Liberal Forum

Misty » 15 Jul 2017 12:19 pm » wrote:So is that the standard now?
Anything goes as long as they don't step over the line into criminality?
It's okay to just flout all the rules and disregard ethical boundaries?

Democrats' Real, Pervasive Collusion With Russia Somehow Lost In Media's Hysterical Anti-Trump Campaign

Last January, Politico reported that the Democratic National Committee, acting on behalf of Hillary, actually contacted officials in the corrupt government of the Ukraine seeking opposition research against Trump. "Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office," Politico said. "They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton's allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisors."


Is that not collusion? By the way, Ukrainian-supplied information about Manafort meeting with Russian officials led to him being fired by Trump. So the DNC actually used the information.


OK, but what about Russia? The media did very little due diligence on reports of Hillary's collusion with Russia. As we reported in May, not only did Bill Clinton get $500,000 in 2010 for giving a speech in Moscow, paid for by a company with ties to Russian intelligence, but he did so while Hillary was the nation's top diplomat.


We noted the overwhelming stench of collusion between the Clintons and Russia, noting that Viktor Vekselberg, a "Putin confidant," and other Putin cronies gave money to the Clinton Foundation. The Clinton charity also took in millions from Uranium One, which was sold to the Russian government in 2010. With its acquisition, Russia gained control of 20% of the U.S.' uranium deposits. Hillary's State Department approved the sale.


John Podesta: Hillary's campaign manager didn't disclose during the campaign that he had received 75,000 shares of stock from Joule Unlimited, which was financed by the Kremlin. Podesta served as a director of the company from 2010 to 2014, when he joined the Obama White House. He hid the holdings from public scrutiny by transferring them to a shell company called Leonidio Holdings, that he incorporated a mere week and a half before taking a post in the White House.


Oh, and don't forget Tony Podesta, John's brother, who was paid $24 million in fees as a lobbyist in 2016, much of it from foreign governments. He lobbied for Sberbank, a Russian financial firm, that was trying to get U.S. sanctions removed that had been imposed after Russia took the Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
http://www.investors.com/politics/edito ... -campaign/

Misty » 15 Jul 2017 12:59 pm » wrote:Yet another T-Bag lie debunked.

Misty » 15 Jul 2017 1:38 pm » wrote:quote="Termin8tor » 15 Jul 2017 1:35 pm"]Liar.

I have a thread filled with examples.

You never read them, then you lie that I "have yet to name one."

Just like you lied for years in defense of Clinton, stonewalling the mountain of evidence.

This is Really Just Stupid

By Erick Erickson

You know what?

It is ultimately irrelevant that either the Democrats set up Donald Trump, Jr. or the Russians set up both the Democrats and the Trump campaign.

Whether there was a set up or not, the only reason we are in this situation is because Donald Trump, Jr. chose to take that meeting, chose to lie about that meeting, chose to feign full transparency and disclosure about that meeting, and is still hiding stuff about that meeting.

If the meeting was perfectly innocent, why hide so much that it perpetuates a media cycle?

If nothing came of the meeting, why not get it all out there now?

Who all was in the meeting?

We should all know this by now instead of seeing the media drip, drip, drip out that first there was a Russian lawyer who the Trump team said was not there.

Then it turns out there was a former Soviet spy in the meeting too.

Kushner allegedly left the meeting pretty quickly, but the others stayed and there were more in the meeting than we know about.

If the Trump team truly has nothing to hide, they ought to get it all out there quickly, forcefully, and make the case that they should move on.

The problem is at this point no one can really trust them and you can tell no one trusts them because even their own chief defenders are divided on how best to defend them and what talking points work best.

It seems they have hired outside, expert damage control advisers and have refused to listen to them given the array of defenses and decisions being made.

On top of it all, it is more and more obvious that most of the leaking is coming from within the Trump team.

In fact, one person in the White House tells me he is even convinced it is his colleagues leaking and not the Mueller team leaking.

Two senators familiar with the Mueller investigation also tell me the leaks are Trump team originated and not with Mueller’s team in their opinion.

In fact, one person with direct knowledge of the investigation tells me that Mueller’s team is looking at something the media speculation is not currently covering and has only shifted its attention to Trump, Jr. after the release of that email thread.

But even this guy will not say what the team is actually looking at.

And I should note that it was Jared Kushner’s legal team that threw the Don, Jr. email out there.

The people in the Trump team, as a White House friend said to me, are engaged in “amateur Game of Thrones bulls**t” and have largely succeeded in sabotaging the rest of this year for the President.

It should be abundantly obvious to everyone at this point that the Russians knew stupid when they saw it and knew just how easy it would be to toy with Team Trump for their own ends.

Sadly, that should be the wake up call to the President that he needs to start listening to advice from the qualified people around him, but he seems intent to keep it all in the very same family that is sinking his ship of state.

This is so stupid.

When Collusion with Russia Becomes a Crime: Part III — “Aiding and Abetting”

By Bob Bauer

House investigators have scheduled an interview with the Trump campaign digital director to question him about any campaign coordination with Russian-financed Internet advertising.

Amid all the intense attention to obstruction of justice issues, this is a timely reminder of the central question of Trump campaign collusion with Russian interference in the election.

As argued here and here, Trump campaign liability would be grounded in a provision of the campaign finance laws prohibiting “substantial assistance” to a foreign national in an electoral intervention.

It is new territory for a prosecution under this law: the government has not applied the regulation in circumstances like these.

The question has not come up, as it could not have: there have been no comparable circumstances.

Also, on the facts known so far, the Trump campaign’s actions in support of the Russian program have been “in plain sight”—carried out openly and notoriously.

So it may seem to some observers that, even if not requiring any stretch of the plain language of the rule, the substantial assistance theory is novel.

They may hesitate to see it deployed in a case involving, at least in part, political campaign speech, namely, what the Trump campaign would prefer to characterize as routine commentary on the Wikileaks disclosures.

It may be easier to appreciate the case to the contrary–that liability with the requisite intent could be imposed for these actions–by considering how the case could also be brought under ordinary “aiding and abetting” principles of the criminal law.

It is well understood that established “aiding and abetting” principles have wide, elastic application.

The abettor is not required, of course, to have been “in on it” from the beginning.

In Learned Hand’s classic formulation in United States v. Peoni, the law requires only “that he in some sort associate himself with the venture, that he participate in it as in something that he wishes to bring about, that he seek by his action to make it succeed.”

The courts have defined in various terms this association, but what is required is “some affirmative conduct designed to aid in the success of a venture with knowledge that [the]actions would assist the perpetrator, the principal of the crime.” United States v. Cowart, 595 F.2d 1023, 1031(1979).

Note that the assistance constituting aiding and abetting does not have to be substantial.

The accomplice liability provision of the federal campaign finance law, focused on “substantial assistance,” is, in that sense, stricter.

So federal prosecutors proceeding on an “aiding and abetting” theory may have the latitude to reach a broader range of Trump campaign conduct in support of the Russian program.

It would not be the first time that prosecutors would have enforced campaign finance law with an “aiding and abetting” charge.

And they have evidence in the Trump/Russia case with which to work.

The campaign was fully aware of the Russian source of the stolen material and of the Putin regime purpose to intervene in an election.

The hackers did not steal into the Podesta account for their private consumption and edification; they put the stuff out with fanfare, with the intention of generating sensational disclosures that would have the most impact possible on the presidential campaign.

Understanding the foreign national aim, the campaign welcomed the intrusion and did what it could to advance its objectives.

The national party over the course of the month of October issued multiple releases highlighting whatever it judged politically useful in the content of the Wikileaks disclosures.

The President himself, who had openly invited the Russian hacking and declared that he “loved “ Wikileaks, cited this material in the closing weeks.

His confidante Roger Stone has made various and inconsistent statements about whether he had advance knowledge of the Wikileaks document releases, and there remains an open question of what he knew and how he came to know it; but he certainly amplified the disclosures by promoting them in advance and afterwards.

Even after the intelligence community finding, Mr. Trump participated in a presidential debate in which he would not denounce the Russian involvement, or even squarely acknowledge that there was no question that Russia was behind the hacking.

Was this part of a strategy to send the needed message to his Russian political allies–a wink and nod?

If so, the Trump campaign did not stop at signaling its approval of the Russian theft.

It then made active and systematic use of it.

One reason for the uncertainty about whether the Trump campaign may have accomplice liability is the focus on the hacking, the preliminary illegal act by which the Russians acquired the emails.

It showed up, remarkably in Attorney Sessions’ recent testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

He defined the Russian activity as a “serious matter,” because it involved “hacking into a private person or DNC computer and obtaining information and spreading that out.”

“It’s an improper thing,” he told the Committee.

So Mr. Sessions suggested in this way that the illegality consisted narrowly of the hacking and the transmission via Wikileaks of the purloined emails.

If the Trump campaign had no direct hand in that “serious matter,” then it could have done nothing improper.

Indeed, there is no evidence, and little likelihood, that the Trump campaign helped the Russians infiltrate the DNC computer system or helped arrange for Wikileaks publication.

It could not have aided and abetted that particular illegal act.

The confused talk about “collusion” suggests that those who deny it should be asked which collusion–and what kind–they are disputing.

What is too often lost in the crossfire of charges and denials is that the Russians hacked the emails as a means to an end–the distribution of the emails and influence through these acts in the presidential election.

The Trump campaign unquestionably associated itself with this venture and wished for it to succeed.

The Republican nominee said so.

His actions and those of his campaign represented an “affirmative conduct designed to aid in the success of a venture with knowledge that [the]actions would assist the perpetrator, the principle of the crime.”

The crime was foreign spending–providing any “thing of value”–in a U.S. election.

It is not taking an expansive or tenuous reading of the law to see that the Trump campaign was engaged in “aiding and abetting” that.

This is the other notable aspect of the strange testimony from the Attorney General on this issue.

He seemed to believe that the issue warranting investigative attention was electoral “impact” of the illegal Russian activity.

From Mr. Sessions’ perspective, any “impact” in the election could be traced directly from the illegal hack through the Wikileaks publication to the American electorate, and the Trump campaign was just one hapless member of the audience.

The Attorney General is badly mistaken in his understanding of the legal significance of what transpired in 2016 when the Russians committed cyber-crimes to affect the US election.

Whatever the actual “impact” of the Wikileaks disclosure, the intervention was illegal.

The Trump campaign’s encouragement and exploitation of this violation of law exposes it to accomplice liability.

This liability could be based on the prohibition on supplying “substantial assistance” to the Russian scheme, or on the application of “aiding and abetting” doctrine as it has been brought to bear in other campaign finance law prosecutions.

The thrust of the prosecution is the same in both cases, though arguably the evidentiary threshold is higher, at least less certain, for “substantial assistance.”

The evidence as it is further developed will determine which theory, if not both, is ever put to the test.

roadkill » 16 Jul 2017 7:33 am » wrote:"RUSSIAN LAWYER IS ANTI-TRUMP & HAS TIES TO HILLARY AND THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION"

Yes Mr. & Mrs. Smith...you too can enjoy "Connect the Dots". It's fun for the whole family.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrWJSH-o3cE

Misty » 16 Jul 2017 12:20 am » wrote:Treason! Crimes! Blah, blah, blah

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bob Bauer is a partner at the law firm of Perkins Coie and Professor of Practice and Distinguished Scholar in Residence at New York University School of Law. During 2010 and 2011, he was White House Counsel to President Obama.

Misty » 16 Jul 2017 12:20 am » wrote:He asked Russia to interfere in our election, and they did.

What else do we need

Misty » 15 Jul 2017 8:25 pm » wrote: This is Really Just Stupid
By Erick Erickson

Misty » 15 Jul 2017 8:25 pm » wrote:

If you want real collusion with a real trail of evidence of people trying to do real things interfering with the 2016 campaign, Dr. Krauthammer, try Hillary Clinton’s real collusion with the Ukraine to derail and besmirch Team Trump. As Politico reported in a story that went nowhere at the time:

Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found.


A Ukrainian-American operative who was consulting for the Democratic National Committee met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose ties between Trump, top campaign aide Paul Manafort and Russia, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.


The Ukrainian efforts had an impact in the race, helping to force Manafort’s resignation and advancing the narrative that Trump’s campaign was deeply connected to Ukraine’s foe to the east, Russia. But they were far less concerted or centrally directed than Russia’s alleged hacking and dissemination of Democratic emails.


Here you have a meeting between a DNC operative in a foreign embassy receiving materials used to defame and derail the Trump campaign. This meeting had real consequences unlike the Trump meeting.


Was anyone interested? Certainly not MSNBC’s Brian Williams and Andrea Mitchell, who were puzzled as to what Donald Trump was referring to when he tweeted about Team Hillary’s collusion with Ukraine:


On MSNBC Wednesday morning, two of MSNBC’s most prominent anchors admitted they had no idea what Trump was referring to, when he tweeted out that the Clinton campaign also sought out information from foreign government officials to help boost her campaign, during the 2016 election. After reading the tweet, Brian Williams asked Andrea Mitchell if she knew what he was talking about. “I’m hoping you can help me decipher this,” he asked. “It’s hard to figure out what this is about,” Andrea Mitchell quizzically responded.
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles ... z4moGeZkwN

Termin8tor » 16 Jul 2017 8:24 am » wrote:
Obama's entire presidency was stupid, Dim.

Eight years of vast damage to the country by a closet leftist.

Misty » 15 Jul 2017 8:25 pm » wrote:

Huey » 16 Jul 2017 8:06 am » wrote:
Let me set you straight. This is a little long but it corrects obvious errors with your meme. Additionally, if you are going to claim the story is true you next have to address the facts that the documents showed your candidate accepting foreign money from Russia. do you accept that? But, if this story is true from AP your talking point has crashed and burned........

In a statement Sunday, Trump Jr. said the attorney had said she had information that people tied to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Clinton, a description that Akhmetshin backed up in his interview with the AP

Termin8tor » 16 Jul 2017 8:40 am » wrote:
Not that you'll deal with this and answer the question.....


Massive illegal fundraising was one of the charges that was going to be made against Bill Clinton. Obama raised large amounts of illegal money as well.

So evidence was being offered of illegal activity by HRC.

So who is the real wrongdoer in all this; the person who commits no crime but wants to expose crimes?

Or the person who was committing the crimes, Hillary Rodham Clinton?

This is so obvious, even a liberal or two might figure it out.

Misty » 15 Jul 2017 8:25 pm » wrote:

Misty » 15 Jul 2017 8:32 pm » wrote:


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/tru ... aaee274fde