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Attorney General William Barr has appointed a U.S. attorney to examine the origins of the Russia inv

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by mick fry, May 13, 2019.

  1. Sweet Lou 4 2

    Sweet Lou 4 2 Contributing Member
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    Lock him up!
     
  2. El_Conquistador

    El_Conquistador King of the D&D, The Legend, #1 Ranking
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    [Educational Post]
    Friend, you are very confident, yet unaware that you lack information. Mueller shot down all of your accusations above, but just for poops and grins...

    1. The Trump Tower Moscow project never got off the ground -- it was a business idea that never materialized into a business deal. Even if it had materialized, it would have been a small piece of the Trump portfolio -- hardly enough to move the needle on persuading Trump to cede control of the United States' foreign policy to Russia, which is your absurd fantasy.
    2. Don Jr did not "invite" Russians to Trump Tower. Don Jr was invited by a Fusion GPS-linked person (Natalia V) as a part of the FBI's entrapment scheme. You are about to find out a lot more about this in the days/weeks ahead. It was a setup orchestrated by the FBI, CIA and Preet Bharara.
    3. That was obviously a joke made at a rally. Do you really think Trump would be this overt? Your position is absurd.
    4. Flynn did absolutely nothing wrong as it relates to Russia. His post-election call to Sergei (that was illegally leaked) was a normal part of a transition. This was also investigated by Mueller and cleared. Flynn was a target of the intel agencies and Samantha Power (who spied on him through unmaskings) since Day 1, since he opposed their Israel strategy. He too was setup, and we are going to learn more about this.

    Papa, Flynn, and Carter Page were all targeted by the intel agencies, accused of giving false testimony (anyone whose testimony contradicts another person can be accused of this - which is darn near everyone who gives testimony), and had their reputations ruined ALL BECAUSE they were a key part of the FBI/CIA's entrapment scheme. If these guys weren't dirtied up by these charges, then Brennan, Clapper, Comey and McCabe would all be in prison already. They may all end up there, but they got their time to posture and go on TV try to become more likable ahead of time over the past 2 years.

    There remains much that you have yet to learn, friend.

    GOOD DAY
     
    cml750 and Pistol Pete like this.
  3. Sweet Lou 4 2

    Sweet Lou 4 2 Contributing Member
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    [Life changing advice]
    Why don't you actually quote the Mueller report instead of making things up?
     
    No Worries and dmoneybangbang like this.
  4. dmoneybangbang

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    And why where they targeted by intel agencies...... because they were patriots and upstanding citizens?

    [Pro Question]

    How much is too communication between a US presidential campaign and Russian linked associates too much?
     
  5. tallanvor

    tallanvor Contributing Member

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    Well they haven't been charged with anything besides two process crimes, so yes. They were upstanding citizens according to mueller.
     
  6. Sweet Lou 4 2

    Sweet Lou 4 2 Contributing Member
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    Where's the quote from Mueller saying that?
     
  7. Os Trigonum

    Os Trigonum Contributing Member
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    op-ed piece in the WSJ this morning

    About the FBI’s Spying
    What’s the difference between surveillance of Carter Page and Martin Luther King?
    By
    William McGurn
    June 3, 2019 7:01 p.m. ET

    When Carter Page learned in April 2017 that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had obtained a secret court order to listen in on his communications, the Washington Post asked him about it. Mr. Page, the paper reported, “compared surveillance of him to the eavesdropping that the FBI and Justice Department conducted against civil rights leader Martin Luther King.”

    Everyone had a good laugh. “Never ever, ever, compare yourself in any way whatsoever to Martin Luther King,” sneered the Post’s Jonathan Capehart. “Ever.”

    Certainly Mr. Page would have been ridiculous if he meant he was of King’s stature. But that wasn’t what he had contended. All he suggested was that he, like King, had been a target of an FBI counterintelligence operation run amok.

    Now a new report on the FBI’s surreptitious tapings of King makes it harder to see the difference between what J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI did with King and what James Comey’s FBI did with Mr. Page. In an article in Standpoint magazine, David Garrow, author of a Pulitzer-winning biography of King, reports summaries of the FBI recordings collected on the civil-rights leader. The article has stoked a furor for some of the unflattering details reported about King, for example that he “looked on and laughed” while a fellow pastor forcibly raped a female parishioner.

    But while the details of King’s sexual behavior have attracted most of the attention, the parallels with Mr. Page may be more illuminating. Remember, the FBI sought a warrant on Mr. Page from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court based on the claim that the former Trump campaign associate was “an agent of a foreign power,” namely Russia. Yet Mr. Page is one of the few targets of the investigation to have emerged without ever being charged with anything.

    The surveillance of King likewise began as a national-security matter. In a Rose Garden conversation, President John F. Kennedy told King he needed to cut ties with one of his closest advisers, Stanley Levison, a former financier for the Communist Party USA. When King refused to cut Levison loose, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy authorized the FBI to wiretap King.

    In his book “A Higher Loyalty,” Mr. Comey writes that the King case illuminates how “a legitimate counterintelligence mission” could morph into “an unchecked, vicious campaign of harassment and extralegal attack on the civil rights leader and others.” To “drive the message home,” Mr. Comey writes that as FBI director he kept on his desk a copy of the October 1963 memo, written by Hoover and signed by RFK, approving the King wiretaps.

    “I kept the Hoover memo there not to make a critical statement from Hoover or Kennedy, but to make a statement about the value of oversight and constraint,” Mr. Comey writes. “I have no doubt that Hoover and Kennedy thought they were doing the right thing. What they lacked was meaningful testing of their assumptions. There was nothing to check them.”

    Cut to today, when Attorney General William Barr is bringing that “oversight” and “meaningful testing” to decisions such as the one to listen in on Mr. Page. Far from applauding what he himself once called for, Mr. Comey now accuses Mr. Barr of “sliming his own department.”

    Mr. Comey has also taken issue with Mr. Barr’s use of the word “spying” to describe the FBI’s behavior. He’s not alone. At the Senate hearing where Mr. Barr first used it, Hawaii Democrat Brian Schatz asked if he wanted to rephrase because “when the attorney general of the United States uses the word ‘spying,’ its rather provocative and in my view unnecessarily inflammatory.” Meanwhile, the New York Times accused Mr. Barr of using a “charged word.”

    So here’s the question for all those who assert that Mr. Barr was wrong to use the word “spying”: Would they use it to describe what the FBI did to Martin Luther King?

    We already know the answer to that one. The Washington Post used the word “spying” often to describe what happened to King—without scare quotes. Ditto for the New York Times and others. The word was not considered “charged” until April 10, after Mr. Barr used it.

    Just one example. Here’s Charles M. Blow’s lead sentence in a 2013 Times column: “The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ so disturbed the American power structure that the F.B.I. started spying on him in what The Washington Post called ‘one of its biggest surveillance operations in history.’ ”

    In an interview with CBS on Friday, Mr. Barr sounded almost Comeyish when he spoke of what might have led FBI leaders astray in their investigation into alleged Trump ties with Russia. “Sometimes,” he said, “people can convince themselves that what they’re doing is in the higher interest, the better good.”

    Sooner or later, Mr. Barr will sort it out. Meanwhile, it may be a good moment for current director Christopher Wray to install permanently at FBI headquarters a copy of the application for the FISA warrant on Mr. Page—signed by his predecessor, Mr. Comey. Maybe it will help “drive home” the need for “oversight and constraint.”

    Write to mcgurn@wsj.com.

    Appeared in the June 4, 2019, print edition.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/about-the-fbis-spying-11559602877?mod=hp_opin_pos1
     
  8. No Worries

    No Worries Contributing Member

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    Will this be before or after Congress hold Barr in contempt?

    Just curious.
     
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  9. FranchiseBlade

    FranchiseBlade Contributing Member
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    A lot. One was suspected of doing illegal business with a foreign adversary of the United States. The other was known to be a leader for civil rights and change that was upsetting the status quo.

    They had good reason to investigate Page. This is Page's own statement and words.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_Page

    We also know that Page was a target of recruitment by Russian operatives in 2013.

    Page himself admitted with various Russian government officials. So there was a bit of a difference.

    The Mueller report did not charge Page, but it expressly refused to clear him or exonerate him as well.
     
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  10. Os Trigonum

    Os Trigonum Contributing Member
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    "Why Did The Obama Administration Ignore Reports Of Russian Election Meddling?" Excerpt:

    Testimony by former National Security Council Cybersecurity Coordinator Michael Daniel provides further evidence of the Obama administration’s lax response to Russian interference. During questioning by the Senate Intelligence Committee, Daniel admitted to telling his team during a morning staff meeting that they had been told “to stand down,” from their planned response to the Russian hacking and that his directive drew a terse response: “Why the h-ll are we standing down?”

    While Daniel admitted he received a stand-down order, he told the committee that there was a “larger context” that could be discussed in the classified session. He added that not all activities concerning Russian interference ceased at that point. Instead, the cybersecurity unit shifted in the September and October timeframe to assist states in protecting the electoral infrastructure. But the cyber response was “put on the backburner.”

    The release of notes a State Department official took during her October 2016 meeting with dossier-author Christopher Steele also shows the Obama administration’s flatfooted response to Russian interference. “The Russians have succeeded in placing an agent inside the DNC,” Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec wrote based on Steele’s supposed intel.

    In his dossier, Steele also highlighted concerns that the Russians had “a dossier of compromising material on Hillary Clinton,” including “bugged conversations” and “intercepted phone calls.” Yet, to date, there has been no mention of the Obama administration investigating either claim—something one would expect in a robust investigation of Russian interference.

    While most of these examples connect to Spygate and suggest the Obama administration and career DOJ and FBI employees inappropriately targeted the Trump campaign, that is but half the scandal. The corollary consists of the Obama administration’s reckless handling of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and its decision to prioritize a sting of the Trump campaign over fighting foreign influence on the electorate. Even those who reject Spygate as a conspiracy theory should see the Obama administration’s ineffective response to Russia’s meddling in our elections as a scandal.​

    https://thefederalist.com/2019/06/04/obama-administration-ignore-reports-russian-election-meddling/
     
  11. JuanValdez

    JuanValdez Contributing Member

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    Maybe I set the bar too high, but I like my upstanding citizens to be charged with no crimes at all.
     
  12. tallanvor

    tallanvor Contributing Member

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    Try reading what I responded to
     
  13. FranchiseBlade

    FranchiseBlade Contributing Member
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    There were grounds for investigating, and warrants were issued. It was all above board.
     
  14. dobro1229

    dobro1229 Contributing Member

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    They didn’t ignore it. 16 intelligence agencies went public. But because it was Hillary and co. getting the most airtime to convey the message folks from your tribe who writer op eds for the Federalist, regarded it as fake news.

    Obama wanted a bi-partisan unified front from Congress, the FBI, and the White House but Mitch McConnell refused.

    Had Obama acted more the same person writing this op ed would have accused Obama of throwing the election for Hillary and you know it. Can you imagine the lead from the Federalist if it was reported that Obama ordered Facebook to take down pro-Trump “articles” before the election? Can you imagine the lead on FoxNews when it came out that the CIA launched a counter offensive that punished foreign pro-Trump advertisements?

    You and all the others here would be losing your sh$&.
     
  15. MojoMan

    MojoMan Member

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  16. dmoneybangbang

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    Lol. Stop talking about it and do something.... unless the entire point is just all talk...
     
  17. MojoMan

    MojoMan Member

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    Like it was with the false accusations that you guys spewed at President Trump for the 2.5+ years?
     
  18. dmoneybangbang

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    Or with Obama and Clinton for 8 years? Did we ever figure out if Obama was a Kenyon Muslim Terrorist?

    Or with Benghazi..... Reagan got over a hundred marines killed in an embassy attack but Clinton!111!
     
  19. mick fry

    mick fry Member

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