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  • Originally posted by zraver View Post
    they did not seek to pay or be paid for info freely offered
    Without touching on the proceeds of a crime matter, strictly speaking, from the campaign finance angle, that would make it illegal. The fact that it was offered freely. That's what makes it a contribution/donation. Trump Jr., Manafort, and Kushner traveled there to solicit it. Solicitation of a contribution or donation from a foreign national or government is illegal.
    "Every man has his weakness. Mine was always just cigarettes."

    Comment


    • Originally posted by zraver View Post
      Jr's meeting was not illegal, they did not seek to pay or be paid for info freely offered, when the dirt did not materialize they ended the meeting. Funny, the Russian lawyer met with the Clinton camp before and after the meeting.
      The election law specifies that foreign citizens are forbidden from making contributions in cash or kind. Intel has value, therefore a foreigner contributing intel to a campaign breaks the law. Others may know better than I if the mere offer constitutes a crime.
      Trust me?
      I'm an economist!

      Comment


      • I think it's interesting to note that the Campaign Legal Center has filed complaints with the FEC against both the Trump and Clinton campaigns regarding, respectively, the Trump Tower meeting and Steele Dossier. There is a notable difference in their complaints.

        Trump Tower meeting:

        "The evidence is clear that Don Jr. knew that the offer of opposition campaign research came from the Russian government, and the law is clear that giving such valuable research for free would have been a contribution to the Trump campaign,” said Brendan Fischer, director, federal & FEC reform program at Campaign Legal Center (CLC). “By soliciting that contribution and arranging and attending a meeting to receive it, Don Jr. clearly violated the prohibition against soliciting a contribution from a foreign national."
        Steele Dossier:

        “Questions about who paid for this dossier are the subject of intense public interest, and this is precisely the information that FEC reports are supposed to provide,” said Brendan Fischer, director, federal and FEC reform at CLC. “Payments by a campaign or party committee to an opposition research firm are legal, as long as those payments are accurately disclosed. But describing payments for opposition research as ‘legal services’ is entirely misleading and subverts the reporting requirements.”
        Basically, the difference is a financial disclosure violation in the payments to Fusion GPS, versus a violation in soliciting a contribution from a foreign national in the case of the Trump Tower meeting.
        Last edited by Ironduke; 02 Feb 18,, 12:03.
        "Every man has his weakness. Mine was always just cigarettes."

        Comment


        • Originally posted by rosspoons View Post
          He could find people who are qualified with a public purpose agenda
          People said that over a year ago. He'll surround himself with qualified people. They'll rein him in. Well, what's he waiting for?

          Certainly one was an absolute masterstroke of personnel selection (Mattis) and 2 others were very strong picks as well (Kelly and McMaster)
          In fact I daresay they're the only reason why we're not at war with North Korea right now. The rest of the government though....

          The rest is a rogue's gallery of clowns, criminals, idiots, sycophants and stooges. The Trump White House is a perfect storm of instability and batshit craziness.

          Originally posted by rosspoons View Post
          Most analysis I have seen say they expect a recession in early 2009 which is probably going to be when you see major corrections in at least some sectors.
          Sounds about right. (I assume you meant 2019)

          Originally posted by rosspoons View Post
          I have trouble seeing this massive beating happen. The DNC is fairly broke. They have way too many Senate seats to defend and then the whole House being up. They will try to nationalize every race to get more messaging out of their money, but that usually doesn't work well when it comes to the House. Since they are fighting back and positioning themselves as a preemption against the whatever memo, that memo plus an improving economy will probably be too strong a headwind to sail through broke.
          If enough people are disgusted with Trump, and he's certainly not inspired confidence in anybody but his hardcore supporters, they'll make their displeasure known at the polls.
          He certainly didn't impress a majority of Americans during the 2016 election. It was the Electoral College that condemned him to victory.

          He's also fighting a decades-old trend of the incumbent party getting thumped to one degree or another in the midterms.

          To be fair, I wouldn't be surprised if the DNC leaves all manner of seats on the table for the GOP to claim/reclaim though.
          They're really no different than the GOP and they actually have no message worth rallying around.
          “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

          Comment


          • Originally posted by TopHatter View Post
            People said that over a year ago. He'll surround himself with qualified people. They'll rein him in. Well, what's he waiting for?

            Certainly one was an absolute masterstroke of personnel selection (Mattis) and 2 others were very strong picks as well (Kelly and McMaster)
            In fact I daresay they're the only reason why we're not at war with North Korea right now. The rest of the government though....

            The rest is a rogue's gallery of clowns, criminals, idiots, sycophants and stooges. The Trump White House is a perfect storm of instability and batshit craziness.
            I was just talking more about conceptually what he could do. I am mostly indifferent to who is in the White Hose. It doesn't have a lot of practical effect on my day to day life.

            Sounds about right. (I assume you meant 2019)
            Yes sorry. I couldn't go back to correct that typo once posted.



            If enough people are disgusted with Trump, and he's certainly not inspired confidence in anybody but his hardcore supporters, they'll make their displeasure known at the polls.
            He certainly didn't impress a majority of Americans during the 2016 election. It was the Electoral College that condemned him to victory.

            He's also fighting a decades-old trend of the incumbent party getting thumped to one degree or another in the midterms.

            To be fair, I wouldn't be surprised if the DNC leaves all manner of seats on the table for the GOP to claim/reclaim though.
            They're really no different than the GOP and they actually have no message worth rallying around.
            Trump's approval rating floats around what it was during the campaign, so I really don't know what people will or won't do. I am not sure he will even run again because this was a combination vanity exercise and self-serving mission for him thus far it seems. He's got his so he really just needs to declare himself the greatest thing since sliced bread and exit stage right and his ego will be stroked.

            Comment


            • Originally posted by rosspoons View Post
              I was just talking more about conceptually what he could do. I am mostly indifferent to who is in the White Hose. It doesn't have a lot of practical effect on my day to day life.
              Oh it's a great concept but pretty much DOA when you're talking about a sociopathic personality like Trump.

              Originally posted by rosspoons View Post
              I am not sure he will even run again because this was a combination vanity exercise and self-serving mission for him thus far it seems.
              I agree, it's pretty bizarre all around. He even registered for reelection immediately, something that is rarely (if ever?) done. But I can't imagine him physically or mentally handling even a full 1st term let alone campaigning and surviving a 2nd term. The Office of President ages the hell out of you and he's the oldest President ever.
              “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

              Comment


              • damn, Tea Party former congressman scorches Nunes. savage.

                ====
                https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...-remember-him/

                Devin Nunes is acting like a partisan hack. That’s just how I remember him.
                My former colleague doesn’t seem to grasp what his job in Congress is.

                By Joe Walsh
                February 2 at 6:00 AM

                Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) has been a controversial figure in the House's Russia investigation. But how did he get to where he is today? (Patrick Martin/The Washington Post)

                I served in Congress with Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.). Based on my experience working with him, nothing about the way he’s behaving now as chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence — overseeing part of the so-called Russia-Trump investigation — is particularly shocking.

                The Nunes I knew was a purely partisan animal. When it comes to exercising good judgment and discharging his duties in service of the Constitution, he’s just not up to the task.

                He saw everything through a Republican vs. Democrat lens. In weekly conference meetings for Republican House members, Nunes was always one of then-Speaker John A. Boehner’s or Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s go-to lieutenants, willing to tout the party line and make sure the rest of us lined up like obedient boys and girls. During my brief tenure, I was one of the more outspoken tea party members, regularly at odds with leadership when it came to budget or government-funding legislation. I still vividly recall Nunes lambasting us as obstinate obstructionists on many occasions, trying to bend us to leadership’s will on votes that went against our principles. With Nunes, I found it was all about politics, almost never about policy.

                At one meeting, we were fighting over passing some budget resolution, and leadership had Nunes go to the mic, where he said something like: You tea party extremists are the problem. You’re making the Republican Party look dysfunctional. If you keep this up, Romney is going to lose in 2012. Well, Mitt Romney lost. The GOP looks dysfunctional now. And either way, I didn’t go to D.C. to get Romney, or anyone else, elected. I went to stop D.C. from bankrupting the country.

                So it doesn’t surprise me to see Nunes today, acting more like the chairman of the president’s reelection campaign than chairman of the Intelligence Committee. He wants to please whomever he sees as the person or people running the show. Back then, it was House GOP leadership. Now it’s President Trump. And it’s pretty clear Nunes has decided his job is to protect Trump no matter what collateral damage results. How else do you explain his careless and dangerous rush to release his already infamous “memo”?

                The FBI and Trump’s Justice Department have practically begged Nunes, and Trump, not to release it. Urging his fellow Republicans not to release the memo, Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) said, “We can’t let the politics of the moment cloud our judgment.”

                I agree. But it’s not Nunes’s style to care.

                Instead, he’s doubling down on the farce that he started when he tried to steer the Russia investigation in the direction of documents the White House fed him that were meant to put the blame on Obama’s national security adviser, Susan E. Rice. But that’s not his job. He’s supposed to be sorting out a high-stakes national security crisis, not scoring political points. I’m a Trump supporter, and I’m definitely no fan of Rice, but if Nunes can’t keep his eye on the ball, he shouldn’t be running any part of the investigation, and he shouldn’t be chairman.

                The congressional intelligence committees traditionally function as some of the least partisan committees — as they should. Oversight for security threats to this country is too great a responsibility to let committee business devolve into finger-pointing and score-settling along party lines, but that’s exactly where the level of discourse has gone under Nunes’s “leadership.” He’s not searching for truth, he’s running interference for the White House, abdicating his role as a member of a coequal branch of government, dragging his fellow committee members down with him and exposing House leadership as ineffectual and foolish.


                As a former congressman — but more important, as a citizen — that’s not what I want. I want transparency because I believe that we need to get to the end of the Russia investigation and let Trump get back to being Trump on behalf of the American people. Whatever is happening now isn’t that.

                If Nunes’s investigation and memo are about transparency, if he and the president have confidence in their case, then the committee should release the memo, with Nunes’s version of events — and the Democrats’ memo, with their version of events — at the same time. To the extent they can do this without disclosing classified sources and methods, they should release the underlying intelligence both memos are based on. Hell, at this point, they should release the FISA warrant the memo apparently alludes to. If they don’t, Nunes and anyone who backs him should be ashamed.

                Some issues have to be partisan. But in this case, we’re not talking about lowering taxes, getting rid of the individual mandate or clamping down on immigration — all good things that Trump can be proud of. No, here, Nunes is at risk of turning what should be a nonpartisan issue — a foreign government trying to interfere in our election — into a game.

                The president, and the country, are being poorly served.

                My Republican colleagues would be screaming bloody murder if Russia, or any foreign government, was suspected of helping Hillary Clinton become president. If Chairman Nunes can’t lead them out of this sad of hypocrisy, it means he’s putting party over country. I’ll be disappointed. But not surprised.
                There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."- Isaac Asimov

                Comment


                • Originally posted by DOR View Post
                  The election law specifies that foreign citizens are forbidden from making contributions in cash or kind. Intel has value, therefore a foreigner contributing intel to a campaign breaks the law. Others may know better than I if the mere offer constitutes a crime.
                  Unless of course it's actually paid for by a democrat through their attorney. Then it's perfectly ok.

                  Sorry, it still doesn't fly.

                  Comment


                  • Originally posted by zraver View Post
                    Typical liberal sleight of hand.
                    Bad Trump for appointing a 'liberal' like Pompeo.

                    Comment


                    • Originally posted by Ironduke View Post
                      Without touching on the proceeds of a crime matter, strictly speaking, from the campaign finance angle, that would make it illegal. The fact that it was offered freely. That's what makes it a contribution/donation. Trump Jr., Manafort, and Kushner traveled there to solicit it. Solicitation of a contribution or donation from a foreign national or government is illegal.
                      How do you solicit something that was already offered freely? It was either offered or solicited. It cannot be both. Either way, let me know when charges are pressed for violating campaign finance for this. It's only been a year or so.

                      Comment


                      • Trump proves to all, except the most tone deaf, that nothing takes precedence over his ego. No person. No institution. Nothing as he attacks DOJ and the FBI as being biased in favor of the Democrats. Good old Joe McCarthy should feel proud.

                        https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/02/polit...emo/index.html

                        President Donald Trump positioned himself squarely against the leadership of the FBI and Department of Justice on Friday ahead of the possible release of a highly controversial Republican memo alleging the FBI abused its surveillance tools, claiming the government agencies "politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats and against Republicans."

                        Trump, by accusing the leadership of having a bias against Republicans, is once again maligning people he appointed to their roles, including FBI Director Christopher Wray, a man Trump nominated after he fired former FBI Director James Comey in May.
                        The tweet also puts Trump squarely on the side of Republican lawmakers who view the memo, which was penned by House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes and approved for release by the House committee earlier this week, as a document that shows evidence of nefarious motives atop the FBI.

                        "The top Leadership and Investigators of the FBI and the Justice Department have politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats and against Republicans - something which would have been unthinkable just a short time ago," Trump wrote. "Rank & File are great people!"...
                        So is this memo (a) the second coming of the Pentagon Papers or (b) the opening of Al Capone's grave by Geraldo?

                        Comment


                        • Originally posted by tbm3fan View Post
                          So is this memo (a) the second coming of the Pentagon Papers or (b) the opening of Al Capone's grave by Geraldo?
                          I'd like to know that myself. Some people think its the Pentagon Papers and Watergate rolled into one. Personally I'm leaning toward Geraldo and the vault.
                          “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                          Comment


                          • http://docs.house.gov/meetings/IG/IG...0129-SD001.pdf

                            Like I said, nothing but a damp squib.
                            "Every man has his weakness. Mine was always just cigarettes."

                            Comment


                            • Originally posted by Ironduke View Post
                              http://docs.house.gov/meetings/IG/IG...0129-SD001.pdf

                              Like I said, nothing but a damp squib.
                              Shocking.
                              “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                              Comment


                              • Originally posted by Wooglin View Post
                                How do you solicit something that was already offered freely? It was either offered or solicited. It cannot be both.
                                It sure can.
                                "Every man has his weakness. Mine was always just cigarettes."

                                Comment

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