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On May 25 2019 02:56 xDaunt wrote:
I think such a position on obstruction would be political suicide for democrats, especially when people understand that Trump’s political opponents are behind the investigation. Trump is behind his investigation because he publicly fired the FBI director for investigation his friend in relation to 'the Russia thing'.
How are Trumps political opponents behind it when Rosenstein authorised it? Or are you saying Rosenstein is a Trump opponent?
And how does that square with him being appointed as deputy AG by Trump?
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United States42247 Posts
On May 25 2019 02:56 xDaunt wrote:
I think such a position on obstruction would be political suicide for democrats, especially when people understand that Trump’s political opponents are behind the investigation.
Trump defined opponents as people who are investigating him and then concluded the investigation was filled with his opponents. The key figures are conservatives with excellent professional track records.
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On May 25 2019 02:44 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On May 25 2019 02:36 xDaunt wrote:
For those who think that Trump did criminally obstruct justice, are you still going to insist that he committed such crime if it is verified that the entire investigation into him was illegitimate? Stated another way, are you going to argue that his resisting an unlawful investigation is criminal or impeachable conduct? You are not allowed to illegally resist arrest, even if you did nothing wrong lol. If you did nothing wrong you lawyer up and prove it. You don’t threaten the police chief to make him stop the investigation.
I find this a rather dangerous sentiment. Under this mindless obedience, the targets of McCarthy's witch-hunt would've been expected to simply submit to it?
Not that I think this is a very honest question. Firstly, the investigation actually caught people doing shady shit. People in Trump's inner circle. This means that at the least there was actually something there worth investigating, regardless of whether it can be proved Trump was personally involved or not.
Secondly, I'd think we should wait until this I that xDaunt is all riled up about is actually done. The last time the Republicans were this excited about an investigation they were yelling about emails and Ben Ghazi, and those turned out to be giant nothing burgers. I fully expect this to fizzle in the same way. They should stop selling the pelt before the bear is shot.
And lastly, the guy under investigation isn't some powerless person. He's the POTUS. If there is even the slightest evidence of wrongdoing, it needs to be followed.
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On May 24 2019 20:13 iamthedave wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2019 12:08 Mohdoo wrote:
There was once a time where the last few pages would have never looked anything like this. This thread is in a very bad place right now. What in particular looks so out of place to your eyes? Show nested quote +On May 24 2019 18:05 Dangermousecatdog wrote:On May 24 2019 14:56 Artisreal wrote:On May 24 2019 08:29 Velr wrote:
Yeah, because you like to bash everything, glory to the revolution whiteout a solution. Gogogo.
Seriously, your the worst of the lot.There is a reason most grown ups don't spout the revolution bullshit, i'm sure you will one day arrive at that point. Gh points to many unsolved problems. the nature of them being unsolved involves thinking out of the box. the lightbulb wasnt invented through continuous development of the candle. Without a radical overhaul of how many of us think, we won't solve the problems we face. Climate change and the Conservative positions in the US regarding it are a clear sign for that. It's delusional to think we can continue the trodden paths The problem is that He has no solutions. Just Rev rev rev revolution! Abolish the police. Reeee! He uses words to make himself sound clever with no idea of what they mean, and refuses to explain those words because he has no idea what he means either. Having no solutions, a sense of disatisfaction comes with honestly engaging with him, as he doesn't engage sincerely with you. I actually agree with many of GH central tenants, but the way he puts them about just looks terrible. Climate change is a problem. Police brutality in USA is a problem. Chanting about revolution without writing what this revolution entails or why you think it is the only, or best option is just a single meaningless word, chanted ad nauseum, devoid of meaning, without interaction. It's just a one sided interaction, like when iplaynettles come down here with his empty one-liners he thinks is so clever and leaves. Also there's something rather Orwellian about xdaunt's continued focus on Hillary/Obama. He is obviously being fed information from a media source. It's like 2 minutes hate. You have to spend two minutes reading on who you have to hate. I'm not really sure why this is the bar for entry. GH isn't the President, and if he was he wouldn't be in this thread (though admittedly Trump's lowered the bar so far I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that Trump had an account on The_Donald and future Presidents engage in twitter wars with randoms on the internet and then arrange predator drone strikes on their houses when they get embarrassed). He also doesn't just say those things. GH's position has ALWAYS been clearly elucidated; he feels the structural corruption is so severe that the institutions he calls for revolution on cannot be fixed by reform. The fact that any time people talk about reforming the police the discussion just kind of meanders off into silence reveals that he has a point, too. He knows exactly what the words mean, and he generally communicates at a fairly 'low' level (by which I mean he doesn't elevate his language to the level he probably could to make it easier to understand; compare to Igne, who always uses the most elevated language he has available for the difference in approach) to make sure we can all follow him to the spring. The fact people continuously mis-characterise his stance on things (mocking the conclusions and ignoring the clearly explained steps that got him there) is one of the more annoying facets of how the thread's always dealt with him. He's also gone into detail about how he thinks such a revolution could play out with the police. Sure it was flawed to hell and back, but to make the claim GH 'doesn't know what the word means' or 'hasn't thought it through' is just plain lying. The posts are in this very thread. There's nothing wrong with disagreeing with his stance, but don't pretend he doesn't have one.
Thanks for putting my thoughts on the abolish police discussion into words.
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On May 24 2019 11:29 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2019 10:39 xDaunt wrote:On May 24 2019 10:30 Danglars wrote:
Finally we'll have the surveillance info. Barr was pretty quick with the giant Mueller report release, so hopefully he can carry this out with great speed too. Americans deserve answers on the surveillance campaign and actions of domestic spies. Brennan, Comey, Clapper, and the other Obama-era agency heads are toast. But here’s my big prediction: Obama himself is going to be implicated in authorizing and directing the unlawful spying on Americans. The biggest winner here will be the ghost of Nixon, because Obama is going to supplant him as being the most abusive president in history. Bold prediction. I don't think he'll have fingerprints anywhere near the actions of his subordinates. Allowing this stupidity by seeing the reports and doing nothing is one thing, but being dumb enough to have anything in writing is quite another. It's another stain on his administration most likely, but nothing personal to the man. I think the real juice will be the anticipatory classified leaks to the major newspapers to soften the news before it breaks.
Yeah, like a day after posting this we get the start. The CIA is exposed in the probe for its role in starting the investigation. This time it's the New York Times that got the leak. Good thing the NYT did not reveal the name in obtaining the info. It's likely that Barr too will censor.
WASHINGTON — President Trump’s order allowing Attorney General William P. Barr to declassify any intelligence that sparked the opening of the Russia investigation sets up a potential confrontation with the C.I.A., including over the possible implications for a person close to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia who provided information to the C.I.A. about his involvement in Moscow’s 2016 election interference.
The concern about the source, who is believed to be still alive, is one of several issues raised by Mr. Trump’s decision to use the intelligence to pursue his political enemies. It has also prompted fears from former national security officials and Democratic lawmakers that other sources or methods of intelligence gathering — among the government’s most closely held secrets — could be made public, not because of leaks to the news media that the administration denounces, but because the president has determined it suits his political purposes.
Mr. Trump granted Mr. Barr’s request for sweeping new authorities to conduct his review of how the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia were investigated. The president ordered the C.I.A. and the other intelligence agencies to cooperate, granting Mr. Barr the authority to unilaterally declassify their documents and thus significant leverage over the intelligence community.
On Friday afternoon, Mr. Trump, heading to his helicopter on the beginning of a trip to Japan, defended his decision and said the declassification would be sweeping. “What are we doing, we are exposing everything,” he told reporters. “We are being transparent.” He expressed no qualms about any national security implications.
Intelligence officials have feared before that their findings were being twisted to political agendas — notably concerns during the run-up to the Iraq war that information about Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction was being cherry-picked to justify combat. But Mr. Trump’s decision is different.
It allows Mr. Barr, who has used the charged term “spying” to describe efforts to investigate the Trump campaign, sole discretion to declassify the intelligence behind the F.B.I.’s decision to begin investigating whether any Trump aides or associates were working with the Russians. It also raises the specter that officials ranging from the F.B.I. to the C.I.A. to the National Security Agency, which was monitoring Russian officials, will be questioned about their sources and their intent.
The order could be tremendously damaging to the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies, drying up sources and inhibiting their ability to gather intelligence, said Representative Adam Schiff, Democrat of California and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
“The president now seems intent on declassifying intelligence to weaponize it,” Mr. Schiff said in an interview.
Mr. Trump has long held that he was a target of the “deep state,’’ at various points accusing former President Barack Obama without evidence of tapping his phones, the F.B.I. of secretly trying to undermine his candidacy and past intelligence chiefs of bending their findings to prove Russian involvement in his election victory.
He has repeatedly appeared to side with Mr. Putin’s contention that there is no evidence of a Russian campaign to sabotage the 2016 election, even though the Mueller report left no question that the Russian leadership was behind both the theft and publication of emails and other data from Democrats and a social media campaign that ultimately worked to boost Mr. Trump’s candidacy, as well as efforts to tamper with election registration systems.
But it is the human source that particularly worries some former and current intelligence officials. Long nurtured by the C.I.A., the source rose to a position that enabled the informant to provide key information in 2016 about the Russian leadership’s role in the interference campaign.
John O. Brennan, the C.I.A. director under Mr. Obama, would bring reports from the source directly to the White House, keeping them out of the president’s daily intelligence briefing for fear that the briefing document was too widely disseminated. Instead, he would place them in an envelope for Mr. Obama and a tiny circle of aides to read.
The source provided evidence for one of the last major intelligence conclusions that Mr. Obama made public before leaving office: that Mr. Putin himself was behind the Russia hack.
John Sipher, a former C.I.A. official who led Russia operations for the agency, expressed concern that giving the president names of sources or agency officials who oversaw those informants could put those secrets at risk because they would inevitably be more widely disseminated.
“If the president of the United States asks for a name, it would be hard not to provide a name,” Mr. Sipher said. “It wouldn’t do him any good unless he sent it around to people to look into it, and that is where the security problem is, obviously.”
Mr. Schiff pledged that his committee would pay close attention to all of Mr. Barr’s actions in the inquiry. “We are going to expose any abuse, any politicization of intelligence,” he said.
NYT
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On May 25 2019 03:14 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On May 25 2019 02:44 KwarK wrote:On May 25 2019 02:36 xDaunt wrote:
For those who think that Trump did criminally obstruct justice, are you still going to insist that he committed such crime if it is verified that the entire investigation into him was illegitimate? Stated another way, are you going to argue that his resisting an unlawful investigation is criminal or impeachable conduct? You are not allowed to illegally resist arrest, even if you did nothing wrong lol. If you did nothing wrong you lawyer up and prove it. You don’t threaten the police chief to make him stop the investigation. I find this a rather dangerous sentiment. Under this mindless obedience, the targets of McCarthy's witch-hunt would've been expected to simply submit to it? Not that I think this is a very honest question. Firstly, the investigation actually caught people doing shady shit. People in Trump's inner circle. This means that at the least there was actually something there worth investigating, regardless of whether it can be proved Trump was personally involved or not. Secondly, I'd think we should wait until this I that xDaunt is all riled up about is actually done. The last time the Republicans were this excited about an investigation they were yelling about emails and Ben Ghazi, and those turned out to be giant nothing burgers. I fully expect this to fizzle in the same way. They should stop selling the pelt before the bear is shot. And lastly, the guy under investigation isn't some powerless person. He's the POTUS. If there is even the slightest evidence of wrongdoing, it needs to be followed. Any defence against 'McCarthy witchhunts' have to follow lawful means. No one is saying you can't try to fight back through things like the courts and have the investigation show they operated under probable cause (I believe that's the right legal term?).
You can't just fire the guy investigation you, bury the investigation and say 'i'm innocent, just trust me on this'.
Note how I don't think anyone in this thread has said that Barr's investigation of the investigation should not be allowed to happen.
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On May 25 2019 03:10 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On May 25 2019 02:56 xDaunt wrote:
I think such a position on obstruction would be political suicide for democrats, especially when people understand that Trump’s political opponents are behind the investigation. Trump is behind his investigation because he publicly fired the FBI director for investigation his friend in relation to 'the Russia thing'. How are Trumps political opponents behind it when Rosenstein authorised it? Or are you saying Rosenstein is a Trump opponent? And how does that square with him being appointed as deputy AG by Trump? I see this same bullshit is happening with Christopher Wray right now. He's being lambasted by conservative media because he isn't seemingly willing to play team ball, unlike Barr. Wray was a Trump appointee too. They just seem pissed off that he actually wants to do his job well and be independent.
It's both hilarious and quite scary.
edit: And to the point on the previous page about people not saying this investigation of the investigation should be stopped, yeah exactly. It'll probably end up like Benghazi, Her Emails, or any of the other nonsense investigations they've done. People who are actually competent and do the right thing don't worry about this type of stuff. It's what makes the behaviour of the Republicans so suspicious to the rest of the world. They act guilty and are too incompetent to realize that they are acting as such.
The thing with Republicans, and this more recent brand of conservatives in general (we see the same type of shit here in Canada, but to a slightly lesser extent), is that they always project what they are doing. They assume "the other side" is doing untoward things in investigations because they themselves would likely do so in the same position. They claim the other side is rigging elections because they themselves are attempting to do so, as we have seen with all of the gerrymandering nonsense and that case in North Carolina where there was actual election fraud perpetuated by a Republican. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to see what they're doing.
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The investigation of the investigation should happen, if only so we can stop hearing about the cover up.
Edit: the head of the CIA pointing out the Bill Barr that it’s on him if releasing any classified information get someone hurt or worse.
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On May 25 2019 03:25 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2019 11:29 Danglars wrote:On May 24 2019 10:39 xDaunt wrote:On May 24 2019 10:30 Danglars wrote:
Finally we'll have the surveillance info. Barr was pretty quick with the giant Mueller report release, so hopefully he can carry this out with great speed too. Americans deserve answers on the surveillance campaign and actions of domestic spies. Brennan, Comey, Clapper, and the other Obama-era agency heads are toast. But here’s my big prediction: Obama himself is going to be implicated in authorizing and directing the unlawful spying on Americans. The biggest winner here will be the ghost of Nixon, because Obama is going to supplant him as being the most abusive president in history. Bold prediction. I don't think he'll have fingerprints anywhere near the actions of his subordinates. Allowing this stupidity by seeing the reports and doing nothing is one thing, but being dumb enough to have anything in writing is quite another. It's another stain on his administration most likely, but nothing personal to the man. I think the real juice will be the anticipatory classified leaks to the major newspapers to soften the news before it breaks. Yeah, like a day after posting this we get the start. The CIA is exposed in the probe for its role in starting the investigation. This time it's the New York Times that got the leak. Good thing the NYT did not reveal the name in obtaining the info. It's likely that Barr too will censor. https://twitter.com/jabeale/status/1131971172629995520Show nested quote +WASHINGTON — President Trump’s order allowing Attorney General William P. Barr to declassify any intelligence that sparked the opening of the Russia investigation sets up a potential confrontation with the C.I.A., including over the possible implications for a person close to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia who provided information to the C.I.A. about his involvement in Moscow’s 2016 election interference.
The concern about the source, who is believed to be still alive, is one of several issues raised by Mr. Trump’s decision to use the intelligence to pursue his political enemies. It has also prompted fears from former national security officials and Democratic lawmakers that other sources or methods of intelligence gathering — among the government’s most closely held secrets — could be made public, not because of leaks to the news media that the administration denounces, but because the president has determined it suits his political purposes.
Mr. Trump granted Mr. Barr’s request for sweeping new authorities to conduct his review of how the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia were investigated. The president ordered the C.I.A. and the other intelligence agencies to cooperate, granting Mr. Barr the authority to unilaterally declassify their documents and thus significant leverage over the intelligence community.
On Friday afternoon, Mr. Trump, heading to his helicopter on the beginning of a trip to Japan, defended his decision and said the declassification would be sweeping. “What are we doing, we are exposing everything,” he told reporters. “We are being transparent.” He expressed no qualms about any national security implications.
Intelligence officials have feared before that their findings were being twisted to political agendas — notably concerns during the run-up to the Iraq war that information about Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction was being cherry-picked to justify combat. But Mr. Trump’s decision is different.
It allows Mr. Barr, who has used the charged term “spying” to describe efforts to investigate the Trump campaign, sole discretion to declassify the intelligence behind the F.B.I.’s decision to begin investigating whether any Trump aides or associates were working with the Russians. It also raises the specter that officials ranging from the F.B.I. to the C.I.A. to the National Security Agency, which was monitoring Russian officials, will be questioned about their sources and their intent.
The order could be tremendously damaging to the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies, drying up sources and inhibiting their ability to gather intelligence, said Representative Adam Schiff, Democrat of California and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
“The president now seems intent on declassifying intelligence to weaponize it,” Mr. Schiff said in an interview.
Mr. Trump has long held that he was a target of the “deep state,’’ at various points accusing former President Barack Obama without evidence of tapping his phones, the F.B.I. of secretly trying to undermine his candidacy and past intelligence chiefs of bending their findings to prove Russian involvement in his election victory.
He has repeatedly appeared to side with Mr. Putin’s contention that there is no evidence of a Russian campaign to sabotage the 2016 election, even though the Mueller report left no question that the Russian leadership was behind both the theft and publication of emails and other data from Democrats and a social media campaign that ultimately worked to boost Mr. Trump’s candidacy, as well as efforts to tamper with election registration systems.
But it is the human source that particularly worries some former and current intelligence officials. Long nurtured by the C.I.A., the source rose to a position that enabled the informant to provide key information in 2016 about the Russian leadership’s role in the interference campaign.
John O. Brennan, the C.I.A. director under Mr. Obama, would bring reports from the source directly to the White House, keeping them out of the president’s daily intelligence briefing for fear that the briefing document was too widely disseminated. Instead, he would place them in an envelope for Mr. Obama and a tiny circle of aides to read.
The source provided evidence for one of the last major intelligence conclusions that Mr. Obama made public before leaving office: that Mr. Putin himself was behind the Russia hack.
John Sipher, a former C.I.A. official who led Russia operations for the agency, expressed concern that giving the president names of sources or agency officials who oversaw those informants could put those secrets at risk because they would inevitably be more widely disseminated.
“If the president of the United States asks for a name, it would be hard not to provide a name,” Mr. Sipher said. “It wouldn’t do him any good unless he sent it around to people to look into it, and that is where the security problem is, obviously.”
Mr. Schiff pledged that his committee would pay close attention to all of Mr. Barr’s actions in the inquiry. “We are going to expose any abuse, any politicization of intelligence,” he said. NYT
My guess is that this "source" was already outed in the Kavalec notes regarding her interview with Steele. And if it is one of the people named in those notes, then Brennan is going to have some explaining to do. Everything that has been made public so far corroborates the theory that the CIA information was the same as the FBI information -- ie it was the garbage from Steele/FusionGPS. We'll see, though.
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On May 24 2019 20:13 iamthedave wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2019 12:08 Mohdoo wrote:
There was once a time where the last few pages would have never looked anything like this. This thread is in a very bad place right now. What in particular looks so out of place to your eyes? Show nested quote +On May 24 2019 18:05 Dangermousecatdog wrote:On May 24 2019 14:56 Artisreal wrote:On May 24 2019 08:29 Velr wrote:
Yeah, because you like to bash everything, glory to the revolution whiteout a solution. Gogogo.
Seriously, your the worst of the lot.There is a reason most grown ups don't spout the revolution bullshit, i'm sure you will one day arrive at that point. Gh points to many unsolved problems. the nature of them being unsolved involves thinking out of the box. the lightbulb wasnt invented through continuous development of the candle. Without a radical overhaul of how many of us think, we won't solve the problems we face. Climate change and the Conservative positions in the US regarding it are a clear sign for that. It's delusional to think we can continue the trodden paths The problem is that He has no solutions. Just Rev rev rev revolution! Abolish the police. Reeee! He uses words to make himself sound clever with no idea of what they mean, and refuses to explain those words because he has no idea what he means either. Having no solutions, a sense of disatisfaction comes with honestly engaging with him, as he doesn't engage sincerely with you. I actually agree with many of GH central tenants, but the way he puts them about just looks terrible. Climate change is a problem. Police brutality in USA is a problem. Chanting about revolution without writing what this revolution entails or why you think it is the only, or best option is just a single meaningless word, chanted ad nauseum, devoid of meaning, without interaction. It's just a one sided interaction, like when iplaynettles come down here with his empty one-liners he thinks is so clever and leaves. Also there's something rather Orwellian about xdaunt's continued focus on Hillary/Obama. He is obviously being fed information from a media source. It's like 2 minutes hate. You have to spend two minutes reading on who you have to hate. I'm not really sure why this is the bar for entry. GH isn't the President, and if he was he wouldn't be in this thread (though admittedly Trump's lowered the bar so far I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that Trump had an account on The_Donald and future Presidents engage in twitter wars with randoms on the internet and then arrange predator drone strikes on their houses when they get embarrassed). He also doesn't just say those things. GH's position has ALWAYS been clearly elucidated; he feels the structural corruption is so severe that the institutions he calls for revolution on cannot be fixed by reform. The fact that any time people talk about reforming the police the discussion just kind of meanders off into silence reveals that he has a point, too. He knows exactly what the words mean, and he generally communicates at a fairly 'low' level (by which I mean he doesn't elevate his language to the level he probably could to make it easier to understand; compare to Igne, who always uses the most elevated language he has available for the difference in approach) to make sure we can all follow him to the spring. The fact people continuously mis-characterise his stance on things (mocking the conclusions and ignoring the clearly explained steps that got him there) is one of the more annoying facets of how the thread's always dealt with him. He's also gone into detail about how he thinks such a revolution could play out with the police. Sure it was flawed to hell and back, but to make the claim GH 'doesn't know what the word means' or 'hasn't thought it through' is just plain lying. The posts are in this very thread. There's nothing wrong with disagreeing with his stance, but don't pretend he doesn't have one.
No GH isn't US President, but we are all in this thread to express and discuss our thoughts and ideas are we not? If he knows what he means, he sure does a pretty bad job at explaining elucidating it. For instance just now there there was another poster who had to define revolution to another revolution to another poster, in order to carry the conversation forward, but GH's response was to completely ignore all that and we are still completely clueless as to what this means, and what this entails. GH does well enough starting a topic of conversation, following a line of thought or fleshing out a concept is what is required for an actual conversation that includes himself, rather than being offended if others offer alternative views or definitions, in a lack of one, or one which is anappropriate, for where is the discussion to be had of that?
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No. There is zero obligation connected with stating that the current (police) system in the US is not capable of treating people fairly. There's also ample evidence to make the argument compelling that it's beyond reform (tried and failed).
What else than a complete (revolutionary) overhaul is an option here?
The status quo isn't an option, and nobody but GH ever presented anything resembling an idea - as far as my memory holds - of how to properly adress the issue. Some might say there isn't (enough of) an issue in the first place - though tbh this is laughable. To me it seems that his position, police being beyond reform, is share or accepted by some, but a different conclusion from it having to be removed, is drawn from the judgement of its current state.
It's ridiculous to assume that he's obligated to present the solution to this problem, just to get the conversation started or even people to accept, that the status quo is a severe problem for many citizens.
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On May 25 2019 05:24 Ben... wrote:Show nested quote +On May 25 2019 03:10 Gorsameth wrote:On May 25 2019 02:56 xDaunt wrote:
I think such a position on obstruction would be political suicide for democrats, especially when people understand that Trump’s political opponents are behind the investigation. Trump is behind his investigation because he publicly fired the FBI director for investigation his friend in relation to 'the Russia thing'. How are Trumps political opponents behind it when Rosenstein authorised it? Or are you saying Rosenstein is a Trump opponent? And how does that square with him being appointed as deputy AG by Trump? I see this same bullshit is happening with Christopher Wray right now. He's being lambasted by conservative media because he isn't seemingly willing to play team ball, unlike Barr. Wray was a Trump appointee too. They just seem pissed off that he actually wants to do his job well and be independent. It's both hilarious and quite scary. edit: And to the point on the previous page about people not saying this investigation of the investigation should be stopped, yeah exactly. It'll probably end up like Benghazi, Her Emails, or any of the other nonsense investigations they've done. People who are actually competent and do the right thing don't worry about this type of stuff. It's what makes the behaviour of the Republicans so suspicious to the rest of the world. They act guilty and are too incompetent to realize that they are acting as such. The thing with Republicans, and this more recent brand of conservatives in general (we see the same type of shit here in Canada, but to a slightly lesser extent), is that they always project what they are doing. They assume "the other side" is doing untoward things in investigations because they themselves would likely do so in the same position. They claim the other side is rigging elections because they themselves are attempting to do so, as we have seen with all of the gerrymandering nonsense and that case in North Carolina where there was actual election fraud perpetuated by a Republican. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to see what they're doing.
What's suspicious is how contravening evidence is ignored for partisan reasons. People think ill of Republicans around here and most of the internet. This is then used to ignore actual oversight and investigations of misconduct.
The semantics on spy and spying is one of them. Among the things we now know happened are: foreign intelligence assets, secret wiretaps, unmasking, national security letters, and other informants to secretly gather information for the government. All that amounts to spying. You might think it has too negative of a term, because some spying may have legal basis, but it's spying all the same. NYT is famous for using "FBI sent cloaked investigator" and "FBI sent investigator posing as assistant" for using multiple overseas and domestic intelligence assets against the Trump campaign. All the while they never told the Trump campaign they suspected some members of foreign ties.
Well, it's not the term I would use. Lots of people have different colloquial phrases. I believe that the FBI is engaged in investigative activity, and part of investigative activity includes surveillance. As an aside, Wray's nondenial denial is pretty weak too.
I have been trying to justify all the professed ignorance on the specific matter, together with sweeping conclusions based on the ignorance. Why state so surely that this is a nonsense investigation, when you haven't done any real looking into the facts? The Comey Memo on the FISA investigation, now the Kavalec notes, showing that the dossier had no business being used to justify wiretaps. The FISA applicadtion included assertions that Steele was reliable and unaware of any derogatory information pertaining, patently false considering all the facts the FBI had about the dossier and Steele prior to applying for surveillance. One political campaign getting the government to spy on a rival campaign is a very serious deal. Imagine Trump using some flimsy oppo document to put Biden's campaign under investigation, while selectively leaking juicy parts to the press.
Secondarily, with the elections, the US left is currently in denial about Stacey Abrams and Andrew Gillum's assertions that they were the true winners. They lost by margins above anything claimed in voter suppression studies. It didn't stop them from making the claim, and it hasn't stopped the left from trying to say Trump's a unique figure in his assessment of the impact of illegal alien votes. It's nonsense, and borrowing a phrase, it proves the Democrats don't really care about the underpinnings of Democracy when it suits them. It doesn't take a "rocket surgeon" to see the clear double standard, and it doesn't take much heroism to buck the trend and condemn the actions of Abrams and Gillum to have moral authority on Trump. Sadly, it's pretty lacking around these parts. Trump thrives on the double standards of his critics--it's his life-blood.
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Sigh.
Except we know that Trump's Campaign was warned about Flynn.
Stop lying Danglers.
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On May 25 2019 05:31 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On May 25 2019 03:25 Danglars wrote:On May 24 2019 11:29 Danglars wrote:On May 24 2019 10:39 xDaunt wrote:On May 24 2019 10:30 Danglars wrote:
Finally we'll have the surveillance info. Barr was pretty quick with the giant Mueller report release, so hopefully he can carry this out with great speed too. Americans deserve answers on the surveillance campaign and actions of domestic spies. Brennan, Comey, Clapper, and the other Obama-era agency heads are toast. But here’s my big prediction: Obama himself is going to be implicated in authorizing and directing the unlawful spying on Americans. The biggest winner here will be the ghost of Nixon, because Obama is going to supplant him as being the most abusive president in history. Bold prediction. I don't think he'll have fingerprints anywhere near the actions of his subordinates. Allowing this stupidity by seeing the reports and doing nothing is one thing, but being dumb enough to have anything in writing is quite another. It's another stain on his administration most likely, but nothing personal to the man. I think the real juice will be the anticipatory classified leaks to the major newspapers to soften the news before it breaks. Yeah, like a day after posting this we get the start. The CIA is exposed in the probe for its role in starting the investigation. This time it's the New York Times that got the leak. Good thing the NYT did not reveal the name in obtaining the info. It's likely that Barr too will censor. https://twitter.com/jabeale/status/1131971172629995520WASHINGTON — President Trump’s order allowing Attorney General William P. Barr to declassify any intelligence that sparked the opening of the Russia investigation sets up a potential confrontation with the C.I.A., including over the possible implications for a person close to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia who provided information to the C.I.A. about his involvement in Moscow’s 2016 election interference.
The concern about the source, who is believed to be still alive, is one of several issues raised by Mr. Trump’s decision to use the intelligence to pursue his political enemies. It has also prompted fears from former national security officials and Democratic lawmakers that other sources or methods of intelligence gathering — among the government’s most closely held secrets — could be made public, not because of leaks to the news media that the administration denounces, but because the president has determined it suits his political purposes.
Mr. Trump granted Mr. Barr’s request for sweeping new authorities to conduct his review of how the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia were investigated. The president ordered the C.I.A. and the other intelligence agencies to cooperate, granting Mr. Barr the authority to unilaterally declassify their documents and thus significant leverage over the intelligence community.
On Friday afternoon, Mr. Trump, heading to his helicopter on the beginning of a trip to Japan, defended his decision and said the declassification would be sweeping. “What are we doing, we are exposing everything,” he told reporters. “We are being transparent.” He expressed no qualms about any national security implications.
Intelligence officials have feared before that their findings were being twisted to political agendas — notably concerns during the run-up to the Iraq war that information about Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction was being cherry-picked to justify combat. But Mr. Trump’s decision is different.
It allows Mr. Barr, who has used the charged term “spying” to describe efforts to investigate the Trump campaign, sole discretion to declassify the intelligence behind the F.B.I.’s decision to begin investigating whether any Trump aides or associates were working with the Russians. It also raises the specter that officials ranging from the F.B.I. to the C.I.A. to the National Security Agency, which was monitoring Russian officials, will be questioned about their sources and their intent.
The order could be tremendously damaging to the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies, drying up sources and inhibiting their ability to gather intelligence, said Representative Adam Schiff, Democrat of California and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
“The president now seems intent on declassifying intelligence to weaponize it,” Mr. Schiff said in an interview.
Mr. Trump has long held that he was a target of the “deep state,’’ at various points accusing former President Barack Obama without evidence of tapping his phones, the F.B.I. of secretly trying to undermine his candidacy and past intelligence chiefs of bending their findings to prove Russian involvement in his election victory.
He has repeatedly appeared to side with Mr. Putin’s contention that there is no evidence of a Russian campaign to sabotage the 2016 election, even though the Mueller report left no question that the Russian leadership was behind both the theft and publication of emails and other data from Democrats and a social media campaign that ultimately worked to boost Mr. Trump’s candidacy, as well as efforts to tamper with election registration systems.
But it is the human source that particularly worries some former and current intelligence officials. Long nurtured by the C.I.A., the source rose to a position that enabled the informant to provide key information in 2016 about the Russian leadership’s role in the interference campaign.
John O. Brennan, the C.I.A. director under Mr. Obama, would bring reports from the source directly to the White House, keeping them out of the president’s daily intelligence briefing for fear that the briefing document was too widely disseminated. Instead, he would place them in an envelope for Mr. Obama and a tiny circle of aides to read.
The source provided evidence for one of the last major intelligence conclusions that Mr. Obama made public before leaving office: that Mr. Putin himself was behind the Russia hack.
John Sipher, a former C.I.A. official who led Russia operations for the agency, expressed concern that giving the president names of sources or agency officials who oversaw those informants could put those secrets at risk because they would inevitably be more widely disseminated.
“If the president of the United States asks for a name, it would be hard not to provide a name,” Mr. Sipher said. “It wouldn’t do him any good unless he sent it around to people to look into it, and that is where the security problem is, obviously.”
Mr. Schiff pledged that his committee would pay close attention to all of Mr. Barr’s actions in the inquiry. “We are going to expose any abuse, any politicization of intelligence,” he said. NYT My guess is that this "source" was already outed in the Kavalec notes regarding her interview with Steele. And if it is one of the people named in those notes, then Brennan is going to have some explaining to do. Everything that has been made public so far corroborates the theory that the CIA information was the same as the FBI information -- ie it was the garbage from Steele/FusionGPS. We'll see, though.
I really doubt it. The NYT talked about a high placed official that "rose to a position that enabled the informant to provide key information in 2016 about the Russian leadership's role in the interference campaign." The Kavalec notes, by contrast, are entirely unredacted. If Steele stumbled upon a highly placed intelligence source and put material obtained from him/her into his dossier, then state department notes containing his name would "out him" and be redacted prior to publication.
On the question of DOJ fighting FBI/CIA for classified documents relating to the counterintelligence investigation of Trump/other investigations of Trump relating to the 2016 campaign:
Barr's obviously garnered a reputation for no-nonsense investigating, based on his Congressional committee interviews and releases from his office. He's well prepared for any bullshit the CIA and FBI try to pull to keep the head of their branch of government from lawfully declassifying information. You can see the separation of powers and upholding of constitutional governance permeating his testimony thus far. I wonder how much fight officials with their reputation on the line will put up? After all, the DOJ, probably from FBI recommendation, absurdly tried to say the Nunes memo contained confidential sources and methods and could not be released. Barr looks ready for the fight, so I think even stiff opposition will delay things but not prevent the release of the necessary documents.
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On May 25 2019 06:30 Gorsameth wrote:
Sigh.
Except we know that Trump's Campaign was warned about Flynn.
Stop lying Danglers.
Carter Page, George Papadopoulos. Read my post. Flynn was not the subject of FISA warrants for surveillance and multiple spies run against the campaign. Stop trying to distract from the case.
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On May 25 2019 05:24 Plansix wrote:The investigation of the investigation should happen, if only so we can stop hearing about the cover up. Edit: the head of the CIA pointing out the Bill Barr that it’s on him if releasing any classified information get someone hurt or worse. https://twitter.com/nahaltoosi/status/1132004403848908802
What will happen if Trump really declares war on the IC and they actually start working against him instead of just trying to counter Russia?
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On May 25 2019 07:08 CuddlyCuteKitten wrote:What will happen if Trump really declares war on the IC and they actually start working against him instead of just trying to counter Russia?
That isn't going to be a problem. This is just the head of the CIA reminding Barr that the CIA isn't part of the justice department and they will march right up to the House of Representatives if Barr releases information that could endanger a source or agency that is assisting the US. Because once these bridges are burned in the international community, they cannot be rebuilt.
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The IC "working against him instead of just trying to counter Russia" would just prompt another investigation and legislative reform. The CIA, NSA, and FBI are subordinate departments within the executive branch, headed by the President. An IC working against the executive branch purposefully needs legislation to follow the hierarchy of the department. Any presidential/staff abuses should be brought up to the OIG if they exist. Any redactions (they do have a duty to protect sources/methods from political actors, keep classified information out of the press) are not truly "working against him."
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On May 25 2019 06:03 Artisreal wrote:
No. There is zero obligation connected with stating that the current (police) system in the US is not capable of treating people fairly. There's also ample evidence to make the argument compelling that it's beyond reform (tried and failed).
What else than a complete (revolutionary) overhaul is an option here?
The status quo isn't an option, and nobody but GH ever presented anything resembling an idea - as far as my memory holds - of how to properly adress the issue. Some might say there isn't (enough of) an issue in the first place - though tbh this is laughable. To me it seems that his position, police being beyond reform, is share or accepted by some, but a different conclusion from it having to be removed, is drawn from the judgement of its current state.
It's ridiculous to assume that he's obligated to present the solution to this problem, just to get the conversation started or even people to accept, that the status quo is a severe problem for many citizens.
You're being silly. You can't just throw mud from your moral high ground and expect to be rewarded for your contribution to the enviorment. GH isn't presenting an idea, this is the precise point most people arguing with him have about "abolishing the police". Hes asking for mass murder and the burning down of all civilization because the status quo is less then ideal.
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EPT
