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Jamie_B

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Either that or the witch hunt continues...

 

I hope for either a smoking gun, or an end to the charade.

 

All this time spent with basically NOTHING to show for it....

 

and STILL nothing’s being done to protect our children more.

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8 minutes ago, USN Bengal said:

Either that or the witch hunt continues...

 

I hope for either a smoking gun, or an end to the charade.

 

All this time spent with basically NOTHING to show for it....

 

and STILL nothing’s being done to protect our children more.

 

 

Witch hunt? Nothing to show for it?

 

22 indictments,  4 guilty pleas. 

 

All kinds of smoke. 

 

That House Intel investigation was a joke from the start.

Nunes has worked harder to muddy the waters and carry water for Trump than anything else.

They'd call people in and they would refuse to answer questions and not be forced to answer.

I actually am not surprise nor do I care that it ended. The real investigation is still going strong.

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You sound like you’re reading directly from the Hillary Clinton/DNC/CNN storybook.

 

So with all the “evidence”, if they turned their eyes to EVERYONE who was supposedly using the Russians to get dirt, why aren’t there any democrats being charged?

 

Come on old... BOTH of our esteemed parties have been using whatever they can to throw shit against the wall to see if it sticks.

 

Of the indictments and guilty pleas, how many of them had ANYTHING to do with collusion?

 

None... and the bottom line is that O believe there has ALWAYS been collusion going on with ALL parties.

 

The only reason it’s come to a head this time is the DNCs embarrassment and refusal to “practice what they preach” about accepting election results.

 

Asshats all, donkeys and elephants.

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Yeah dont know how anyone can say its all BS when people are getting arrested over this. That seems weird.

 

 

I mean I too thought it was all spilt milk from the Clintonistas at first but people getting arrested seems to kind of indicate something might be going on.

 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

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Investigate them all, and you’ll see arrests in the hundreds I’m sure... and there still isn’t any smoking gun related to collusion. Did the Russians take out ads on Facebook? Probably, and they’ve probably been doing it on other places since the damn internet was made available to the public... as we’ve probably done to them.

 

Proof? There’s been all kinds of proof that both parties have been involved in shady dealings with the Russians, where are all the democrats that should be arrested?

 

Thats why it’s a witch hunt... if you find anything, go after ALL who have done wrong... not just the selected bad guys.

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10 hours ago, USN Bengal said:

You sound like you’re reading directly from the Hillary Clinton/DNC/CNN storybook.

 

So with all the “evidence”, if they turned their eyes to EVERYONE who was supposedly using the Russians to get dirt, why aren’t there any democrats being charged?

 

Come on old... BOTH of our esteemed parties have been using whatever they can to throw shit against the wall to see if it sticks.

 

Of the indictments and guilty pleas, how many of them had ANYTHING to do with collusion?

 

None... and the bottom line is that O believe there has ALWAYS been collusion going on with ALL parties.

 

The only reason it’s come to a head this time is the DNCs embarrassment and refusal to “practice what they preach” about accepting election results.

 

Asshats all, donkeys and elephants.

 

 

 

No I am reading from THE FACT BOOK.

 

Trump went to Russia in 2013 for the Miss Universe. FACT

In 2014 Russia decided it was going to attack our election. FACT

They prefered Trump over Hillary and tried to help his campaign. FACT

In 2015 Michael Flynn went to Russia and met with Putin. FACT

Jeff Sessions met with Russians and lied about it. And had to recuse himself. FACT

Michael Flynn met with Russians and lied about it. FACT'

Micheal Flynn was texting about removing sanctions during the Inaguration. FACT

Carter Page was cultivated by the Russian spies in 2013. And then Trump names him a Foreign Advisor. FACT

Paul Manafort was a Putin stooge for over 15 years and Trump made him the head of his campaign and 

during the RNC they took out language put there by the RNC that wasn't Russian friendly. FACT

Ever since the election, Trump has attacked Oprah and his own staff more than Putin. FACT.

Immediately after the election, the first thing the new administration did was look into  removing 

sanctions on Russia. FACT

Eric Prince went to the Seychelles Islands to set up a back channel between Trump and Putin. FACT

And Prince lied about it to the House Intel Committee. FACT

Congress voted 517-5 to impose sanctions on Russia for meddling in our election. FACT

Trump waited until the deadline and said "Those sanctions weren't needed. FACT

Those sanctions are supposed to be LAW and not something Trump could just say no to. FACT

The State Dept was granted $120 million to fight against the Russians and their information warfare.

To this day, even though the Russians are still attacking us,  ZERO has been spent. FACT

Donald Trump Jr met with Russians, lied about the reason for the meeting. FACT

Donald Trump Jr and Roger Stone had communications with Wikileaks before and during them leaking DNC emails. FACT

Jared Kushner talked to the Russians and wanted to have a way to communicate with their government, from their embassy, so that

they FBI and CIA couldn't hear what was being said. FACT

 

That is just off the top of my head. And just what I know at 7:19 in the morning. I don't have much time before work.

But if there is "no there, there", then why all the lying and shadiness?

And just because there hasn't been any charges for collusion yet, DOES NOT mean there wasn't any.

 

For some one that claims to hate both sides, you sure seem to spout off FOX NEWS talking points and ignore the FACTS in this case.

 

Now please tell me where the Democrats colluded with Russia. And if you mention the Steele Dossier or Uranium One, you're disqualified.

 

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1 hour ago, oldschooler said:

 

 

 

No I am reading from THE FACT BOOK.

 

Trump went to Russia in 2013 for the Miss Universe. FACT

In 2014 Russia decided it was going to attack our election. FACT

They prefered Trump over Hillary and tried to help his campaign. FACT

In 2015 Michael Flynn went to Russia and met with Putin. FACT

Jeff Sessions met with Russians and lied about it. And had to recuse himself. FACT

Michael Flynn met with Russians and lied about it. FACT'

Micheal Flynn was texting about removing sanctions during the Inaguration. FACT

Carter Page was cultivated by the Russian spies in 2013. And then Trump names him a Foreign Advisor. FACT

Paul Manafort was a Putin stooge for over 15 years and Trump made him the head of his campaign and 

during the RNC they took out language put there by the RNC that wasn't Russian friendly. FACT

Ever since the election, Trump has attacked Oprah and his own staff more than Putin. FACT.

Immediately after the election, the first thing the new administration did was look into  removing 

sanctions on Russia. FACT

Eric Prince went to the Seychelles Islands to set up a back channel between Trump and Putin. FACT

And Prince lied about it to the House Intel Committee. FACT

Congress voted 517-5 to impose sanctions on Russia for meddling in our election. FACT

Trump waited until the deadline and said "Those sanctions weren't needed. FACT

Those sanctions are supposed to be LAW and not something Trump could just say no to. FACT

The State Dept was granted $120 million to fight against the Russians and their information warfare.

To this day, even though the Russians are still attacking us,  ZERO has been spent. FACT

Donald Trump Jr met with Russians, lied about the reason for the meeting. FACT

Donald Trump Jr and Roger Stone had communications with Wikileaks before and during them leaking DNC emails. FACT

Jared Kushner talked to the Russians and wanted to have a way to communicate with their government, from their embassy, so that

they FBI and CIA couldn't hear what was being said. FACT

 

That is just off the top of my head. And just what I know at 7:19 in the morning. I don't have much time before work.

But if there is "no there, there", then why all the lying and shadiness?

And just because there hasn't been any charges for collusion yet, DOES NOT mean there wasn't any.

 

For some one that claims to hate both sides, you sure seem to spout off FOX NEWS talking points and ignore the FACTS in this case.

 

Now please tell me where the Democrats colluded with Russia. And if you mention the Steele Dossier or Uranium One, you're disqualified.

 

LMAO!

 

How can you even put up the facade of a conversation when YOU won't acknowledge the facts? Here is an editorial that presents the OTHER side that looks at the FACTS about what the Mueller probe just did;

 

https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/mueller-investigation-13-indictments-trump-russia-collusion/

 

For more than a year, Democrats have been pushing the story that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to steal the election from Hillary Clinton. But the evidence keeps piling up indicating that it was Democrats, wittingly or not, who've been helping Russia achieve its real meddling goals.

The latest comes from the indictments issued Friday by Special Counsel Robert Mueller against 13 Russians accused of illegally meddling in the U.S. political system. This has been taken by Trump critics as proof that Russia did, indeed, conspire to meddle in the election.

But if you read the indictments, look at the Facebook ads, the Trump "dossier" and other evidence, it becomes clear that the goal of this meddling wasn't to elect Trump, but to create anger, hostility, bitterness, and discord in the U.S.

Mueller Indictment

Consider what's quoted in the indictment as the goals of these Russians:

  • The Organization's stated goal was "spread(ing) distrust toward the candidates and the political system in general."
  • Specialists were directed to create "politician intensity through supporting radical groups, users dissatisfied with (the) social and economic situation and oppositional social movements."
  • The Organization controlled Facebook pages that "addressed a range of issues, including immigration (with group names including "Secured Borders"); the Black Lives Matter movement(with group names including "Blacktivist"); religion (with group names including "United Muslims of America" and "Army of Jesus"); and certain geographic regions.
  • In June 2016, the Russians used the Facebook group "United Muslims of America" to promote a rally called "Support Hillary. Save American Muslims."

Although not in the indictment itself, it's already been reported that in May 2016, two Russian-backed groups — "Heart of Texas" and "United Muslims of America" — organized both pro- and anti-Muslim rallies outside an Islamic center in Houston, where the two rallies squared off.

Notice what's missing here? Any mention of electing Trump president. Over and over again, the stated goal of these groups, according to Mueller's indictment, wasn't to get Trump elected, but to set Americans at each other's throats.

Facebook and Social Media

The indictment makes much of the ads these Russians bought on Facebook, and it suggests that these efforts were designed to disparage Clinton and support Trump.

But the Facebook VP of Ad Product Rob Goldman reviewed every ad in question, and noted in a series of tweets over the weekend that " I can say very definitively that swaying the election was *NOT* the main goal."

 

Most of the ads didn't mention the election or any candidate. A quarter of them weren't seen by anybody. And, as Goldman notes, "The majority of the Russian ad spend happened AFTER the election."

How does this point to a Russian effort to elect Trump? It doesn't. But as Goldman notes with apparent frustration, nobody wants to hear that.

"We shared that fact, but very few outlets have covered it because it doesn't align with the main media narrative of Tump (sic) and the election."

We noted in this space last October that other examples of Russia's "meddling" didn't support the Democrats claims, either. One campaign was called "Don't Shoot Us." Among other things, tried to encourage those playing the augmented reality game  Pokémon Go to find and train Pokémon near locations where alleged incidents of police brutality had taken place, and name their Pokémon after the victims.

In case anyone has forgotten, police brutality and social justice reform were Democrat issues.

Anti-Trump Rallies

The Mueller indictment also points out that the Russians organized rallies in favor of Trump. But they also organized at least two anti-Trump rallies after the election.

The Russians "organized a rally in New York called 'Trump is NOT my President' held on or about November 12, 2016."

They "organized a rally entitled 'Charlotte Against Trump' in Charlotte, North Carolina, held on or about November 19, 2016."

It's worth noting that the New York rally received extensive coverage from the mainstream press, who were apparently uninterested in the rally's sponsorship.

Trump Dossier

Even the much-ballyhooed Trump dossier fails to support a claim that Russia was bent on getting Trump elected. If that were the case, why would top Russian officials have been feeding dirt to Christopher Steele, who then tried to peddle it to the press before the election?

"If any part of the Steele dossier is accurate, Russia was playing both sides of the fence," noted Real Clear Politics Washington bureau chief Carl Cannon.

Election Polls

The Mueller indictment does allege that these Russian operations were "primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, to denigrate other candidates such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald Trump."

But think about this for a moment. No one in the U.S. or around the world thought Trump had any chance of winning the election. On the day of the election itself, the highly cited poll analysis group FiveThirtyEight gave Trump a 28.6% chance of winning the election.

When the Russian efforts were supposedly going on in earnest, FiveThirtyEight put Trump's odds in the teens. (In the end, the IBD/TIPP poll was one of the only national polls to show a Trump victory.)

It's more likely that those anti-Hillary efforts weren't designed to help defeat her, but to weaken her presidency after she got elected, just as the Russian-informed Trump "dossier" has weakened Trump's presidency.

The Real Co-Conspirators

So, to sum up: There's been no credible evidence presented so far — none — of any collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia to sway the November election, despite more than a year-and-a-half of relentless FBI and media investigations.

But there is growing evidence that, as Facebook's Goldman put it:

"The main goal of the Russian propaganda and misinformation effort is to divide America by using our institutions, like free speech and social media, against us. It has stoked fear and hatred amongst Americans. It is working incredibly well. We are quite divided as a nation."

Indeed it has worked incredibly well.

The problem is that Democrats and the mainstream press will never admit any of this, because if they did, they'd also be admitting that they were co-conspirators in this nefarious Russian campaign to undermine America's democratic institutions.

During the Cold War, there was a label for Americans who unwittingly did Russia's bidding — "useful idiots."

 

Perhaps it's time to resurrect this label.

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SO what I see happening is just what I said happened...

 

BOTH of our DISGUSTING political parties are using collusion, AND ALWAYS HAVE BEEN!

 

Why do you say "For some one that claims to hate both sides, you sure seem to spout off FOX NEWS talking points and ignore the FACTS in this case." 

All I have continued to do is call out the FACTS that you seem to ignore;

 

DNC is just as guilty, and you make don't want to even TALK about the democrats wrongdoing... you're so hung up on your hatred for Trump that you don't WANT to see the wrongdoing.

 

Here... a New York Post article on the democrats and their spin doctoring;

 

https://nypost.com/2018/01/04/democrats-dishonest-scramble-to-disown-the-trump-dossier/

 

Democrats have been quoting from the infamous anti-Trump “Steele dossier” as if it were gospel, but now that Hillary Clinton has been revealed as its paymaster and a Hillary-friendly FBI is under investigation for possibly launching the Trump-Russia “collusion” probe under its false pretenses, they are suddenly in full retreat from it.

Their credibility is in tatters along with the discredited document.

 

Rep. Adam Schiff, who’s led the Democrats’ “collusion” inquisition as vice chair of the House Intelligence Committee, fully embraced the dossier from the moment the panel kicked off a public hearing in March with then-FBI Director James Comey. The California Dem eagerly read into the record its unfounded criminal accusations against Trump campaign advisers.

Since then, Schiff has dramatically changed his tune to one of caution and even regret: “I certainly would have liked to know who paid for it earlier.”

And he admits it “still remains to be seen” if the gossip against former Trump adviser Carter Page he read aloud and broadcast to the world, with McCarthyite relish, is actually true. In a recent closed-door meeting with Schiff, Page denied under oath the dossier’s claim that he met with two Kremlin officials to end US sanctions on Russia in exchange for bribes.

Also beating a hasty retreat from the dossier is Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), a colleague of Schiff’s on the House Intelligence Committee.

“There may very well be errors in the dossier,” Himes conceded Wednesday to CNN, even though he had also cited the document repeatedly and vouched for its contents.

Over in the Senate, Democrat Mark Warner, who’s been leading the effort in that chamber to frame Trump as a Kremlin-backed traitor, is suddenly having reservations about the dossier he previously touted.

 

Firm behind Trump dossier accuses Congress of 'conspiracy theories'

 

“Much of it still remains a real question of whether it is true or not,” the ranking Democratic member of the Senate Intelligence Committee said, adding, “It’s obviously very inflammatory.”

Democrats’ new mission is to bury the dossier, and the media are providing them the shovel.

The New York Times now reports “it was not [the dossier]” but other factors, including a tip from an Australian diplomat, that triggered the Russia probe.

On cue, Democrats are using the report to help them downplay their own party’s opposition-research paper and make it look like the now-obvious political smears were never a big factor in their witch hunt, either.

Even the Democratic opposition-research firm Hillary hired is distancing itself from the dossier it subcontracted.

While Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS claims “we’re extremely proud of our work,” nowhere in his defensive op-ed in the Times earlier this week does he specifically defend that work. Astoundingly, he’s completely silent about the dossier’s core claim that ginned up this whole alleged scandal — that Trump officials and Russian intelligence worked together to hack the Democrats and spread stolen emails.

Instead, he changed the subject to “money laundering” and “financial ties,” which were never part of the “stolen election” narrative that Democrats have flogged to dog the presidency without end.

 

“We don’t believe the Steele dossier was the trigger for the FBI’s investigation into Russian meddling,” Simpson now maintains, even though the dossier’s author, ex-British spy Christopher Steele, worked closely with the FBI, while Simpson met with a top Justice official married to one of his researchers, to make sure the dossier’s wild allegations were taken seriously by investigators.

This is damage control.

What we have here is the miniaturization of the scandal as originally presented. The conspiracy-mongers are receding and retracting from their original accusations and smears in a fit of anxiety over what Congress will uncover about the Obama Justice Department’s reliance on this Democrat-underwritten dossier.

Its shameless Democratic promoters got everyone lathered up over a false conspiracy theory, and now they’re realizing they overreached and are running for the exits, revising history, recasting narratives, covering their keisters.

They led the nation on a wild goose chase, and now they fear the reckoning.

Paul Sperry is a former Hoover Institution media fellow and author of several books, including the bestseller “Infiltration.”

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Now let's go to the next step... a rebirth of "McCarthyism" and fascism... basically what the democratic side has been doing since they lost the election.

 

http://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/368158-democrats-search-for-russians-any-russians-for-collusion-story

 

Do you know or have you ever known anyone of Russian descent? Think carefully, because the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence could well be interested in your answer.

In a letter from the Democratic senior minority counsel for the committee, April Doss, various individuals and groups were told to reveal not just any Russian citizens with which they have associated but anyone that an organization “knows or has reason to believe [is] of Russian nationality or descent.” Any degree of Russian blood.

The demand from the Senate raises serious issues of free speech and associational rights. Suspicion based on nationality has a long and dark history in the United States, a history being ignored in the rush to incriminate all things Russian in Washington.

 

The Senate not only demanded information on anyone of Russian descent involved in the 2016 election but involved in some capacity in “activities that related in any way to the political election process in the U.S.” So these individuals and groups are expected to reveal the names and association with anyone with any Russian blood who acted “in any way” with any aspect of the “political election process in the U.S.”

The demand for information from the Senate has gone out to a wide range of individuals, including Jill Stein, the 2016 Green Party candidate. As a struggling third party, it is particularly concerning for the Green Party to disclose its supporters and associations to a committee composed of members from the two dominant parties.

The forced disclosure of such names has long been viewed as a threat to core constitutional rights. In the 1958 case National Association for the Advancement of Colored People v. Alabama, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Alabama in seeking the list of members from the NAACP. The court ruled that the disclosure of such names “may induce members to withdraw from the Association and dissuade others from joining it because of fear of exposure of their beliefs shown through their associations and of the consequences of this exposure.”

While the Senate may argue that the mere disclosure of names does not mean that these individuals have committed any wrongful acts, the Court found that the act of disclosure itself creates a chilling effect on speech. The sweeping Senate demand was issued in December.

Notably, in 2016, I testified in Congress in a controversy over a congressional investigation of state prosecutors and environmental public interest groups involved in an alleged campaign against Exxon Corporation. Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and others had issued subpoenas demanding disclosure of academics and groups associating with Exxon and other energy companies opposed to climate change reforms. The House Science Committee responded with demands for evidence on coordination or communications between those prosecutors and environmental groups.

At the time, Democratic lawmakers like Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) denounced the demand, and many distributed a letter signed by law professors that declared, “The subpoenas, and the threat of future sanctions, themselves threaten the First Amendment — directly inhibiting the rights of their recipients to speak, to associate and to petition state officials without interference from Congress.” In my testimony, I expressed similar concerns over protecting free speech and associational rights. While I concluded that the committee was not constitutionally barred in seeking such evidence, I strongly encouraged the committee to narrow its demands and ultimately did narrow its discovery.

What is striking is that the demand from the House committee that led to the outcry from Democratic members in 2016 is a model of restraint compared to the Democratic demand letter from the Senate committee. This country has had a long and ugly history with investigations or actions based on nationality. From the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 to the California Alien Land Law of 1913 to the Japanese internment camps of World War II, we have often yielded to our prejudices or fears. Ironically, Democrats most recently objected to the use of nationality in the Trump travel ban as unlawful and “un-American.”

The demand from Doss, who was reportedly brought on to the Senate committee staff by vice chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.), is particularly worrisome because it is entirely unnecessary. The Democratic members could have simply tailored their questions to focus on specific types of actions or advocacy linked to Russian interests. That would make more sense, since the Russians have used non-Russians to pursue such interests. Instead, individuals and groups received demands for any “Russian persons” who may have had some involvement in the 2016 U.S. election.

We have roughly three million Americans claiming Russian descent, including 750,000 who were either born in Russia or have at least one parent or grandparent of ethnic Russian heritage. These citizens have every right and civic obligation to participate in our elections. They include some of our greatest artistic and social icons, from Woody Allen to Michael Bay to Irving Berlin to Harrison Ford. The list also includes such genetic fellow-travelers as Ben Cardin, William Cohen, Russ Feingold, Al FrankenBernie Sanders and former Sen. Jim Talent (R-Mo.), whose paternal grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Russia. All of these national politicians participated in the 2016 U.S. election. It would also include my children, since my wife descends from a Jewish family from Minsk in the 1800s.

The Senate committee has every right to look into the role of the Russian government and its surrogates in our presidential election. This will necessarily involve scrutiny of the ties, including business and other ties, between potential targets or witnesses and Russia. However, the Senate Democratic staff has flipped the proper inquiry. Rather than confining its discovery to people engaged in well-defined contacts or conduct and then looking at their background, the Senate is looking for “Russians” and then investigating their conduct. While the letter does not ask if and how long your family has been Russian, the end result is the same.

For those of us who have supported the special counsel and congressional investigations, the Doss letter undermines the credibility of the effort to find the truth about campaign interference. It is not simply a gratuitous insult to millions of Russian Americans, but a careless exercise of congressional authority. Moreover, it conveys a reckless, if not desperate, effort to find Russians to fulfill some simplistic narrative of collusion. The fact is that you do not need actual Russians in the United States for Russian collusion, as any more than being Russian means you are more likely to collude. The evidence of Russian intervention has been found by following moneylines and codelines, not bloodlines.

 

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. You can follow him on Twitter @JonathanTurley.

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