ChiGoose

You’re welcome. I am a big advocate of reading primary sources and a big critic of how the media covers legal things.

Here ya go: US v. Trump (DC Case) US v. Trump (Florida Case) The People of the State of New York v. Trump (Manhattan Case) The State of Georgia v. Donald Trump, Rudolph Giuliani, John Eastman, Mark Meadows, Kenneth Chesebro, Jeffrey Clark, Jenna Ellis, Ray Smith III, Robert Cheeley, Michael Roman, and David Shafer And also here's the ruling for the NY fraud case: People of the State of New York v. Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Allen Weisselberg, Jeffrey McConney, The Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, The Trump Organization, Inc., Trump Organization LLC, DJT Holdings LLC, DJT Holdings Managing Member, Trump Endeavor 12 LLC, 401 North Wabash Venture LLC, Trump Old Post Office LLC, 40 Wall Street LLC, Seven Springs LLC

Because trials take time. More complicated trials take more time. And defendants have rights. Additionally, sorting out what activity was protected by virtue of him being president and what wasn't adds complication and leads to more lengthy appeals. Not to mention that there isn't a lot of precedent of former presidents committing crimes so the judges involved are likely to take more time to reach decisions as they'd want to carefully consider the facts and law since they cannot easily rely on case law. Trump has taken every effort to delay the prosecutions instead of trying to move it along quickly to get it resolved before the election. It's his right to do that, but appealing everything up and down the appellate levels pushes trials back and delays his acquittal or conviction.

There are serious national security concerns about a highly addictive app that vacuums data to send to the Chinese Communist Party but I am not sure outright banning an application like this is the best solution.

Wow. It’s almost as if the best way to end the war without the complete destruction of Ukraine is to give them the ability to push Russia back and force them to the table. Bad break for the Neville Chamberlin caucus who have played into Russia’s hands and ensured the war will rage on.

“Dems can’t stop bringing up Russia even though the evidence that the GOP is working to advance Russian aims is overwhelming. This is a serious position and I am a smart person” -Morons like Mr. Eyerolls here

Question for those who believe life begins at conception: If you were in a burning building and could only save either a baby or a tray of embryos, which would you save?

Ahhhhhh. You live in a fantasy world where you've isolated yourself away from reality. That makes sense. I was trying to understand how someone could believe that the FBI, an organization that has always leaned to the political Right, has basically always been headed by a Republican, and whose head in 2016 broke longstanding protocol to denigrate the Clinton campaign in the days leading up to the election (potentially sealing Trump's victory) was actually a tool of the Democrats. Is being gullible a requirement for being conservative these days, or does it just make things easier?

Do you honestly, truly believe that the *FBI* is in the tank for Democrats? Is that something people actually believe?

Already told you how it got out. This is all publicly known stuff. And there were many meetings between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives. I don’t understand the willful ignorance. I guess people would rather be told they are right than actually be right. It’s really kinda sad.

Hillary paid Fusion GPS for oppo research. When they came up with the Steele dossier, the Clinton campaign attempted to bury it. That is obviously very different than people saying “hey, I work for the Russian government and I want to help you win the election” and the campaign responding with “sounds good!”

Man, you really will believe anything, won’t you? The dossier was trash oppo that fell apart the minute anybody looked into it. Steele thought he was some super spy getting all kinds of info because he was too dumb to realize that he was being fed lies. The pee tape story should have tipped him off.

Ah yes, unnamed sources to a Substack. That definitely beats investigations, real documents, and testimony. The Steele Dossier was unverified oppo research so unreliable that the Clinton Campaign buried it and got in trouble for doing so. Steele shopped it around but nobody would publish it because nothing in it could be independently verified. Then BuzzFeed did a very stupid thing and published it and we’ve all been worse off for it.

Is there some competition between the resistance Libs and MAGA to see who can misunderstand the Steele dossier the most? Hard to tell who’s winning, but reality is certainly losing.

I'd say scale and willingness by a campaign to accept interference. As far as I can tell, the IRA is fairly unprecedented. I'm not aware of such an organization playing in a US election at that scale before. The advent of the internet and social media presented an effective opportunity that we hadn't seen before and were definitely not prepared for. In addition to that, the Trump Campaign had an unprecedented willingness to meet with foreign agents promising politically beneficial information. There were dozens of contacts between the campaign and Russian operatives when the normal thing to do would be to report such attempted contacts to law enforcement.

US Senator Menendez charged with obstruction of justice in new indictment "NEW YORK, March 5 (Reuters) - U.S. Senator Bob Menendez and his wife, Nadine Menendez, were charged with obstruction of justice in a new, 18-count indictment unsealed on Tuesday, adding to corruption charges the New Jersey Democrat already faces. Menendez has pleaded not guilty to earlier charges of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars from businessmen to impede law enforcement probes they faced, and illegally acting as an agent of the Egyptian government. In the new indictment, federal prosecutors in Manhattan said Menendez's former lawyers had told them in meetings last year that Menendez had not been aware of mortgage or car payments that two businessmen had made for his wife, and that he thought the payments were loans. "In truth and in fact, and as Menendez well knew, Menendez had learned of both the mortgage company payment and the car payments prior to 2022, and they were not loans, but bribe payments," prosecutors wrote. The businessman who made the alleged car payment, Jose Uribe, pleaded guilty last week to fraud and bribery charges." Dude needs to go.

Most of this is actually covered in the Mueller Report. I cannot emphasize enough that people should actually read it if they want to talk about it correctly. It's not that long and you can always just start with the Executive Summaries. "Collusion" is not a term in federal law. The media is really bad at covering law stuff and even worse when it involves politics. Politicians also use incorrect or inflammatory language when it benefits them. That's why Mueller looked at the investigation through the lens of conspiracy law, not collusion. The report also notes that the origin of the Russia investigation was the FBI learning of George Papadopoulos's claim that the Trump Campaign had been told that Russia wanted to assist it by damaging Clinton. As to the idea of the origins being the Carter Page FISA, not only is that debunked by Mueller in the above link, but the report from Trump's DoJ reviewing the origins and appropriateness of the investigations also agrees that Crossfire Hurricane was started because of Papadopoulos in July 2016. It also notes that the first Page FISA was applied for in October 2016, several months after Crossfire Hurricane had already started. As to what some Dems are saying, unfortunately, I do not control the Democratic Party. If I did, Hillary wouldn't have been the nominee in 2016 and Schiff would be losing to Katie Porter right now. Alas, I lack the power to make people say what I want them to say.

Something that has become pretty common is to set a baseline on an issue that is either incorrect or exaggerated because it allows you to make the point you want to make. It's just strawman stuff all the way down. For the Russia investigation, many on the Right assume the narrative of far-Left loonies was the basis of the investigation (think Occupy Democrats, Krassenstein grifters, and even Hillary, etc.) who said things along the lines of Trump taking orders from Putin. That way, when there's a lack of evidence to disprove the extreme position, they can claim victory over the entire issue, ignoring the reality of the situation. What the Mueller Report found is that Russia tried to interfere in the election to Trump's benefit and that the Trump Campaign was open to (or even welcoming of) that support. It also detailed several crimes committed by Russians, members of the Trump Campaign, and by Trump himself. But because it didn't prove the extreme / exaggerated claim that Trump and Putin were working hand-in-hand, the Right declared victory, completely ignoring anything else discovered in the investigation. The idea that Trump and Putin had entered into a conspiracy was always way out there. There wasn't any need for an agreement between the parties: they wanted the same thing and they were going to act to achieve it. Why would they need a formal agreement on it when they were going to do it anyway? If Mueller was telling the truth when he said there wasn't an agreement between Trump and Putin (he was), then why do they think basically everything else in the report is a lie (it isn't)? In the end, you get people stupidly using the Mueller Report to disprove the Mueller Report either through a lack of reading comprehension or a malicious desire to mislead.

Look, obviously the Russia investigation was a hoax. There was no evidence or anything to suggest that Russia was trying to interfere in the election or that the Trump Campaign was open to or welcoming of help from Russia. I mean, sure, Yevgeniy Prigozhin had Russia's Internet Research Agency (IRA) start targeting the US in 2014, and yeah, it created a bunch of accounts pretending to be US people and organizations, and Michael Cohen restarted negotiations on Trump Tower Moscow after an earlier attempt never materialized, and the IRA began organizing dozens of political rallies inside the US, and Trump signed a new letter of intent for Trump Tower Moscow with I.C. Expert, a company represented by Felix Sater, and sure, in 2016 the IRA began having its accounts support the Trump Campaign and disparage the Clinton Campaign, and members of the Trump Campaign and family cited, posted, and responded to posts from IRA-controlled accounts such as TEN_GOP, and during the campaign, Michael Cohen spoke to the personal assistant of Russia's press secretary Dmitry Peskov about Trump Tower Moscow, meanwhile the IRA was actually purchasing social media ads opposing Clinton and promoting rallies it organized within the US, around the same time the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff (GRU) hacked into the computers and email accounts of organizations, employees, and volunteers supporting the Clinton campaign, and then it hacked into the DCCC and DNC, stealing hundreds of thousands of documents, and then the GRU leaked stolen information from the Clinton Campaign to cutouts "DCLeaks", "Guccifer 2.0", and WikiLeaks, at the same time that Trump Campaign staffer George Papadopoulos was informed that the Russian government had dirt on Clinton in terms of thousands of emails, and Trump and campaign officials met with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak at a private event, while Paul Manafort (who had a history working with oligarch Oleg Deripaska to install friendly political officials where Deripaska had business interests but was embroiled in litigation after the relationship soured) told Risk Gates to provide Konstantin Kilimnik with updates on the Trump Campaign (including internal polling data) because he believed Kilimnik would share it with Deripaska, and then Roger Stone met with Henry Oknyansky (AKA Henry Greenberg) and Alexei Rasin who claimed to have information on Hillary Clinton, around the same time Michael Cohen accepted an invitation to travel to Russia and meet with Dmitry Peskov (and potentially Putin and/or Medvedev) before backing out of the trip, and then the GRU began targeting state and local computer networks and was able to compromise the Illinois State Board of Elections and gain access to a database of millions of registered Illinois voters, around the time that Emin Agalarov (son of oligarch Aras Agalarov) had Robert Goldstone contact Trump Jr. about incriminating info on Hillary, so Trump Jr. repeatedly told senior campaign staff that he had a lead on negative info about Clinton, after which Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner met with Goldstone, Natalia Veselnitskaya, and others at Trump Tower hoping to get dirt on Clinton, and Roger Stone told the Trump Campaign that he knew that WikiLeaks had the Clinton emails before it was public and he told Manafort that he was in contact with someone connected to WikiLeaks, and the GRU sent hacked materials to WikiLeaks which then released them three days before the Democratic Convention, and within hours of Trump's statement asking Russia to find the 30,000 missing Clinton emails, the GRU began targeting Clinton's personal office for the first time, meanwhile a senior campaign advisor for the Trump Campaign diluted a proposed amendment to the GOP platform supporting "lethal" assistance to Ukraine to only "appropriate" assistance, and Donald Trump posted about an IRA-organized political rally in Miami, and Dmitry Simes of the Center for the National Interest (CNI) provided Jared Kushner with information about Bill Clinton, around the time that Manafort met with Kilimnik who personally delivered a message from Vikto Yanukovych about a peace deal that would allow for Russia to control Eastern Ukraine, and Manafort told Gates that his work from the Trump Campaign would be a way to be made whole for his current issues with Deripaska, and then the GRU sent additional hacked materials to WikiLeaks, which then released them, and WikiLeaks began communicating directly with Trump Jr., providing him with info and a password for an anti-Trump website that was about to launch, and then, less than an hour after the publication of the Access Hollywood video, WikiLeaks released the first set of emails that the GRU had stolen from John Podesta, and in the lead-up to the election, the GRU gained access to the network of at least one Florida county government, and in November 2016, Kislyak met with Kushner and Michael Flynn at Trump Tower to discuss US-Russian relations and floated the idea of a secure communication link with the transition team, and Kislyak also set up a meeting between Kushner and Sergey Gorkov, head of the government-owned VEB who had a direct line to Putin, and after Putin met with his oligarchs, Russian oligarch Petr Aven attempted to meet with Kushner to establish a secret channel with the Trump people, and Carter Page (who had previously formed a relationship with Victor Podobnyy, a Russian intelligence officer working covertly in the US) traveled to Moscow telling people that he was still working on behalf of the Trump Campaign (even though he was no longer employed there). While in Moscow, Page met with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich who wished to connect with the Trump transition team, and in December 2016, when the US looked like it would allow a vote on a UN resolution against Israeli settlements, Michael Flynn contacted Kislyak to let him know that Trump opposed the resolution, and also Flynn called Kislyak to discuss sanctions imposed on Russia by the Obama administration, and George Nader arranged a secret meeting in the Seychelles between Erik Prince and Kirill Dmitriev (head of the Russian sovereign wealth fund), and later on Facebook testified that it had identified 470 IRA controlled Facebook accounts that had collectively made 80,000 posts reaching as many as 126 million people and Twitter testified that it had identified 3,814 IRA controlled Twitter accounts that had been in contact with 1.4 million Twitter users... But aside from that, what evidence is there that warranted looking into Russian efforts to interfere in the election and/or the Trump Campaign's willingness to accept such help?

I’ve said what I continue to say: the reason Biden, Hillary, and Pence were not prosecuted is because their cases differ significantly from Trump’s and would almost certainly lose in court. I’m sorry that reality doesn’t match your narrative but that’s just how it works sometimes. But to bring it back to the topic of the thread, if Trump is right about presidential election immunity, then Biden can’t be prosecuted anyway even if he decides to just start selling our secrets, so long as the Dems don’t vote to impeach him.

I cannot help those who are unwilling to help themselves. Either you cannot read or you are being intentionally ignorant.

The one thing that just about everybody across the political spectrum can rejoice at.

I really would encourage you to read the report where it discusses what evidence they actually have that they can bring to court and why it would ultimately be unsuccessful. That's a pretty good description of Trump's arguments, but most of the cases are actually pretty strong. The documents case in particular is about as slam dunk a case as you can find. Literally anyone else would have already plead out because there's very little hope to be acquitted at trial.

The Dems are so nefarious and controlling that they coordinated a multi-jurisdiction legal attack at Trump by: leading with the worst case, getting the best case stuck with a judge who is in the tank for Trump, waiting for years to move forward so that they would be up against the election, and managing to get each case delayed to a point where Trump likely doesn’t face a jury verdict in a criminal trial before the election. Seems like a bad plan.

Why read primary sources when you can just have dishonest and/or moronic pundits tell you what you want to hear?