelesslypartisan.com/the-papadopoulos-nothingburger-cont/

http://hopelesslypartisan.com/the-papadopoulos-indictment/

http://hopelesslypartisan.com/the-manafort-indictment-and-podesta-dissolution/

"That. Is. A. Very. Big. Nothingburger." 

Enjoying

[AUFAN78 3,889]

More fodder for the fans:

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/10/31/sorting-out-the-russia-mess/

[Auburnfan91 1,407]

Here's an excellent article by a site that is certainly not pro-Trump:

Quote

The Papadopoulos Case 

by ANDREW C. MCCARTHY October 30, 2017 8:03 PM 

The indictment is more exculpatory than incriminatory of Trump. 

As related in my earlier column on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of Paul Manafort and an associate, today on balance is a good day for the Trump administration. Of course, you never want to see your former campaign chairman get charged with crimes. Nevertheless, after all these months of investigation, the much-anticipated Manafort charges turned out to be unrelated to Russian meddling in the 2016 election, let alone to any purported Trump-campaign collusion therein. 

On that collusion question, today’s other development in Mueller’s investigation seems more relevant. As David French and Dan McLaughlin detail, the special counsel announced the guilty plea of George Papadopoulos — which apparently happened on or about October 5 — to a single count of making false statements to government investigators. As Rich Lowry observes, Papadopoulos was a low-level Trump-campaign adviser. He had contacts with Russians who claimed to have close connections to the Putin regime. 

As outlined in a 14-page “Statement of the Offense,” Papadopoulos’s principal offense was to lie to the FBI about when these contacts occurred. He told the FBI they happened before he joined the campaign; in fact, they happened not only after he was aboard but only because he was aboard. Upon close examination, the story unfolded in the offense statement is actually exculpatory of Trump and his campaign. To understand why, we need to revisit the term “collusion.” 

First, some background. 

Papadopoulos is a climber who was clearly trying to push his way into Trump World. We recall that much of the Republican foreign-policy clerisy shunned Trump during the campaign. Thus did comparatively obscure people like Carter Page get seats at the table. George Papadopoulos was another of these: a 30-year-old who graduated from DePaul in 2009, later got an M.A. from the London School of Economics, and did sporadic work for the Hudson Institute between 2011 and 2014. 

While living in London in early March 2016, he spoke with an unidentified Trump-campaign official and learned he would be designated a foreign-policy adviser to the campaign. These arrangements are very loose. Papadopoulos was a fringe figure, not plugged into Trump’s inner circle. 

In London, Papadopoulos met an unidentified Russian academic (referred to as “the Professor”), who claimed to have significant ties to Putin-regime officials and who took an interest in Papadopoulos only because he boasted of having Trump-campaign connections. There appears to be no small amount of puffery on all sides: Papadopoulos suggesting to the Russians that he could make a Trump meeting with Putin happen, and suggesting to the campaign that he could make a Putin meeting with Trump happen; the Professor putting Papadopoulos in touch with a woman who Papadopoulos was led to believe was Putin’s niece (she apparently is not); and lots and lots of talk about potential high- and low-level meetings between Trump-campaign and Putin-regime officials that never actually came to pass. 

In the most important meeting, in London on April 26, 2016, the Professor told Papadopoulos that he (the Prof) had just learned that top Russian-government officials had obtained “dirt” on then-putative Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. The dirt is said to include “thousands of emails” — “emails of Clinton.” The suggestion, of course, was that the Russians were keen to give this information to the Trump campaign. 

This may raise the hopes of the “collusion with Russia” enthusiasts. But there are two problems here. 

First, Papadopoulos was given enough misinformation that we can’t be confident (at least from what Mueller has revealed here) that the Professor was telling Papadopoulos the truth. Remember, by April 2016, it had been known for over a year that Hillary Clinton had used a private email system for public business and had tried to delete and destroy tens of thousands of emails. The Russians could well have been making up a story around that public reporting in order further to cultivate the relationship with Papadopoulos (whom they appear to have seen as potentially useful). Note that the Professor suggested the Russians had Clinton’s own emails. But the emails we know were hacked were not Clinton’s — they were the DNC’s and John Podesta’s (Hillary is on almost none of them). So, Papadopoulos’s Russian interlocutors could well have been weaving a tale based on what had been reported, rather than on what was actually hacked and ultimately released by WikiLeaks. 

Second, and more significant: If the proof, at best, implies that the Russians acquired thousands of Clinton emails and then had to inform a tangential Trump campaign figure of this fact so he could pass it along to the campaign, that would mean Trump and his campaign had nothing to do with the acquisition of the emails. 

As observed above, this brings us back to the meaning of “collusion.” I’ve long argued that this term has been used by Trump’s accusers because they don’t have proof of criminal collusion. The term “collusion” can have a dark connotation, but it really only means some kind of concerted activity — not necessarily illegal. Prosecutors don’t care about collusion; they care about conspiracy — an agreement by two or more people to commit a violation of a criminal statute. That is, even if there is some concerted activity, collusion is not a crime unless the Trump campaign conspired with the Putin regime to do something federal law makes a crime — for example, to hack communications systems. 

If Trump officials and associates did not do this, then their activities may be unsavory, but they are not criminal. It is a disgraceful thing for an American political candidate to seek damaging information about his or her opponent from a despicable, anti-American regime. But it is not illegal. A criminal investigation is about proving crimes, not revealing dirty politics.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/453264/donald-trump-george-papadopoulos-indictment-exculpatory-trump

 

I'm sure this article won't go over well considering the views on Trump by the crowd  in this thread but I think it makes several good points that are sure to be overlooked and dismissed.

[homersapien 11,353]

8 hours ago, NolaAuTiger said:

Notwithstanding election posts, doesn't change the fact that still no closer to collusion.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/453244/manafort-indictment-no-signs-trump-russia-collusion

From President Trump’s perspective, the indictment is a boon from which he can claim that the special counsel has no actionable collusion case. It appears to reaffirm former FBI director James Comey’s multiple assurances that Trump is not a suspect. And, to the extent it looks like an attempt to play prosecutorial hardball with Manafort, the president can continue to portray himself as the victim of a witch hunt.

 

 What has that got to do with "pulling feathers"?

[NolaAuTiger 3,295]

10 hours ago, homersapien said:

 What has that got to do with "pulling feathers"?

it doesn't. do you know what "notwithstanding" means, Homer? 

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

Interesting read here about a tactic that Mueller is using in the investigation to compel lawyers to testify against their clients.  Free article from WaPo.  (Can't get the text to copy into here).

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/mueller-got-manafort’s-attorney-to-speak-against-him-once-he-may-try-the-tactic-again/ar-AAuhTN8?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartanntp

 

[homersapien 11,353]

2 hours ago, NolaAuTiger said:

it doesn't. do you know what "notwithstanding" means, Homer? 

Then why was it posted as a response to my post of "exactly"? 

I think one of us is confused.  When I said "exactly" I was confirming your admission that your post was totally irrelevant.  It reflected something suited to the "trash talk" forum - trying to get a rise ("pulling feathers") with a superfluous crack. 

 

[NolaAuTiger 3,295]

2 minutes ago, homersapien said:

Then why was it posted as a response to my post of "exactly"? 

I think one of us is confused.  When I said "exactly" I was confirming your admission that your post was totally irrelevant.  It reflected something suited to the "trash talk" forum - trying to get a rise ("pulling feathers") with a superfluous crack. 

 

Gotcha, thanks for confirming. I was worried. Now you can respond to article. I appreciate your concern. Very thoughtful. 

[homersapien 11,353]

11 minutes ago, NolaAuTiger said:

Gotcha, thanks for confirming. I was worried. Now you can respond to article. I appreciate your concern. Very thoughtful. 

More trash talk.

But as far as the National Review article, I don't see how having his original campaign manager indicted for money laundering and conspiring with Russia is a "boon" for Trump.  

Also, it is obviously premature at this point to claim Trump is innocent - or guilty - of anything.