The Mueller investigation succeeded in harassing and intimidating Trump associates. The Mueller investigation failed to find any evidence that Trump or his associated colluded with any foreign power in any effort to influence the 2016 election.
If the success of a government program is defined as harassing and intimidating citizens, then Mueller succeeded. If the success of a government program is defined as accomplishing its stated objective, then Mueller failed.
The Mueller investigation succeeded in harassing and intimidating Trump associates. The Mueller investigation failed to find any evidence that Trump or his associated colluded with any foreign power in any effort to influence the 2016 election.
If the success of a government program is defined as harassing and intimidating citizens, then Mueller succeeded. If the success of a government program is defined as accomplishing its stated objective, then Mueller failed.
It always amazes me how stubbornly and stupidly Leftists will hold onto their narratives even long after they have been systematically and factually shown to be falsehoods.
I have come to the conclusion that there is a certain percentage of the population that is psychologically predisposed to both believe and disseminate propaganda and that predisposition is directly proportional to their absence of critical thinking ability.
Trump abandoned his campaign promise of America First very quickly, maybe immediately. He was stable on slowing border crossings, yes. But not much the rest.
Leftists do adhear to and practice that thing that 20th century Germans pointed out that was used against them by their opponents and enemies. That thing is The Big Lie. And leftists still practice it as a tactic. That's what Goebbels said. He said that is what is used against them.
Trump has a recent video interview you can find stating that Israel "rightly" deserves to control and own our Congress and says they should like they did 10 years ago.
But his REPUBLICAN supporters won't acknowledge how that betrays his campaign slogan, which was the movement that brought him our votes. He desperately wants the deep state to support him. The same people who defeated him, no less. He betrays the Capitol protesters too. And he shills the experimental injections still. Intelligence agencies control our country, our politics and they control our media to push their agenda.
You're screwed. We're screwed. He will screw you further.
[This message has been edited by sourmash (edited 11-05-2021).]
The Mueller investigation succeeded in harassing and intimidating Trump associates. The Mueller investigation failed to find any evidence that Trump or his associated colluded with any foreign power in any effort to influence the 2016 election.
If the success of a government program is defined as harassing and intimidating citizens, then Mueller succeeded. If the success of a government program is defined as accomplishing its stated objective, then Mueller failed.
The Muller investigation was a failure.
That would be the takeaway from the title that the New York Times used at the top of this article.
"Why the Mueller Investigation Failed" Katie Benner for the New York TImes; originally published on August 5, 2020, and recently updated on September 1, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/202...-jeffrey-toobin.html
Benner's article, for either "benner" or worse, is a look at what was a newly published book over a year ago, at the beginning of August 2020, from Jeffrey Toobin, "True Crimes and Misdemeanors", subtitled "The Investigation of Donald Trump" and published as a hardcover by Doubleday.
JeffreyToobin, as I suspect someone is not unlikely to remark, become something of a laughingstock in the not so distant past--a seemingly unseemly episode that I guess could be described as a "wardrobe malfunction"--but I wouldn't call out his book as "bad" just because of that. I wouldn't read his book, either, but that's because I couldn't read an entire book of that kind from end to end, even if I thought it were important to me.
Here's the very beginning of the article from NYT reporter Katie Benner:
quote
Thanks to Robert S. Mueller’s Russia investigation, we know that the Kremlin used underhanded tactics to help Donald Trump win the 2016 election, that the Trump campaign tacitly welcomed those efforts and that Trump ultimately attempted to end the Mueller inquiry itself. But in what passes for political discourse today, the report’s damning examples of presidential abuse of power were spun as anti-Trump propaganda. Mueller himself, a once-revered law enforcement official and rock-ribbed Republican, was smeared and diminished by the president’s allies as a left-leaning hack.
In his latest book, “True Crimes and Misdemeanors,” Jeffrey Toobin seeks to explain why Trump came out basically unscathed, despite the fact that, as he writes, the president “never really pretended to be anything other than what he was — a narcissistic scoundrel.” He [Toobin] rightly argues that the investigation was an utter political failure.
Mueller ran a by-the-book, narrow inquiry and adhered to Justice Department rules that bar comment about ongoing investigations. He provided ample evidence that the president broke the law, but in the end he would not clearly say as much. His equivocation provided the president room to declare that Mueller found “no collusion and no obstruction.” Toobin says that this half-truth and falsehood, respectively, were a rhetorical success because “simplicity rarely loses to complexity in battles in the public square.” . . .
So that's NYT reporter Katie Benner's take on Jeffrey Toobin's book. It's not quite the way I see it, though--the Mueller investigation. That word "utter" gives me pause. I think that maxing things out or taking things to the limit in that way, with "utter", is unlikely to befriend the truth. I find "a political failure, on the whole" a more credible description of the Mueller investigation, rather than an "utter" political failure.
I remain puzzled by the "updated on September 1, 2021" at the top of this article. Was the text of the article changed in any way, since it was first published in the NYT on August 5, 2020? I see this, at the very end:
quote
A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 23, 2020, Page 10 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: "How Mueller Failed."
But that begs the question, was anything in the article changed, except for the slight alteration of the banner or title that was superimposed above the article in the NYT?
[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 11-06-2021).]
It always amazes me how stubbornly and stupidly Leftists will hold onto their narratives even long after they have been systematically and factually shown to be falsehoods.
I have come to the conclusion that there is a certain percentage of the population that is psychologically predisposed to both believe and disseminate propaganda and that predisposition is directly proportional to their absence of critical thinking ability.
As for that Leftist sexual pervert Toobin, MASTURBATING on video during a live online video meeting is NOT a "wardrobe malfunction".
Leftists will invariably redefine sick and abhorrent behavior of their own in order to minimize or ignore it.
"Jeffry Toobin, a CNN contributor and writer at The New Yorker, got caught tickling his pickle on a work Zoom call. This wasn’t a situation where he thought he had hung up but hadn’t. Oh no. Toobin was purposefully masturbating during a work call."
It always amazes me how stubbornly and stupidly Leftists will hold onto their narratives even long after they have been systematically and factually shown to be falsehoods.
I have come to the conclusion that there is a certain percentage of the population that is psychologically predisposed to both believe and disseminate propaganda and that predisposition is directly proportional to their absence of critical thinking ability.
As for that Leftist sexual pervert Toobin, MASTURBATING on video during a live online video meeting is NOT a "wardrobe malfunction".
Leftists will invariably redefine sick and abhorrent behavior of their own in order to minimize or ignore it.
This might be the same thing? But I boil it down to "brand loyalty". Not the marketing type per say, but the sports fanatic type. A person that no matter what happens to the team, year after year they are in the stands with season tickets cheering for the team even during a winless season. When a person just has no interest in sports they will search for another outlet for this character trait to express that primal part of our human nature to associate with. But then, some people just like to argue, push buttons, stir up drama just for something to do........fill the lonely hours in the days.
This might be the same thing? But I boil it down to "brand loyalty". Not the marketing type per say, but the sports fanatic type. A person that no matter what happens to the team, year after year they are in the stands with season tickets cheering for the team even during a winless season. When a person just has no interest in sports they will search for another outlet for this character trait to express that primal part of our human nature to associate with. But then, some people just like to argue, push buttons, stir up drama just for something to do........fill the lonely hours in the days.
How the hell loyal and lonely does somebody have to be to not only get their political ideas and opinions from a confirmed Leftist sexual pervert but to also cite that same pervert as a "authoritative source" for anything?
That's not "brand loyalty".
That's just stupidity.
[This message has been edited by randye (edited 11-06-2021).]
Originally posted by randye: How the hell loyal and lonely does somebody have to be to not only get their political ideas and opinions from a confirmed Leftist sexual pervert but to also cite that same pervert as a "authoritative source" for anything?
That's not "brand loyalty".
That's just stupidity.
Yep, but it happens Some things in life just don't make sense
The political axis isn't the only dimensionality that describes the Mueller probe. There's the investigation itself. There's no paucity of online summaries; I like this one:
"Mueller's investigation is done. Here are the 34 people he indicted along the way" William Cummings,Tom Vanden Brook, Kevin Johnson and Bart Jansen for USA TODAY; March 25, 2019. https://www.usatoday.com/st...-charges/3266050002/
The Mueller investigation rises above the landscape of American jurisprudence like a Colossus, and like the persistence of the Great Pyramids of Egypt, still towering above the Giza Plateau almost 5,000 years after the first stone blocks were laid, the Mueller investigation will be remembered for countless years to come.
Archival image.
[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 11-06-2021).]
the Mueller investigation will be remembered for countless years to come.
I think you are correct Rinselberg. This "investigation" will be studied as "how to NOT do investigations" for years to come. The FBI knew a year before the "investigation" even started that the source was a fraud. In fact, the FBI knew that the primary source of the investigation was a fraud at the time of the second secret warrant. This "investigation" will be remembered as a purely political assassination attempt of a President of the United States of America. This "investigation" will be studied by future "journalists" as a massive deception to poison the minds of voters before an election. Tapping into a sad, primal and evil corner of the human mind,.........the definition of political propaganda.
WASHINGTON — Within hours of opening an investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia in the summer of 2016, the F.B.I. dispatched a pair of agents to London on a mission so secretive that all but a handful of officials were kept in the dark.
Their assignment, which has not been previously reported, was to meet the Australian ambassador, who had evidence that one of Donald J. Trump’s advisers knew in advance about Russian election meddling. After tense deliberations between Washington and Canberra, top Australian officials broke with diplomatic protocol and allowed the ambassador, Alexander Downer, to sit for an F.B.I. interview to describe his meeting with the campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos.
The agents summarized their highly unusual interview and sent word to Washington on Aug. 2, 2016, two days after the investigation was opened. Their report helped provide the foundation for a case that, a year ago Thursday, became the special counsel investigation. But at the time, a small group of F.B.I. officials knew it by its code name: Crossfire Hurricane. . . .
"Code Name Crossfire Hurricane: The Secret Origins of the Trump Investigation" Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman and Nicholas Fandos for the New York Times; May 16, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/201...r-investigation.html
That wasn't the Steele dossier. That was a Trump campaign staffer, George Papadopoulos, whose lips were loosened in London by too many libations containing alcohol.
There would be lots of media buzz about the Steele dossier, starting about six months after the beginning of the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane investigation, but I don't see that the Steele dossier was crucial to either the "oranges" (origins) or the eventual outcomes of the Mueller investigation.
Whether I continue to see it this way--well, that remains to be--seen.
[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 11-06-2021).]
I think you are correct Rinselberg. This "investigation" will be studied as "how to NOT do investigations" for years to come. The FBI knew a year before the "investigation" even started that the source was a fraud. In fact, the FBI knew that the primary source of the investigation was a fraud at the time of the second secret warrant. This "investigation" will be remembered as a purely political assassination attempt of a President of the United States of America. This "investigation" will be studied by future "journalists" as a massive deception to poison the minds of voters before an election. Tapping into a sad, primal and evil corner of the human mind,.........the definition of political propaganda.
Conversely, the DURHAM INVESTIGATION (that the Pennocks Purveyor of Perjury wants to deflect from), and the resulting indictments so far and the information and evidence that it has revealed, THAT THE "MUELLER PROBE" COMPLETELY AND PURPOSELY IGNORED will stand as testament to my enduring quote:
"THE TRUTH EVENTUALLY COMES OUT AND IT IS NEVER WHAT THE LEFTIST MEDIA, (or Leftist "probes" and "reports"), ORIGINALLY TOLD YOU"
[This message has been edited by randye (edited 11-06-2021).]
WASHINGTON — Within hours of opening an investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia in the summer of 2016, the F.B.I. dispatched a pair of agents to London on a mission so secretive that all but a handful of officials were kept in the dark.
The "LEAD AGENT" on that particular little political hit job junket was none other than DISGRACED LIAR and FIRED FBI agent PETER STRZOK
Just another one of the Leftist LIARS, PERVERTS and MORONS that you continually and unquestioningly hold out as your "authoritative sources"
Public masturbators and disgraced FBI liars. You sure know how to pick em'.
[This message has been edited by randye (edited 11-07-2021).]
The "LEAD AGENT" on that particular little political hit job junket was none other than DISGRACED LIAR and FIRED FBI agent PETER STRZOK
Just another one of the Leftist LIARS, PERVERTS and MORONS that you continually and unquestioningly hold out as your "authoritative sources"
I've asked many times before but I'll repeat it:
Have you ever ONCE stopped to consider that the stupid things that you think and believe are due to the stupid people and sources that you get your opinions and ideas from?
I was scrolling hurriedly through some of the remarks on this page and I saw a reference to the notorious and disgraced--partially disgraced, IMO--Peter Strzok.
I caught some of Strzok's testimony before one of the Congressional committees. This was after he'd been removed from the Mueller investigation, if memory serves me. This was the day when Louie Gohmert (needs no introduction) tried to castigate Peter Strzok over Strzok's affair with the other FBI agent, Lisa Page, and Mr Strzok's infidelity to Mrs Strzok in this matter.
I don't think that Louie Gohmert came off well in that exchange. It seemed like a "holier than thou" kind of moment. I didn't perceive Louie Gohmet as having even an iota of sincerity in that exchange. I'll take Peter Strzok over Louie Gohmert any day of the week, and twice on Sunday.
I didn't sit down to view that hearing from end to end, but I caught quite a bit of it, if memory serves me. (Is that a texting acronym? IMSM?)
What I saw and heard does not make me think all that badly of Peter Strzok. I don't think he screwed up the Mueller investigation, or took it off course, either by any nefarious design, or even just by not being fully on top of his game as an FBI agent tasked with having a major role in the Mueller investigation. That didn't happen, IMO.
It's my impression that when Mueller removed Strzok from the case, he (Mueller) also assembled his entire group of Special Counsel's Office investigators and prosecutors and supervised a thorough review of Strzok's body of work on the case, going all the way back to the first day that Strzok was on the case. Like a forensic audit.
I have a "vision" of Mueller assembling the entire group and saying (in so many words) "We need to review everything in our investigation that has Strzok's 'fingerprints' on it. We need to review all of the assessments and decisions that are on record from Strzok and all of the interviews that Strzok was involved in--including Strzok's interview of Mike Flynn--and look for any 'red flags' that would suggest or reveal that Strzok has not been 'playing it straight', in between his texting 'orgies' with Lisa Page."
I think there was such an internal Mueller-led review or forensic audit or "autopsy" of Strzok's role in the investigation and no "red flags" were uncovered that would discredit Strzok's work on the case.
Does anyone have more specific information about this? Something about this from the media, or from a book or a book review?
Strzok it to me.
[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 11-07-2021).]
A university professor emeritus (Political Science) hints that the Steele dossier was central to "he most ambitious dirty trick pulled in an American election and its aftermath."
quote
Last week, John Durham’s grand jury issued its third criminal indictment in the Trump-Russia collusion hoax. The person who was arrested may be obscure; the news may have been buried after Virginia’s bombshell election results; but Durham’s move is a big deal. It shows that the special counsel’s probe is methodically unraveling a huge conspiracy, seemingly engineered by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and implicating James Comey’s FBI, either as a willing participant or as utterly incompetent boobs [sic].
Where do you see commentary like this online?
At RealClearPolitics.
Read-o-Metering at a comparatively svelte 8 minutes--almost 8 minutes--this article is sure to bring a smile to the face of anyone--well, you can figure that out in less than a "New York Minute."
That would be none other than Charles Lipson,the Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Political Science Emeritus at the University of Chicago. Doctor Lipson "I presume" founded the Program on International Politics, Economics, and Security.
You can email Professor Lipson with your hearty congratulations on this article, or any other thoughts, at <charles.lipson@gmail.com>.
I think "Doc" Lipson is making way too much of the Steele dossier, which I've said wasn't that important to the Mueller investigation, but as the (old) proverb goes, "different Strzoks for different folks."
[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 11-09-2021).]
When it became apparent they had been lied to, as Durham now has proven, they didn’t move to discredit Steele but kept the scam going all through the Robert Mueller investigation.
Senile old "Bumblin' Bob" Mueller is back to taking his long naps and eating his applesauce during his retirement at Wilmer-Hale.
After Hillary is dead of natural causes the press will publish how she really was selling US top secret intel through her unsecured server, intel she had installed on it for that purpose. Anthony Weiner having it on his laptop is proof she is guilty.
There will doubtless be many people that will wish to attend the senior Clinton's funerals for the singular purpose of confirming that the heads of that crime family are finally dead.
OH.....BY THE WAY:
The media is also finally starting to call the "Steele" dossier by its correct name:
David Frum joined the Tuesday edition of MSNBC's "Morning Joe" to discuss his latest column for The Atlantic magazine. Frum speaks, starting at the 2:50 mark, and speaks again, towards the end, at the 7:54 mark. If one were to view this as a stage play, it's the Frum character that has the most important lines.
So you don't know him "frum" who?
quote
David Frum is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy (2020). In 2001 and 2002, he was a speechwriter for President George W. Bush.
"It Wasn’t a Hoax"
quote
People with scant illusions about Trump are volunteering to help him execute one of his Big Lies.
The factual record on Trump-Russia has been set forth most authoritatively by the report of the Senate Intelligence Committee, then chaired by Richard Burr, a Republican from North Carolina. I’ll reduce the complex details to a very few agreed upon by virtually everybody outside the core Trump-propaganda group.
This is followed by a list of 12 bullet points about Trump and Russia.
Frum underlines the fallacy of a reductionist line of thought that cavalierly overestimates the worth of the "Anti-anti-Trump journalists [who] want to use the Steele [dossier] controversy to score points off politicians and media institutions that they dislike."
There are facts that are damning and transactions that are destructive to the fabric of the United States--yet they are not prosecutable crimes.
It's a cogent observation that also applies to the report that is expected from the House Committee tasked with investigating "January 6", as Frum himself remarks during that early morning conversation on Morning Joe.
[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 11-30-2021).]
It's David Frum again, talking about his latest column for The Atlantic, "It Wasn't a Hoax." This time he's even more to the point. Laser-focused. Not a single superfluous word.
That link to YouTube in the previous message doesn't work. And the reason it doesn't work is entirely beyond my control. But I have a transcript. This is David Frum, senior editor and staff writer for The Atlantic, responding on-air to MSNBC anchor Lawrence O'Donnell.
quote
Well, I think one of the problems we`ve had is that people keep trying to take this [the Trump and Russia] case to court. I mean they`re trying to keep turning this into a criminal matter when it`s a counter intelligence matter. It`s a matter of what are the facts?
What motivated me to write this article, and I think what motivates you to talk about it and the congressman to talk about it is there is now a pushback not coming from only pro-Trump people because what do you expect form them, but for many people who have good records in the past four years, where they were trying to score some other points by saying, well, we want to back away from the Russia business.
The Steele dossier wasn`t all that it should have been. It got overplayed. There are many things we still don`t know. and so we want to tell a different kind of story in order to score points off politicians. We don`t like Hillary Clinton, like TV programs like this one that they don`t like for other reasons.
We have to keep in front of us the plain fact that everything you saw, everything that happened that was important you saw it in front of your own -- with your own eyes. You saw the Russians hack. You saw the Trump campaign try to persuade the world that the hackers were not Russians but were poor, murdered (INAUDIBLE). And in fact insinuate that the Clinton people had somehow not only packed themselves but murdered the people who were the instruments of their hack.
You saw Donald Trump on television welcome the help. And all of these things would have been the biggest scandal in American electoral history except that Donald Trump kept creating even bigger scandals than that.
Through the Trump years there have been many secrets but no mysteries. What you know, you know and you are being gaslit and only by pro-Trump people but unfortunately by people with distinguished records who are now trying to score some another political point, a very subtle one, by denying what was true.
PENNOCKS PURVEYOR OF PERJURY IS OBSESSED WITH SOMEONE......AGAIN
NOW IT'S DAVID FRUM
As usual it doesn't take more than a couple of minutes to find out the TRUTH about his latest "hero"......at least for anyone who has critical thinking skills.
Omidyar is the founder of eBay and the publisher of “The Intercept.” He was a billionaire at the age of 31 and is throwing around his money like his idol, George Soros.
The tech titan runs an extensive operation of nonprofits through the Omidyar Network, based in Silicon Valley. In 2017 alone, his foundation donated roughly $85 million to a variety of causes around the world.
As one would expect from a Bay-area billionaire, Omidyar is anything but conservative. He, along with like-minded tycoons such as George Soros and Tom Steyer, promotes a far-left radical agenda.
Thanks to, and PAID BY, Omidyar's Network, Bill Kristol and other Trump haters have created or run several groups, including Defending Democracy Together and the Niskanen Center, which also receives Soros funding.
Niskanen houses a who’s who of NeverTrumpers. Gabe Schoenfeld, author of a hit piece on Victor Davis Hanson, and writer Linda Chavez are senior fellows.
Its advisory board includes McMullin, Finn, David Frum and Tom Nichols.
In December 2018, Niskanen hosted a daylong seminar entitled ‘Starting Over: The Center-Right After Trump’. Panelists included conservatives-turned-lefties Jennifer Rubin, David Frum and Bill Kristol.
....... Toobin to Frum......WOW!....you sure have a habit of picking perverts, propagandists and whores as your heroes.
Has it ever ONCE occurred to you that the stupid things that you think and believe are due to the stupid people and sources that you get your "news" and opinions from?
[This message has been edited by randye (edited 12-12-2021).]
Of course, my first reaction is to remind everyone that this isn't a time for overridingly partisan, knee-jerk, intellectual reductionism. And this, of course, begs the question, is it ever a time for overridingly partisan, knee-jerk, intellectual reductionism? If someone were to say that I am indulging in a mere truism with this remark, I would say, indeed, so I am, because I am responding to a mere truism.
Hold that thought.
I would be remiss if I didn't revisit my previous message (the message immediately before the message immediately before this one) to provide an http(s) link to the transcript of that conversation, aired on December 2, among MSNBC anchor Lawrence O'Donnell, Congressman Eric Swalwell and David Frum.
I've already introduced David Frum to this conversation--one need look no farther back than the message immediately before the message immediately before this one.
Eric Swalwell (D) is a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, elected from California's 15th Congressional District, which includes parts of nearby (*) Alameda and Contra Costa Counties. Congressman Swalwell represented the House of Representatives as the impeachment manager during the second impeachment trial of the former President, Donald Trump. So with no further ado, here is the http(s) link to that transcript: https://www.msnbc.com/trans...onnell-12-2-n1285389
The conversation is about halfway into the transcript. "And coming up, Donald Trump`s other -- the other big lie. That`s next." That's when O'Donnell sets it up. The time mark of [22:32:23] immediately follows that, in the transcript.
The asterisk (*) after "nearby"--where I said "nearby"--is because California's Alameda and Contra Costa counties are, in fact, nearby, from my geographic perspective. But nearby to anyone else that might be following this forum conversation at this point? That depends on their geographic perspective, whoever they may (or may not) be.
[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 12-12-2021).]
Oh wait--that Fox News report is from December 14, 2020, not December 14, 2021. A year and a day ago.
I actually didn't realize that until I got to this point and then went back and double-checked the date.
Talking Point Memo's Josh Kovensky just published his take on the Durham investigation, Kovensky's column seems to boil down to the age old question of "Where's the beef?"
Josh Kovensky is an investigative reporter for Talking Points Memo, based in New York. He previously worked for the Kyiv Post in Ukraine, covering politics, business, and corruption [in the Ukraine].
Ankush Khardori seems not "bullish" but "borderline" on the Durham investigation.
quote
I have no idea whether Sussmann or Danchenko [both indicted by John Durham] will ultimately be convicted (though I have serious doubts as to Sussmann), and I have no interest in defending the Steele dossier. For all I know, all of Durham’s various allegations and insinuations across both cases are correct. But it used to be widely recognized that the government’s allegations in a criminal case are just that, unless and until they are established at a trial, and that a healthy amount of skepticism is always a good idea, particularly when a prosecutor has been less than completely trustworthy.
The fervor among liberals and the media for the Mueller investigation seemed to diminish that sentiment. Durham may end up reviving it.
Ankush Khardori is a former federal prosecutor, now a D.C.-based lawyer (private sector) and a regular contributor to New York Magazine's Intelligencer, Politico and a slew of other well-known media venues. That was the end of his column from a few days ago for the Intelligencer:
A federal judge has turned down a request from Special Counsel John Durham for a ruling that a lawyer facing trial on a false statement charge was part of a wide-ranging “joint venture” involving Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, Democratic operatives, private investigation firm Fusion GPS and various technology researchers.
The decision issued Saturday afternoon by U.S. District Court Judge Christopher Cooper limits evidence and testimony prosecutors can offer against attorney Michael Sussmann at a jury trial set to get underway later this month.
The ruling spares the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee the potential embarrassment of a federal judge finding they were part of a coordinated effort to level since-discredited allegations that candidate Donald Trump or his allies maintained a data link from Trump Tower to Russia’s Alfa Bank. The Clinton campaign disseminated that claim amid a broader effort to call out Trump’s ties to Russia at a time when U.S. intelligence agencies had revealed efforts by the Russian government to interfere in the 2016 election.
Is anyone surprised? U.S. District Court Judge Christopher Cooper is an Obama appointee.
The jury was seated on Monday, and includes one federal government employee who told the judge they donated to Democrats in 2016 and another government employee who told the judge they "strongly" dislike former President Trump—both of those jurors told the judge they could be impartial throughout the trial.
Nothing to see here, folks. Just business as usual.
There aren't enough political threads in Politics & Religion to humor you? You felt there was a dire need to resurrect this more than two year old O/T political thread?
As much as it's nice to see a post from rinselberg again, let the poor guy rest in peace.
