Trump's Russian Collusion

[Trinity]

No one even poses the broader question. Only did he criminally conspire with Russia. Trump’s terrified of Putin. Beholden to Bonesaw. Why? Why so desperate to hide his taxes? The counter intelligence investigation remains hidden, along with the many redactions.

[old salt]

They're not hidden from the Gang of 8.

[Trinity]

The gang has his Deutcshebank records? When did that happen?
Part 1 would be longer if Part 2 were shorter, no? Mueller said so.

[MDlaxfan76]

I could well be misunderstanding but I believe the reporting is that the IG team spent 16 hours with Steele themselves. Initially skeptical, they came away as believers.

...believers in what ? What Steele reported in his dossier or what Steele told them about his dealings with the DoJ, FBI, State Dept & MSM ?

What is the IG investigating ?

You think you know what the IG's going to conclude ?
You don't even know what they questioned Steele about.
Here's the original report from Marc Hosenball of Reuters, upon which all the other "reporting" (& speculation) are based :

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa- ... SKCN1U410I

Federal lawyers probing the origins of the investigation of ties between Russia and President Donald Trump’s campaign have interviewed the author of a “dossier” that alleged misconduct between Trump and Moscow, prompting the lawyers to extend their inquiry.

Three attorneys from the Inspector General’s office of the U.S. Department of Justice met in person in early June with dossier author Christopher Steele in Britain, said two sources with direct knowledge of the lawyers’ travels.

The Justice Department’s inspector general has been examining the earliest stages of an FBI investigation of Trump, his former 2016 presidential campaign rival Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, Russia and former Trump adviser Carter Page.

One of the two sources said Horowitz’s investigators appear to have found Steele’s information sufficiently credible to have to extend the investigation. Its completion date is now unclear.

A key focus of the Horowitz probe is whether the FBI followed proper procedures when it applied for a warrant with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) to secretly conduct surveillance on Page and his ties to Russia.

Declassified documents show that the FBI cited information in Steele’s dossier when it asked the secretive FISA court in late 2016 for a warrant to eavesdrop electronically on Page, a U.S. businessman with interests in Russia.

Horowitz’s office in Washington declined to comment.
A spokesman for Orbis Business Intelligence, Steele’s London investigations firm, declined to comment.
UK government agencies declined to disclose whether they were in contact with Horowitz’s team in London.

Investigators working for Mueller in September 2017 twice interviewed Steele, who also gave written testimony to the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee in August 2018. That panel and other committees of Congress have taken up where Mueller left off after his investigation ended.

Mueller had the intel analysts at his disposal. The IG does not. The Mueller Report did not even cite Steele's "intel".

Yup, they found Steele credible. 16 hours.
What, do you think he told him it was all bogus and that's what they found credible?

No, they were looking to try to find evidence that the counter-intelligence operation was ill-founded, or worse. That's what Barr wants to hear. Find that, and the IG can give the GOP what it wants and wrap things up with a report to that effect. Find the opposite and the investigation continues on.

Now, the reporting could be inaccurate or confused, but it says they found Steele to be credible.
Kinda undermines the whole notion that he's a liar.

But why would the Steele dossier be discussed at any length in the Mueller Report?

Mueller reported on what his team's investigation uncovered from an actual investigation that they, not Steele, performed. Of course, what they did not include was all sorts of threads and information that remain outstanding in other investigations, both counter intelligence and financial crimes etc. Whole bunch of investigations outstanding.

The IG is trying to determine if DoJ officials acted within DoJ guidelines in seeking FISA warrants.
The IG is examining the nexus between Steele & DoJ officials.
This inquiry was commenced before Barr became AG.
Nobody's accusing Steele of lying, rather -- he was duped & fed disinformation by his Russian sources,
& DoJ officials were remiss in using it in FISA applications, without substantiation.

So, now you know exactly what the IG is investigating?

Fundamentally I agree with you that the IG is doing oversight. Were decisions made honestly, were legal processes followed correctly, were any significant errors made, etc.

Part of that is indeed to examine the portion that came from Steele. Was his information credible? Was he credible? Was it worth further investigation?
What we're hearing is that after 16 hours of questioning they found Steele credible, just as apparently the Russian experts had earlier.

As we know, the FBI had more reasons than Steele's info to be concerned. And indeed, if we've learned anything, it was that there was lots and lots of verified reasons to be concerned, running from the reality of the Russians active measures campaign to Trump's not telling the truth about the Moscow deal to the reality that the Trump Tower mtg happened and they tried to cover it up, all certainly compromising a future President Trump.

The attack by the right wing and its media flaks on the professionals who made decisions to be concerned and to investigate when presented with the various irregularities is truly disturbing. These are folks who've made careers of protecting the United States under Presidents of both parties.

[MDlaxfan76]

The Congress is trying to determine if Trump is compromised. No one will say.

Too FN FUNNY

2.5 years 2500 subpoenas 19 democrat prosecutors 40 investigators. 500 witnesses questioned.

NO ONES TELLING.

Of course he's 'compromised'. The only "Funny' aspect is that so many are unwilling to admit it.

Any time an adversary knows embarrassing information that an official would not want made public, that official is 'compromised'.

For instance, Putin knew that Donald was lying during the campaign about his business dealings with Russian and Russians. Lots of such lying, most obvious one that has caught the imagination are the lies about the Moscow deal.

Lots of other shady dealings and lies, but that's a lay up for 'compromise'.

Listen, Trump has been a cheater throughout his life, in all dimensions of his life.
There are people who know the details. So, he's 'compromised'.

But he's in power, and his base is cultishly in thrall to that power.

[Trinity]

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/07/ ... gs-1409190

Pompeo has already investigated the “oranges” and found no bad faith? He should tell Barr. Don’t waste your time.

[MDlaxfan76]

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/07/ ... gs-1409190

Pompeo has already investigated the “oranges” and found no bad faith? He should tell Barr. Don’t waste your time.

Seems to me that Pompeo is actually trying to do his J-O-B.
He's in the 'it's a tough gig, but somebody's gotta do it' dept.
Not as straight as a Mattis, but generally straight.
Dan Coates...guy trying to do right.

Barr, on the other hand, has revealed himself for the right-wing, authoritarian toady he really is (and always was).

[Trinity]

Prosecutors from SDNY (under Barr) are not expected to bring charges against the Trump Org for improperly classifying the hush money pmnts to Cohen. @CNN says the investigation went dark 5 months ago.

When you’re a star, they let you do it.

[CU88]

Why don't r's want Mueller to talk?

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house ... er-mueller

After all, Trump has done nothing to stop Russia from screwing with the 2020 election.

[LandM]

CU, MD
It would be great if you could educate:
1. The Russians, Cubans, heck pick a country has been messing with our elections since we have had them. IMHO you nor anyone else is going to fix that problem;
2. Russia is still a power in this world. Patton had it right as it would have saved us from allot of grieve and bickering in today’s environment;
3. When does the American voter take responsibility for using social media as a news source?
4. Mueller will testify and the D will say he obstructed and the R will say the President has been vindicated. Besides the media circus and the Uber smart people telling me what I should have heard, what else is gonna be accomplished?
5. Had HRC been elected the situation -scary- might have been worse. She needs to take her own advice and get off Twitter. BC figured it out after metoo
5. Tax returns - what say you that we get all elected officials their tax returns. IMHO no aide is going to figure it out;
6. In reading the different threads - put business aside- what you detest seems to be what is trying to get fixed/updated. The language is unpresidential and unpredictable;
7. What can be done for a voter like me - based on what I see I will sit out again and that is not good

CU briefly landed in ND but spending the night on the way home. Fortunately my wife hates guns or someone would be in jail . Unless one has the patience of Job do not recommend driving coast to coast

[old salt]

MDLF76 :

OS :
The IG is trying to determine if DoJ officials acted within DoJ guidelines in seeking FISA warrants.
The IG is examining the nexus between Steele & DoJ officials.
This inquiry was commenced before Barr became AG.

So, now you know exactly what the IG is investigating?

...based on what I heard on both FNC & MSNBC.

[old salt]

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/07/ ... gs-1409190

Pompeo has already investigated the “oranges” and found no bad faith? He should tell Barr. Don’t waste your time.

Pompeo examined how CIA gathered the intel, not what the DoJ & Obama Admin did with it.

[MDlaxfan76]

CU, MD
It would be great if you could educate:
1. The Russians, Cubans, heck pick a country has been messing with our elections since we have had them. IMHO you nor anyone else is going to fix that problem;
The "problem" is indeed not going away; the problem is that we actually have a candidate now President who welcomes the interference as long as it's on his behalf. Come on in and do as you will.

2. Russia is still a power in this world. Patton had it right as it would have saved us from allot of grieve and bickering in today’s environment;
Certainly they're still a 'power'. We deal with adversaries and allies all the time, the important thing is to understand the difference.

3. When does the American voter take responsibility for using social media as a news source?
Unfortunately, this is a challenge that's not going away. Human beings respond to various input, e.g. advertising and think they're not persuadable, but advertisers know better. Social media currently 'chooses' algorithmically between various 'content' based upon the likelihood of being of interest. Content that receives response, both positive and negative, gets hugely amplified in its likelihood of being seen. The 'bad guys' understand this and create content to achieve the greatest possible response, and it goes viral. Further, the 'bad guys' create false accounts or 'bots' that automate the 'response' so as to prime the engine of viral spread. And human beings seeing incendiary content inevitably respond, much as it may be irrational to do so.

4. Mueller will testify and the D will say he obstructed and the R will say the President has been vindicated. Besides the media circus and the Uber smart people telling me what I should have heard, what else is gonna be accomplished?
We'll see. Could open some eyes, both within Congress, and most importantly across the population. Or it could get ignored, swamped by the cultish pro-Trump media.

5. Had HRC been elected the situation -scary- might have been worse. She needs to take her own advice and get off Twitter. BC figured it out after metoo
I'd be happy if she 'went away'. More importantly, most Democrats do too.

5. Tax returns - what say you that we get all elected officials their tax returns. IMHO no aide is going to figure it out;
Let's start with those in highest office and work down.

6. In reading the different threads - put business aside- what you detest seems to be what is trying to get fixed/updated. The language is unpresidential and unpredictable;
Not sure what you mean, but yes, he's a jerk in every sense.

7. What can be done for a voter like me - based on what I see I will sit out again and that is not good
Yup; not good. It would be better if you, like me, bite the bullet and 'vote for a stump over Trump'. He needs to go, the more ignominiously the better. The GOP needs to be shaken out of its fever trance and find an inclusive, positive message going forward, else demographics will totally overwhelm and the country will tilt hard left for decades. I'm hoping our choice isn't a hard left candidate in 2020, but even a stump is better than Trump again. None of the candidates for the Dem nomination have the immense immorality of Trump, nor do any of them have the degree of underlying corruption and corporate cronyism of HRC. We could rank them by their ethics and not all would be top of the list for sure, but we're not even in the same ball park thank goodness.

CU briefly landed in ND but spending the night on the way home. Fortunately my wife hates guns or someone would be in jail . Unless one has the patience of Job do not recommend driving coast to coast

[old salt]

Did somebody post " mic drop " a while back ? ... ..

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house ... es-dossier

FBI's spreadsheet puts a stake through the heart of Steele's dossier

Some in the news media have tried in recent days to rekindle their long-lost love affair with former MI6 agent Christopher Steele and his now infamous dossier.

The main trigger was a lengthy interview in June with the Department of Justice (DOJ) inspector general, which some news outlets suggested meant U.S. officials have found Steele, the former Hillary Clinton-backed political muckraker, to be believable.

“Investigators ultimately found Steele’s testimony credible and even surprising,” Politico crowed. The Washington Post went even further, suggesting Steele’s assistance to the inspector general might “undermine Trumpworld’s alt-narrative” that the Russia-collusion investigation was flawed.

But lest anyone be tempted to think Steele’s 2016 dossier is about to be mysteriously revived as credible, consider this: Over months of work, FBI agents painstakingly researched every claim Steele made about Trump’s possible collusion with Russia, and assembled their findings into a spreadsheet-like document.

The over-under isn’t flattering to Steele. ...the vast majority of Steele’s claims were deemed to be wrong, or could not be corroborated even with the most awesome tools available to the U.S. intelligence community. One source estimated the spreadsheet found upward of 90 percent of the dossier’s claims to be either wrong, nonverifiable or open-source intelligence found with a Google search.
In other words, it was mostly useless.
“The spreadsheet was a sea of blanks, meaning most claims couldn’t be corroborated, and those things that were found in classified intelligence suggested Steele’s intelligence was partly or totally inaccurate on several claims,”...

The FBI’s final assessment was driven by many findings contained in classified footnotes at the bottom of the spreadsheet. But it was also informed by an agent’s interview, in early 2017, with a Russian that Steele claimed was one of his main providers of intelligence,...
The FBI came to suspect that the Russian misled Steele, either intentionally or through exaggeration,...
The spreadsheet and a subsequent report by special prosecutor Robert Mueller show just how far off the seminal claims in the Steele dossier turned out to be.

The inaccuracy of Steele’s intelligence on Page is at the heart of the inspector general investigation specifically because the FBI represented to the FISA court that the intelligence on Page was verified and strong enough to support the FISA warrant. It was, in the end, not verified.

Steele had some general things right, of course, including that the Russians were behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s emails. Of course, there were public reports saying so when Steele reported this.
But even then, his dossier’s theory of how the hackers worked, who paid them and how they communicated with Trump was determined in the FBI spreadsheet and subsequent Mueller investigation to be far from accurate.
Even State officials, who listened to Steele’s theories in October 2016 — less than two weeks before his dossier was used to support the FISA request — instantly determined he was grossly wrong on some points.

Any effort to use Steele’s belated cooperation with the inspector general's investigation to prop up the credibility of his 2016 anti-Trump dossier or the FBI’s reliance on it for the FISA warrant is deeply misguided.
The FBI’s own spreadsheet was so conclusive that it prompted then-FBI Director James Comey (no fan of Trump, mind you) to dismiss the document as “salacious and unverified” and for lead FBI agent Peter Strzok to text, “There’s no big there there.” FBI lawyer Lisa Page testified that nine months into reviewing Steele’s dossier they had not found evidence of the collusion that Steele alleged.
Two years later, Mueller came to the same conclusion: Steele’s intelligence alleging a conspiracy was never verified.

The next time you hear a pundit suggesting Steele’s dossier is credible or that the FBI’s reliance on it as FISA evidence was justified, just picture all those blanks in that FBI spreadsheet.
They speak volumes as to what went wrong in the Russia investigation.

[Trinity]

So Trump wasn’t secretly collaborating with the Kremlin on his Moscow Tower during the campaign? Have you seen the CNN footage yet of Assange and his hacker visitors? Team Trump was widespread and international, filled by dirtbags.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Did somebody post " mic drop " a while back ? ... ..

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house ... es-dossier

FBI's spreadsheet puts a stake through the heart of Steele's dossier

Some in the news media have tried in recent days to rekindle their long-lost love affair with former MI6 agent Christopher Steele and his now infamous dossier.

The main trigger was a lengthy interview in June with the Department of Justice (DOJ) inspector general, which some news outlets suggested meant U.S. officials have found Steele, the former Hillary Clinton-backed political muckraker, to be believable.

“Investigators ultimately found Steele’s testimony credible and even surprising,” Politico crowed. The Washington Post went even further, suggesting Steele’s assistance to the inspector general might “undermine Trumpworld’s alt-narrative” that the Russia-collusion investigation was flawed.

But lest anyone be tempted to think Steele’s 2016 dossier is about to be mysteriously revived as credible, consider this: Over months of work, FBI agents painstakingly researched every claim Steele made about Trump’s possible collusion with Russia, and assembled their findings into a spreadsheet-like document.

The over-under isn’t flattering to Steele. ...the vast majority of Steele’s claims were deemed to be wrong, or could not be corroborated even with the most awesome tools available to the U.S. intelligence community. One source estimated the spreadsheet found upward of 90 percent of the dossier’s claims to be either wrong, nonverifiable or open-source intelligence found with a Google search.
In other words, it was mostly useless.
“The spreadsheet was a sea of blanks, meaning most claims couldn’t be corroborated, and those things that were found in classified intelligence suggested Steele’s intelligence was partly or totally inaccurate on several claims,”...

The FBI’s final assessment was driven by many findings contained in classified footnotes at the bottom of the spreadsheet. But it was also informed by an agent’s interview, in early 2017, with a Russian that Steele claimed was one of his main providers of intelligence,...
The FBI came to suspect that the Russian misled Steele, either intentionally or through exaggeration,...
The spreadsheet and a subsequent report by special prosecutor Robert Mueller show just how far off the seminal claims in the Steele dossier turned out to be.

The inaccuracy of Steele’s intelligence on Page is at the heart of the inspector general investigation specifically because the FBI represented to the FISA court that the intelligence on Page was verified and strong enough to support the FISA warrant. It was, in the end, not verified.

Steele had some general things right, of course, including that the Russians were behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s emails. Of course, there were public reports saying so when Steele reported this.
But even then, his dossier’s theory of how the hackers worked, who paid them and how they communicated with Trump was determined in the FBI spreadsheet and subsequent Mueller investigation to be far from accurate.
Even State officials, who listened to Steele’s theories in October 2016 — less than two weeks before his dossier was used to support the FISA request — instantly determined he was grossly wrong on some points.

Any effort to use Steele’s belated cooperation with the inspector general's investigation to prop up the credibility of his 2016 anti-Trump dossier or the FBI’s reliance on it for the FISA warrant is deeply misguided.
The FBI’s own spreadsheet was so conclusive that it prompted then-FBI Director James Comey (no fan of Trump, mind you) to dismiss the document as “salacious and unverified” and for lead FBI agent Peter Strzok to text, “There’s no big there there.” FBI lawyer Lisa Page testified that nine months into reviewing Steele’s dossier they had not found evidence of the collusion that Steele alleged.
Two years later, Mueller came to the same conclusion: Steele’s intelligence alleging a conspiracy was never verified.

The next time you hear a pundit suggesting Steele’s dossier is credible or that the FBI’s reliance on it as FISA evidence was justified, just picture all those blanks in that FBI spreadsheet.
They speak volumes as to what went wrong in the Russia investigation.

Old Sycophant, it’s now settled! Thanks

[old salt]

Old Sycophant, it’s now settled! Thanks

No Typical Liberal Douche. It's not settled. It's just getting started.

[old salt]

So Trump wasn’t secretly collaborating with the Kremlin on his Moscow Tower during the campaign?

Sure he was. He didn't expect to win. He would cash in after the election. All legal.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Old Sycophant, it’s now settled! Thanks

No Typical Liberal Douche. It's not settled. It's just getting started.

Thanks Old Sycophant. I knew I could count on you.

[runrussellrun]

So Trump wasn’t secretly collaborating with the Kremlin on his Moscow Tower during the campaign? Have you seen the CNN footage yet of Assange and his hacker visitors? Team Trump was widespread and international, filled by dirtbags.

SO, you will be supporting Tulsi Gabbard, like me?

who is NOT a dirtbag? (did I mention that for private prisons donate to Pelosi, Bennett, Harris? )

exactly