I hear Russian oligarchs have no connection to the dictator that runs Russia.
It’s a meritocracy over there.
I don’t think that’s true.
I think he’s advertising what he comes up with in court filings. I agree he’s not going to end up indicting Trump, but that’s because the DOJ won’t permit it. But I do think he has clear evidence that Trump has been complicit in this Russia meddling, because the evidence is more or less public knowledge, per above.
Interesting exchange between Nathasha Bertrand and Marcy Wheeler.
I’ve included all the twitter links for the twitter-averse.
If everything were known, what do you think Trump’s exact role in Russian meddling was? What narrative seems realistic to you (what did he know and when did he know it)? Why do you think this is more likely than what I consider the null hypothesis, that he had no clue what was going on?
From my perspective, there are three narratives of actual Russian collusion that I don’t think have been ruled out. I don’t think any of them are particularly likely, but I’ll list them in what I think are descending order of likelihood:
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Manafort gave the Russians Trump internal polling data to convince them that Trump had a chance to win and to help them make their Internet Research Agency efforts more effective.
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The Mercers and/or Bannon coordinated with the Russians in instigating Trump’s run and shaping his message, sharing Facebook data obtained by Cambridge Analytica in order to make IRA efforts more effective.
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Stone was really privy to inside information about Wikileaks and shared it with the Trump campaign.
Is it not possible that the Trump Tower meeting involved assurances to the Russians about likely repeal of the Magnitsky Act (or at least lax enforcement), and Don Jr. reported same to Trump via the phantom cell phone call?
(This is fun… like JFK stuff)
“Then the phone call turned—in midair, no less—and …”
That he was aware of efforts to obtain help from the Russians in a quid-quo-pro arrangement and explicitly or tacitly approved them.
Because we already have evidence that he knew what was going on.
While you all grasp at increasingly tenuous and laughable straws, I would like to single out two leftist journalists, Greenwald and Tracey, for praise for never buying into this Trump/Russia bullshit. I’m sure there are others, and I would be appreciative of anyone who would be willing to list them.
That evidence being?
Lying about his Russia deals and pressiing Hillary on her email scandals do not, alas, constitute evidence that he knew what was going on (any more than anyone else did).
That he called on the Russians to hack Hillary’s emails? He was surely aware of the allegations that they hacked the DNC and gave the goods to WikiLeaks, and his campaign was coordinating through Stone to get advance notice of the leaks, and then he calls on the Russians to do more?
I mean, it’s a bit like believing that Reagan was completely unaware of what his lieutenants were doing in Iran-contra. It’s not credible.
At that point Hillary’s emails had already been destroyed. Destroyed while under a congressional subpoena.
This is, frankly, false.
Don’t fall for it, guys. Every once in a while 4chan comes to visit. It doesn’t seek to engage in productive discussion.
I don’t think that Trump colluded with the Russians to get himself elected… because he never actually WANTED to get elected, and he never actually THOUGHT he would be elected.
He colluded with the Russians to help himself make money and to advance his firm’s profits. Now, that collusion involved things that radically changed the GOP’s stance on Russia like the sanctions and Crimea and he did manage to do a lot of damage even as a candidate… but I don’t think he ever thought he would be in a position to actually do any of the things he was promising his Russian buddies he might do.
4 million people made the same joke on Twitter before Trump did. Is that evidence that those 4 million were in on the plot?
If the campaign was in fact coordinating through Stone, that would be interesting and Mueller has gone after it very hard, but there’s no public evidence that this really happened.
But Trump is more senile than Reagan was at the time, and we know that stuff happened in Iran-Contra, while we don’t know that there was anything for Trump to know about collusion.
Again, I ask, what do you think is a plausible sequence of events for the campaign to collude and for Trump to know about it?
It is just what I said.
I’m sure there’s nothing in Mueller’s report, so Trump won’t interfere with its release.
(We already know Trump colluded with Russia)
Yes, but it’s not convincing evidence.
I really don’t get the point of this question. Is it plausible that Trump knew and approved of asking Stone to coordinate with WikiLeaks to maximize the negative impact of the leaks? Yes, it’s perfectlh plausible. Why not?
The reason I ask is that you (and @Timex) seem so sure that Trump colluded with Russia, you must have some mental model of what the collusion that so certainly happened consisted of. The brief narrative you gave is, I agree, not implausible, but based on what we know now I can hardly be certain that that happened, that we know Trump colluded and that is how.
Or is your certainty that Trump colluded more statistical-- his confidantes did so many bad things, many of which we surely don’t know about yet, but you’re sure some of them must amount to collusion that Trump knew about?
False. Manafort gave polling data to the Russians and plead guilty to it.
Stone’s Indictment re: WikiLeaks is also connected to Russia (it’s where the data came from).