ChiGoose

1. Did Mueller ever say that any Russian in contact with the Trump campaign was working for the Russian Government? Yes. The Mueller report actually starts with about 60 pages on what the Russians were doing to hurt Clinton and benefit Trump, which then moves into their connections with the Trump campaign. 2. Steele dossier / Clinton campaign Here's where I have some trouble understanding the argument. The Clinton campaign hires Fusion GPS to do oppo research (possibly because Fusion GPS was already doing it on behalf of Republican actors during the primary, Clinton wanted that work to continue). Fusion GPS then hires an ex-spy to find information on Trump. Steele talks to his contacts and gets back information that, though unverified, would be alarming if true. Given his concern, he tips off the FBI. Absolutely none of that is crime. Nor is it underhanded. Nor is it even a problem. Like I've said, we want people to report suspicious things to authorities, don't we? Given the sheer number of contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives, there were a lot of things the FBI was tipped off about, even outside the Steele dossier. Some of it was debunked, other claims turned out to be credible. But just because someone brought a claim that was ultimately debunked does not mean they were part of some grand plot. I know people want to make this into some big conspiracy and Clinton pulling all the strings and the FBI was in the tank for her. But she lost the election, in a big part because the head of the FBI came out right before the election and said he was reopening an investigation into her. Why would that happen if there was some big deep state effort to get her elected? The idea that Clinton is so powerful and cunning that she can manipulate all of these people but still lose an election to someone who had been considered a joke for most of the election is really hard to square. 3. At the beginning of your post, you said the Trump Campaign did bad, possibly criminal, things. But Trump may not have. You won't say the same thing for the Clinton Campaign. Trump clearly illegally obstructed justice in the Mueller investigation. The evidence is overwhelming and it's really not much of a question at this point. If you don't agree, I suggest reading Volume II of the report. As to the Clinton campaign, I think there is a big misunderstanding on how oppo research works and when it is right and proper to notify authorities. If an oppo researcher finds potential crimes and reports it to the FBI, then that's a good thing.

1. do you think Trump did anything wrong in 2016? Do you think the House should have impeached Trump for his alleged misdeeds in the 2016 campaign? I think that the Trump campaign certainly did bad things, some even criminal. A foreign power was trying to influence the election and the campaign was happy to receive their help, even soliciting it at times. How much of this is Trump versus his associates is up for debate, especially as Trump himself does not leave much of a paper trail. I think that the House should have impeached Trump for obstruction of justice into the Mueller investigation. They had him dead to rights on more than one count and could persuasively argue several others. Despite this, the senate would absolutely not convict in any scenario. Still, it was their duty to at least try to hold him accountable for his actions and they failed to do so. 2a. the dossier was handed to the the press and the FBI simultaneously in order to create a feedback loop of reporting and investigation I do not believe this is true. Steele claims to have handed the dossier to the FBI in July 2016: https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/09/politics/feinstein-releases-glenn-simpson-transcript/index.html From what I've seen, the first mentions of the dossier in the media weren't until September 2016 and BuzzFeed did not release the entire text until January 2017, after the election. 2b. an investigation into Trump that revealed nothing of substance I would disagree that a presidential campaign working with a foreign adversary to influence an election is "nothing of substance" 3. I think Sussman has a plausible defense. Whether he really was acting as a concerned citizen is plausible. I would agree that this is plausible but by no means assured. If Sussman discovered the Alfa Bank connection and was truly alarmed and went to the FBI with it, then that is not a crime nor even a problem. We should encourage that sort of behavior. But if he went there on the orders of the campaign and lied about his purposes, then that is a serious problem and even a crime if that lie is deemed material. 4. So what you have with the 2016 campaigns (both of them) are allegations and nothing "provable". / You might say that the Trump campaign allegedly worked with foreign actors to influence the 2016 campaign. For Trump's campaign I would. Mueller did. The evidence lays it out pretty clearly. The Trump campaign actively engaged with agents of the Russian government in order to help them win the 2016 election. That is undisputable fact. 5. A better case might be made that the Clinton campaign allegedly worked with foreign actors and our own Government to influence the 2016 campaign. Not at all. That would be a much worse case to make. Which is why it hasn't been made by an investigated body. Steele was not working on behalf of the British government. He was not part of a concerted effort by the UK to elect Clinton. He was a contractor doing oppo research. In that research, he was given information that may amount to crimes or compromise if they were true so he provided that information to the FBI. That is exactly what he should have done and what anybody should do in that situation. Ultimately, the FBI can investigate and determine the truth. With the Alfa Bank thing, they quickly decided it was not true. Once again, if you come across something that might be a crime and you report it to the FBI, that does not constitute a conspiracy to influence an election. And it does not constitute a conspiracy with a foreign government if one of the people you worked with wasn't from America.

I am not speculating: Mueller stated explicitly in the report that he was not making a charging decision because he could not indict the president even if the evidence warranted it. He did, however, state that he had the ability to clearly state that the president did not commit any crimes if the evidence supported that statement, but that the evidence in the report did not support that determination. I'm saying that congress is political, and often spineless. Instead of doing a proper wide-ranging investigation, they were mostly content to let Mueller do it, hoping he would come out and say the president should be indicted (something he wouldn't even consider even if it was warranted). They wanted someone else to do the work so they could keep their hands clean and avoid political problems. When the political winds didn't blow their way, they decided not to act and justified it by saying a conviction in a partisan senate was impossible anyway. In short: they were cowards. Barr's summary of the report did not accurately reflect the details and context within the report, something that frustrated Mueller. As for the Trump family, Mueller did investigate Don Jr. for the Trump Tower meeting. Mueller concluded that, while the actions that Don Jr. took may have violated federal election law, that law has a mens rea component: the individual has to know that what they are doing is illegal. Mueller was skeptical they could prove that Don Jr. knew what he was doing wrong and so they declined to charge him. He was too dumb to crime. There isn't much on Ivanka as it doesn't appear she was involved much with the Russia related activities within the campaign. I don't recall much of anything about Eric, though I'm not sure how involved he was in the campaign. In regards to the claim that this was all cooked up by the Clinton campaign, the article you cite includes the following: The Steele Dossier took on a life of its own in the media because it was truly scandalous. But I think it often gets misconstrued as to what it was and what it was not. It was a raw intelligence document provided by an ex-spy on behalf of a client (Fusion GPS / Clinton Campaign / Whichever GOP campaign originally requested the document). Essentially, Steele talked to his contacts who gave him information and he documented it. It is not an analysis document that assesses the validity of the information, just that information he was told that may or may not be true. It also wasn't what started the Russia investigation. It definitely should have been handed to the FBI to investigate but it was problematic when it was leaked to the media (*cough* John McCain *cough*) because it was then stripped of context and blown out to be either a 100% fact based document that showed that Trump likes watersports in Moscow or 100% fake that shows a grand conspiracy to hurt Trump. It was neither of those things. At the time that Russia was working to help get Trump elected, several members of the campaign welcomed the help from Russians and met with them for those purposes. That is very well documented. It seems unlikely to me that Clinton somehow manipulated the Russians and the Trump campaign into working together so that she could tarnish Trump. I've never met a Democrat who is that competent. I think it's not only reasonable, but expected, that if you believe someone is committing crimes, that you report them to the authorities. If a campaign is doing oppo research and they find members of their opposition campaign doing shady things or possibly committing crimes, they absolutely should report that to the FBI. As for Sussman, I have no strong opinion on his guilt or innocence. I would not be outraged if he was found guilty, nor would I celebrate should he be acquitted. While I find the case itself interesting, I have a hard time bringing myself to care very much about Sussman himself, one way or the other. I laid out the arguments being presented by both sides earlier in this thread and I think both are believable. It'll come down to the facts and what convinces the jury. Where I disagree with many on this thread is that the Sussman case is anything other than a single case of a guy lying to the FBI. I do not expect this to snowball into some big thing that takes down a bunch of people.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/house-approves-bill-to-combat-gasoline-price-gouging It's not going to be a silver bullet to fix the gas price issue, but it should help. If gas prices were only raising at the rate of increased costs, the companies would be posting record profits. That being said, seems unlikely this passes the Senate.

Yes, leaking oppo to the media is very standard. It's why Madison Cawthorn just lost his primary. It happens in every campaign all of the time, constantly. It would be completely within standard practice for the Clinton campaign to tip off the media about the alleged Alfa Bank connection. Where it becomes problematic is if they tried to get the FBI to act in a particular manner by concealing that it came from a campaign. That's what the Sussman trial is about.

I honestly don't see this as a problem. Pretty standard campaign stuff. The issue at hand is if she, or campaign officials, directed Sussman to disclose the info to the FBI while telling the FBI that he was doing so on his own behalf. Throwing chum to the media: 👍 Trying to deceive the FBI: 👎

Colluding with a foreign country is NOT treason. Treason is defined by 18 USC § 2381 as: While Russia may be an adversary, we were not at an open state of war with them. Nor does accepting help in an election likely meet the standard of "giving aid and comfort" since it would be Trump, not Russia, that is primarily benefitting. I would be willing to bet against this.

Where did treason come from? That's never been part of the discussion. And as to the evidence, I would really suggest checking out the actual Mueller report. It has a significant amount of evidence. Concluding that because someone was not charged with a crime means that they did not commit a crime would be assuming a perfectly operating legal system that does not exist in this country or any country. My wife has made me watch enough Dateline to know that sometimes people get away with crimes for years and years before they are eventually charged (if they ever are).

Politics. Mueller felt he could not indict a sitting president so he essentially treated the report as a roadmap for impeachment. However, impeachment is a political process, not a legal one. You could have unassailable evidence that the President committed crimes but it basically comes down to how many Senators are from the opposition party, not the actual truth of the matter at hand. We saw this with Clinton's impeachment too. In fact, until Trump's second impeachment, no Senator had ever voted to remove the President of their own party. Now, the DoJ could still indict Trump but that raises many of the same political concerns I've outlined previously. Even if the evidence is ironclad, the DoJ would be immediately called out as a political actor who is only going after Trump because of politics. Given the hits to the reputation of the DoJ over the last several years, an institutionalist like Garland may be reluctant to pursue that path.

This notion is really hard to square with the pages and pages of evidence of the Trump campaign working with individuals working on behalf of the Russian government in the Mueller report. I would like to think that if we had the same amount of evidence of the Clinton campaign working with the Chinese to help her get elected, we would be outraged as well. In any event, it is clear from reading the actual report that Mueller did not specifically accuse Trump of committing crimes solely because he felt he could not indict a sitting president (giving him the opportunity to respond and clear his name via trial) and not because there was no evidence of crimes. Given that Sussman going to the FBI was not the predicate to launch the Mueller investigation, and that Mueller actually found ample evidence of connections between the Trump campaign and Russians, I have a hard time believing that this Sussman trial is the loose string that Durham will pull to unearth some vast conspiracy. Like I've said before, if Durham gets a guilty verdict here and then starts getting guilty verdicts up the chain of the Clinton campaign, I'll change my mind. But I'd wager the chances of that are fairly slim. Even if Sussman is found guilty (which he may be), I'd expect that'll be the high water mark of Durham's investigation or at least close to it.

Well... this is starting to get out of hand... This thread was originally started as a discussion about the Sussman trial and in two pages it has devolved into sh!tposting, mudslinging, and talk about being triggered and Putin for some reason. I think there are valid disagreements to be had, but since I've really tried to get involved on this board over the last week or so, it seems that people are more interested in yelling at each other and making broad sweeping claims rather than actually engaging on any particular topic. It really feels like everybody tries to sort every post into either Left or Right and then brings all of their assumptions and accusations to bear based on that assessment regardless of the actual discussion at hand. I will give credit to DrsGhost, Tiberius, Doc, Westside, and Buffalo Timmy for trying to stay on topic, but I feel like this thread is on the cusp of falling into the same scrapheap of garbage threads littering this part of the forum. Anyhoo, I'd suggest reading the Mueller Report. It's dense but heavy on facts and citations. The media has done an absolutely terrible job covering what is in it, but it is very clear from the record that the Trump campaign had many connections to Russians and even collaborated at some points. That does not mean that Trump is a Russian toadie or in Putin's pocket. Both groups were interested in a Trump victory (or at least damaging Clinton should she succeed), but it does not appear they engaged in an agreement to corporate on that goal. At the time of the 2016 election, I still considered myself a Republican, but Trump and the party's support for him were too much for me to endorse and I ended up leaving. It's ok to change course sometimes. I still maintain that the Sussman trial is being made out to be much more than it is, and that it is not going to end in some big unraveling of a Clinton conspiracy. That being said, if Sussman is convicted and then Durham starts securing convictions up the chain, I reserve the right to change my mind. If anyone wants to actually seriously discuss the actual facts of the Sussman case (or any other interesting topic) and where they may lead, I'm down for it. But if this is going to just devolve into the rest of the garbage I see on the PPP part of the message board, I suppose I can log off for a couple years and see if things get better.

Fair enough. I will state that if what Kash Patel states comes to pass (Sussman is convicted and Durham starts getting convictions up the chain, proving a conspiracy), that will be convincing to me. I'm not ruling it out, I just don't see it as the most likely outcome. I hold no water for Clinton, I was still a Republican in 2016. I am just skeptical that she is capable of pulling off a complicated nationwide hoax, but we shall see.

EDIT: I answered this based on the president committing a crime. As stated in the Mueller Report "collusion" isn't actually a crime as laid out in a statute. I would agree that they probably should be prosecuted but I'm not confident that they definitely would be. I don't think we've ever had a former president criminally prosecuted before. The closest we came was Nixon but that became impossible when Ford pardoned him. Prosecuting a president is far trickier than your average citizen because they have additional protections (executive privilege, duties as president, etc.) that would need to be overcome in the trial. It also will immediately be politicized, potentially putting a stain on the office leading the prosecution. So even if an investigative body has a strong case, they may be reluctant to bring it unless they are 100% certain they could secure a guilty verdict. And even then, they would have to weigh that against political concerns. I don't love it, I think there is plenty enough evidence to indict Trump on obstruction of justice as well as breaking Georgia election law, but I'm not confident that will actually happen. Bottom line for prosecutors: you come at the king, you best not miss.

I am skeptical that it ends up going that far. The case against Sussman is far from a slam dunk and conviction is certainly not assured. And even if Sussman is convicted on a single charge of lying to the FBI, would the sentence be so high that he would roll over (assuming there really is some big conspiracy here)? It's definitely not impossible, but at the current stage, it seems fairly improbable to me.

Here's an article from two years ago outlining who was indicted and who plead guilty or was convicted: https://www.axios.com/2019/11/15/trump-associates-convicted-mueller-investigations Collusion is not a legal term and it's a big reason why the media coverage on this was so bad. Mueller specifically noted in the report on page 2: The report then goes on to document a myriad of interactions between individuals in the Trump campaign and Russian operatives, including sharing internal polling data with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. However, because conspiracy requires an agreement between parties, Mueller was not able to state affirmatively that there was a conspiracy. Coordinating and working with Russian agents towards a shared goal is not enough if you do not have an actual agreement between the parties. That being said, the report also detailed numerous instances that meet or may meet the standards of obstruction of justice. In setting the stage for that part of the report (Volume II), Mueller states that he was not making a prosecutorial judgement because the sitting president could not be indicted under guidance from the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). Stating that the president committed a crime without indicting the president would not allow him a chance to clear his name through a trial. Therefore, Mueller would not make a decision on indictment. However, he did note the following: Volume II then details out 10 instances where the president may have committed obstruction of justice, including several instances in which all prongs of obstruction are strongly supported by the evidence. This is a helpful chart for understanding the obstruction of justice evidence in the report: https://www.lawfareblog.com/obstruction-justice-mueller-report-heat-map In terms of impeachment? That's a political process. It was highly unlikely, no matter the facts, that any president would be removed on impeachment in our currently polarized time if it required a significant number of votes from their own party. Also, one must never underestimate the ability of the Democratic Party to fumble every opportunity it is handed.

What about it was a hoax? I've read the Mueller report and it is very thorough. I definitely think the media coverage was generally very poor, but the media is generally bad at covering politics and incredibly bad at covering legal issues. So a legal investigation into a political campaign spawned a lot of poor quality news stories. That being said, there were something like 30 indictments arising out of that investigation. Those aren't a hoax.

This really seems like we're all jumping to conclusions on alleged specifics of a document that hasn't even been drafted yet. We can spin comments like Johnson's anyway we want but it doesn't mean anything until there is an actual proposal on the table.

There were definitely problems with the Russia investigation but it was certainly not a hoax and was not predicated on the Steele dossier nor Sussman's meeting with the FBI. So it's not surprising that Durham didn't find any vast conspiracy or even big wrongdoing. In fact, if this is all he was able to find, it probably bolsters the investigation's findings. It looks like people are making the Sussman trial into some big referendum on Mueller / the Russia investigation, but it's definitely not that. The investigation was not based on Sussman's tip and the FBI quickly dismissed the information that Sussman provided to them anyway. This is a fairly straightforward §1001 case, though whether or not the jury convict is not yet clear this early on. If Sussman is convicted, that means he should have told the FBI explicitly that he was working on behalf of a client(s). Drawing conclusions beyond that would not be a good idea nor based in any facts on the record.

I read some recaps of the trial today and thought I would try to sum them up here for those who don’t have time to read all the news. Facts of the case: the Clinton campaign engaged Michael Sussman as lawyer during the 2016 presidential election campaign. In September of 2016, Sussman reached out to an FBI contact about information he had about the Trump campaign. Sussman told the FBI that he was doing so not on behalf of any of his clients*. At the meeting, Sussman provided a thumb drive he said contained data that showed that the Russian bank Alfa Bank had a connection to servers belonging to the Trump organization. In the Fall of 2021, Sussman was indicted on one count of violation of 18 U.S. Code § 1001 (a)(2) for not disclosing to the FBI that he was working on behalf of any client when he conveyed those allegations against the Trump campaign. Subsection (a)(2) reads as: This charge has two prongs that Special Counsel Durham must prove to secure a guilty verdict: Sussman knowingly and willfully lied when he said he was not acting on behalf of any client when meeting with the FBI That the lie was material The prosecution gave their opening statements that included the following: Sussman was actually working on behalf of the Clinton campaign and another client when he met with the FBI Sussman’s goal was to create an “October surprise” by having FBI investigations into Trump generating negative headlines about him leading into the 2016 election. Sussman lied because he believed that if the FBI knew he was working for a political campaign, they would find his claims less credible. The defense made the following arguments in their opening: Sussman regularly worked with the FBI and they knew he worked with the Clinton campaign and the DNC The prosecution cannot prove that Sussman lied since only he and FBI lawyer James Baker were in the meeting; neither of them took notes and Baker’s memory is unreliable. In any event, the information provided by Sussman appears to have been quickly debunked by the FBI as not credible. Sources: Indictment (charge is on page 27): https://www.justice.gov/sco/press-release/file/1433511/download 18 U.S. Code § 1001: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1001 Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/opening-statements-set-in-trial-linked-to-russia-probe/2022/05/17/620d479e-d596-11ec-be17-286164974c54_story.html The Hill: https://thehill.com/regulation/3491229-sussmanns-defense-lawyer-calls-durham-prosecution-an-injustice/ Kansas City Star: https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/national-politics/article261511192.html *Sussman had other clients in addition to the Clinton campaign, including a data specialist who is also involved in the case

Am I missing something? These make it sound like countries want to start discussing how to prepare for pandemics in the future but there are basically no specific language on what that means. Seems like they aren't even at the starting line yet...

Is there a link to the proposal document from WHO?

It really does seem like he's trying to find a way out without having to pay the $1 billion penalty.

Anyone else going to the season opener at SoFi stadium? Where's the best tailgating?

There are two main factual issues that will need to be decided by the jury (the finder of fact in trials): Did Sussman lie when he said he was acting on his own out of a true concern of potential crimes? Someone who discovers potential criminality and reports it to the FBI is not necessarily doing it on behalf of their employer Durham alleges that Sussman was actually working at the campaign's behalf to push negative stories about Trump to damage his campaign If Sussman lied, was the lie "material" in that it impacted the decisions that the FBI made? Given the nature of the information provided by Sussman, would the FBI have acted differently or treated it differently had they known that he was working for the Clinton campaign? This is going to hinge on the testimony on the case and who the jury feels is more believable about the two prongs above. To succeed on a §1001 charge, Durham will need to convince the jury both that Sussman lied, and that the lie had a material impact on the FBI's investigation. Sussman will likely make two arguments: that he was a concerned citizen not acting under direction of the campaign, or in the alternative, if he did lie, it was not material to how the FBI would investigate his claim. Ultimately, the penalty should Sussman be convicted is a fine and/or imprisonment of no more than five years. Given the facts that I've seen (and I admit I have not been following this super closely), I would not expect a heavy sentence should Sussman be found guilty. However, any conviction for lying to the FBI would likely end his legal career.

Nah, that's someone else. Sussman was a lawyer for a firm working with the Clinton campaign who reported an alleged connection between the Trump organization and a Russian Bank. He has been charged with one count of lying to the FBI for not disclosing that he was representing the political campaign when he met with the FBI. He told his contact at the FBI that he was coming on his own behalf, not on behalf of any client. An important point of the dispute will be if the jury determines that he was in fact acting on his own to alert the FBI of a potential crime, or (as Special Counsel Durham alleges), this was part of an effort by the Clinton campaign to discredit Trump. Durham alleges that this was a material lie because if the FBI knew he was actually working on behalf of a campaign, they would have acted differently. Ultimately, the information that Sussman provided to the FBI (that servers in Trump Tower were communicating with Alfa Bank) were deemed to be not credible or not true. I'm not even sure they were mentioned in the Mueller report.