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On October 30 2017 07:28 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On October 30 2017 07:22 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On October 30 2017 06:55 xDaunt wrote:On October 30 2017 06:52 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On October 30 2017 05:01 xDaunt wrote:On October 30 2017 04:51 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On October 30 2017 04:24 xDaunt wrote:On October 30 2017 04:18 ChristianS wrote:On October 30 2017 04:15 xDaunt wrote:On October 30 2017 03:15 Introvert wrote:
Wait, has it been reported how much the DNC (or whoever) spent directly or indirectly on the dossier? Maybe I missed it. I don't think so. The Hillary campaign and DNC sent $12 million combined to the attorney, but I don't think anyone has gotten the bank records from either the attorney, Fusion GPS, or Steele, so we don't know where that $12 million went. I'd expect most of it to be legit, however. What are the non-"legit" possibilities here? Considering what a fuss the right is making, I sincerely hope the Democrats are accused of more than just paying an investigative firm for oppo research? We already know that they failed to report the expenditure on the opposition research and only listed the payments to the attorney as legal services -- i.e. They laundered the funds through the trust account. This wouldn't be laundering.. I don't know of any reporting requirement that would make this mis-categorizing an expense either. Care to elaborate? FEC regs require campaigns to report who they pay money to and why. Sending money to a law firm under the guise of "legal services" when the law firm then pays that money from its trust account to a third party for another purpose is money laundering -- i.e. Hiding the source and payment of the funds from regulatory oversight. This could be strictly accidental. But given that the law firm lied about all of this for a year, I highly doubt it. I don't know how strict the reporting requirements are, but I could totally see classifying an invoice from a law firm as a legal expense. Still not seeing the laundering aspect - no money is dirty in need of cleaning. Nor is paying for oppo research illegal. By contrast, Russia did illegal things (hacking). We do know that Trump wanted to work with Russia in exchange for dropping sanctions. Directly tying those together hasn't happened yet. This is not that. This issue is what the money was used for and who knew about it. I'm sure that we are going to learn more. So, no evidence of laundering, or illegal activity, or collusion, but maybe Clinton knew about the doc and didn't say so. Certainly the campaign knew and didn't speak up. Given that, where would even the wildest speculation bring us? Dirty but not illegal? How can you say no evidence of laundering when the use of the money was misreported? You can chalk it up as a mistake if you want, but it doesn't change the fact that the money was, intentionally or not, laundered through Perkins Coie to do opposition research that was kept off of the books.
Because that's no definition of laundering that I'm familiar with. All clean money all the way through. Nothing to launder.
Money needs to be dirty to be laundered... Totally legal money used for totally legal things. One league thing was labeled as another legal thing. Still all clean - nothing to launder.
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All this business continues to be much ado about nothing until xD actually articulates why this is significant. And he still has yet to do so.
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On October 30 2017 03:11 Nevuk wrote:Show nested quote +On October 30 2017 03:02 Danglars wrote:On October 30 2017 01:45 Slaughter wrote:
The more Trump tweets the more I kind of wish societies still exiled people, not sure who would take Trump and his shitty family though. Your gripe is really with the people that sent him to office despite his tweeting habits. Half the country already wants to exile the other half from what I can tell. No one wants to exile all Trump voters. I'm sure the majority of farmers voted for him, and I like having food. I've actually never seen anyone call to exile the KKK or white supremacists either.
I have seen some people that think non-whites should at least be exiled from the ethnostate, though.
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On October 30 2017 07:31 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On October 30 2017 07:28 Tachion wrote:On October 30 2017 07:22 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On October 30 2017 06:55 xDaunt wrote:On October 30 2017 06:52 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On October 30 2017 05:01 xDaunt wrote:On October 30 2017 04:51 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On October 30 2017 04:24 xDaunt wrote:On October 30 2017 04:18 ChristianS wrote:On October 30 2017 04:15 xDaunt wrote:
[quote]
I don't think so. The Hillary campaign and DNC sent $12 million combined to the attorney, but I don't think anyone has gotten the bank records from either the attorney, Fusion GPS, or Steele, so we don't know where that $12 million went. I'd expect most of it to be legit, however. What are the non-"legit" possibilities here? Considering what a fuss the right is making, I sincerely hope the Democrats are accused of more than just paying an investigative firm for oppo research? We already know that they failed to report the expenditure on the opposition research and only listed the payments to the attorney as legal services -- i.e. They laundered the funds through the trust account. This wouldn't be laundering.. I don't know of any reporting requirement that would make this mis-categorizing an expense either. Care to elaborate? FEC regs require campaigns to report who they pay money to and why. Sending money to a law firm under the guise of "legal services" when the law firm then pays that money from its trust account to a third party for another purpose is money laundering -- i.e. Hiding the source and payment of the funds from regulatory oversight. This could be strictly accidental. But given that the law firm lied about all of this for a year, I highly doubt it. I don't know how strict the reporting requirements are, but I could totally see classifying an invoice from a law firm as a legal expense. Still not seeing the laundering aspect - no money is dirty in need of cleaning. Nor is paying for oppo research illegal. By contrast, Russia did illegal things (hacking). We do know that Trump wanted to work with Russia in exchange for dropping sanctions. Directly tying those together hasn't happened yet. This is not that. This issue is what the money was used for and who knew about it. I'm sure that we are going to learn more. So, no evidence of laundering, or illegal activity, or collusion, but maybe Clinton knew about the doc and didn't say so. Certainly the campaign knew and didn't speak up. Given that, where would even the wildest speculation bring us? Dirty but not illegal? The HOPE is what they potentially have Don Jr. on the line for, soliciting contributions from a foreign national. That's the collusion. You have to make a lot of jumps to get there through, hence the drive for an investigation to turn up something. Realistically they'll probably get fined by the FEC and that will be the end of it. 'Someone hiring a firm that hires a guy who pays another guy for info' is a long long away from 'a guy getting mailed an offer for information by a foreign government'.
Yes but what if Hillary knew she was paying Steele to work with Russian diplomats to create the dossier but never used it till after the election in a conspiracy to commit libel?
I dunno dude, I didn't say it made sense.
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On October 30 2017 07:34 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On October 30 2017 07:26 xDaunt wrote:On October 30 2017 07:14 ChristianS wrote:On October 30 2017 07:03 xDaunt wrote:On October 30 2017 06:58 ChristianS wrote:On October 30 2017 06:46 xDaunt wrote:On October 30 2017 06:44 ChristianS wrote:On October 30 2017 06:39 xDaunt wrote:On October 30 2017 06:37 WolfintheSheep wrote:On October 30 2017 06:34 xDaunt wrote:
[quote]
What do you mean Clinton paid before Steele got involved? Her money went right to Steele through Perkins Coie and Fusion GPS. We are talking up to $6 million being at issue here. And it is undisputed that both her campaign and Perkins Coie lied about it for a year. How that raises no red flags for you is simply incredible. Again, citation needed. Because that last article you posted was a heaping pile of shit. It doesn't even talk about lies. At best it finger wags using lawyers for confidentiality, which as a lawyer you should know is not lying. I already cited it by linking to the David French article. I can't help it if you can't read. Your "undisputed" claim is something I disputed. You referred me (didn't link, I had to look it up) to French's article, which doesn't address my dispute. In fact, it doesn't say anything more than the WaPo article did, which also didn't address my dispute. I quoted you and said this, you still haven't responded. You're not doing great at crossing your t's and dotting your i's. I cited everything that I claimed. I don't even know what you are disputing. That she lied? That the money went to Steele? Both are proven. That she lied for a year about knowing all about the dossier. There's no evidence in either article that she knew who Steele was or even who Fusion GPS was. In fact, Steele didn't even work for Fusion GPS when Elias decided to retain them. Making a bunch of claims and then saying "just go look up the article by so-and-so" when pressed for citation is already not great. But when the cited article just cites another article, and that other article doesn't even support your claim, that's really just shitty. From the WaPo article: It is unclear how or how much of that information was shared with the campaign and the DNC and who in those organizations was aware of the roles of Fusion GPS and Steele. One person close to the matter said the campaign and the DNC were not informed by the law firm of Fusion GPS’s role. Undisputed, indeed. French clearly thinks the Clinton campaign knew all along, but even he doesn't think it indicates anything approximating "collusion," just that they mislead us into thinking the dossier was an intelligence document, not an oppo document. And more importantly, he gives no evidence whatsoever about what they knew. All I can imagine is that you thought nobody would actually bother to go look up the article you were talking about, especially if you didn't provide a link. Did you miss the tweet that French quotes from Maggie Haberman of the NYT where she notes that "Folks involved in funding lied about it, and with sanctimony, for over a year."? Who the fuck do you think she is talking about? Santa Claus? She's very clearly referring to the Clinton campaign and Marc Elias. EDIT: Here is again: A Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer who launched what would become known as the anti-Trump 'dirty dossier' denied involvement in the project for a year as reporters pressed him for information.
Marc Elias brokered a deal between the Clinton camp, the Democratic National Committee and opposition research firm Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on the president while he was running for office.
But a pair of New York Times reporters said Tuesday night on Twitter that Elias and others involved had lied about their ties to the arrangement.
'Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year,' Times reporter Maggie Haberman tweeted after The Washington Post linked the dossier to Elias and his law firm Perkins Coie.
Kennth Vogel, another Times journalist, tweeted: 'When I tried to report this story, Clinton campaign lawyer @marceelias pushed back vigorously, saying "You (or your sources) are wrong". Source. That's TWO reporters tweeting the exact same thing. Ah, so you weren't really citing French, that was just a proxy to look up a particular tweet from an NYT reporter who says "folks involved in funding" lied about it for a year, and cites the WaPo article (which, as mentioned previously, doesn't support your claim). From the same reporter, by the way: Vogel's tweet specifically accuses Marc Elias, not Clinton or the rest of the campaign, of lying about it. So once again, "It's already proven that Clinton and her campaign knew all about the dossier" remains unsupported. To be clear, I'm not saying with any certainty that she didn't know. And it might be that some reporting out there has confirmed that she did – a lot of articles come out every day, and I haven't read most of them. But you continue to repeat the assertion as though it's undisputed, without providing evidence for the claim, even though it's disputed within the original WaPo article. You realize that an attorney is legally an agent of the client, right? When an attorney speaks in that capacity, he is speaking for the client. Indeed, but if my attorney calls his buddy for advice on the case, and I later say I had no idea his buddy had anything to do with the case, I'm not lying.
But that's not what happened here. Elias spent Clinton's campaign funds. That doesn't happen without informed consent from the client.
Show nested quote +And if you want to draw a meaningful distinction between paying for something and knowing about it, good luck with that one. Attorneys are ethically prohibited from spending their client's money without telling them what it's for and having their consent. What do you mean without their consent? Presumably Elias told the Clinton campaign and DNC that he was hiring an investigative firm to do oppo research. They said okay. At the time that decision occurred, Steele didn't even work for Fusion GPS.
What outfit okays the expenditure of (at a minimum) tens of thousands of dollars (potentially a helluva lot more) without knowing what they are investing in? That never happens in the legal world. Not once. All of my clients want to know why I want to spend that kind of money on their behalf.
Show nested quote +And I can bet that the Clinton campaign was quite eager to see what their investment would return them, so there is simply no way that they did not know about the Steele dossier after they paid for it. You tried to make the transition from "this is confirmed by investigative reporting and undisputed" to "Here's what I think was probably going on" and thought nobody would notice. What you bet the Clinton campaign did, and what it's proven they actually did are very different things. Show nested quote +They certainly saw it and knew that they bought it. The one thing that cannot be concluded is what the campaign knew about how the funds were used to create the dossier.
I haven't made the transition out of anything. The reporters cited above are the ones who noted that the Clinton team lied and denied knowledge of the funding. And I can guarantee you that they used the term "lie" because they are aware of the very same circumstances that I have been pointing out here regarding how the attorney/client relationship works and how ridiculous it is to presume that the Clinton campaign did not know what they were spending money on.
Afaik they claim they didn't know about the dossier until Buzzfeed published it, so they easily might have seen it and known (or been told by Elias) that they bought it. That's a very different thing from having known all along about the details.
The Clinton campaign has been mum on the details regarding what they knew and when (gee, I wonder why....). If I were them, I would come clean and admit to knowingly paying for the opposition research but not knowing how the funds would be applied. They're going to get tagged with the first part, so no point denying it. And there's nothing inherently wrong with paying for opposition research anyway as y'all have been all to keen to point out.
All of this is skipping the question you continue to not answer, which is what is illegal about any of this anyway. What law did they violate? Forget Clinton, what would Elias even be guilty of?
Like I said earlier, the potential illegality is here is whether the Clinton campaign funds were being paid to Russian sources to acquire information about Trump, and whether the Clinton campaign knew about it. It's the same thing that Trump Junior was accused of for meeting with that Russian.
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On October 30 2017 07:41 NewSunshine wrote:
All this business continues to be much ado about nothing until xD actually articulates why this is significant. And he still has yet to do so.
Read harder.
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I have no idea what kind of lawyer you are, but Marc Elias was specifically used to create a layer of separation. He certainly wasn't hired to represent them in court.
And the reporters saying the Clinton campaign lied both link to the same article with the same information: that the lawyer knew. Which, yes, we've established the lawyer knew. And was used so there would be several layers of confidentiality.
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On October 30 2017 07:57 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On October 30 2017 07:41 NewSunshine wrote:
All this business continues to be much ado about nothing until xD actually articulates why this is significant. And he still has yet to do so. Read harder.
Everything you post here is based on utterly bogus premises that you know are lies. The reason collusion sticks on Trump is that the Kremlin wanted him to win and tried to help him (Veselnetskya, Assange, Chaika, DonJR, Manafort, Flynn, Agalarov). The collusion charge doesn't stick on Steele/HRC because the Kremlin wanted her to lose (see every last intelligence agency conclusion that didn't come from Trump's toady Pompeo). Collusion requires some alignment of goals and you are willfully pretending that you don't need to show this alignment.
And on top of all this we already know HRC didn't know about the memo. Elias kept the whole thing closely held and didn't even see the raw dossier.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/clinton-lawyer-kept-russian-dossier-project-closely-held/2017/10/27/e7935276-ba68-11e7-be94-fabb0f1e9ffb_story.html?utm_term=.4da8cf2feb1a
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I suspect that the right's attempt to divert attention from the fact that Russia sought to help Trump win the election will not be successful. Fusion's oppo research, which (shock) was paid for (originally by a Republican primary opponent of Trump, and then the tab was picked up by Clinton/the DNC. There's also a reason the FBI independently wanted to pay for further research), and the dossier had no effect prior to the election. The research was passed to the FBI for them to independently investigate.
Russia conducted a hacking campaign against Clinton/the DNC. Russia wanted Trump to win. Any argument of collusion between Clinton and Russia is based on shoddy reasoning.
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On October 30 2017 08:16 WolfintheSheep wrote:
I have no idea what kind of lawyer you are, but Marc Elias was specifically used to create a layer of separation. He certainly wasn't hired to represent them in court.
And the reporters saying the Clinton campaign lied both link to the same article with the same information: that the lawyer knew. Which, yes, we've established the lawyer knew. And was used so there would be several layers of confidentiality.
The legal duties and principles that I have been referring to have nothing to do with litigation and court appearances. They are universal.
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How does who paid for the dossier and what they knew even matter? All that matters is whether any of its claims are true, and many of those aren't even part of the main thrust of Mueller's investigation.
Or is it again pure coincidence all this pops up right around Mueller doing something major and it's not intended to discredit the dossier or his investigation in any way and it's just angry Republicans trying to pin something on Clinton for the 10 millionth time as if it will ever be successful? Podesta (or his brother or whatever) already went down after all.
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Jesus Christ, I'm not gonna do this parallel point-by-point thing again. I just got done with doing that with Danglars, and that was probably a mistake, and this time I'm on mobile.
It's only confirmed that the "Clinton team" knew if you count Elias as part of the "Clinton team." Your guesses about how much the campaign probably would have known are not the same as "undisputedly proven by current reporting." So when you say "they definitely would've wanted lots of details on what they were getting for their money" that's worth very little. It's just as plausible that they had a presidential campaign to run and were letting their lawyers sift through the oppo material and let them know about anything good. You're talking like Fusion GPS was the only research firm they hired, when in fact the Clinton campaign had a shit ton of money. Your anecdotes about what your clients would want are useless because your clients don't have a shit ton of money and they aren't running for President.
For those trying to follow along: xDaunt claimed it was "undisputed" that the whole Clinton team has lied for more than a year about knowing about the dossier. Asked for evidence he cited people saying that Marc Elias knew, which we all knew already. From there he offered his personal opinion that if Elias knew the rest probably knew too, and tried to act like that's the same thing.
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And everyone's talking about Clinton again.
Say what you want about Trump but he's effective at trying to control the narrative in desperate circumstances.
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If you really want to hang your hat on this is no big deal because only the general counsel for the campaign lied, good luck.
Here's what one guy says that is on point:
Their claim that nobody in the campaign or the DNC knew anything about the deal doesn’t pass the smell test. When as much as $12 million goes out the window for a document that aimed to win the election — and failed — everybody knows something
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On October 30 2017 08:32 xDaunt wrote:
If you really want to hang your hat on this is no big deal because only the general counsel for the campaign lied, good luck.
I'm not hanging my hat on anything! Like I said, there's a very good chance they knew about all of it. We're just calling you on claiming stuff is absolutely proven when it's not, then saying bullshit like "I cited it, learn to read" when people dispute it.
Edit: Here's what one guy says that is on point: Show nested quote +Their claim that nobody in the campaign or the DNC knew anything about the deal doesn’t pass the smell test. When as much as $12 million goes out the window for a document that aimed to win the election — and failed — everybody knows something
Ah, "some guy" said it. I see you're still into the insinuation and anonymous citations. This has been quite a week for you
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I'm not sure I can trust your opinion on what is a big deal or not since you consider Russian collusion from various Trump campaign and administration is not a big deal
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On October 30 2017 08:35 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On October 30 2017 08:32 xDaunt wrote:
If you really want to hang your hat on this is no big deal because only the general counsel for the campaign lied, good luck. I'm not hanging my hat on anything! Like I said, there's a very good chance they knew about all of it. We're just calling you on claiming stuff is absolutely proven when it's not, then saying bullshit like "I cited it, learn to read" when people dispute it. Edit: Show nested quote +Here's what one guy says that is on point: Their claim that nobody in the campaign or the DNC knew anything about the deal doesn’t pass the smell test. When as much as $12 million goes out the window for a document that aimed to win the election — and failed — everybody knows something Ah, "some guy" said it. I see you're still into the insinuation and anonymous citations. This has been quite a week for you
Maybe someday you'll learn how to properly contextualize information. What I'm quoting is irrelevant. It's just an opinion that I very easily could have presented as my own. But hey, keep working that double standard of yours. I look forward to continuing to not see you call out every poster who pushes assertions suggesting that Trump colluded with the Russians beyond what is actually known.
And again, I can't help it if y'all refuse to read what is right in front of you. I didn't say that the Clinton campaign lied. The reporters did. It's really obvious to me why they used that word. It should be obvious to you as well, but y'all would rather pretend to be ostriches and keep your heads in the sand.
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"But Clinton" is merely a tool to solve cognitive dissonance among thinking conservatives who voted for Trump. It follows that the lower Trump goes, the worse the Clinton "scandals" have to become. Otherwise they'd be forced to come to terms with the fact they betrayed their principles in helping elect a grossly incompetent conman to the WH.
For instance, Fox News isn't a bastion of conservative values, it's a safe space to insulate Trump voters from coming to terms with what an this administration is.
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The last four pages show that the only thread objection part of “Trump campaign-Russia collusion” is “Trump campaign.” When Clinton campaign figures lie about financing the dossier, no fucks are given. I mean they even throw the NYT reporting under the bus (Maggie Haberman and Ken Vogel were previously esteemed). You might deny that collusion with Russia is a one-way Street, but your actions show differently. Next time, play up some angle you wouldn’t mind criticizing a Democrat campaign on. You’ll emerge with more credibility that way.
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Every time this gets rehashed I'm desperate to understand why this instance in particular is so significant for people. It's not like we don't collude with foreign political groups to influence elections regularly.
It really seems like everyone is freaking out about 21st century technology lowering the economic barriers to entry and a country that doesn't have our best interest being able to use it against us.
Like there isn't an actual principled stand people are taking, it seems completely driven by self-interest and political point scoring on all sides.
The irony of it all being Russia seems to have a better grasp of what's wrong with our politics than we do.
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EPT
