Mueller closing in on Trump in Russian probe

In the meantime, VIPS has assembled a chronology that imposes a persuasive logic on the complex succession of events just reviewed. It is this:

• On June 12 last year, Julian Assange announced that WikiLeaks had and would publish documents pertinent to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
• On June 14, CrowdStrike, a cyber-security firm hired by the DNC, announced, without providing evidence, that it had found malware on DNC servers and had evidence that Russians were responsible for planting it.
• On June 15, Guccifer 2.0 first appeared, took responsibility for the “hack” reported on June 14 and claimed to be a WikiLeaks source. It then posted the adulterated documents just described.
• On July 5, Guccifer again claimed he had remotely hacked DNC servers, and the operation was instantly described as another intrusion attributable to Russia. Virtually no media questioned this account.

It does not require too much thought to read into this sequence. With his June 12 announcement, Assange effectively put the DNC on notice that it had a little time, probably not much, to act preemptively against the imminent publication of damaging documents. Did the DNC quickly conjure Guccifer from thin air to create a cyber-saboteur whose fingers point to Russia? There is no evidence of this one way or the other, but emphatically it is legitimate to pose the question in the context of the VIPS chronology. WikiLeaks began publishing on July 22. By that time, the case alleging Russian interference in the 2016 elections process was taking firm root. In short order Assange would be written down as a “Russian agent.”

By any balanced reckoning, the official case purporting to assign a systematic hacking effort to Russia, the events of mid-June and July 5 last year being the foundation of this case, is shabby to the point taxpayers should ask for their money back. The Intelligence Community Assessment, the supposedly definitive report featuring the “high confidence” dodge, was greeted as farcically flimsy when issued January 6. Ray McGovern calls it a disgrace to the intelligence profession. It is spotlessly free of evidence, front to back, pertaining to any events in which Russia is implicated. James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, admitted in May that “hand-picked” analysts from three agencies (not the 17 previously reported) drafted the ICA. There is a way to understand “hand-picked” that is less obvious than meets the eye: The report was sequestered from rigorous agency-wide reviews. This is the way these people have spoken to us for the past year.

...from The Nation.

 

Awesome. Just in time for the holidays.

I love these kinds of threads.

 

When will the Left and the 'intelligence agencies' realise they screwed up, and then shut up? Why do they keep digging, and by doing so expose themselves to even more ridicule?

 

An investigation is not proof of guilt.

Hillary was investigated also, does that mean she was guilty or did they find nothing wrong?

To assume Trump is guilty is just showing partisanship. For all you know Mueller will say nothing happened.

 

Hilarious EDITOR comment at the end of the article:

 

Thanks for the detailed analysis but everyone knows it was the Macedonians who "done" it.

 

They got tired of tilting at statues apparently, those hurt when you run into them full speed.

 

It's August already, Trump should be in jail by now if you were even close to the truth. All you have is ozone and egg on your face.

 

It reminds me of a Simpsons episode, where as an experiment Lisa wires up a cupcake to an electricity supply to see how many times Bart makes attempts to acquire it before he eventually concludes it just isn't worth the pain.

 

Yeah.

You know....some day....these threads will be over.....*sad*

They truly are fascinating.

 

Pretty much.

This was supposed to be an investigation to see if Russian interefered in our election. They couldn't find anything so they moved on to collusion with Trump. That didn't work so now they are looking for anything Trump or his people did that was illegal.

This whole thing is a joke.

Mueller has nothing and is stalling because he knows if he announces he has nothing then the left will throw him under the bus and his career will be over.

I bet Mueller is regretting he took on this witch hunt right about now.

 

Don't forget the brief Nazi's and "omg statues" period.

 

I often find myself wondering what we'd all be talking about if Clinton had won?

 

That would just be a lot of screaming and hellfire.

 

Hey progressives. What happened to Russia, Russia Russia.?? How much crow are the idiots on the left willing to eat?
The people on the left think they need a reason to hate, being miserable people makes it easier to hate.

 

Most of the information in the OP is news from the last couple of days.

 

Yeah, and it all began when Hillary Clinton needed an excuse for losing an election. It's hilarious! Dems are the biggest fools on the planet.

Steve

 

No, you were not.

You were doing the cover your ears-and shut your eyes tight act that Trumpsters are reduced to these days.

Information in the OP is about events that have happened in the last couple of days.

In the last couple of days, we learned this:



These statements (Trump is President when he said it), were outright lies.

We now have correspondence between Trump's personal attorney and Vladimir Putin's right hand man asking him to intervene to move a Trump Tower Moscow forward.

We also have Trump's signature on a letter of intent for such a project.

And we haven't even gotten to how such a deal would square with the fact that Trump has refused to divorce himself from his business interests.

 

Why are you talking about Hillary Clinton? You Trumpster keep bringing her up.

No one else does.

We don't know when it all began yet. But Robert Mueller is going to find out.

Did it begin when Trump started going to Russians to finance his project when no legitimate bank would trust him enough to lend him money?

Did it begin when Trump repeatedly tried to engratiate himself with Russian oligarchs.

Did it begin when Trump decided to run for President and reached out to try and leverage his Russian business connections?

Did it begin when Trump Jr enthusiastically embraced the Russian offer of dirt on Hillary Clinton? Or was that just de facto acceptance of a deal that was already on the table? (Given Paul Manafort and Carter Page's shady histories with Russians, this is a possibility)

Or did the Russians throw in after their attack campaign against US political interests claim the scalp of Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz?

Of course, there is one (rhetorical) question remaining.

Why, if Trump and his cronies are innocent, do they get caught repeatedly in blatant outright lies about these qustions?

The lies and cover ups are so constant the they aren't even viewed as remarkable. People have come to expect this Administration to lie about just about anything.

 

Why not tell you the truth? Does it hurt? You aren't getting the truth from the media. Get angry at THEM!

Steve

 

Well, that was a nothingburger response!

Again, why are you talking about Hillary Clinton? She has nothing to do with Trump and his Russian friends.

And the media did not manufacture five seperate investigations into Trump and Russia, either.

 

That's the wrong direction for finger pointing. Comey admitted UNDER OATH of wrong doing. He leaked false information to the media. There's no telling how much false information is floating around out there because the media won't do its JOB. Nearly EVERYTHING has "unnamed sources."

When investigators leak information to the media, that information hasn't been proven to be false or TRUE until a court decides it is. That's the real problem here.

Steve

 

Seems like Hillary does have ties to Russians. Podesta and Manafort worked together on behalf of Ukrainian lobbyist group efforts. Mueller has issued Podesta subpoenas ... presumably because Podesta also failed to register, per FARA, and failed to disclose million$ in foreign payments. Now it's possible Clinton, like Trump, was unaware of those activities, but it's something worth investigating, and discussing.

 

Meuller just managed to block the Trump card by working with state AG to remove pardon availability. Smart move considering what is happening. Trump staffers are probably sweating heavily and rethinking their positions.

 

That claim is false.

And the discussion today is about named sources and actual documents, of which there are plenty.

Don't waste people's time with talking point claims. There have been plenty of anonymous sources, but the fact that Don Jr was enthusiastic about colluding with Russians is documented, as is Trump's letter of intent, and Trump's attempts to get the Russians to put his deal forward, even as he was standing in front of microphones telling people he had no business with Russians.

Not one of these things is from an anonymous source.