US Politics Mega-thread - Page 9805

On January 31 2018 01:30 Mohdoo wrote:
I don't understand how Trump ignoring a 98-2 senate vote isn't an enormous red flag. How in the world are republicans not suddenly super sketched out?

Putin on Tuesday referred to the list as a "hostile step" — but said Moscow does not want to make the situation even worse.

"We were waiting for this list to come out, and I'm not going to hide it: we were going to take steps in response, and, mind you, serious steps, that could push our relations to the nadir. But we're going to refrain from taking these steps for now," Putin said.

On January 31 2018 02:22 Danglars wrote:
https://twitter.com/chuckrossdc/status/958367657060962305

Now all the additional people mentioned in Senator Grassley’s request for information makes sense. I hope the Nunes memo and underlying primary source documents relating to the FISA court are declassified and released pronto.

On January 31 2018 02:30 Plansix wrote:
All these Democrats turning information over to the FBI once they received it. How terrible.

Meanwhile, Trump’s son meets with Russian government contacts promising dirt on his father’s opponent and didn’t tell anyone. And this is still all about Carter Page, one of the dumbest people involved in this. And its a competitive field.

On January 31 2018 02:35 Gorsameth wrote:

Didn't tell anyone and then lied about it. So they knew they had something they should hide.

On January 31 2018 02:32 Acrofales wrote:

However much of a prick that Shearer guy is, if two people independently come to you with the same intel that is reason to believe the intel is worth following up on.

Mind you, they might both be talking to the same untrustworthy source, but then you have to uncover that source. You can't just point to Steele and say "he fabricated lies" when some completely separate source is apparently fabricating the same lies. Either it is simply true, or they are both listening to the same lying source. And however much you dislike both Steele and Shearer, they don't seem to know each other, or have exchanged info before each writing their own report.

On January 31 2018 03:19 IyMoon wrote:


it's getting to the point where ever reporter is going to have to record every meeting so they can show tapes on what was said

On January 31 2018 03:04 PhoenixVoid wrote:

Meanwhile she says that the Norwegian newspaper fabricated the statement and denies ever saying Trump was a liar and "cheats like hell".

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/golf/lpga/2018/01/30/lpga-suzann-pettersen-donald-trump-cheats-like-hell-golf/1078038001/

it's getting to the point where ever reporter is going to have to record every meeting so they can show tapes on what was said

On January 31 2018 03:19 m4ini wrote:
I still haven't really seen any of the usual suspects like Danglars etc explain the non-sanctions away so far. Still thinking of a way to come up with a reason, or does that one look so bad that you simply prefer to not argue for it?

Constitution, wasn't that a thing held in high regards, or is that only if it suits your argument?



Actually, that's what they do anyways. You can't write the article while interviewing. The question simply is, does the journalist still have them.

On January 31 2018 03:04 PhoenixVoid wrote:

Meanwhile she says that the Norwegian newspaper fabricated the statement and denies ever saying Trump was a liar and "cheats like hell".

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/golf/lpga/2018/01/30/lpga-suzann-pettersen-donald-trump-cheats-like-hell-golf/1078038001/


I'd hope they have something recorded to prove they were reporting properly, otherwise they'll look real stupid. If they were reporting accurately, I can imagine Suzann wouldn't want to endanger her friendship with Trump over some rash words, and now she's having some second thoughts so she pulls out #FakeNews to protect herself.

And then two FSB assassins put a radioactive poison into the tea of Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB officer turned London-based dissident. It was an audacious operation, and a sign of things to come. MI6 picked Steele to investigate. One reason for this was that he wasn’t emotionally involved with the case, unlike some of his colleagues who had known the victim. He quickly concluded the Russian state had staged the execution.

Steele’s gloomy view of Russia – that under Putin it was not only domestically repressive but also internationally reckless and revisionist – looked about right. Steele briefed government ministers. Some got it. Others could scarcely believe Russian spies would carry out murder and mayhem on the streets of London.

...

Simpson had been an illustrious Wall Street Journal correspondent. Based in Washington and Brussels, he had specialised in post-Soviet murk. He didn’t speak Russian or visit the Russian Federation. This was deemed too dangerous. Instead, from outside the country, he examined the dark intersection between organised crime and the Russian state.

By 2009, Simpson decided to quit journalism, at a time when the media industry was in all sorts of financial trouble. He co-founded his own commercial research and political intelligence firm, based in Washington DC. Its name was Fusion GPS. Its website gave little away. It didn’t even list an address.

Simpson then met Steele. They knew some of the same FBI people and shared expertise on Russia. Fusion and Orbis began a professional partnership. The Washington- and London-based firms worked for oligarchs litigating against other oligarchs. This might involve asset tracing – identifying large sums concealed behind layers of offshore companies.

Later that year, Steele embarked on a separate, sensitive new assignment that drew on his knowledge of covert Russian techniques – and of football. (In Moscow he had played at full-back.) The client was the English Football Association, the FA. England was bidding to host the 2018 soccer World Cup. Its main rival was Russia. There were joint bids, too, from Spain and Portugal, and the Netherlands and Belgium. His brief was to investigate the eight other bidding nations, with a particular focus on Russia. It was rumoured that the FSB had carried out a major influence operation, ahead of a vote in Zurich by the executive committee of Fifa, soccer’s international governing body.

Steele discovered that Fifa corruption was global. It was a stunning conspiracy. He took the unusual step of briefing an American contact in Rome, the head of the FBI’s Eurasian serious crime division. This “lit the fuse”, as one friend put it, and led to a probe by US federal prosecutors. And to the arrest in 2015 of seven Fifa officials, allegedly connected to $150m (£114m) in kickbacks, paid on TV deals stretching from Latin America to the Caribbean. The US indicted 14 individuals.

The episode burnished Steele’s reputation inside the US intelligence community and the FBI. Here was a pro, a well-connected Brit, who understood Russian espionage and its subterranean tricks. Steele was regarded as credible. Between 2014 and 2016, Steele authored more than 100 reports on Russia and Ukraine. These were written for a private client but shared widely within the US state department, and sent up to secretary of state John Kerry and assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland, who was in charge of the US response to Putin’s annexation of Crimea and covert invasion of eastern Ukraine. Many of Steele’s secret sources were the same people who would later supply information on Trump.

One former state department envoy during the Obama administration said he read dozens of Steele’s reports. On Russia, the envoy said, Steele was “as good as the CIA or anyone”.

Steele’s professional reputation inside US agencies would prove important the next time he discovered alarming material.

On January 31 2018 03:19 m4ini wrote:
I still haven't really seen any of the usual suspects like Danglars etc explain the non-sanctions away so far. Still thinking of a way to come up with a reason, or does that one look so bad that you simply prefer to not argue for it?

Constitution, wasn't that a thing held in high regards, or is that only if it suits your argument?

On January 31 2018 03:27 Danglars wrote:

I’m not paid to answer to ... suspicions and whispers directed at nobody and lacking concrete framing. Much like all the usual suspects that want our health insurance system to resemble enlightened Europe say little when our abortion regulations are brought closer to Europe’s. I wasn’t really expecting any, nor is it necessary to give your two cents on every subject.

On January 31 2018 04:00 Mohdoo wrote:


It does do a good job at hurting a lot of the "but hilary" arguments, though. A lot of the core thoughts behind people who voted for trump focused around "he can't fuck up things too badly, and I really dislike abortion". For the senate to vote 98-2 in favor of sanctions against our major military enemy, and then the Trump administration to ignore it, certainly says something about how Trump can only do so much damage.

I'll phrase it this way: How important do you think those sanctions were? Why do you think it passed 98-2?

Senator Claire McCaskill called it a “constitutional crisis.” Congressmen Raja Krishnamoorthi and Ted Lieu claimed that the president is bucking the will of Congress expressed in signed legislation. In a statement, the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s top Democrat, Eliot Engel, said the Trump administration had the opportunity to “follow the law” but balked. “They chose instead,” he insisted, “to let Russia off the hook again.”

Those are strong words—reckless words if they are misapplied. Democrats deployed them amid reports that the Trump administration would not impose new sanctions on Russian entities in accordance with a bipartisan act of Congress. Donald Trump has not earned the benefit of the doubt when it comes to Russia, and the administration’s justification for holding back on sanctions is derisory. The sanctions bill itself, the administration insisted, has already served as a “deterrent” for bad actors. Nevertheless, Moscow continues its destabilizing behavior abroad and anti-democratic agitation at home.

But has the president flagrantly ignored the law and inaugurated a crisis of constitutional legitimacy, and done so to curry favor with a hostile power, as Trump’s Democratic critics have alleged? The answer won’t surprise you.

The Trump administration was required by the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act to give Congress both a classified and unclassified list of Putin allies and oligarchs that could be targeted for potential sanctions, which they did. The law also required the administration to provide a report detailing the impact of sanctions on Russia’s sovereign debt, which they did. The law provides the administration a 120-day grace period for the imposition of new sanctions on unspecified targets if the president can claim that those targets have already substantially reduced their business activities in the Russian defense and intelligence sectors. In a statement, the State Department declared “that foreign governments have abandoned planned or announced purchases of several billion dollars in Russian defense acquisitions,” therefore satisfying that requirement. The statement left open the possibility for more sanctions on Russian and non-Russian entities, but added that the State Department would not “preview” them.

Lawmakers who allege that this amounts to a “constitutional crisis” should be ashamed of themselves. Their hyperbole is wildly irresponsible. And yet, given Trump’s bizarre efforts to seek Vladimir Putin’s approval, those who dismiss the State Department’s comments are not entirely unjustified in thinking this is all obfuscation. Trump has, after all, worn his admiration for Russia and its strongman president on his sleeve. The president’s rhetoric aside, however, this administration has also demonstrated that it is perfectly comfortable adopting an aggressive posture toward Russia.