Are you an FBI investigator ? Because they are the only one's with access to any "proof" of Trump collusion or other crimes at this point....but to be clear there's a ton of indicators that they have "proof" of serious malfeasance.

There is abundant proof that Trump is a repeatedly convicted and admitted (he plead guilty) fraud, however....which is what I referenced. Not long ago that would have been plenty to disqualify him from running at all. Today, multiple convictions for running fraud schools, selling fraud investments, charitable fraud, etc. aren't even on the list of worst 10 things in his history.

The republican created dossier is another nothingburger.

Once again, since you need things explained multiple times to grasp it, the memo is nothing, it's not evidence, it's a disputed republican provocateur's inflammatory notes based on....nothing according to the Democrats that have read the actual classified evidence, which is not being released. The ridiculous partisan memo probably won't be released either, the DOD is clear it could harm our national interests and law enforcement capabilities, and republicans refuse to allow them to screen for secret information it may contain, so releasing it as planned would intentionally be doing what they're (and you're) irate Clinton could possibly have done unintentionally with her less secure email servers, releasing harmful secret information, this time intentionally and for pure short term political gains and nothing more.
Good luck with that.

Keep in mind, the author of your memo is the same idiot who claimed the recent email and "missing" emails was absolute proof of a secret anti Trump society having taken over at the FBI..until the missing emails were recovered, then he moved on to this next BS ploy.

@Cnote

Too bad there is ZERO proof of Trump / Russian collusion. to be fail Muller is quietly doing his job. Time will tell



However there is FBI/DNC / Clinton FISA/ Trump–Russia dossier/ aka Steele dossier,is coming. Hip high is corrupt shit.

Intelligence oversight committee Memo coming out soon.

@bobknight33

i was fucking agreeing with you that mueller has nothing on russian collusion! and you come back with....

"alt-left"?

what in holy fuckballs are you squealing about bob?
so what is it now?
somebody has a critical position of trump and they are automatically dismissed because they are ( fill in bullshit political rhetoric here).

"alt-left"...seriously?
you are being serious?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Cay_Johnston

so now "alt-left" means:pulitzer prize winning,investigative journalist,professor of tax law?

come on bob...
you may want to put that away and zip that thing up.
your ideologue is showing.

BOOM!
right in the meat clackers!
maybe use a thing called "google" before you let that mouth drip like a herpes blister.

now go worship your lord and master..
fucking sycophant rightwingers..even when you agree with them...when are you going to get sick of losin..*cough* i mean "winning"?

@bobknight33

mueller finding evidence of russian collusion during the campaign?

yeah..you are probably right.still have yet to see concrete evidence,just a lot of circumstantial pearl clutching.

however..

there IS a lot of evidence,and growing larger by the day of trump colluding with the russian government and russian oligarchs to:
illegally launder money from russia.
tax evasion with the help of russian banks.
and a ton of hanky panky money exchanges to cover that all up.

which of course is not really news.
if anybody had bothered to pay attention trump has been mobbed up for decades.

david cay johnston has been exposing trumps corruption for quite awhile.

What bull shit -- Typical leftest dribble.
Guess CNN is off the Russian collusion fake story for the night.

And the post 1990 borders of Texas include historically Mexican lands populated by Mexican people...so what. It was sovereign and Russia acknowledged that, agreed to it, and signed binding treaties ratifying it permanently.

Those keys and systems would have been quickly replaced had those treaties not been enacted...enough of them to be a deterrent. Had we not agreed to defend them and Russia agreed to never try to annex or otherwise take them over, they would have been a nuclear nation and safe from Russian expansion.

As I said, not defending them was a violation. I'm not defending the US's actions.
Opportunity kicked off Russian land grabs, make no mistake.

That statement reflects our undeniable obligation under clear international treaty, not any personally desire to be at war.
Nuclear powers often go to war...by proxy. We've been in one in Syria recently. Edit: according to Russia, they weren't there anyway, so they would be hard pressed to complain about US military in the Ukraine fighting what Russia said were all Ukrainians, no?

Regarding collusion-This isn't a legal forum, you can debate legal terminology and specific charges on one, here, we all understand what collusion means and none of us are swearing out specific legal charges.
Definition of collusion:secret agreement or cooperation especially for an illegal or deceitful purpose; acting in collusion with the enemy

Edit: As for the coup, many called it the revolution. It was a coup by the populace, who largely thought the elections were rigged for pro Russians. That said, it was probably a violation for us to eventually support it (I think we waited until after Russian incursions, though). It still, in no way, excuses the Crimean or Ukrainian invasions and annexations.

Ah, I see you didn't read the links.

Else you would know :

* The post 1990 borders of Ukraine include historically Russian lands populated by Russian people.

* Ukraine's nukes could not be to guard against Russia because Russia had the crypto keys and guidance control over Ukrainian nukes.

* U.S. support for the 2014 coup against Ukraine's government was arguably also a treaty violation. (I don't actually care about this one)

* Government corruption, rising nationalism, and anti-Russian sentiment, are what led to the coup, which kicked off the fighting, which led to Russian intervention, which led to the "land grabs".


(Anti-Russian sentiment was brewing for years before the 2014 coup. You can see it play out in the 2012 language law issue, which was one of the historical turning points leading up to conflict: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_policy_in_Ukraine#Proposals_for_repeal_and_revision)


Sidenote, this statement is pure insanity : "We should be at war with Russia today over it's murderous expansions"
War with Russia would last less than an hour, and the only winner would be South America and Africa.
Nuclear powers can never go to war. I mean _never_ never.






Regarding collusion, here :
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/02/opinion/collusion-meaning-trump-.html

"
President Trump declared on Twitter: “There is NO COLLUSION!”
"
There ya go. A Trump declaration that the campaign was not illegally secretly coordinated (i.e. no collusion). Not backwards at all.

The link also explains the irrelevance of the term regarding legal issues.

-scheherazade

Expansionist Russia is back, and their neighbors need help guarding against Russian overthrow. That time is back.
Ukraine is not Russian, and it had a nuclear weapons program to safeguard against Russian incursions...which we convinced them to give up under our, and Russia's guarantee of their sovereignty and borders, and our guarantee to defend them militarily against Russia should it ever try to take any back, Crimea had the same guarantees. We should be at war with Russia today over it's murderous expansions. Russia entering either area at all was an act of war against us by treaty, one we barely responded to with defensive missiles in countries that wanted them desperately before they became Russian themselves.
The anti Russian sentiment is because of the land grabs, not an excuse for them. Holy shit!

Collusion against your own government and country to subvert the law with a foreign country is a crime. The collusion compounds the subversion.

People use the word collude to assert that Russia and the campaign illegally coordinated, you wrote it backwards.

The USSR is gone. No one is trying to guard western industry against communist overthrow anymore. That time is long gone.




Imagine person A pushing person B, and person B pushes back, and the news runs around screaming that B pushed A. That's basically our simplistic news coverage about Ukraine.

Feel free to read about the 2014 coup : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Ukrainian_revolution
I take no issue with Ukrainians giving their old government a swift kick out the door (and for understandable reason - such as corruption). However, with that comes the usual scapegoating of the undesirables. Would it have been better that Russia let groups like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_Sector ravage ethnic Russians just across their border?

Crimea has been Russia from 1779 till ~1990, when it happened to end up under Ukrainian control after the USSR broke up. People living there are also Russian citizens, born either while it was still Russia, or to Russian parents.
Take a look:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Crimea
Then ask yourself, considering the right wing neo nazi anti-ethnic-Russian shitstorm in Ukraine, where would the Crimeans rather be?

Russia isn't a saint. It's acting in self interest. It's also not a villain. Things happen for reasons.

The treaty you refer to is : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Security_Assurances
The link explains how it can be read to fault either the U.S. (for coup involvement) or Russia (for subsequent conflict involvement).

Just to put things in perspective :
Imagine Russia getting involved in a coup in Mexico or Canada. Or imagine Russia placing missile launchers in Cuba. Do you think that we would be as cordial to Russia as Russia has been to us?
So Russia tries to help a candidate who prefers friendly relations, that's hardly the sign of a committed adversary.

I mean, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I shouldn't think and analyze the situation from multiple perspectives with consideration for circumstance and motivation, and instead I should just accept what the news has on 24/7 repeat. /s





Collusion is not a crime because /literally/ it is not a crime. You will not find the word "collusion" mentioned as an offense in any criminal code. It's only on TV because people started using that phrase to assert that the campaign and Russia were acting independently (which is irrelevant, they don't need to coordinate to break the law).


-scheherazde

Way to ignore point one...the illegal hacking of what he hoped contained top secret information by a hostile power at Trump's public direction.

The fact that you would even try to contend that the relationship between the U.S. and Russia is not adversarial makes anything else you say moot, because you have already proven to either be a liar or insanely naive. It is, and since ww2 has been adversarial. Your contention that responding to an illegal-by-treaty Russian military build up and invasion on it's borders with a long term international defence program stoked the Russian invasions of Crimea and the Ukraine shows you bought the Putin propaganda, and your follow up that it's an excuse for them installing their candidate in a hostile nation, as if that's proper, shows you aren't being rational at all. What we were required by treaty to do was protect the Ukraine...all of it...with our full military force, securing their borders....we balked and Russia just walked in.

Really, you think collusion with a foreign power to perform illegal acts against private citizens and the government and the interests of the U.S. isn't a crime? Sorry, but it absolutely is here in the U.S., where he did it.

So far, "he" isn't charged with a crime (only because it's likely he's so incompetent that he actually didn't know his entire staff were covert foreign agents....some have admitted as much when confronted with proof)...what his cabinet is charged with varies but all of them perjured themselves to congress about the crimes, who they work for, who paid them, and who they owe millions... so that's felonious.
Just a few crimes (of many) that the campaign is accused of is working with Russian diplomats for the benefit of Russia and against the interests of the U.S., hiring foreign agents, and hiding tens if not hundreds of millions secretly paid to the managers by Russia.
The campaign managers did directly receive money, all of them it seems, tens of millions...and lied about it over and over. What's more, they have admitted (only after recordings were produced) having subverted government policy by making arrangements with Putin before taking office that were diametrically opposed to the current (at the time) policy...again, that's treason.

[editing down to not make wall of text / rant]

Russia is not a hostile power. We are not at war with them, and we are not in any standoff. While that sort of rhetoric generates plenty of sensation for the news, it isn't factually true. We certainly do plenty to antagonize them (placing missiles launchers on Russia's border, stoking the 2014 Ukrainian coup that led to a civil war on Russia's border), and in light of that I consider it understandable that they would attempt to aide a candidate that is likely to be less confrontational.

(Keep in mind that both sides have been hacking each other on the daily for decades. Nothing special there.)

The DNC hack was a good thing for democracy. People should not be in the dark about any candidate's election cheating.

The news argues about things that are not salient.
Collusion is not a crime. That term only comes up for argument's sake, and has no bearing on the legality/illegality of anything in question.

The crime that the campaign is accused of is 'accepting foreign money for elections', which is a campaign funding violation. The argument is that : while Russia appears to not have provided money, the *information Russians provided directly to campaign staff had a monetary value, which makes it equivalent to receiving money.
(*content of said information as of yet not revealed)

Since then, campaign staff has gotten into individual trouble when their individual financial actions have been dug into (namely, laundering), which has led to individual financial conspiracy charges (IIRC).

-scheherazade

So, there's no evidence any hack was by request, except that one, highly illegal hack where he repeatedly publicly requested a foreign country hack into and release to show his opponent used then for top secret info...meaning he also requested they hack and release that top secret info. Lucky for us all there wasn't any secret info in them....after thanking them for hacking the DNC on his behalf, and the Russians followed his direction to the letter. To me, that's pure unquestionable collusion in public intended to skew the election for the benefit of a hostile foreign power...or treason. Edit: his claim now that it was just a joke is as ridiculous as the spurned lover who hires a hitman, pays them, and revels in the murder claiming the instructions to murder were a joke. It just doesn't fly.

The email hack was not the first publicly known instance of Russian interference this election, sorry. It might be the first well known to the majority of the public, but there were many known "items" before that. Trump suggested they hack her servers and anywhere the missing emails might be because it was already well known they were hacking American systems on his behalf, clearly and repeatedly....also it was clear the FBI was investigating Trump in the final weeks of the election, but Comey didn't feel the need to tell the public about that, only about the baseless reopening of the Clinton investigation over not new evidence...WTF?

It wouln't be funny even if you weren't working directly for Putin and against America, just sad that you would do his bidding for free.

Working with Russia in your official capacity as Secretary of State to create international treaties, even bad ones....that is not collusion, it's diplomacy.
Working with Russia to reform American policy before you're in office...that's subversive collusion, and admitted to by Trump's cabinet.

Who's colluding with Russia? Apparently at least Manafort while he ran the Trump campaign according to the indictment....oh, and Flynn who's eventually admitted (when his lies were proven false after the tapes surfaced) that he illegally made multiple policy change agreements in December with Russia contradicting the government's positions, like a promise to remove sanctions, which is a crime called subversion and could be/is treason.

Edit: Before you try to trot out the DNC partially paying for the 'Trump dossier' as some form of collusion, remember it was conceived and created by the RNC and only later sold to Clinton's camp after Trump took the nomination, and it's not even nearly as bad as what Jared thought he was going to buy directly from the Russian government in his meeting that he falsely claimed was about adoption until the email surfaced proving that was another lie.

$40-$60 million more in undisclosed payments to Manafort surfaced last week....but Trump has nothing to do with the Trump for president campaign, does he?....and did I say collusion, or even Trump? Nope, but a guilty conscience hears accusations that never happened.
The Russians today are doing exactly what you do, pretending to be right wing nutjobs on left leaning sites, and lefty snowflakes on right leaning sites, pushing the narrative to all that the other guy is a total nut by making ridiculous, ignorant claims like you do. If you aren't being paid by Putin, you're working for him for free.

Jesus fucking Christ, Bob. Can you be more deluded and ignorant? Once again, your Russian text book of American history is 100% ass backwards.

Southern strategy: In American politics, the southern strategy was a Republican Party electoral strategy to increase political support among white voters in the South by appealing to racism against African Americans.[1][2][3] As the Civil Rights Movement and dismantling of Jim Crow laws in the 1950s and 1960s visibly deepened existing racial tensions in much of the Southern United States, Republican politicians such as presidential candidate Richard Nixon and Senator Barry Goldwater developed strategies that successfully contributed to the political realignment of many white, conservative voters in the South to the Republican Party that had traditionally supported the Democratic Party.[4] It also helped push the Republican Party much more to the right.[4]
Not Nixon courting the black vote.

Troll: Internet slang, a troll (/ˈtroʊl/, /ˈtrɒl/) is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting quarrels or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory,[1] extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the intent of provoking readers into an emotional response[2] or of otherwise disrupting normal, on-topic discussion,[3] often for the troll's amusement.
Definitely you, Dimitri. It's almost time to have lucky investigate your ip address to see if you're in Kiev or Moscow.

Ha! I misread your appetizer, reading it as a description of how Russiagate (I hate that name) worked instead of a description of how it's being reported on. It works fairly well for both. ;-)

Not exactly a nothing burger to me, but not case closed proof of collusion with Trump either. His cabinet and campaign, different story.