Trump/Russia/SDNY investigation

SteveJ

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I was sure those were spoof tweets. He sounds like a comedian.
 

Pexbo

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Obama was incredibly mindful of not taking any action because it would have been deemed to have been interfereing in the election.

Imagine if it was announced during the campaign that Trump Campaign was under investigation for colluding with the Russian government.

Republicans would have gone absolutely fecking mental. He let it play out the only way he could. Rock and a hard place.

The last line isn’t all the proof you need that he’s attempting to change the narrative.
 

SteveJ

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There should be a comma after 'smart', smarty.
 

2cents

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Can someone tell me, would it not be the case that the CIA would have been playing a pretty major role in investigating all this from day one, probably a bigger role than the FBI? I'm not sure how the agencies divide their responsibilities, always just thought the CIA was responsible for all the external stuff. If that's the case, why do we never hear about the CIA's role in uncovering any of this?
 

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Can someone tell me, would it not be the case that the CIA would have been playing a pretty major role in investigating all this from day one, probably a bigger role than the FBI? I'm not sure how the agencies divide their responsibilities, always just thought the CIA was responsible for all the external stuff. If that's the case, why do we never hear about the CIA's role in uncovering any of this?
Depends on where the crime is being committed. CIA can't operate on US soil. I don't know how they attribute cyber crime like this.
 

afrocentricity

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Tbh that's not the only take (US getting some of their own medicine). I've seen a lot of people stating this is showing the US up. It all looks a bit of a shambles, like standards have well and truly slipped.
 

adexkola

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Not nice looking in the mirror... we've been meddling in elections, politics of countries the world over for decades.

Russians do it to us...and it's a dastardly act of monumental proportions lol

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/02/...dling-in-elections-we-do-it-too.html?referer=
Have to love this justification of our meddling...

But in recent decades, both Mr. Hall and Mr. Johnson argued, Russian and American interferences in elections have not been morally equivalent. American interventions have generally been aimed at helping non-authoritarian candidates challenge dictators or otherwise promoting democracy. Russia has more often intervened to disrupt democracy or promote authoritarian rule, they said.

Equating the two, Mr. Hall says, “is like saying cops and bad guys are the same because they both have guns — the motivation matters.”
Yeah, that makes it all right eh? And that ignores the history of the U.S. intervening and toppling popular/democratic left-wing governments in Latin America and Africa and Asia...

Doesn't excuse the Russian interventions in our elections of course. Does make complaints from a moral standpoint sound a bit rich.
 

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Can someone tell me, would it not be the case that the CIA would have been playing a pretty major role in investigating all this from day one, probably a bigger role than the FBI? I'm not sure how the agencies divide their responsibilities, always just thought the CIA was responsible for all the external stuff. If that's the case, why do we never hear about the CIA's role in uncovering any of this?
The FBI would have their own cyber crime division looking into it since it pertained to US affairs, and they were responsible for the FISA request on Manafort .

They would be working together on this along with the NSA, but the FBI is the only one with the power to prosecute so they'd be the ones putting it all together .
 

Rajma

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More than the year passed by since his inauguration and it's still surreal seeing president of the fecking United States twitting like an entitled teenager who was thrown her/his parents closed-mined views unto him, taken it those at face value and now is engaged with comment battles on FB/Twitter under various news feeds.
 

2cents

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The FBI would have their own cyber crime division looking into it since it pertained to US affairs, and they were responsible for the FISA request on Manafort .

They would be working together on this along with the NSA, but the FBI is the only one with the power to prosecute so they'd be the ones putting it all together .
Ah, makes sense. Fair to speculate though that much of the intelligence surrounding Trump-Russia must have come from the CIA.
 

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This looks like Mueller has flipped Gates to testify against his boss (Manafort). Sounds like Mueller is putting the full squeeze on to flip Manafort himself to get to Trump.
 

Pexbo

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This looks like Mueller has flipped Gates to testify against his boss (Manafort). Sounds like Mueller is putting the full squeeze on to flip Manafort himself to get to Trump.
I’m not so sure. I think Mueller’s straight as an arrow. I don’t think he’s got tunnel vision on Trump and I don’t think he expects to get anything out of Manafort in that regard. Manafort’s crimes were one of the things they found from one line of enquiry and he’s the big fish in that regard, hence why Gates gets a plea deal to take him down.

I don’t see any situation where Manafort would agree to rat on Trump, not when you think of all the characters Manafort has worked with over the years. I don’t think any deal would be good enough.
 

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I’m not so sure. I think Mueller’s straight as an arrow. I don’t think he’s got tunnel vision on Trump and I don’t think he expects to get anything out of Manafort in that regard. Manafort’s crimes were one of the things they found from one line of enquiry and he’s the big fish in that regard, hence why Gates gets a plea deal to take him down.

I don’t see any situation where Manafort would agree to rat on Trump, not when you think of all the characters Manafort has worked with over the years. I don’t think any deal would be good enough.
If Manafort was confronted with life in Prison then he will definitely flip. I think at this point he still believes Trump may pardon him (doubtful). Once all escape routes are choked off by Mueller, he will have to flip.
 

matherto

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If Manafort was confronted with life in Prison then he will definitely flip. I think at this point he still believes Trump may pardon him (doubtful). Once all escape routes are choked off by Mueller, he will have to flip.
I do wonder how safe he feels from the oligarchs he owes a lot of money to. Or from the Ukrainians he screwed over working with Yanukovych.

Perhaps a bit TV/movie style but it probably isn't that hard to get someone into the prison he ends up in if they find out where it is. Would he feel safe then? The guards can't watch him 24/7 and could be bought perhaps to look the other way...
 

JPRouve

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I do wonder how safe he feels from the oligarchs he owes a lot of money to. Or from the Ukrainians he screwed over working with Yanukovych.

Perhaps a bit TV/movie style but it probably isn't that hard to get someone into the prison he ends up in if they find out where it is. Would he feel safe then? The guards can't watch him 24/7 and could be bought perhaps to look the other way...
Totally off topic, but there is a documentary about russian prison tattoos, in that documentary you quickly understand that TV and movies aren't that far off.
 

Pexbo

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If Manafort was confronted with life in Prison then he will definitely flip. I think at this point he still believes Trump may pardon him (doubtful). Once all escape routes are choked off by Mueller, he will have to flip.
His goose is cooked. What’s a 70 year old with huge debts and frozen assets going to do? His use to his old associates is completely irradiated too. The most important thing in his mind now will be maintaining an element of control and he’ll get that from refusing to deal. If he got out in 6 years after making a deal, he’ll still be miserable.
 

Nucks

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If Manafort was confronted with life in Prison then he will definitely flip. I think at this point he still believes Trump may pardon him (doubtful). Once all escape routes are choked off by Mueller, he will have to flip.
If he's guilty of collusion with a foreign power, pretty sure we get to shoot people for that legally. Should threaten him with death by firing squad IMO!
 

sglowrider

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I read that Mueller has employed a guy who's speciality is flipping people. I must wonder what its like in his household. Constantly trying to flip the missus and the kids and turning onto each other for his little sq metre of peace & calm?
 

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I read that Mueller has employed a guy who's speciality is flipping people. I must wonder what its like in his household. Constantly trying to flip the missus and the kids and turning onto each other for his little sq metre of peace & calm?
I think he has specialists across the board on this team. A flip specialist, a financial crimes specialist, obstruction etc.
 

Organic Potatoes

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Ah, makes sense. Fair to speculate though that much of the intelligence surrounding Trump-Russia must have come from the CIA.
That'd be fair to guess . There's a lot of overlap between the agencies in this case.

And a remarkable amount of overlap with the case in general due to current geopolitics.
 

matherto

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What does this mean?
I presume if Mueller just went ahead and dropped everything he had at once, Trump could pardon everyone involved?

Selectively targeting individuals with different parts of the puzzle makes it harder to pardon given you don't know what you're pardoning. You can't blanket ban it because it leaves you open to wondering what might've come out of it whereas if you already knew what it was then the impact would be lessened.
 

Pexbo

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I presume if Mueller just went ahead and dropped everything he had at once, Trump could pardon everyone involved?

Selectively targeting individuals with different parts of the puzzle makes it harder to pardon given you don't know what you're pardoning. You can't blanket ban it because it leaves you open to wondering what might've come out of it whereas if you already knew what it was then the impact would be lessened.
Yup, good summary. To add to it, pardoning is an admission of guilt, if he parsons someone for a crime, he could inadvertently be implicating them in as yet unseen charges.

So say he gets himpeached and no longer has the power to pardon, a previous pardon could bite them in the ass and be used as evidence against them.
 

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Yup, good summary. To add to it, pardoning is an admission of guilt, if he parsons someone for a crime, he could inadvertently be implicating them in as yet unseen charges.

So say he gets himpeached and no longer has the power to pardon, a previous pardon could bite them in the ass and be used as evidence against them.
Good point - I think that if he was to pardon people that would signal the end of his Presidency anyway.
 

Raoul

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What does this mean?
Its an entire thread where the person is suggesting Mueller is slowly and carefully tightening the noose around Trump without doing it in such a threatening way that would lead Trump to attempt to pardon various people. The current narrative in the media is that Trump himself isn't implicated in any of this and until such time as that changes, he wouldn't be incentivized to attempt to end the investigation or else pardon his way out of it, for fear of his own fate .
 
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Il Prete Rosso

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Its an entire thread where the person is suggesting Mueller is slowly and carefully tightening the noose around Trump without doing it in such a threatening way that would lead Trump to attempt to pardon various people. The current narrative in the media is that Trump himself isn't implicated in any of this and until such time as that changes, he wouldn't be incentivized to attempt to end the investigation or else pardon his way out of it, for fear of his own fate .
But he wanted to end the investigation since last year February.
 

Raoul

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But he wanted to end the investigation since last year February.
That was under different circumstances at the time. He had just fired Comey and wanted to squash Mueller's work before it even had a chance to get off the ground running. Now, 8 months later, Mueller has dropped 16 indictments, including Trump's associates and 13 Russians, so any attempt to get rid of him now will be a massive admission of his own guilt.