It’s almost like they weren’t a dog and pony show that ignored any sort of information or something.
NYT with a big story just out.
The FBI was conducting a broad and intensive investigation of the Trump campaign and Russian meddling during the summer and fall of 2016, but moved slowly and cautiously on it and gave guarded statements to wave off press coverage. The slowness and over-caution of the FBI and the lack of diligence on the matter by the media prevented an enormously damaging Trump campaign story from seizing the narrative in the final weeks of the campaign.
Also, the same story has as close to an “Oops, we fucked up” as we’re likely to get from the Times on that October 31 story with the misleading headline that seemed to clear the Trump campaign of any wrongdoing. They admit the headline was bad, while wheedling that they did mention that an investigation was still going on (in the 10th paragraph).
I mean, imagine if the FBI had disclosed any of this in mid-October, 2016:
While I suspect that there is something nefarious about a Russia-NRA-Trump money route, the document does not say what Shannon Watts says it says. She says “The Kremlin used the @NRA as a means of accessing and assisting Trump and his campaign”
The report actually says: “The Committee has obtained a number of documents that suggest the Kremlin used the National Rifle Association as a means of accessing and assisting Mr. Trump and his campaign.” and “The Kremlin may also have used the NRA to secretly fund Mr. Trump’s campaign.”
The report then states “The extent of Russia’s use of the NRA as an avenue for connecting with and potentially supporting the Trump campaign needs examination. Requests for documents and staff interviews have been sent to Ms. Butina, Mr. Erickson, and Mr. Keene, but they have refused to cooperate.”
Maybe they brought Ollie North on-board for his experience with secretly funneling money to people.
He was really good at it amirite?
I mean… he knows what NOT to do now.
Well that certainly sounds like they’re completely innocent of wrongdoing. Just another reason for me say Fuck the NRA.
I would not be surprised if Mueller is all over this already.
Their description in this new article of their massive fuckup in October 2016 - is maddening, engaging exactly the same sort of obfuscation-disguised-as-journalistic-propriety the original article did.
Having been exposed as fuckups in the ensuing months, the NYT play up the ass-covering line they put in paragraph ten of the original article, which no one read, and downplay the part of the story that everyone did read, but that was wildly misleading: the headline “Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia.”
(By which the NYT meant, “there’s no smoking gun linking Donald Trump Sr. personally - we’re not talking about the campaign - to the Russian government specifically - oligarchs and Putin proxies don’t count - on the extremely specific topic of election hacking.” Obviously!)
I’m increasingly fearing that whatever Mueller uncovers, however heinous and outright traitorous it is, it simply won’t matter because the GOP won’t do anything about it. I just want the mid-term elections to be over already so we can know the fate of our country.
Yeah me too. I’m envisioning the end of A Few Good Men where Jessup shouts “YOU’RE DAMN RIGHT I DID!” about ordering the “code red,” but instead of the trial ending and him being led out by MPs, the judge simply ignores the admission and dismisses everyone with a “have a nice day!”
Ultimately the buck stops with the American people. If they (we) keep propping up this man and his party, then it’s on them (us).
No one can save a democracy if the electorate is incapable of doing its job.
Ah ha, but the majority of the American people didn’t elect this fucktard. As a Fox blonde put it the other day, “I prefer the candidate that the American people errrrrr, electorally voted for!”
Them was the rules. I’ve long since felt the EC should be abolished. Not that I have any shred of belief in some kind of intrinsic collective wisdom of demos, after 2016. (If such existed, Trump wouldn’t have gotten more than 20% of the vote, tops.)
Didn’t Trump recently say something like that?
Yes, and I agree with him.
Why not just leak them to the press? I’m pretty sure the various ethics committees are busy working on the Hillary emails so there won’t be any repercussions.