Special Counsel JOHN DURHAM Concludes the DOJ-FBI is Out To Get Donald Trump.

Also lets not forget how Durhams trials were a sham with lots of conflict of interest amongst the jurors and judge. Anybody here that has some more links to info about that? Its buried in the propaganda machine that is Google..

a reply to: carewemust

Thx for pointing out the RCP article in your sig; however, the text of your link is again, at best inaccurate. What Clapper said was that Obama asked for an intelligence assessment of Russian meddling in the US presidential election, which got the intel community ball rolling, which did lead to the Mueller investigation and other matters. It lead to other matters as well, including the investigation of the Russian cyber hacking of the DNC in 2015 and 2016. Are you also saying that isn't a real thing? In any case, in the RCP article and no where else I have seen has there been an attributed statement that Obama ordered the DOJ/FBI investigation of the Trump campaign. If you have one, I'd be more than glad to read it.

Sure, there was US intelligence gathering towards the end of Obama's administration that looked into what Russia was doing and what ties it might have with people or organizations in the US, but when did the actual investigation of possible ties between Russia and the Trump campaign begin, i.e. the Mueller investigation? It began on May 17, 2017. Who was president then? Oh yeah, Trump. So, in fact, neither Obama or even his DOJ ordered the specific investigation of the Trump presidential campaign.

The Mueller investigation did investigate whether or not the Trump administration was colluding with Russia. Now what reason(s) might the DOJ and FBI have had to investigate this? Item 1: Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign manager who agreed to work for free in this capacity, and who previously worked on the pro-Russian presidential candidate in Ukraine and had a $60 million dollar relationship with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, a billionaire with close ties to the Kremlin.

Manafort Had $60 Million Relationship With a Russian Oligarch

Item 2: that at the 2016 GOP presidential convention, the pro-Ukraine/anti-Russia platform in the GOP presidential platform was water downed at the behest of the Trump campaign. This from the party of Reagan, a long-time staunch anti-communist party that continued to be suspicious of Russia (to wit: What Mitt Romney said about Russia in his 2012 debate with Obama).

Trump, Deferring To Putin, Deleted GOP Platform's Call To Supply Ukraine With Lethal Defensive Weapons

2016 RNC Delegate: Trump Directed Change To Party Platform On Ukraine Support

Item 3: There were numerous ties between the Trump campaign and Russians or Russian connections, see:

All of Trump’s Russia Ties, in 7 Charts

Item 4: Paul Manafort while Trump's campaign manager gave Trump campaign then-recent polling data for 18 swing states, including Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania to Konstantin Kilimnik, a known Russian intelligence operative, before the election. It was these three very states that were swung by very small voting margins that gave Trump the presidency in 2016.

Manafort Owns Up to Passing Campaign Data to Suspected Russian Agent

The Mueller investigation looked into these matters as I would hope they would, given the above items. They did not find enough evidence to support an accusation of conspiracy (which the term "collusion" applies to), but did find enough evidence of obstruction of justice by Trump and his campaign that it could merit charges, although it didn't press any because the DOJ has a policy of not indicting current presidents. The Mueller investigation did find criminal wrong doing by some Trump associates, including his just-fired campaign chief Paul Manafort, as well as some foreign nationals:

Now I'll grant you that the infamous "Russian dossier" on Trump had some hinky and/or in accurate information in it. Even Michael Cohen, Trump's former "fixer" lawyer who is a big critic of Trump for the past six or so years, has said as much. My understanding is that a large part of Durham's criticism of the FBI's investigation concerned this in particular.

Also, if a president thought there was Russian involvement in a US election and did nothing about it, that actually would be dereliction of duty and treason. Obama's asking the intelligence community to, in fact, look into Russian meddling was a legitimate and prudent policy decision. He asked the intelligence services to investigate this, and one thing and the other led to the Mueller investigation.

I also want to say that I respect your use of mainstream news sources for the information you cite, but you have shown a bad habit of making up statements, and putting them in quotes, and using those for your hyperlinks, rather than any factual quotes from the articles themselves, seemingly in an attempt to make a more compelling argument for your POV. And that is what I took you to task for in this and my previous response post to yours. For example Obama's asking for an intelligence assessment of potential Russian meddling in the 2016 election is significantly different from "It was President Obama who gave the order to target the Trump Campaign!" Yet your statement is in quotes, suggesting that you are quoting Clapper. Adding the emphatic characterization to the statement only makes it a more egregious mischaracterization of what Clapper actually said and meant. You might try using the actual article title in your hyper text links, rather than making things up that comport with your narrative, and attributing them as direct quotes, for goodness sake!

a reply to: MrInquisitive

To address some of your points.

1) Manafort having a relationship with a Russian Oligarch has no relevance to the thread or the conclusion of Durham that the FBI improperly launched an investigation into the Trump campaign based on Hillary Clinton paid for propaganda

2) Trump deciding not to put arming Ukraine into the GOPs platform (as above). You also forgot to mention that Trump actually DID arm Ukraine. Not putting something in a platform is a smart move, especially as he was going to have to deal with Putin as part of his job President. Perfectly normal to wait until he had the opportunity to get into the job.

3) Your 7 'ties' are irrelevant nonsense. Similar ties could be made for ANY President or candidate.

4) From the article "Paul Manafort on Monday publicly admitted that he gave polling data to Konstantin Kilimnik, a suspected Russian intelligence asset." This also has no bearing and is not illegal.

In short, your rehashing of tired perfectly legal activity spun into speculation is EXACTLY the type of information that Durham made clear is no basis for an investigation. The bottom line here is simply that the FBI improperly launched an investigation based on Clinton campaign paid for propaganda and it led to a disgraceful 3 years of nonsense just like the crap you have posted.

ANYONE pushing Russian collusion for years only has one thing legitimate left to do. Apologise. Anything else is just partisan hackery, either driven by an ego that can't accept they were duped or paid for propaganda.

Some still continue to spread the lies that Trump was colluding with the Russians. I think Trump should sue the living hell out of all of them for continuing to spread untruth lies slandering him. It's time they face the Reaper.

originally posted by: UKTruth
a reply to: MrInquisitive

To address some of your points.

1) Manafort having a relationship with a Russian Oligarch has no relevance to the thread or the conclusion of Durham that the FBI improperly launched an investigation into the Trump campaign based on Hillary Clinton paid for propaganda

2) Trump deciding not to put arming Ukraine into the GOPs platform (as above). You also forgot to mention that Trump actually DID arm Ukraine. Not putting something in a platform is a smart move, especially as he was going to have to deal with Putin as part of his job President. Perfectly normal to wait until he had the opportunity to get into the job.

3) Your 7 'ties' are irrelevant nonsense. Similar ties could be made for ANY President or candidate.

4) From the article "Paul Manafort on Monday publicly admitted that he gave polling data to Konstantin Kilimnik, a suspected Russian intelligence asset." This also has no bearing and is not illegal.

In short, your rehashing of tired perfectly legal activity spun into speculation is EXACTLY the type of information that Durham made clear is no basis for an investigation. The bottom line here is simply that the FBI improperly launched an investigation based on Clinton campaign paid for propaganda and it led to a disgraceful 3 years of nonsense just like the crap you have posted.

ANYONE pushing Russian collusion for years only has one thing legitimate left to do. Apologise. Anything else is just partisan hackery, either driven by an ego that can't accept they were duped or paid for propaganda.

Oh, ignore everything I said in your refutation, huh? Very compelling. It does, however, get you a lot of stars from your group think fellow travelers.

Yeah what would the $60M financial ties of Trump's campaign manager, who offered to work for free, to a Russian oligarch who had and has ties to the Kremlin have to do with ties between Russia and the Trump campaign? No connection whatsoever. Particularly after Manafort gave Trump polling data to Russia. Are you claiming that the only reason the FBI/DOJ investigated possible Russian ties to the Trump campaign is the "Russian Dossier"? I just gave you a list of other connections, and you chose to ignore them. No doubt the FBI knew about these, too, and were part of their basis for further investigations. I have no where defended the "Russian Dossier" or claimed that what was said in it is true.

Whether or not Trump's decision to water down the GOP platform plank on the Ukraine was a sensible move is not the point. It was a suspicious move given the GOP's hitherto then tough stance on Russia. That all of a sudden, the candidate whose campaign manager has Russian ties, decides to tone down the anti-Russia rhetoric in the party platform would and should raise eyebrows, and give the intelligence agencies reason to further look into possible ties between Russia and Trump. Not to do so would be malpractice.

And yes, Trump's campaign manager giving fresh polling data from their campaign to Russia has everything to do with potential ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. Why would any campaign give a foreign country polling data from a current presidential election other than so said country could try to sway the election? Whether it was legal or not the point, the point is that the information I have provided has shown that there was some level of cooperation between Russia and the Trump campaign, which warranted an investigation. The Mueller investigation concluded that there was no conspiracy between the two, but the circumstantial evidence suggested that an investigation should be conducted, whether or not the "Russian dossier" was taken into account.

How you can claim the seven sets of ties between the Trump campaign and Russia has no bearing? Did you look at all the charts? Are you aware that Jeff Sessions lied to the Senate when he said he never spoke about the campaign to the Russian foreign minister? Show me the ties the Clinton or Biden administrations had to Russia, as you claim the case can be made against any president or presidential candidate. And keep in mind, Trump was not president, he was only a candidate.

Demanding an apology for my or other persons' bringing up this information when discussing the legitimate reason the DOJ/FBI had to investigate possible ties between Russia and the Trump campaign is the height of obtuseness. I listed multiple reasons why the US government had good reason to investigate the matter. The investigation did turn up Russian meddling in the election (and successfully prosecuted cases against foreign actors in absentia), but could prove no conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign. End of story. What is the problem with that? You are trying to make it seem as if there was never any reason to warrant an investigation, and I have provided you multiple reasons why it made sense to do so. Yet you dismiss them all without providing a good reason. Sure, you provided reasons, but they weren't good.

Moreover, the initial fact-finding investigation of Russian meddling was not made pubic until after the election, so unlike Comey's public state reopening the investigation of HRC right before the election in October, so it did not influence the election results. And to claim the specific investigation of possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia was unwarranted is just ignoring all of the connections I provided you previously. You want to make people believe that the suspect "Russian dossier" was the only cause of the investigation, and that was clearly not the case.

Thursday May 18, 2023

Late Breaking News...

FBI Agent "whistleblowers" to testify before Congress later this morning.

Source: twitter.com...

As you can see at Jim Jordan's Twitter, these whistle-blowers are under extreme duress and are very angry at the FBI-DOJ.

Making this announcement at the last minute helps assure their safety.

What a wast of money ... any objective person knew full well that the DOJ-FBI-DNC had attempted to frame Donald Trump over Russian collusion when special counsel Robert Mueller showed up drunk to his congressional hearing at the conclusion of his investigation and couldn't remember a thing about his multi year investigation.... no one objective needed the Durham report to tell them something they didn't already know.

I realize palace intrigue is the number one American guilty pleasure of late; it has saturated our entertainment industry; but anyone truly arguing this issue years later is eather plating around the edges or triblaly dilutionsal.

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and wacks like a duck ... its a duck; life is truly that simple.

We're getting closer to Kraken Time!

Joe Biden bragged, "I am the Democratic Party!".

Mega Ego w/Dementia: www.axios.com...

You expose Biden's criminality and the entire party collapses in on itself. What a beautiful sight that will be!

Hey Comer, Jordan, McCarthy and the 10% of news media/pundits who are pro-America...

Destroy the HEAD DIMocrat and the country belongs to MAGA-AF Republicans!

a reply to: carewemust

How could the FBI have thought there was some connection between Trump and Russia? Here's an article that addresses that:

Trump couldn't possibly be a Russian asset...could he?

Imagine you’re in the FBI overseeing national security and a candidate for President for the United States hired to run his campaign a man who’d:
— taken $66 million from Russian intelligence services via Putin-friendly oligarchs,
— helped Russia install their own puppet government in Ukraine in 2010,

— forced his party to remove references in their platform to defending Ukrainian democracy,
— gave a Russian intelligence agent top-secret insider campaign information about voters in 6 swing states so they could run an ultimately successful micro-targeted Facebook campaign to help the candidate,
— offered to run the campaign for free because he’d been well-compensated by Russian intelligence services,
— and then repeatedly lied to the FBI about his connections to Putin and Russia, leading to his being charged, convicted, and imprisoned until that candidate pardoned him.

Imagine if during his campaign for the White House that president — when only a candidate — had inked a secret deal with Russia to earn hundreds of millions of dollars by putting a hotel with his name on it in Moscow, and kept it concealed from the American public throughout the campaign.

Imagine that he made extensive use of his opponent’s emails that had been hacked by Russian intelligence services, who then ran a Facebook operation hyping that same information that reached 26 million targeted Americans in 6 swing states, helping him win the Electoral College vote.

Imagine that during the 2016 campaign an insider with Russian connections learned that Russia had successfully hacked this candidate’s opponent’s emails on behalf of the candidate before the hack was revealed on Wikileaks during the Democratic National Convention where his opponent was nominated for president…and that information came to you via an informant.

Imagine that candidate became president 29 years after his first Moscow trip and in his first weeks in office, presumably as thanks for their help, invited the Russian ambassador and the Russian foreign minister to a covert meeting in the Oval Office and gave them top-secret information on a spy about whom Russia had been concerned; that spy was then “burned.”

Imagine that this was nothing new for that president’s party: that two presidents before him had gained the White House by treasonous collaboration with openly hostile foreign powers (North Vietnam in 1968 and Iran in 1980). That congressional members of his own party would then go on to vote against compiling information about war crimes committed in Ukraine by Russia. That a senator from that party by the name of Rand Paul made a private trip to Russia to hand-deliver possibly stolen sealed “documents” to Putin’s intelligence service given him in confidence by that president.

Imagine that president had a series of nearly 20 secret telephone conversations with Putin (for which the records of what was said no longer exist) and then unilaterally — in defiance of both Congress and the law — blocked military aid to Ukraine while Russia was massing troops on its borders. And then followed those up with a years-long campaign to destroy NATO, which was Russia’s top military concern. And openly praised and deferred to Putin while trash-talking American intelligence services.

Imagine that the FBI worked with a special prosecutor named Mueller to determine the extent of Russian involvement in the 2016 election and:

— Found that Russian interference in the 2016 election was “sweeping and systemic.”
— Brought indictments against 37 individuals including six Trump advisers and 26 Russian nationals, secured seven guilty pleas or convictions, and found “compelling evidence” that the president himself had stonewalled or lied to investigators and “obstructed justice on multiple occasions.”
— Referred 14 criminal matters to the Justice Department, where the president’s hand-picked Attorney General — who’d helped President George HW Bush cover up the Iran/Contra Treason Scandal — ignored them and let them lapse.
— Uncovered five specific examples of the president criminally obstructing justice in ways that could easily have been prosecuted.

Imagine that when that president ran for re-election Russia again came to his aid by hacking his 2020 opponent’s family members, both looking for and trying to plant damaging information suggesting his opponent’s family was corrupt. That Russia then spread rumors across social media to that effect on the candidate’s behalf in the months before the election.

Imagine that when he nevertheless lost, Russian intelligence officers used social media to amplify his claims the election was stolen, leading to an attempted coup conspiracy involving the assassination of the Vice President and Speaker of the House.

Imagine that the FBI — in part, during that president’s time in office — compiled material for a report concluding that:

“Throughout the [2020] election, Russia’s online influence actors sought to amplify mistrust in the electoral process by denigrating mail-in ballots, highlighting alleged irregularities, and accusing the Democratic Party of voter fraud.”

So, if you were in the FBI and knew all that, how do you imagine you’d react?

Would you want to dig deeper, to determine if an agent of a hostile foreign power was trying to co-opt or even destroy America from within, a la The Manchurian Candidate?

This week we learned that Trump-humper John Durham, a former federal prosecutor who should know better, can’t imagine any of this.

He issued a 306-page report on his well-paid four-year investigation in a futile effort to salvage his reputation (or burnish it with Trump) claiming that the FBI really had “no basis” to investigate the possibility that the 2016 Trump campaign might have been infiltrated or corrupted by Russian intelligence.

Durham wrote there was “a complete lack of information from the Intelligence Community that corroborated the hypothesis upon which the [2016] Crossfire Hurricane investigation [of Trump’s connections to Russia and Putin] was predicated.”

During the course of his $6.6 million “investigation,” Durham pressed charges against two people, costing each a fortune in legal fees and damaging their reputations, and in both cases the individuals were exonerated by a jury of their peers.

When Bill Barr and John Durham took multiple taxpayer-funded luxury trips to Italy to interrogate that country’s government about possible FBI wrongdoing in the Hurricane Crossfire investigation of Trump and Russia, they instead discovered evidence of specific “financial crimes” committed by Trump himself that were so serious they aborted the trip and Barr authorized himself to dig deeper.

The details of those Trump crimes aren’t mentioned in yesterday’s Durham report, and there’s no explanation for their absence. Barr’s “digging” was, perhaps, simply another cover-up like he did with Iran-Contra back in the day.

Nope, no reason to investigate Trump and his campaign and their ties to Russia. It's just a witch hunt.

a reply to: MrInquisitive

Basically you summed up why it was a witch hunt; his enemies are trying every trick in the book with endless budget to nail him with multiple fabrications proven, if it wasnt a witch hunt they wouldve gotten him behind bars with a regular investigation into any of your headlines.

a reply to: carewemust

Here is a NYT report on the goings ons of the Durham investigation and its results, including the report. It's not a good look.

How Barr’s Quest to Find Flaws in the Russia Inquiry Unraveled

The review by John Durham at one point veered into a criminal investigation related to Donald Trump himself, even as it failed to find wrongdoing in the origins of the Russia inquiry.

But after almost four years — far longer than the Russia investigation itself — Mr. Durham’s work is coming to an end without uncovering anything like the deep state plot alleged by Mr. Trump and suspected by Mr. Barr.

Moreover, a monthslong review by The New York Times found that the main thrust of the Durham inquiry was marked by some of the very same flaws — including a strained justification for opening it and its role in fueling partisan conspiracy theories that would never be charged in court — that Trump allies claim characterized the Russia investigation.

Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham never disclosed that their inquiry expanded in the fall of 2019, based on a tip from Italian officials, to include a criminal investigation into suspicious financial dealings related to Mr. Trump. The specifics of the tip and how they handled the investigation remain unclear, but Mr. Durham brought no charges over it.

Mr. Durham used Russian intelligence memos — suspected by other U.S. officials of containing disinformation — to gain access to emails of an aide to George Soros, the financier and philanthropist who is a favorite target of the American right and Russian state media. Mr. Durham used grand jury powers to keep pursuing the emails even after a judge twice rejected his request for access to them. The emails yielded no evidence that Mr. Durham has cited in any case he pursued.

There were deeper internal fractures on the Durham team than previously known. The publicly unexplained resignation in 2020 of his No. 2 and longtime aide, Nora R. Dannehy, was the culmination of a series of disputes between them over prosecutorial ethics. A year later, two more prosecutors strongly objected to plans to indict a lawyer with ties to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign based on evidence they warned was too flimsy, and one left the team in protest of Mr. Durham’s decision to proceed anyway. (A jury swiftly acquitted the lawyer.)

Mr. Trump would repeatedly portray the Mueller report as having found “no collusion with Russia.” The reality was more complex. In fact, the report detailed “numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign,” and it established both how Moscow had worked to help Mr. Trump win and how his campaign had expected to benefit from the foreign interference.

While attorneys general overseeing politically sensitive inquiries tend to keep their distance from the investigators, Mr. Durham visited Mr. Barr in his office for at times weekly updates and consultations about his day-to-day work.

At the time Mr. Barr was confirmed, he told aides that he already suspected that intelligence abuses played a role in igniting the Russia investigation.

Mr. Barr’s insistence about what he had surmised bewildered intelligence officials. But Mr. Durham spent his first months looking for any evidence that the origin of the Russia investigation involved an intelligence operation targeting the Trump campaign.

Mr. Durham’s team spent long hours combing the C.I.A.’s files but found no way to support the allegation. Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham traveled abroad together to press British and Italian officials to reveal everything their agencies had gleaned about the Trump campaign and relayed to the United States, but both allied governments denied they had done any such thing. Top British intelligence officials expressed indignation to their U.S. counterparts about the accusation, three former U.S. officials said.

Mr. Durham and Mr. Barr had not yet given up when a new problem arose: In early December, the Justice Department’s independent inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, completed his own report on the origins of the Russia investigation.

The inspector general revealed errors and omissions in wiretap applications targeting a former Trump campaign adviser and determined that an F.B.I. lawyer had doctored an email in a way that kept one of those problems from coming to light. (Mr. Durham’s team later negotiated a guilty plea by that lawyer.)

But the broader findings contradicted Mr. Trump’s accusations and the rationale for Mr. Durham’s inquiry. Mr. Horowitz found no evidence that F.B.I. actions were politically motivated. And he concluded that the investigation’s basis — an Australian diplomat’s tip that a Trump campaign adviser had seemed to disclose advance knowledge that Russia would release hacked Democratic emails — had been sufficient to lawfully open it.

Mr. Durham lobbied Mr. Horowitz to drop his finding that the diplomat’s tip had been sufficient for the F.B.I. to open its “full” counterintelligence investigation, arguing that it was enough at most for a “preliminary” inquiry, according to officials. But Mr. Horowitz did not change his mind.

Minutes before the inspector general’s report went online, Mr. Barr issued a statement contradicting Mr. Horowitz’s major finding, declaring that the F.B.I. opened the investigation “on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient.” He would later tell Fox News that the investigation began “without any basis,” as if the diplomat’s tip never happened.

And the Justice Department sent reporters a statement from Mr. Durham that clashed with both Justice Department principles about not discussing ongoing investigations and his personal reputation as particularly tight-lipped. He said he disagreed with Mr. Horowitz’s conclusions about the Russia investigation’s origins, citing his own access to more information and “evidence collected to date.”

But as Mr. Durham’s inquiry proceeded, he never presented any evidence contradicting Mr. Horowitz’s factual findings about the basis on which F.B.I. officials opened the investigation.

By summer 2020, it was clear that the hunt for evidence supporting Mr. Barr’s hunch about intelligence abuses had failed. But he waited until after the 2020 election to publicly concede that there had turned out to be no sign of “foreign government activity” and that the C.I.A. had “stayed in its lane” after all.

On one of Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham’s trips to Europe, according to people familiar with the matter, Italian officials — while denying any role in setting off the Russia investigation — unexpectedly offered a potentially explosive tip linking Mr. Trump to certain suspected financial crimes.

Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham decided that the tip was too serious and credible to ignore. But rather than assign it to another prosecutor, Mr. Barr had Mr. Durham investigate the matter himself — giving him criminal prosecution powers for the first time — even though the possible wrongdoing by Mr. Trump did not fall squarely within Mr. Durham’s assignment to scrutinize the origins of the Russia inquiry, the people said.

Mr. Durham never filed charges, and it remains unclear what level of an investigation it was, [or] what steps he took.

So a shoddy, ethically shady investigation of an FBI investigation by a Trump appointed US attorney. Big surprise.

originally posted by: MrInquisitive
a reply to: carewemust

How could the FBI have thought there was some connection between Trump and Russia? Here's an article that addresses that:

Trump couldn't possibly be a Russian asset...could he?

Imagine you’re in the FBI overseeing national security and a candidate for President for the United States hired to run his campaign a man who’d:
— taken $66 million from Russian intelligence services via Putin-friendly oligarchs,
— helped Russia install their own puppet government in Ukraine in 2010,

— forced his party to remove references in their platform to defending Ukrainian democracy,
— gave a Russian intelligence agent top-secret insider campaign information about voters in 6 swing states so they could run an ultimately successful micro-targeted Facebook campaign to help the candidate,
— offered to run the campaign for free because he’d been well-compensated by Russian intelligence services,
— and then repeatedly lied to the FBI about his connections to Putin and Russia, leading to his being charged, convicted, and imprisoned until that candidate pardoned him.

Imagine if during his campaign for the White House that president — when only a candidate — had inked a secret deal with Russia to earn hundreds of millions of dollars by putting a hotel with his name on it in Moscow, and kept it concealed from the American public throughout the campaign.

Imagine that he made extensive use of his opponent’s emails that had been hacked by Russian intelligence services, who then ran a Facebook operation hyping that same information that reached 26 million targeted Americans in 6 swing states, helping him win the Electoral College vote.

Imagine that during the 2016 campaign an insider with Russian connections learned that Russia had successfully hacked this candidate’s opponent’s emails on behalf of the candidate before the hack was revealed on Wikileaks during the Democratic National Convention where his opponent was nominated for president…and that information came to you via an informant.

Imagine that candidate became president 29 years after his first Moscow trip and in his first weeks in office, presumably as thanks for their help, invited the Russian ambassador and the Russian foreign minister to a covert meeting in the Oval Office and gave them top-secret information on a spy about whom Russia had been concerned; that spy was then “burned.”

Imagine that this was nothing new for that president’s party: that two presidents before him had gained the White House by treasonous collaboration with openly hostile foreign powers (North Vietnam in 1968 and Iran in 1980). That congressional members of his own party would then go on to vote against compiling information about war crimes committed in Ukraine by Russia. That a senator from that party by the name of Rand Paul made a private trip to Russia to hand-deliver possibly stolen sealed “documents” to Putin’s intelligence service given him in confidence by that president.

Imagine that president had a series of nearly 20 secret telephone conversations with Putin (for which the records of what was said no longer exist) and then unilaterally — in defiance of both Congress and the law — blocked military aid to Ukraine while Russia was massing troops on its borders. And then followed those up with a years-long campaign to destroy NATO, which was Russia’s top military concern. And openly praised and deferred to Putin while trash-talking American intelligence services.

Imagine that the FBI worked with a special prosecutor named Mueller to determine the extent of Russian involvement in the 2016 election and:

— Found that Russian interference in the 2016 election was “sweeping and systemic.”
— Brought indictments against 37 individuals including six Trump advisers and 26 Russian nationals, secured seven guilty pleas or convictions, and found “compelling evidence” that the president himself had stonewalled or lied to investigators and “obstructed justice on multiple occasions.”
— Referred 14 criminal matters to the Justice Department, where the president’s hand-picked Attorney General — who’d helped President George HW Bush cover up the Iran/Contra Treason Scandal — ignored them and let them lapse.
— Uncovered five specific examples of the president criminally obstructing justice in ways that could easily have been prosecuted.

Imagine that when that president ran for re-election Russia again came to his aid by hacking his 2020 opponent’s family members, both looking for and trying to plant damaging information suggesting his opponent’s family was corrupt. That Russia then spread rumors across social media to that effect on the candidate’s behalf in the months before the election.

Imagine that when he nevertheless lost, Russian intelligence officers used social media to amplify his claims the election was stolen, leading to an attempted coup conspiracy involving the assassination of the Vice President and Speaker of the House.

Imagine that the FBI — in part, during that president’s time in office — compiled material for a report concluding that:

“Throughout the [2020] election, Russia’s online influence actors sought to amplify mistrust in the electoral process by denigrating mail-in ballots, highlighting alleged irregularities, and accusing the Democratic Party of voter fraud.”

So, if you were in the FBI and knew all that, how do you imagine you’d react?

Would you want to dig deeper, to determine if an agent of a hostile foreign power was trying to co-opt or even destroy America from within, a la The Manchurian Candidate?

This week we learned that Trump-humper John Durham, a former federal prosecutor who should know better, can’t imagine any of this.

He issued a 306-page report on his well-paid four-year investigation in a futile effort to salvage his reputation (or burnish it with Trump) claiming that the FBI really had “no basis” to investigate the possibility that the 2016 Trump campaign might have been infiltrated or corrupted by Russian intelligence.

Durham wrote there was “a complete lack of information from the Intelligence Community that corroborated the hypothesis upon which the [2016] Crossfire Hurricane investigation [of Trump’s connections to Russia and Putin] was predicated.”

During the course of his $6.6 million “investigation,” Durham pressed charges against two people, costing each a fortune in legal fees and damaging their reputations, and in both cases the individuals were exonerated by a jury of their peers.

When Bill Barr and John Durham took multiple taxpayer-funded luxury trips to Italy to interrogate that country’s government about possible FBI wrongdoing in the Hurricane Crossfire investigation of Trump and Russia, they instead discovered evidence of specific “financial crimes” committed by Trump himself that were so serious they aborted the trip and Barr authorized himself to dig deeper.

The details of those Trump crimes aren’t mentioned in yesterday’s Durham report, and there’s no explanation for their absence. Barr’s “digging” was, perhaps, simply another cover-up like he did with Iran-Contra back in the day.

Nope, no reason to investigate Trump and his campaign and their ties to Russia. It's just a witch hunt.

Yep...that's what Special Counsel John Durham concluded after 3 years.

May 19, 2023

FOOD FOR THOUGHT...

The FBI did not weaponize itself. The weaponization of the institution was done by people; the same people that John Durham did not indict for weaponizing it.

The same applies to the DHS, ODNI, DOJ, DOJ-NSD and SSCI. These institutions did not weaponize themselves; they were weaponized by the people within them.

This is the core reality behind the missing part of the John Durham report, no proposed change in policy or institutional systems. Why? Because the policies and systems are not the issue; it was the intent of the people within it – those who weaponized it. Here’s the kicker. Those people are still in place – that’s why the weaponization continues.

Continued at: theconservativetreehouse.com...-246878

Hopefully AG Merrick Garland will allow Special Counsel John Durham to testify to Congress. Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan has invited him to do so. A lot of questions remain.

-cwm

a reply to: MrInquisitive

HRC, Uranium One, to answer your question.

A business arrangement that is clearly and plainly, on its face, a perfect vehicle for pay to play type political operations, a tactic the Clinton machine is deft and well practiced with, for all appearances.

Stack that against the patchwork quilt of shoddy accusations against DJT, and I know which one I'd need to do something about if I were an ethical law enforcement administrator.

Your walls of words are somewhat lacking in a balanced perspective, so I hope you don't expect me to take you seriously on any of that. I've done my homework to satisfy myself as to the merits of any accusations against DJT. Apparently you have not, or alternatively, do not concern yourself with such minor details as 'do these accusations have merit?'

Yes, a witch hunt. Let's throw in a dash of epic gaslighting for flavor.

originally posted by: ElitePlebeian
a reply to: MrInquisitive

Basically you summed up why it was a witch hunt; his enemies are trying every trick in the book with endless budget to nail him with multiple fabrications proven, if it wasnt a witch hunt they wouldve gotten him behind bars with a regular investigation into any of your headlines.

I don't think you get it. One of the articles I quoted in depth was about all the connections between Trump, his campaign and Russia, and why all of it added up to more than reason enough warrant an investigation of Trump. Now the Mueller investigation couldn't prove a conspiracy between Trump, his campaign and Russia, but it did prosecute and convict Paul Manafort, his one-time campaign manager, a bunch of Russian operatives in absentia, and several other Trump associates. Mueller also said that Trump had committed obstruction of justice, but didn't prosecute on account of DOJ policy (not indicting sitting presidents). Given that Trump refused to comply with providing testimony or documents, as did a number of his associates, it is not surprising that conspiracy with Russia was not proven. But that's fine. I am not claiming that Trump, for certain, colluded with Russia, although it is clear that his former campaign manager did, and his first National Security Advisor was also convicted of lying to the FBI about talking to the Russians before Trump became president. The point is that there was plenty of circumstantial evidence to warrant a FBI investigation of him and his campaign. It wasn't just a witch hunt, unlike the Durham investigation that fell flat, but did actually come up with information regarding criminal financial dealings by Trump, but were not pursued (this was one of the points in the NYT article I posted).

Not all investigations find wrong doing against a target of interest, whether they come up short in the investigation, or there wasn't any. The investigation of Trump and campaign conspiracy with Russia fell into this category. It wasn't a witch hunt given all the circumstantial evidence linking him and his campaign to Russia, and crimes by some of his associates. The FBI did not act in bad faith in this way. They did, as both the DOJ IG's and Durham reports say, wrongly obtained FISA warrants on several of Trump's campaign associates by not providing enough evidence and falsifying one application (for which a person plead guilty). However Durham tried a similar tactic, but got shot down by the FISA judge twice. Durham's investigation also lasted a lot longer and spent much more money than the Mueller investigation.

So no, the FBI/DOJ wasn't out to get Trump but were doing their due diligence. If they hadn't investigated him and his campaign given all the circumstantial evidence pointing to possible collusion with Russia, it would've been a dereliction of duty. Notice that I am not saying that the investigation was sabotaged to let Trump off the hook? Although there was a lot of circumstantial evidence and Trump and company refused to cooperate with the investigation, I accept the results. Trump supporters, however, are trying to make something of this investigation in order to scare off the DOJ/FBI from pursuing the other current investigations of him.

To be clear, there are a series of additional criminal investigations of Trump currently -- two by Special Jack Smith for instigating the Jan 6 riot/attempted insurrection and for the mishandling of classified materials in Mar a Lago, and related obstruction of justice charges for the latter. There's also the Fulton Co., GA investigation of Trumps attempting voter fraud there, and there is the case in New York City/State for criminal financial wrong doing. I believe he is up for 34 felony counts on that one. So he is already facing charges, and it looks as if he will be facing more for these other investigations as well. These investigations already have a lot of evidence, including Trump's own admission in the Mar a Lago documents case, and a self-incriminating phone to the GA Sec. of State in the Fulton Co. case. I believe his claiming that he will pardon Jan 6 criminals is also a bit self incriminating, but I'll leave that one to federal prosecutors to decide.

originally posted by: carewemust

originally posted by: MrInquisitive
a reply to: carewemust

How could the FBI have thought there was some connection between Trump and Russia? Here's an article that addresses that:

Trump couldn't possibly be a Russian asset...could he?

Nope, no reason to investigate Trump and his campaign and their ties to Russia. It's just a witch hunt.


Yep...that's what Special Counsel John Durham concluded after 3 years.

Did you read what the NYT article said regarding the Durham investigation, including the fact that there was disagreement with in the investigative team whether to follow-up on some matters, and that though Durham, a Trump appointee, said there was not reason enough, there were other people in the DOJ and FBI who disagreed with him? The fact that this supposed independent prosecutor met regularly with Bill Barr, Trump's tool of an AG, also raises suspicions of his biases and agenda. Talk about witch hunts. That's what the Durham investigation turned out to be.

Durham tried to get the IG, Horowitz to change the result of his investigation, to align with Durhan's narrative, and he refused. Additionally the two court cases Durham brought to trial over this investigation resulted in unanimous acquittals (after costing the defendants enormous legal fees), and the feds usually win court cases over 90% of the time. Durham has ruined his reputation -- just like most people that go all in with The Donald.

originally posted by: TheBadCabbie
a reply to: MrInquisitive

HRC, Uranium One, to answer your question.

A business arrangement that is clearly and plainly, on its face, a perfect vehicle for pay to play type political operations, a tactic the Clinton machine is deft and well practiced with, for all appearances.

Stack that against the patchwork quilt of shoddy accusations against DJT, and I know which one I'd need to do something about if I were an ethical law enforcement administrator.

Your walls of words are somewhat lacking in a balanced perspective, so I hope you don't expect me to take you seriously on any of that. I've done my homework to satisfy myself as to the merits of any accusations against DJT. Apparently you have not, or alternatively, do not concern yourself with such minor details as 'do these accusations have merit?'

Yes, a witch hunt. Let's throw in a dash of epic gaslighting for flavor.

Not sure which question of mine your answering with the HRC, Uranium One response. You're do a bit of what-aboutism, but I'll bite.

I found a report at FactCheck.org on the matter:

The Facts on Uranium One

The fact is she was on a committee that can approve sales to foreign companies, although the committee cannot actually stop a sale.

The Committee on Foreign Investments has nine members, including the secretaries of the treasury, state, defense, homeland security, commerce and energy; the attorney general; and representatives from two White House offices (the United States Trade Representative and the Office of Science and Technology Policy).

So HRC was one of 9 people on the committee, so she didn't give away 20% of uranium in the US, which is what Trump claimed during the 2016 election. Even with this sale, it was no more than 10% of US uranium mining, and it meant money was paid to the prior owner of the mining rights, so nothing was given away, and the uranium stayed in the US or was sent to Canada for processing. There are more details in the report I sighted, but I am not going to spend more time on this deflection of yours.

As to the merits of accusations against DJT, we're talking in this thread about whether or not there was merit enough to warrant an investigation of him regarding Russia. From the one article I cited, it seems like there was more than enough for that purpose. In the end no connections could be proved, so no indictments were made. Of course, you are free to agree with Durham on the matter, but his report and how he went about doing it has received considerable criticism. My point in writing everything that I have in this thread is the point out that the Durham investigation didn't amount to much, and one ought not hang their hat on it as far as claiming the DOJ and FBI were out to get Trump. Never mind that Trump fired the then-current FBI director and appointed his own, and fired his own appointed DOJ director, and appointed one who was much more in his pocket, and yet this investigation continued through these new directors appointed by Trump. It couldn't have been too witch hunty.

This past investigation, however, has nothing to do with the multiple ones currently against Trump, which do look like they are going forward on account that they do have the good on him, including his own self-incriminating statements in two or three of the four cases. They are clearly not witch hunts.

Sorry if my wall 'O text posts are too tedious for you to follow. I am just trying to make compelling cases for my point. These matters can be quite involved and include a lot of pertinent facts.

originally posted by: dandandat2
What a wast of money ... any objective person knew full well that the DOJ-FBI-DNC had attempted to frame Donald Trump over Russian collusion when special counsel Robert Mueller showed up drunk to his congressional hearing at the conclusion of his investigation and couldn't remember a thing about his multi year investigation.... no one objective needed the Durham report to tell them something they didn't already know.

I realize palace intrigue is the number one American guilty pleasure of late; it has saturated our entertainment industry; but anyone truly arguing this issue years later is eather plating around the edges or triblaly dilutionsal.

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and wacks like a duck ... its a duck; life is truly that simple.

That's a bunch of BS. Please provide a legit source claiming Mueller showed up drunk. I watched his testimony. It wasn't purdee or compelling. The guy is clearly old -- too old to have been in charge of that investigation. Which was the fault of Rod Rosenstein, who was the deputy AG under Jeff Sessions, and was responsible for choosing the person. Perhaps he intentionally chose him knowing this, perhaps not; some things Rosenstein did made him seem like a Trump toady. The fact is Mueller's testimony, particularly his voice, made him seem infirm, not drunk.

Your charactering him as drunk during his testimony shows that you're not writing in good faith and nothing that you have to say in the matter amounts to anything of merit.