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Reports on Russian connections to Trump [Summaries in OP] #GoldenShowers

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Well sort of. If the media only published fully verified reports then there'd be very little investigative journalism because many claims can't ever be fully verified. The reporting on this isn't claiming it's verified, they're simply reporting that the intelligence community feels it credible. Were out nor for that fact there'd be nothing to report.

If the intelligence community wasn't nodding furiously in the background nobody would touch this with a bargepole.

Ironically the salacious pee stuff actually makes it harder to report on.


But I'm personally not claiming to be objective. I desperately want this to be true. I'm biased as hell.

The media didn't touch this. They decided not to because they didn't feel it was worth reporting. Even Mother Jones didn't release the report.
 

Boke1879

Member
wtf, how is it remotely comparable?

- The Clinton email server scandal was a REAL scandal, whether you personally care about it or not.

- The FBI *actually was* investigating it on the basis of real evidence found on Huma Abedin's laptop.

It's debatable whether Comey acted improperly by announcing the investigation in the final weeks of the campaign, but everything you posted is all based on real facts. Not outrageous and unsubstantiated innuendo like this Buzzfeed document. Buzzfeed itself isn't even standing by the authenticity of their own document.

Nothing debateable about what Comey did. By his own admission he doesn't talk about ongoing investigations, but he literally did just that with his letter about the emails and then releasing a statement saying he just HAD to say something.

But he was totally mum on this information he had on possible ties with Trump and Russia.

And lets be real. Nothing was verified at the time with Huma laptop. Yet Comey, congress AND the media felt the need to ram it down our throats.
 
Donald Trump has such a verifiable proven track record of lying that the only thing that will fully debunk this report is Trump saying that it's true.
 

brau

Member
they can be looked up, but even if you try and use that against him he will just deny and spin. He has created a culture around himself so that the only thing that his followers will believe is things that he tells them. Everything else is "lame stream media".

Exactly! How does one even discuss things rationally? I think anything anyone says at this point about him will usually be taken personally. Which is even worse. The guy can't take a comment. Did he really need to reply to any of these accusations? or better yet reply to Meryl Streeps speech?

The followers are even worse. Adopting this mentality will only encourage apathy and divide the country even more.
 

trembli0s

Member
I honestly don't know the prevailing standard behavior in a case like this. But it seems to me that Comey was just in an impossible situation. The Weiner/Abedin material was discovered late. It was absolutely relevant to the Clinton investigation, containing documents which had been missing prior to the case being closed. There was no possibility of not investigating these documents. And once you're investigating them, you have to report it to congress.

If Clinton had won, like virtually everyone assumed, and the FBI announced in February that they had re-opened the case based on documents they had back in October, that would be outrageous too.

It was an ugly situation. I'm open to debate about it, especially from people who have some knowledge about FBI policy.

IMO the biggest issue with Comey was Loretta Lynch's meeting on the tarmac with Bill Clinton. After that point she lost any leverage or semblance of impartiality which allowed Comey to do what he "felt" was right.
 
I'm sure there's nothing shady in the doings of a billionaire narcissist with a proven track record of misogyny and a single unchangeable political opinion of supporting Vladimir Putin in public.

And even if there was, the tree of freedom needs watering by the bodily fluids of patriots.
 
Ever heard of a wild goose chase? A red herring/

In all honesty, I think it's outrageous that Clinton got away with it. There was no goosechase, it was an unthinkable violation for anyone less powerful and influential than Hillary Clinton.

If an employee of any large corporation had used a personal, insecure email server for work, let alone with classified documents, they would at minimum never work in that industry again.
 

tuxfool

Banned
Tbh, I couldn't give two shits about Trump's kinks or Russian blackmail. The meat and potatoes here is what are his ties to Russia and how connected are they and in what ways. The piss bits don't matter at all unless you want to prove the entirety of the document is 100% fact. It would be nice to shut down Trump supporters and himself over trying to claim it's all false even if only the pissing bit isn't factual.

The document itself makes no claims to absolute veracity of some of its statements. It doesn't need to, as it wasn't meant for public consumption. It is an intelligence report and perfectly OK for it to deal with rumors.
 
In all honesty, I think it's outrageous that Clinton got away with it. There was no goosechase, it was an unthinkable violation for anyone less powerful and influential than Hillary Clinton.

If an employee of any large corporation had used a personal, insecure email server for work, let alone with classified documents, they would at minimum never work in that industry again.
And if an employee in any large corporation said that Mexicans are rapists, encouraged people to incite violence against people he doesn't like, and had a tape of them admitting to sexual harassment they would at minimum never work in that industry again.

And yet trump got elected!
 
TBH the more I think about this the more its sounding like conspiracy theory.

It's an Opposition Research report that was paid for. The sources are from Russia. Practically nothing has been verified. People here are saying that there must be some truth to it because the FBI and CIA have mentioned it in an intelligence briefing to the President. But...so? Clinton had an entire investigation about her email server. Does that make all of the allegations against her true?

I think we need to step back and think about this clearly. Because if the allegations are never verified (or worse, proven to be fake), this is going cause a huge blowback and will benefit Trump tremendously.

Correct. This is what I'm saying. People are ignoring the "source" of the information. This forum isn't prone to thinking logically about everything Trump so I don't expect many to take a step back.
 

daveo42

Banned
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In otherwords, the 100+ posts treating this as fact are the ones who need to slow their roll.

I'd be there with you if the FBI and CIA and pretty much anyone else in the know came out and said it was all false. There's truth in that document enough that they briefed the President and PE with highly classified information related. It wasn't just a simple report of it being passed around, it was a two page doc covering specifics we have yet to hear. The bread and butter is what we haven't heard yet.

And ya, people need to temper their expectations but saying it shouldn't be believed either is just as bad as taking the whole document as fact. Again, slow your roll. Also, that Snopes article is real shit based on the "claim" they use.
 

Caja 117

Member
In all honesty, I think it's outrageous that Clinton got away with it. There was no goosechase, it was an unthinkable violation for anyone less powerful and influential than Hillary Clinton.

If an employee of any large corporation had used a personal, insecure email server for work, let alone with classified documents, they would at minimum never work in that industry again.
LOL...No, every Corporation handles their information differently, some will give you very harsh consequences other will just end up in job termination.
 

ZOONAMI

Junior Member
But how do we know the document released by Buzzfeed is #1: the same document presented internally, and #2: based on truefacts?

Theoretically we don't, but the length of the report was referenced by CNN (35 pages) and distilled into a 2 page summary that was presented to Obama and Trump.

It would seem this would be the report, but it's possible there is another report we don't even know about.
 
In all honesty, I think it's outrageous that Clinton got away with it. There was no goosechase, it was an unthinkable violation for anyone less powerful and influential than Hillary Clinton.

If an employee of any large corporation had used a personal, insecure email server for work, let alone with classified documents, they would at minimum never work in that industry again.

This is simply not true at all. None of it.
 

Calamari41

41 > 38
Why would those same people be able to see through this but be completely unable to see through nothingburger after nothingburger about Clinton?

The "unverified rumours" absolutely worked at taking her down.

"Hillary Clinton stored classified information in an illegal manner" is a lot different from "Donald Trump is a Russian double agent on Putin's payroll who pays hookers to pee on beds." A LOT different.

The issue with EMAILS was never whether or not she stored them on a private server. She did. The issue was "is it technically legal or illegal to do that."
 

deadlast

Member
Nothing debateable about what Comey did. By his own admission he doesn't talk about ongoing investigations, but he literally did just that with his letter about the emails and then releasing a statement saying he just HAD to say something.

But he was totally mum on this information he had on possible ties with Trump and Russia.

And lets be real. Nothing was verified at the time with Huma laptop. Yet Comey, congress AND the media felt the need to ram it down our throats.

Did Comey's letter come before or after McCain gave him the information he received on Trump? My memory is a little fuzzy on the time lines here.
 

mnannola

Member
Unfortunately the only way this story gains real traction with consequences for Trump is if some kind of video / audio recording comes out. Anything less and his horde of supporters won't really give a crap.
 
"Hillary Clinton stored classified information in an illegal manner" is a lot different from "Donald Trump is a Russian double agent on Putin's payroll who pays hookers to pee on beds." A LOT different.

The issue with EMAILS was never whether or not she stored them on a private server. She did. The issue was "is it technically legal or illegal to do that."
And we know trump has ties to Putin. He has said as much, on camera.

There is a lot of similarity.
 

Croatoan

They/Them A-10 Warthog
Trump has ties to Russia. Where's your tax returns, Trump? Russia helped him in the election (our intel communities confirmed this). Trump seems to want to do Russia bidding (easing sanctions, fucking over NATO, putting a Putin ally in Sec of State). Why are Republicans rushing everything through?

The real impact of this report is that Trump is Russia's bitch. They have stuff on him. Russia hacked everybody (again, the intel communities confirmed this), Republicans and Democrats. They wanted Trump in, not Hillary.

LOL, you sound like one of those idiots that asked constantly for Obama's REAL birth certificate. The real news is no matter which side wins, the other throws a temper tantrum and starts slinging around conspiracy theories.

To be honest I am a bit surprised. I thought educated liberals were above this crap.
 

daveo42

Banned
The document itself makes no claims to absolute veracity of some of its statements. It doesn't need to, as it wasn't meant for public consumption. It is an intelligence report and perfectly OK for it to deal with rumors.

Not my point. My point is that the public or at least people here are riding too much on the blackmail aspect of the document even when it's the wildest and probably hardest rumor to verify.
 
I compared this to pizzagate because people are in a frenzy over a CRAZY news story with no verification, and demanding action be taken, that Trump be arrested, that they always knew this to be true, that he will continue getting away with it. You are wrong if you are saying no one was saying these things. Reread the thread.

I never dismissed it, the same way you never endorsed it as true.

I didn't shift my argument (when did I do that?), I think you just don't want to acknowledge what Im saying, that you and others are being biased and irrational by being willing to jump to a crazy conclusion, and you are attempting to rationalize it by saying the things you observed about Trump make the report not that crazy, which is untrue. There is nothing you could have observed that would make this report not a total bombshell if proven to be true.

I said you tried to shift the overall argument. I mean, your argument has been clear the entire time to try and compare this to pizzagate and how everyone who could possible believe anything about it is crazy, because it's all just too crazy!

But the overall thing is just not that crazy. I mean, yes, it's crazy to think that we have a President-Elect being influenced by a foreign power, if not outright in bed with them. But a candidate that has consistently been Pro-Russia, has numerous possible business connections to Russia, has staff with Russian ties, had the election he won influenced by Russia most likely to benefit him, and nominated a friend of Russia as Secretary of State whose first big challenged after this election will be to address Russia being influenced or in bed with Russia is not that shocking of a thing when you look at all of that lol.
 

BFIB

Member
Unfortunately the only way this story gains real traction with consequences for Trump is if some kind of video / audio recording comes out. Anything less and his horde of supporters won't really give a crap.
Trump will then state it's CGI.
 

ElFly

Member
TBH the more I think about this the more its sounding like conspiracy theory.

It's an Opposition Research report that was paid for. The sources are from Russia. Practically nothing has been verified. People here are saying that there must be some truth to it because the FBI and CIA have mentioned it in an intelligence briefing to the President. But...so? Clinton had an entire investigation about her email server. Does that make all of the allegations against her true?

I think we need to step back and think about this clearly. Because if the allegations are never verified (or worse, proven to be fake), this is going cause a huge blowback and will benefit Trump tremendously.

clinton had a huge investigation dedicated to her to see if there was a crime committed, not because there was any doubt that she had mishandled classified information

the equivalent here would be admitting that Trump had ties to russia and having evidence they have been blackmailing him as truth, and the FBI and CIA wondering if they can actually charge him with anything

they are v different situations
 
Unfortunately the only way this story gains real traction with consequences for Trump is if some kind of video / audio recording comes out. Anything less and his horde of supporters won't really give a crap.

His supporters would just call the video fake. People need to stop pretending that their opinions are the only ones that should matter.
 
And we know trump has ties to Putin. He has said as much, on camera.

There is a lot of similarity.

Hired a Russian sympathizer to work for him in Manafort. And also directed the GOP to remove any harsh Russian language in their platform.

Obviously there are ties and he is sympathetic to Russia. The reason for that needs to be known. And of course a smoking gun needs to be revealed. Will we get that? Who knows.
 
and if you're smart enough you're waiting for more info. I mean all last year you had people parroting emails and wikileaks even though nothing substantial was in them.

eh they were quite substantial - they were actual real emails. as in, objectively verifiable things people said and emailed to each other, people operating with $1.5 billion of the public's money. getting debate questions in advance is not something the right made up, it's something real that happened. if there was nothing substantial then why did you have people stepping down?

if the IC has some real dirt on Trump, they should gather the intel, get a warrant, and do this for real. arrest the dude for treason if he's guilty of that! if the evidence is there (which all these leaks seem to indicate) then let's see the proper channels used here.
 

Guy.brush

Member
Maybe it's the one easy thing he can prove is true instead? Maybe that was the only fact false about him in the report so it's the one he's going to dispute to help discredit the rest? We gotta slow down on rushing to judgement here. Stop assuming every denial's an admission of guilt because that's a damn witch trial right there.

that makes sense as well yes if what NBC reporting is true and for that particular allegation there was a fuck up in passport data.
 

Vixdean

Member
Again, the reason why many people are finding this report credible is that it perfectly fits and explains Trump's public actions over past 6 months and beyond. Since the beginning of this Presidential campaign, he's behaved as Putin's lapdog. A significant part of his political platform has been trying soften the perception of Russia with the American public while simultaneous weakening NATO. In other words, if Russia had blackmailed or even "recruited" a US Presidential candidate, they would have behaved exactly like Trump.
 
LOL, you sound like one of those idiots that asked constantly for Obama's REAL birth certificate. The real news is no matter which side wins, the other throws a temper tantrum and starts slinging around conspiracy theories.

To be honest I am a bit surprised. I thought educated liberals were above this crap.

Asking for Trump's tax returns, which every presidential candidate provides, is not the same thing as the conspiracy theory that Obama was not born in the US.
 

Kyzer

Banned
I said you tried to shift the overall argument. I mean, your argument has been clear the entire time to try and compare this to pizzagate and how everyone who could possible believe anything about it is crazy, because it's all just too crazy!

But the overall thing is just not that crazy. I mean, yes, it's crazy to think that we have a President-Elect being influenced by a foreign power, if not outright in bed with them. But a candidate that has consistently been Pro-Russia, has numerous possible business connections to Russia, has staff with Russian ties, had the election he won influenced by Russia most likely to benefit him, and nominated a friend of Russia as Secretary of State whose first big challenged after this election will be to address Russia being influenced or in bed with Russia is not that shocking of a thing when you look at all of that lol.

Yes, people believing unverified stories with implications that are tantamount to treason and other high crimes, is crazy. And dangerous. Im not sure how you don't see that.

And yes, youre right, it is crazy. If it turned out to be true it would be crazy as fuck. Again you are reducing this report to "trump is in bed with russia", but there are crazy af specific allegations of TREASON
 

Hex

Banned
But nobody is reporting that those things actually happened. People are reporting that document has surfaced. So far it doesn't look like the document itself was fabricated.

This double standard is really pissing me off. Remember EMAILS!!!?

Yes, and remember how the emails thing was stupid and everyone said that they should not have wasted their time on the emails without something more solid?
I do believe I have mentioned emails multiple times in fact.
What we have here is some he said she said about something that may be a video or may not be. Now NBC is saying that it was not vetted?
It is like Tom Arnold saying he had video of Trump from The Apprentice.
Where is it?
I am glad that they are following a lead, and I would be dancing in the streets if they find something.
I Love the meltdowns on twitter, and i think it is amusing and funny that this comes on the day of his press conference.
But if nothing comes of it, if they can not line up evidence then Trump comes out even stronger which is the last thing we needed.
 
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