[News] Trump, Russia, and the 2016 Election

All news related to Donald Trump's alleged ties to Russia and to the Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election. New details should be cited to reputable sources.

The public won't read the report, but they will watch dozens of witnesses get hauled to the House to repeat their testimony to a live camera. The sooner, the better. Mueller should answer every question with "read the report, or ask the witnesses themselves."

Nothing will happen and nothing will change. He will basically repeat everything he has said over and over. Trump and co. will tweet away how this clearly shows that no collusion no crime and him and his GOP cronies will go back to figure out how best to suppress voters in 2020.

Mixolyde wrote:

The public won't read the report, but they will watch dozens of witnesses get hauled to the House to repeat their testimony to a live camera. The sooner, the better. Mueller should answer every question with "read the report, or ask the witnesses themselves."

I think it would be very illuminating for the American people if Mueller did nothing more than sit there and read the most damning pages of the report out loud.

TheGameguru wrote:

Nothing will happen and nothing will change. He will basically repeat everything he has said over and over. Trump and co. will tweet away how this clearly shows that no collusion no crime and him and his GOP cronies will go back to figure out how best to suppress voters in 2020.

Just let the Democratic party primary process run without interference?

JeffreyLSmith wrote:

I think it would be very illuminating for the American people if Mueller did nothing more than sit there and read the most damning pages of the report out loud.

I'm all for this, especially if he prefaces every read response with, "Are you illiterate?"

Maybe the report should have taken the form of a Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Trump meltdown has begun. This is a twitter thread that has several clips from his interview with Fox News' Maria Bartiromo this morning. Let's just say she lost control of him. She so desperately doesn't want him to look like a raving lunatic, but fails.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/v1sUoSq.png)

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/oXI0OYL.png)

TheGameguru wrote:

Nothing will happen and nothing will change. He will basically repeat everything he has said over and over. Trump and co. will tweet away how this clearly shows that no collusion no crime and him and his GOP cronies will go back to figure out how best to suppress voters in 2020.

I actually think the most important part of the testimony will be when he responds to GOP questions. They've already signaled they want to try to discredit him in this hearing. They're going to dip into their off-the-wall conspiracy theories, and Mueller will presumably shoot them down -- on live TV.

I think this will be the best way to ultimately get reasonable, strong, and impactful responses to their bat-sh*t crazy conspiracy mongering. It may even have an impact...if Fox actually airs it.

Jayhawker wrote:

Trump meltdown has begun. This is a twitter thread that has several clips from his interview with Fox News' Maria Bartiromo this morning. Let's just say she lost control of him. She so desperately doesn't want him to look like a raving lunatic, but fails.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/v1sUoSq.png)

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/oXI0OYL.png)

This sounds like just about every conversation Trump has ever had.

firesloth wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

Nothing will happen and nothing will change. He will basically repeat everything he has said over and over. Trump and co. will tweet away how this clearly shows that no collusion no crime and him and his GOP cronies will go back to figure out how best to suppress voters in 2020.

I actually think the most important part of the testimony will be when he responds to GOP questions. They've already signaled they want to try to discredit him in this hearing. They're going to dip into their off-the-wall conspiracy theories, and Mueller will presumably shoot them down -- on live TV.

I think this will be the best way to ultimately get reasonable, strong, and impactful responses to their bat-sh*t crazy conspiracy mongering. It may even have an impact...if Fox actually airs it.

I predict the GOP will not ask Mueller a thing, and then act like they were kept from the truth.

Given that he's literally eaten documents to escape the Presidential Records Act, that's pretty rich.

Also, I'm starting to have doubts about his mental stability...

I'd love to believe that this time it will finally amount to something. But like garion said, this behavior is nothing new.

garion333 wrote:

This sounds like just about every conversation Trump has ever had.

Stolen from Oily in the other Trump thread.

Vox: https://www.vox.com/2019/6/26/18759561/trump-fox-business-interview-mueller

On Wednesday morning, hours after news broke that special counsel Robert Mueller will testify before Congress in a public setting on July 17, President Donald Trump called in to Maria Bartiromo’s Fox Business show for a lengthy phone interview that was especially unhinged, even by his standards.

It was a surreal affair from start to finish. But even during its wildest moments, Bartiromo pretended to understand what Trump was talking about and acted as though he was making profound points. In that respect, it illustrated how Trump-friendly media — Fox News and Fox Business in particular — normalize an obviously abnormal president.

Jayhawker wrote:
garion333 wrote:

This sounds like just about every conversation Trump has ever had.

Stolen from Oily in the other Trump thread.

Vox: https://www.vox.com/2019/6/26/18759561/trump-fox-business-interview-mueller

On Wednesday morning, hours after news broke that special counsel Robert Mueller will testify before Congress in a public setting on July 17, President Donald Trump called in to Maria Bartiromo’s Fox Business show for a lengthy phone interview that was especially unhinged, even by his standards.

It was a surreal affair from start to finish. But even during its wildest moments, Bartiromo pretended to understand what Trump was talking about and acted as though he was making profound points. In that respect, it illustrated how Trump-friendly media — Fox News and Fox Business in particular — normalize an obviously abnormal president.

Trump’s rant was completely disconnected from reality, but Bartiromo responded to it by saying, “it’s obvious what they were planning, sir.”
Jayhawker wrote:

I predict the GOP will not ask Mueller a thing, and then act like they were kept from the truth.

Of course Republicans will ask Mueller questions.

They'll ask him about the fee dispute he had that made him resign his membership to the Trump National Golf Club in Virginia, implying that his investigation was personally motivated. They'll ask him why his investigation team had so many Democrats on it, implying that it was a partisan witch hunt.

They'll ask him about every negative thing about Mueller and his investigation that Trump feverishly tweeted at 4 AM because doing so will please the orange one. And asking questions like that will also match what the people who voted for them have heard about Mueller on Fox News.

I really meant about the more substantive questions so many of the hardcore Trump supporters and Q followers are into, the "Origin of the Investigation" question. They don't want Mueller's answers about that.

Jayhawker wrote:

I really meant about the more substantive questions so many of the hardcore Trump supporters and Q followers are into, the "Origin of the Investigation" question. They don't want Mueller's answers about that.

My money is they WILL ask him all those questions, just worded in such a way a damaging soundbyte can be gleamed from them. Sort of along the line of "When did you stop beating your wife?"

Jayhawker wrote:

I really meant about the more substantive questions so many of the hardcore Trump supporters and Q followers are into, the "Origin of the Investigation" question. They don't want Mueller's answers about that.

Hardcore Trump supporters and Q followers don't need to be placated during Mueller's Congressional testimony. They're chugging their fifth cup of Jim Jones-brand orange fruit drank and are fully convinced of Trump's innocence (and a massive deep state conspiracy against him).

The Republican Congressmen will just treat the testimony as their application to "The Best Trump Lickspittle of 2019" awards.

Republicans will ask Mueller about Strzok and Page and their text messages, because that's what Trump is currently obsessed with.

Republican questioners will ask "wah wahh wah wah woh wah wah wah" thanks to my 'Charlie Brown Adults Talking' Chrome extension which only activates when some corrupt numbskull is grandstanding (I wish this was a thing)

If the Republicans had any brains and self-restraint at all they'd ask Mueller nothing. "Why should we ask questions? The Mueller Report speaks for itself just as he has repeatedly told us, and what is says is 'No Collusion No Obstruction'. Why is the radical Democrat leadership wasting our time on this?"

Doesn't mean that they're not going to be doing their damndest to sound as looney as possible to appeal to the Dear Leader or rile up the MAGA hordes in their districts though; brains and self-restraint are not valued commodities.

On the other side, what I want to hear from the Democrats is as many variants of "Were Mr. Trump not President, would you have indicted him and other members of his family?" as necessary.

r/The_Donald finally went far enough to get themselves quarantined

thrawn82 wrote:

r/The_Donald finally went far enough to get themselves quarantined

It's about f*cking time.

That said, it's pretty sad that reddit's admins were fine with letting that sh*tshow continue until they finally went "too far" by making threats of violence towards Oregon police

Repeatedly advocating violence against liberals and minorities, over and over again, for years? Totally fine, apparently.
Advocating violence against the police? We gotta shut that sh*t down!

muttonchop wrote:
thrawn82 wrote:

r/The_Donald finally went far enough to get themselves quarantined

It's about f*cking time.

That said, it's pretty sad that reddit's admins were fine with letting that sh*tshow continue until they finally went "too far" by making threats of violence towards Oregon police

Repeatedly advocating violence against liberals and minorities, over and over again, for years? Totally fine, apparently.
Advocating violence against the police? We gotta shut that sh*t down!

It's worse than that. it wasn't that they made threats at Oregon police, they've made such threats before. It is that the threats of violence and Reddit's tolerance of them made a headline in a well circulated on-line paper.

but i'll take the win even if it comes from a cynical place.

Which kind of just shows these things need to get a lot of coverage before action is taken. But that is pretty much all evil really. Just look at the weird/horrible stuff coming out about the K-Pop scene in S. Korea.

Exclusive: The true origins of the Seth Rich conspiracy theory. A Yahoo News investigation.

WASHINGTON — In the summer of 2016, Russian intelligence agents secretly planted a fake report claiming that Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich was gunned down by a squad of assassins working for Hillary Clinton, giving rise to a notorious conspiracy theory that captivated conservative activists and was later promoted from inside President Trump’s White House, a Yahoo News investigation has found.

Russia’s foreign intelligence service, known as the SVR, first circulated a phony “bulletin” — disguised to read as a real intelligence report —about the alleged murder of the former DNC staffer on July 13, 2016, according to the U.S. federal prosecutor who was in charge of the Rich case. That was just three days after Rich, 27, was killed in what police believed was a botched robbery while walking home to his group house in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington, D.C., about 30 blocks north of the Capitol.

The Russian effort to exploit Rich’s tragic death didn’t stop with the fake SVR bulletin. Over the course of the next two and a half years, the Russian government-owned media organizations RT and Sputnik repeatedly played up stories that baselessly alleged that Rich, a relatively junior-level staffer, was the source of Democratic Party emails that had been leaked to WikiLeaks. It was an idea first floated by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who on Aug. 9, 2016, announced a $20,000 reward for information about Rich’s murder, saying — somewhat cryptically — that “our sources take risks.”

At the same time, online trolls working in St. Petersburg, Russia, for the Internet Research Agency (IRA) — the same shadowy outfit that conducted the Russian social media operation during the 2016 election — aggressively boosted the conspiracy theories. IRA-created fake accounts, masquerading as those of American citizens or political groups, tweeted and retweeted more than 2,000 times about Rich, helping to keep the bogus claims about his death in the social media bloodstream, according to an analysis of a database of Russia troll accounts by Yahoo News.

DOJ inspector general questioned Christopher Steele for 16 hours last month and found him "credible."

Politico wrote:

Christopher Steele, the former British spy behind the infamous “dossier” on President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia, was interviewed for 16 hours in June by the Justice Department’s internal watchdog, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The interview is part of an ongoing investigation that the Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, has been conducting for the past year. Specifically, Horowitz has been examining the FBI’s efforts to surveil a one-time Trump campaign adviser based in part on information from Steele, an ex-British MI6 agent who had worked with the bureau as a confidential source since 2010.

Horowitz’s team has been intensely focused on gauging Steele’s credibility as a source for the bureau. But Steele was initially reluctant to speak with the American investigators because of the potential impropriety of his involvement in an internal DOJ probe as a foreign national and retired British intelligence agent.

Steele’s allies have also repeatedly noted that the dossier was not the original basis for the FBI’s probe into Trump and Russia.

The extensive, two-day interview took place in London while Trump was in Britain for a state visit, the sources said, and delved into Steele’s extensive work on Russian interference efforts globally, his intelligence-collection methods and his findings about Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, who the FBI ultimately surveilled. The FBI’s decision to seek a surveillance warrant against Page — a warrant they applied for and obtained after Page had already left the campaign — is the chief focus of the probe by Horowitz.

The interview was contentious at first, the sources added, but investigators ultimately found Steele’s testimony credible and even surprising. The takeaway has irked some U.S. officials interviewed as part of the probe — they argue that it shouldn’t have taken a foreign national to convince the inspector general that the FBI acted properly in 2016. Steele’s American lawyer was present for the conversation.

We hired the author of 'Black Hawk Down' and an illustrator from 'Archer' to adapt the Mueller report so you'll actually read it:

So we hired Mark Bowden, a journalist and author known for his brilliant works of narrative nonfiction like "Black Hawk Down," "Killing Pablo," and "Hue 1968."

Our assignment for him was simple. Use the interviews and facts laid out in the Mueller report (plus those from reliable, fact-checked sources and published firsthand accounts) to do what he does best: Tell a story recounting Mueller's report that's so gripping it will hold your attention (and maybe your congressional representative's).

We also hired Chad Hurd, an illustrator from the art department of "Archer." We asked him to draw out scenes from the report to bring them to life.

Here's what Bowden and Hurd gave us …

Courthouse News Service: Michael Cohen Files Implicate Trump, Hope Hicks and David Pecker

MANHATTAN (CN) – When the first batch of Michael Cohen search-warrant materials became public, the files disclosed evidence that President Trump’s former fixer secretly worked for a foreign government.

The new materials released on Thursday proved no less significant, detailing the actions Cohen took after the release of the “Access Hollywood” video threatened to derail Trump’s campaign. Within days of the release, according to the warrants, Cohen exchanged a “series of calls, text messages and emails” with Trump; his then-press secretary Hope Hicks; the National Enquirer’s David Pecker; and Stormy Daniels’ lawyer Keith Davidson.

Detailing Cohen’s illegal hush-money payments to two women, the unsealed pages dispensed with the veiling of “Individual-1.”

“As set forth below, there is probable cause to believe that Cohen made an excessive in-kind contribution to the presidential election campaign of then-candidate Donald Trump in the form of a $130,000 payment to Stephanie Clifford, an individual who was rumored to have had an extramarital affair with Trump, in exchange for her agreement not to disclose the alleged affair,” the document states.

So Mueller has started... I wonder if the dial will move at all. I'm sure this piece will piss off Trump. The double negatives are annoying though

Nadler: So the report did not conclude that he did not commit obstruction of justice? Is that correct?

Mueller: That is correct.

Nadler: And what about total exoneration? Did you actually totally exonerate the President?
Mueller: No.

Nadler: Now, in fact your report expressly states it does not exonerate the President?
Mueller: It does.

This one is fun too...

Nadler: "Is it correct that if you had concluded that the President committed the crime of obstruction, you could not publicly state that in your report or here today?"
Mueller: "The statement would be that you would not indict, and you would not indict because under the OLC opinion, excuse me, a sitting president cannot be indicted, it would be unconstitutional."

Nadler: "Under Department of Justice policy, the President could be prosecuted for obstruction of justice crimes after he leaves office, correct?"
Mueller: "True"

My only take away from this so far is that apparently Mueller has started to go senile sometime between releasing the report and today’s testimony.