Leslie Sharp Posted March 18, 2023 Share Posted March 18, 2023 @Benjamin Cole Ben, I'm bringing our conversation to what seems to be the more appropriate thread. Let's begin with your 1. Russiagate Hoax:Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election, Volume II of II. . . Fourth, if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment. The evidence we obtained about the President’s actions and intent presents difficult issues that prevent us from conclusively determining that no criminal conduct occurred. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.https://www.justice.gov/storage/report_volume2.pdf Analysis by the American Constitution Society* The actual text of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report tells a very different story than what was in summaries produced by Attorney General William Barr in letters to Congress and in a press conference prior to the report’s release. A comparison of the report and Barr’s statements shows that Barr downplayed Mueller’s findings about Russian contacts with Trump campaign associates as well as the damning evidence of the president’s obstruction of justice that Mueller assembled. Following are examples of this gap. Whether the President Is Exonerated on Obstruction of Justice Special Counsel Report: The report makes the statement: “[I]f we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment.” It further states, “The evidence we obtained about the President’s actions and intent presents difficult issues that prevent us from conclusively determining that no criminal conduct occurred. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.” (Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Election, Vol. 2, page 2 (March 2019) (“Special Counsel Report”)) Barr Statements: The Attorney General omitted the Special Counsel office’s allusion to their lack of confidence in exonerating evidence as well as repeated findings that there was substantial evidence supporting the key elements of obstruction. Instead, Barr offered his own conclusions about the obstruction case against the president, stating, “I have concluded that the evidence developed during the Special Counsel's investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.” (Letter from Attorney General Bill Barr to House and Senate Judiciary Committee leaders, p. 3 (March 24, 2019) (the “Barr Letter”)) see full analysis here. https://www.acslaw.org/projects/the-presidential-investigation-education-project/other-resources/stark-contrasts-between-the-mueller-report-and-attorney-general-barrs-summary/ * Russ Feingold, President ACSDuring his 18 years in the United States Senate, Russ was ranked 6th in the Senate for bipartisan voting. He is a recipient of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award and cosponsored the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (McCain-Feingold Act), the only major piece of campaign finance reform legislation passed into law in decades. Russ was the only Senator to vote against the initial enactment of the USA PATRIOT Act during the first vote on the legislation and was well-known for his opposition to the Iraq War and as the Senate's leading opponent of the death penalty. He served on the Judiciary, Foreign Relations, Budget, and Intelligence Committees. Russ was Chairman or Ranking Member of the Constitution Subcommittee. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Douglas Caddy Posted March 18, 2023 Share Posted March 18, 2023 Expects to be arrested Tuesday Trump says he expects to be arrested, calls for protest | AP News Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe Bauer Posted March 18, 2023 Share Posted March 18, 2023 (edited) 1 hour ago, Douglas Caddy said: Expects to be arrested Tuesday Trump says he expects to be arrested, calls for protest | AP News Yes. He's purposely gas lighting his most extreme base again. Just like he did in his January 6th speech at the Ellipse. Where he worked thousands of them up into a blind rage fury with his final call of ( if you don't fight like hell...you won't have a country anymore ) action, to the point they charged down to the Capital building and stormed through with incredible violence. Now, here he is "again" gas lighting his most blindly following and easily worked up base to "PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!" In all caps to simulate angry shouting. After the Trump urged January 6th storming of our capital building full of our life and death fearing and traumatized Congress inside, this new call to Trump's most willing followers to physically protest in the streets about his coming arrest is simply...a repeat of his outrageous sedition call to arms he perpetrated on January 6th, 2021. The man never quits! No wonder his most rabid minions even infer a "civil war with separation of states" would be a good thing. High position and reputation conservative Judge Michael Luttig was right...in spades. Trump is "a clear and present danger to our Democracy." Edited March 18, 2023 by Joe Bauer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Thomas Posted March 18, 2023 Share Posted March 18, 2023 1 hour ago, Douglas Caddy said: Expects to be arrested Tuesday Trump says he expects to be arrested, calls for protest | AP News From the same AP article" "Within hours, he sent a fundraising email to supporters..." As Kellyanne Conway once famously said, "Oh well, might as well sell a few dresses." Steve Thomas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe Bauer Posted March 18, 2023 Share Posted March 18, 2023 13 hours ago, Steve Thomas said: Matson - Caglecartoons.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leslie Sharp Posted March 18, 2023 Share Posted March 18, 2023 (edited) Edited March 18, 2023 by Leslie Sharp Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe Bauer Posted March 18, 2023 Share Posted March 18, 2023 (edited) How can millions of Trump loving and supporting people go to their churches every week to learn about the teachings of Jesus Christ for the goal of trying to honor and incorporate them into their daily lives ... and then justify their support for a man Jesus would have thrown out of his gatherings for a dozen reasons! Trump is a "Money Changer" personified! Everything he does comes with a "making money" mind set and angle. Here today he is once again asking his much poorer flock to send him money to fight his enemies. Trump lusts after his neighbor's wives. He kisses women without asking for permission and even grabs their private parts and brags how he gets away with doing so. He sleeps with porn stars and who knows who else while his wife is pregnant. He then li*s about it, and actually accuses his bed mates of l*ing about his doing so. He li*s incessantly. He cheats on his taxes by making up false numbers regards his assets values. He glorifies material wealth. Shows off and brags about his. He praises murderous dictators and men who deny Christian religion history and values. He defends those who commit physical violence in his name ( "we love Trump" ) when it comes to this benefitting his power and standing. He promotes the sin of gambling when it made him money. A corrupt person who has made a lot of money is considered a "winner" in his mind versus a more moral but penniless one being a "loser." The man apparently has never done any hands-on charity work outside of throwing paper towel rolls to hurricane ravaged Puerto Ricans. The man laughs about hand holding prayer religious leaders to his fixer after they leave. Can you believe that crap? He curses constantly and calls others junior high school bully crude and demeaning names..."publically!" "Horseface", "Fat", "Ugly", "Sleaze Bag", "Nasty", "Dumb", "Stupid", "Pencil Neck", "Pumpkin Head", "Little", and hundreds of other crude names. He associates with child sex traffickers like Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell and even expresses sympathy for Maxwell when she had to go to prison for this? Christ himself would surely have overturned Trump's tables and ordered him out of his presence. Christ parable ...“How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the Kingdom of God!” It is easier for a camel to go through “the eye of a needle” than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God." Fits Trump to a "T." How can these millions of church going Trump followers think this guy is their "chosen one?" He is the "opposite" of a Christian morals living and respecting person. One must consider the possibility that these Christian religion worshiping people are trapped into some type of delusional mental illness where they worship, praise and follow a human being who is at the "opposite end" of the Christian values and respect spectrum. Edited March 18, 2023 by Joe Bauer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Douglas Caddy Posted March 18, 2023 Share Posted March 18, 2023 Donald Trump's post sharing details of his arrest could see him DENIED BAIL | Daily Mail Online Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Douglas Caddy Posted March 18, 2023 Share Posted March 18, 2023 Kevin McCarthy directs GOP committee heads to run interference for Trump after claim 'arrest' is imminent - Raw Story - Celebrating 19 Years of Independent Journalism Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Douglas Caddy Posted March 18, 2023 Share Posted March 18, 2023 He could be denied bail. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe Bauer Posted March 18, 2023 Share Posted March 18, 2023 11 minutes ago, Douglas Caddy said: Donald Trump's post sharing details of his arrest could see him DENIED BAIL | Daily Mail Online He is once again gas lighting his violence minded followers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Thomas Posted March 18, 2023 Share Posted March 18, 2023 - Marjorie Taylor Greene - https://twitter.com/RepMTG/status/1637076244708614144 “The American people deserve a government that actually works for them NOT a bunch of self centered communists who bail out their donors, protect the elites, and weld their power to punish their political enemies!” How dare you go welding your power? Is that what I sent you to welding school for? I should have sent to to knighting school, so you could learn how to knight and make blankets and stuff, and not waste your time on all this power welding foolishness! Steve Thomas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
W. Niederhut Posted March 18, 2023 Share Posted March 18, 2023 How It Started How It's Going Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Thomas Posted March 18, 2023 Share Posted March 18, 2023 (edited) Deleted Steve Thomas Edited August 25, 2023 by Steve Thomas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leslie Sharp Posted March 18, 2023 Share Posted March 18, 2023 (edited) @Benjamin Cole2. My take is Fox-Carlson is on the outs with the national security state---did you see Carlson say Pompeo must have known who killed JFK. Egads! Meanwhile, there are platoons of ex intel-state guys holding forth at CNN and MSNBC. Too many to count. Let's disagree on this one. Benjamin, I’ll begin with Kash Patel because the line of inquiry establishes that the alt-right supports their very own“deep state,” the euphemism for the very same Military-Industrial Complex on an international scale that fueled the decision to assassinate Kennedy in Dallas in 1963. These are the ideological descendants. Spinning Trump as the “no war” president to rail against the “deep state” fails to take into account his $738 billion defense bill before he left office. NSC aide who worked to discredit Russia probe moves to senior ODNI post By Daniel Lippman 02/20/2020, Politico Kash Patel, a former acolyte of Rep. Devin Nunes, is now a top adviser in the Office of National Intelligence. Kash Patel, a former top National Security Council official who also played a key role as a Hill staffer in helping Republicans discredit the Russia probe, is now a senior adviser for new acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, according to four people familiar with the matter. (more on Grenell later.) https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/20/kash-patel-odni-post-116546 ***** Patel’s official bio. KASHYAP P. PATEL, ESQ. Former Chief of Staff to the Secretary of Defense Mr. Patel served as the former Chief of Staff to Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller and is responsible for leading the Secretary’s mission at the Department, including his executive staff and providing counsel to the Secretary on all matters concerning the Department’s operations. Previously, Mr. Patel served as the Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Counterterrorism (CT) at the National Security Council (NSC). In that capacity, Mr. Patel oversaw the execution of several of President Donald J. Trump’s top priorities, including eliminating ISIS and Al-Qa’ida leadership such as al-Baghdadi and Qasem al-Rimi, and the safe repatriation of numerous American hostages. Mr. Patel also served as Principal Deputy to the Acting Director of National Intelligence, where he oversaw the operations of all 17 intelligence community agencies and provided the President’s Daily Briefing. Before joining the NSC, Mr. Patel served as the National Security Advisor and Senior Counsel for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), where he spearheaded the investigation into the Russian active measures campaign to influence the 2016 presidential election. Concurrently, he oversaw sensitive programs for the Intelligence Community and U.S. Special Operations Forces and worked to enact legislation to fully fund the multi-billion dollar budgets supporting intelligence and counterterrorism operations worldwide. In other words, Patel has been entrenched in the “deep state” apparatus for decades.Yet, Patel had the hutzpah to opine on Breitbart News as recently as 3 Mar, 2023. ‘Taking on the Swamp’ — Kash Patel: ‘There Is No Deep State Without the Fake News Mafia’ Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) about how to take on the administrative state, former Pentagon Chief of Staff Kash Patel said “There is no deep state without the fake news mafia.” Lamenting the fact Americans even have to talk about the reality of a “deep state,” Patel called it something one would normally hear about in “tyrannical dictatorships.” https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/03/03/taking-on-the-swamp-kash-patel-there-is-no-deep-state-without-the-fake-news-mafia/ ***** Moving from Patel to Erik Prince. . . Anyone who has studied the “deep state” knows that Erik Prince’s Blackwater and subsequent iterations is the quintessential private military contractor able to skirt Congressional oversight of his for-profit private mercenary operations in dozens of global hotspots since 1996. His sister was Trump’s Secretary of Education, a woman who advocated for private vouchers that erode America’s public school system. The Men Behind the Nunes Memo The House Intelligence Committee’s chair wasn’t alone in drafting the classified memo that it just voted to release. By Natasha Bertrand JANUARY 30, 2018, The Atlantic [Kash] Patel also formally invited Erik Prince to testify before the House Intelligence Committee last summer following a meeting between Prince and Nunes “over the summer or early fall,” according to a transcript of Prince’s interview, which was conducted on November 30. The meeting raised eyebrows given Nunes’s recusal from the Russia investigation at the time and Prince’s status as a witness in that probe. ***** From Prince and Patel, we move to Patel and Carlson and Fo News, Murcoch’s private, partison, alternative ”deep state” media conglomerate . . . Of note, Patel is not relegated to alt-right broadcast and print media i.e., Breitbart or Gateway Pundit, he’s also a favorite consultant on Fo News. Here he is, March 9, 2023, calling on Tucker Carlson to pursue Ray Epps. See how this works, Benjamin? KASH PATEL CALLS ON TUCKER CARLSON TO RELEASE FOOTAGE OF UNDERCOVER FEDS Mar 8 2023 "Ray Epps was on FBI's most wanted list one day, and the next day he was off. There are only two ways that happens: you die, or you are an informant. . . .https://rumble.com/v2c70lc-kash-patel-calls-on-tucker-carlson-to-release-footage-of-undercover-feds.html ***** And who first advanced Patel’s ideology with millions of Fo viewers? Sean Hannity who took him to meet Trump in the oval. Patel is no ordinary aide to Trump. During the Trump administration, he served as Deputy Assistant to the President, a job he reportedly “landed after Fox News host Sean Hannity took him to meet Trump in the Oval.” After the November 2020 elections, Patel was dispatched to the Defense Department as chief of staff to the acting defense secretary where, among other activities, he reportedly pursued the idea that Italian military satellites had been used to turn votes to Joe Biden in the presidential election, according to Jonathan Karl’s book and the House Select Committee hearings. Since leaving office, Patel has joined the board of directors for the former president’s media company, Trump Media & Technology Group. On June 19, 2022, Trump sent a letter to the National Archives designating Patel as one of the former president’s “representatives for access to Presidential records of my administration.” Patel claims to have been in the room when then-President Trump verbally declassified documents. He has often made other statements in right-wing interviews that anticipate and put forward Trump’s specific claims of innocence about the Mar-a-Lago documents.https://www.justsecurity.org/82723/trump-associates-stated-plan-to-publicly-release-declassified-documents/ Additionally, Patel has close ties to the QAnon conspiracy movement, which Trump has also fully embraced. Patel used QAnon to build the user base of Trump-branded social media site Truth Social; Nunes, his former boss, is the site’s CEO. He has also praised QAnon activists, and defended signing his book using a QAnon slogan. https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-bannon/kash-patel-announces-he-will-tour-united-states-trump-campaign-surrogate-2024 ***** Patel and Richard Grenell, Trump’s Amb. To Germany and proposed to serve as his acting Director of Intelligence … Kash Patel, a former top National Security Council official who also played a key role as a Hill staffer in helping Republicans discredit the Russia probe, is now a senior adviser for new acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, according to four people familiar with the matter. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/20/kash-patel-odni-post-116546New US ambassador to Germany under fire for rightwing support Phillip Olterman June 4, 2018, The Guardian Politicians accuse Richard Grenell of breaching protocol over interview with Breitbart German politicians have criticised Donald Trump’s new ambassador to Germany after he said he wanted to “empower” anti-establishment rightwing forces throughout Europe. “US Senator Chris Murphy said rightly that ambassadors are not supposed to ‘empower’ political parties. Ambassador Grenell is new on his post and I hope this irritation will not be repeated.”https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/04/new-us-ambassador-to-germany-under-fire-for-rightwing-support Edited March 18, 2023 by Leslie Sharp Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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