Some close present / former trump associates got indited this morning, including campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/30/us/politics/pa…
http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/30/politics/russia-inv…
How high up will this go, and do you think they have anything on Trump directly?
Will he survive his term and, if so, does this doom his chances for reelection?
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I find it really hard to believe he had much of a chance at being reelected anyway. Does he survive the term? With a republican congress, probably. Will these charges get up to Trump? No clue. What I'm almost certain of is that there will be more charges to individuals higher up on the totem pole.
A Republican Congress is not going to impeach Trump unless he completely turns on them and the numbers aren't on the Democrat's side for winning the midterm elections. I don't think Trump runs again, much less wins, but him finishing his term is likely.
That said, this is a terrible thing for the administration. Manafort was his Campaign Manager and Gates put together both the convention and helped plan the inauguration. They were charged with "Conspiracy Against the United States" and 11 other charges. That's pretty fucked. Papadopoulos already pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI too.
You don't think he runs again? I bet he does, and I bet he wins again...and I'm not voting for him in 2020 either.
IMO I think they are methodically and deliberately trying to build a "bulletproof" case against Trump by encircling him with indictments against his closest inner circle. I think there are more indictments to come. I'm no lawyer, but I think they're playing the guilty-by-association angle. One would have to be immensely incompetent to be unaware that all of one's associates are engaged in unscrupulous activity - not sure if gross incompetence is an impeachable offense tho..
Did you actually read the charges? Manafort's charges are from before he was associated with Trump, and is basically tax avoidance, and in no way involves white house collusion with Russia. So no.
Papadopoulos may involve white house collusion with Russia, though. Plus he plead guilty, which may mean he's now a star witness.
Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to making a false statement "about the timing, extent and nature of his relationships and interactions with certain foreign nationals whom he understood to have close connections with senior Russian government officials."
He was a foreign policy adviser for the campaign and said things via email in regards to meetings with Russians about "dirt" on Hillary such as "We need someone to communicate that DT is not doing these trips. It should be someone low level in the campaign so as not to send any signal."
Also of note is that DT Jr. had a very similar meeting with Russians.
I read he admitted to lying about potential contacts with Russians.
Why is DT Jr. meeting with Russians relevant? We know everything that happened, the meeting was a waste of time.
Honestly, what I've been confused about the whole time, is what would Trump's motives be for "colluding" with the Russians? It makes no sense, there's no motive. The whole thing to me seems like a made-up distraction.
This is what Muellers team came up? Tax evasion that we pretty much already knew about, and some low level staffer lied about timing and context of a meeting.
I think Democrats should focus on a message, rather than keep wasting all this time looking for a silver bullet.
1.) Can we stop with the dems/ republicans bullshit? This is an investigation being performed by a special prosecutor not a politician.
2.) The intention of that meeting is as important as the result, because if they intended to collude that means they may have done it at a later date with different parties that we don't yet know about. Do we know everything that happened for sure? I think we'll find that out soon enough.
3.) Made-up? You're smarter than that. It might not lead to anything serious for Trump but this whole Russia story is way past the point of "it's just media fiction".
4.) Why do you assume Mueller's team is done? To me, that seems like a very convenient assumption because you want that to be the case.
The motive is clearly to get elected. We already know multiple Trump associates met with Russia about "getting dirt" on Hillary Clinton. We already know that state-sponsored individuals in Russia influenced the election via social media and Pokemon Go (of all things). We know that Russia's method of influence in its last few "border disputes" is to create discord, fan the flames, and influence foreign nationals to affect their countries from within - playing into Russia's hands.
Russia's motive was to elevate a chaos agent that would embarrass the United States on the global stage, thus weakening America and, in Putin's mind, strengthening Russia. Even Trump and the alt-right's "anti-globalist" views play right into Putin's hands. If America/The West's sphere of influence over global events weakens due to reduced globalism, Putin can expand his. The Trump campaign's motive was to capitalize on Russia's methods to win the election at any cost. They might not give a shit about Russia or not, but winning is the motive. So much winning, you'll get sick of it, right?
My worry is that much of this can be written off by pure naivety and gross incompetence of the Trump campaign and administration as opposed to evil intent. When Trump tweets "NO COLLUSION," he could be correct. He may have just been played by Putin and never realized it.
But...but...but...Barack Obama wasn't born here?
EDIT: Double Post
I think it's very unlikely that Trump would get impeached as a result of Mueller's special investigation. I tend to believe that if there was a true smoking gun that directly implicated Trump it would have surfaced by now. People have not been shy to leak anything condemnatory to the media under this administration.
That being said, I think a more probable, though still unlikely scenario, would emerge from Trump's response to potential indictments. For example, if Kushner were to be indicted and Trump usurped the investigation and DOJ by delivering an immediate pardon. Would this be enough to rouse Republicans, I don't know. Betting on the integrity and moral gravitas of congressmen and women has proven, time and time again, to be a losing strategy.
Or are they starting by charging the small guys, turning them witness, and using them to testify against bigger players?
Trump can pardon anyone he likes. While a pardon would be a shitty move politically, it means Manfort won't have real incentive to talk. There's also a rumor that the charges are from things done BEFORE he was involved in the campaign.
1.) If Trump starts pardoning people involved in this case that would be a miscalculation worse than his firing of Comey.
2.) Refer to CRE comments on Papadopoulus regarding the possible gravity of the situation. While the charges to Manafort may be from BEFORE, it's highly likely he will be pressured to flip to someone higher up on the totem pole (read: more closely associated with Trump). If that happens, all bets are off.
Manafort and his business associate, Richard Gates, were indicted primarily for money laundering, violation of federal tax law, and lying to the FBI, all related to their lobbying business. Nothing in Manafort and Gates' indictment is related to Trump or the so-called "Trump-Russia collusion" story.
The third indictment could be more problematic for Trump, as it directly relates to the 2016 presidential campaign. George Papadopoulos was a low level Trump foreign policy advisor (the guy had no credentials, but that was par for the course for the Trump campaign) who promised high-level meetings between the Trump campaign and Russian officials and subsequently lied to the FBI about his involvement. Papadopoulos' efforts to arrange a direct meeting between Trump and Putin were squashed by the team, who recognized the flagrant violation of U.S. law that such a meeting would entail. The big question here is whether Trump knew about Papadopoulos' intentions and encouraged it or whether he was out of the loop since the guy was a low level advisor.
As of now, I don't see anything that directly connects these indictments to Trump. I never bought the Trump-Russia collusion hysteria, so we'll see if Mueller can establish a connection beyond the shadow of a doubt. Even if he doesn't, it is disconcerting that Trump hired so many shady people. Part of this stems from the fact that reputable Republicans did not want to work for the guy, so he was left with essentially the D Team.
Good response. Agree with the D team part.
You get the soldiers to flip in order to catch the capo. As of now is crucial. We'll see if that continues to be case as the investigation develops. In the context of investigations of this magnitude, we are still very early in the process.
I agree that we're early in the process. It is certainly within the realm of possibility; we just have to wait for all the evidence to come out.
The only thing that will end Trump is his voters turning on him. The Republican congress would never dare upset the base. Meanwhile the ultra fans like TNA admit they'd support Russian intervention in the election so long as Hillary wasn't elected. I think we all know Trump's base will never turn on their personal savior.
EDIT.
I remembered again why I don't comment much on this forum anymore. Continue with the dreaming over nothing.
You should have kept the post. It was hilarious, like someone parodying you... except you wrote it in total seriousness... I even SBed it.
I think it's unlikely that Trump will be implicated. The Russia hysteria has been going on for a year, and nothing has turned up of substance despite Trump being the most scrutinized man in the world. There would need to be incontrovertible evidence that Trump knowingly and willingly aimed to reach out to the Kremlin during the campaign in an effort to undermine Hillary Clinton. If that had happened, we most likely would have the smoking gun by now. But who knows; let's wait and see.
It is genius strategy, but obviously garbage. I can't believe people actually believe this shit.
Trump won't be impeached. I hope tax reform is passed to juice the market. It is doubtful Dems can win the House so Trump will have 4 years and then step down. Why anyone would want to be President is beyond me.
No more responses for me. It's been about 5 years since I have seen any discussions on this site that are intellectually stimulating. I am too old to debate with kids.
At this point I honestly can't tell if you're trying to mimic some sort of /r/The_Donald regular or if this is actually how you communicate now. Between "LOL," "nothing burger," the Hillary deflection, "low IQ," blaming liberals as if they're the only ones who are concerned about this, "impreached," and "can't wait for...liberals to lose their mind and start crying," this entire post is a farce.
The frustrating thing is that there are solid arguments that Trump colluding with Russia to win the election may not be the big deal everyone is making it. I certainly disagree with them, but other politicians, such as Marco Rubio, have said that if they were given "dirt" on Trump from a foreign source they would definitely have used it to win. It fits in the whole "people will do anything to win an election" and you could even intelligently use the information that recently came out that the Democrats helped finance the infamous Trump dossier about watching Russian hookers piss or whatnot as proof that both sides do whatever it takes to get "dirt."
Instead of making an argument in support of your side though, you resorted to:
I just don't understand.
What argument can I make that hasn't been made already. People jumped over the obviously fake dossier about Trump and hookers pissing on Obama's mattress as proof and then moved right along to the next bullshit.
You do remember about Russia hacking databases and voting booths, right?
Oh wait, that didn't happen
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/10/12/russian-hacking-no-cr…
Or Trumps piss dossier:
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/03/how-the-explosive-russian-dossi…
Oh wait,
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/27/us/politics/trump-dossier-paul-singe…
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/10/30/fusion-gpss-ties-to-clinton-…
So please tell me what argument is going to sway people who hate Trump?
Russia and Trump is genius political strategy. Dems used cold war hysteria to forever dirty Trump. It is masterful. It is also a fucking joke.
HRC lost because of the following:
1) Only Dem with negatives as high as Trump 2) Dems moved left and ignored the blue collar historic base 3) Trump brought enthusiasm and voter turn out to the Republicans as Obama did the Dems 4) An economy that financially recovered, but left workers with flat wages and limited jobs
What did Russia do? Podesta emails? Were they fake. Wikileaks has continually attested that Russia didn't provide it. And even if they did, the emails were not covered by the mainstream news.
Was it the DNC emails? The ones that were before the elections and only fucked over Bernie.
So how did Russia influence or hack this election?
Manafort has had countless dealings with shady governments and got caught not paying taxes. His dealings with shady governments mirror HRC as well as countless other government officials post office. Flynn took money from RT for speech and met with Russian counterparts before officially taking office. It was a technicality. How many people in the cabinet of the President Elect meet with officials before day one to ensure a seamless transition.
Almost a year of investigation and they nail a guy who was on Trumps payroll for 3 months for 2012 tax issues. Ukraine isn't Russia and the USA meddled plenty within the domestic affairs of the Ukraine.
This who thing is a joke and anyone who believes it is disillusion. Great strategy, but a fairy tale that has seen the goal posts moved half a dozen times.
It is 2017. Russia is not the USSR. Russia is not our enemy. North Korea is an issue. China building islands is an issue. ISIS is an issue. Terrorism in Europe because of returning fighters from Syria is an issue. Russia is not. Nothing like dusting off cold war rhetoric to whip people into a fury.
I am focused on tax reform. Let the sheep focus on this lame ass witch hunt. Trump will pardon Manafort after he pays back taxes and life goes on. If Dems think this does anything except stroke their already die hard supporters, they are nuts. People are sick and tired of Russia, but the Dems are a one trick pony. Republicans tried that shit and got rocked.
We get it dude. You think Republicans can do no wrong because they're Republicans. You think Democrats are te root of all evil because they're Democrats. Your love of the Republican party is only rivaled by your hatred of the rule of law. Now when are you going to admit that you're a fascist? The Russian collusion doesn't bother you because you actually want a Putin-esque system as long as it's one of 'your guys' in charge. Just admit that so nobody has to bother with whether to take you seriously. Putin's government is a goal for you.
Edit: I just realized this must be trolling. Nobody on earth with an education can possibly be this partisan. It's not possible.
Please enlighten me how Manafort's tax issues pertaining to 2012 Ukraine is evidence of Russian collusion.
Hyperbole is worthless. The Trump Dossier is a lie. Russia didn't hack voting machines. Wikileaks continually denies Russia provided the Podesta emails (that no channels covered). How exactly didn't they influence in any meaningful way?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-21/russian-ad-buys-on-f…
Oh yeah, $100K in ad spend. WOW. Obviously swayed things.
guys guys guys chill out, you're talking to a borderline retard. take it easy on him. he clearly can't take it.
I'm wondering if Bannon or someone at Bannon's level set this Papadopoulos guy on a trail to eventually bring back information from Russia or to collude otherwise. It sounds like he was hired to seek connections with Russia, and we know of at least two that he tried to establish in an effort to become valuable in this regard.
It sounds like other people are mentioned in the court document. There's a "High-Ranking Campaign Official" as well as a "Senior-ranking Policy Advisor" both of whom were contacted in an effort to arrange trips to Russia between the campaign team and the candidate Trump, even after Papadopoulous learned of this supposed "dirt". It's also clear that Russia was looking to interfere but there's no real implication that the Trump team looked to accept Russian help. But, boy were they close to a steaming bag of shit on this one.
There is implication that the Trump team looked to accept Russian help.
4.) In June 2016, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort met with a Russian operative who promised them dirt on Clinton
... so either you dispute this story as false or, to you, this is not an indication of looking to accept Russian help.
That's true. But I was referring to this specific court document. And, the real issue is that it probably won't be enough to remove Trump. The only thing that is really coming out of this is really just enough leverage to cause disruption to the republican side, I guess until they give in.
Dude, do you not think Russia tries to interfere to some extent with every election? Elsewhere also.
And does the US not interfere
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/10/13/the-long-h…
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-us-has-been-meddling-in-other-…
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/30/russia-ukraine-wa…
I am sorry, but comments about Russia meddling in this most recent election are garbage without including all the other elections they have attempted to influence.
Superpowers fuck with each other. Welcome to the land of obvious.
Let me get this straight, that makes it OK for the President to work with a hostile foreign government to undermine democracy? At the end of the day, you really wouldn’t give a shit if he colluded with a foreign government?
Now that indictments are dropping, I want you to draw a line in the sand where you’d actually 1) believe Trump and/or his campaign colluded with Russia and 2) what it would take to stop supporting him. Because I’ve watched the mental gymnastics for the past year and I’m just curious if you’re actually willing to say that there’s no line in the sand.
Manafort is simply leverage. They basically are saying, "look, we have you for something completely unrelated to Trump, but these are serious charges, and we can put you away for years. If you know of anything Trump did that is criminal, now is the time to speak, and we'll work out a deal with you." This will only work of course if Manafort actually knows something incriminating. He worked for Trump for just 2 months and was promptly fired once he served his purpose of helping to secure the GOP nomination. Even Trump realized that Manafort was bad news, a potential liability for the campaign going forward. Is it possible that Manafort saw or heard something during those 2 months that will be a game changer? Yes it's possible but unlikely.
Therein lies the danger of a special counsel. Almost by definition, a special counsel has to go after someone, even if the charges are unrelated to the original purpose of the investigation. After all, they are using up taxpayer dollars to dig up dirt. So I don't yet buy the story that Mueller has something big up his sleeve, that this all part of a master plan that will result in Trump being nailed for a violation of federal law.
Finally, it is worth noting that the media has barely covered the Hillary Uranium-Russia story, even though the evidence for wrongdoing is far greater than the evidence for Trump-Russia collusion. One can honestly critique Trump and admit that the media has an agenda to undermine his presidency.
Just to clear this up, there is no evidence of any wrong doing as part of uranium one. This is propaganda. Here is the chain of events:
1) A Canadian company was founded by a guy Frank Giustra, that company later became Uranium One when it merged with an Australian company. Frank had sold his entire stake in the business during that merger in 2007.
2) This company produced 20% of Uranium that's produced in the US, but that is only 2.2% of total Uranium reserves and consumption in the US.
3) Uranium cannot be exported, so it will stay in the US no matter who owns it. It's also true that Uranium is not a scarce resource to Russia, so they have no reason to want to export it (which they can't, anyways).
4) In 2009 a Russian state owned company started buying up shares and eventually wanted to take a controlling stake in that company, this needs to be approved by CFIUS, a 9 person board from independent government agencies, and HRC was one of them but not even the chairman. The board is chaired by the Dept of Treasury. This is a common practice for mining special metals, like Uranium, or tech deals thought to have effect on national security. The deal was unanimously approved by all 9 members, none of whom HRC had any power over.
5) Frank Guistra, the Canadian who sold his financial stake in the company in 2007, is also an international Philanthropist and has given, over time, over $100mm to one of his favorite charities, the Clinton Foundation. We are being led to believe this was a kickback for uranium one, a deal that was years after he has sold his financial stake in the company. Also all the money he's given has been audited, as the Clinton foundation has been audited multiple times, and other than some over expensing for planes and trips (which all these rich assholes seem to do with their charities), no money has ever gotten pulled out of the foundation to enrich HRC.
6) Bull Clinton also got paid 500k to give a speech to Rosneft employees, which was also supposed to be a kickback, but fails to recognize that is his going rate and he was giving dozens of these a year from the time he left office to today, and he has more people asking for him to speak than he will do speeches. And are we supposed to believe that 500k got split 9 ways to the CFIUS members and that's enough to convince them to push through a deal that is bad for the US and endanger their careers?
There isn't a single thing in that timeline that is even fishy, let alone "provides evidence" of any wrong doing.
OTOH, we have an email from Pappadappolous with the header "Potential Meeting with Russians - Including Putin" being sent to high level staffers in the campaign regarding material they could provide on HRC, someone replying "we should send a low level staffer to separate this from DT", Carter Page then almost immediately going to Russia, and DjTjr getting an email and meeting a Russian female lawyer, known to be a Russian agent, that sounds quite similar to the woman Pappadappolous had been meeting with prior.
Clearly, one of these things is much more suggestive than the other of wrong doing.
Did anything in his comment suggest he was interested in facts?
3) Uranium cannot be exported, so it will stay in the US no matter who owns it. It's also true that Uranium is not a scarce resource to Russia, so they have no reason to want to export it (which they can't, anyways).
Can't export the Uranium? What say you about these revelations? Just propaganda though, you're right...
http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/358339-uranium-one-deal-led…
"Yet NRC memos reviewed by The Hill show that it did approve the shipment of yellowcake uranium — the raw material used to make nuclear fuel and weapons — from the Russian-owned mines in the United States to Canada in 2012 through a third party. Later, the Obama administration approved some of that uranium going all the way to Europe, government documents show.
NRC officials said they could not disclose the total amount of uranium that Uranium One exported because the information is proprietary. They did, however, say that the shipments only lasted from 2012 to 2014 and that they are unaware of any exports since then.
NRC officials told The Hill that Uranium One exports flowed from Wyoming to Canada and on to Europe between 2012 and 2014, and the approval involved a process with multiple agencies."
Yet no one steps back and asks (themselves or otherwise), what's so bad about Russia? In the grand scheme of things, they might as well be our friends.
The media is so myopic these days, it's disheartening. Focus on things that will actually matter in 100 years.
Do you remember during the 2012 presidential election debate when Obama mocked Romney for calling Russia a geopolitical adversary? Do you remember when Democrats portrayed Romney as a cold-blooded sociopath who wanted to kill poor people, was sexist, and abused dogs? Yeah, that was SO 2012. Now, we are supposed to believe that Russia is a YUGE threat that prevented Queen Hillary from ascending to her "rightful" throne in the White House and that President Trump is the second coming of Hitler who will massacre minorities and order the rape of women.
Liberal hysteria is nothing new. The American people are sick and tired of this shit.
"Liberal hysteria is nothing new."
Thank you, I needed a good laugh this morning!
Most “friends” don’t try to hack voter machines, launch propaganda campaigns, hack political parties and attempt to collude with a favorable campaign to undermine your democracy. They are a hostile foreign government and equating their actions to just being “chummy” with Trump is....wow.
Yeah, except for the gross human rights violations, it barely being a democracy, its campaign of destabilizing its neighbors, driving them to civil war, and its systematic disinformation campaign in the 2016 American election, Russia is great!
Russia has a history of destabilizing countries for the sake of chaos to disrupt world order and hold back the west. This is recent history too. You know, 2014, 1990s, 1980s, etc.
Let’s not forget these crimes by Manafort were committed in the city of New York and therefore Trump would have no executive power to pardon crimes prosecuted at the state level. It’s also worth pointing out that Mueller met with AG for NY regarding Manafort prior to issuing an indictment.
The mental gymnastics of Trumpism makes me laugh.
But besides that, we're all still waiting for this Republican government to throw one of their mortal enemies in jail. We've been waiting since the Benghazi hearings and we're all unsure about what is taking them so long. There were promises about the swamp being drained. What is taking so long?
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