I know, but the FISA warrants didn’t make Trump cheat on his taxes for years. We all knew this day would come
Indeed. But the extent the media works with the intelligence services is not a benign question, if they work in concert to bring about political outcomes, it can be argued I would suggest quite convincingly that this is not how western Democracies should behave at all.
That’s a big ‘if’ to overcome though, and even if that is granted it doesn’t excuse criminal conduct from Trump (remember, though, I see an opportunistic conman trying to get away with not paying the bills again). I’m interested to see what the courts come up with now that his presidential protection is gone. My prediction is that he is probably guilty of something, but that he won’t see any real jail time.
The political scapegoat excuse doesn’t fly with me, I’d need to see the birth certificate on that one. But hey, I’m not a judge let alone a US voter; just an impartial observer with too much free time.
No excusing criminal conduct, I agree with you there. Calling it a big “if” is still being opening minding in my opinion. I don’t think there is an “if” at all, but that would be another discussion for another day.
All it takes to remove the “if” is looking at events chronologically, when it can be demonstrated that the media activity correlates to intelligence activity and the two bring about a desired outcome then the “if” starts to go away. When you can demonstrate this happening over and over again, sometimes over weeks, it goes away completely.
But for another time.
1 Like
His biggest miscalculation.
3 Likes
Weissmann
1 Like
Ummm… have you heard of the Bay of Pigs Invasion? Or thought about why the Middle East has been in absolute shambles for about 70something years?
1 Like
@Mick is one of our conspiracy-theorists-in-residence, so if you have any questions on these things I’m sure he has a lot of information that you won’t find on Wikipedia (I think I can say this, because I say it with 
)
It’s hardly a conspiracy theory when you can observe it. Strzok and Page’s texts showed detailed co-ordination between intelligence and media to take down Flynn, the media stories leading up to the FBI interview where a fever of focusing on if Trump had contact with Russians culminating in a interview where Pence says no one on their team has been talking with Russians, clearly the media knew about the Flynn call.
Then there was all the back and forth about the Steele dossier and how the MSM needed some “hook” to run the story which led up to Comey briefing Trump on some of the details in the dossier and in the Strzok/Page emails they even discuss ahead of time that Jake Tapper will at 4pm run the story about the Steele dossier.
The intelligence services and MSM might claim they weren’t coordinating their behavior, but basic observation of what is now known demonstrates that was a lie.
The Bay of Pigs? I think a case could be made…
I wasn’t talking about this, but didn’t he plead guilty to lying to the FBI?
I’ve heard of it but that’s about all. Might be some other details knocking around my noggin, but nothing that comes to mind right now.
1 Like
Yeah, he did. That’s the go to talking point the media use. An objective review of what happened for those that have time however, is he was a target and had been for quite a while. We could also discuss Weissmanns tactics which in this case involved threatening his son for FARA violations (a Weissmanns favorite).
Did you know Flynn was not originally one of the people put on the list of people to be surveilled in Crossfire hurricane? But a few days later after Stefan Halper turns up on the FBI doorstep in what the IG reports the FBI describing as a “serendipitous” moment, he is put on the list. In highsight and knowing what we now know about Stefen Halper, that was not “serendipitous” at all.
If you like and perhaps if you have an open mind to the fact the entire thing was a shit show, I might highlight some of the funnier aspects.
With thanks, I’ll pass
Ok, but just to note a conspiracy theory is something like bigfoot, area 51 or aliens for which there is no evidence not something that 100’s of pages documenting every detail in an IG report and hundreds of hours of testimony from dozens of people and oodles of text messages and notes from the people involved.
They are all very embarrassed (they being the intelligence community and media), my personal view is once the new AG is in place Durham will go away and they will try to carry on like nothing happened.
1 Like
Evidence mounting
Trump putting finger on scale
That’s a big nono
On the call, Trump urged Watson to focus her attention on Fulton County, which is home to Atlanta.
“You are going to find things that are going to be unbelievable — the dishonesty,” Trump said, according to the Wall Street Journal recording.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/trump-call-georgia-elections-investigator-recording
Trump told Watson that if he wasn’t declared the winner in Georgia, the two Republicans who were up for a run-off the next month were likely to lose their seats in the U.S. Senate.
“When the right answer comes out, you’ll be praised,” Trump told Watson, while claiming that she had the “most important job in the country right now.”
Amid his encouragement of Watson, he mentioned that “the people of Georgia are so angry at what happened to me, they know I won.”
The recording also suggest that at the time of the call Trump was already fixated on producing bogus evidence of fraud ahead of Congress’ certification of Biden’s win on Jan. 6.
“We have that date of the sixth, which is a very important date,” Trump said.
1 Like
lucky #7
That newly surfaced recording which it seems was only found after searching in someones trash folder has led to The Washington Post and CNN publishing corrections. See here
Whoopsie! So as the Washington Examiner notes
Trump did not tell the investigator to “find the fraud”
Which might not be a big deal except that found it’s way into the articles of impeachment.
Those prior efforts included a phone call on January 2,
3 2021, during which President Trump urged the secretary
4 of state of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, to ‘‘find’’ enough
5 votes to overturn the Georgia Presidential election results
6 and threatened Secretary Raffensperger if he failed to do
7 so.
Historians are going to have a field day with this, articles of impeachment driven by a media frenzy, littered with lies about an officer killed after being hit with a fire extinguisher and things Trump never said. In an impeachment lacking an ounce of due process and rammed through in 5 minutes flat without offering the slightest opportunity for a defense.
1 Like
They also found a tape from Lindsey, the Trump humper!
Um, what you quote from the impeachment isn’t affected by the wrong quote re. the call with Watson. Iit’s talking about a different conversation, explicitly (with Raffensperger, not Watson (the subject of your TPM article)).
That call did not rely on someone’s memory of what was said - Wapo posted both a transcript and audio of that call, and the impeachment did not misrepresent it (and the Watson call was never misrepresented either - the source just misremembered the exact word used (and wasn’t that far off - find fraud vs find dishonesty).
Amid the significant cereal box controversies, some relatively minor news:
WASHINGTON – The prosecutor overseeing the criminal probe into former President Donald Trump and his business convened a grand jury that could decide on any indictments, according to a newspaper report Tuesday.
The Washington Post reported that Cyrus Vance, the Manhattan district attorney, convened the grand jury that will sit three days a week for six months. According to the Post, the grand jury will hear several matters beyond Trump’s.
The investigation examines potential tax and bank-related fraud. Prosecutors are interested in whether Trump overvalued his properties and obscured debts to obtain valuable loans and other financial negotiations.
The convening of the grand jury indicates that Vance believes he has a case against Trump or someone else in his orbit.