US and NA Politics (General)

[Disciple of Fate]

I don't think there was a lot to neuter given Trump's party controlling both chambers. And no, not Manafort, someone caught up in the net. Flynn admitted to it, but of course he is changing his story, because the DoJ is favorable to it, not that it matters really, he's truly fallen off the wagon. But lets not rehash this, its over and done. The point is its not on level with domestic terrorism threat, nobody so far has shown up to a pizzeria with an AR-15 to see the Russian operatives yet.

I think rating AOC on level is crazy. Yeah you might view her a a radical leftist and as you're American that sort of political spectrum is understandable. But there is still a significant difference. Honestly AOC is would be closer to a sort of D teaparty variant

[Disciple of Fate]

Aug 14, 2020 13:59:02 GMT -5 whemblycthulhu said:

And...news just broke that Durham has gotten a plea deal from FBI Clinesmith, who defrauded the FISA court. According to the court documents, looks like Clinesmith is cooperating.

That means, he's spilling the beans regarding the Russian investigation and the Special Counsel.

Gird your loins ya'll.

Spilling the beans, as in saying he made a mistake? Really not seeing any bigger pattern for Durham to exploit so far. You know Barr (he downplayed this part) and Trump will make a big show of this investigation, but in the end it will most likely falter with some slaps on the wrist for improper procedures or some such.

[whemblycthulhu]

Aug 14, 2020 14:02:47 GMT -5 Disciple of Fate said:

I don't think there was a lot to neuter given Trump's party controlling both chambers.

This canard again.

No. GOP didn't control both chambers. In the Senate there's a thing called cloture, which needs 60 total votes. The GOP didn't ahve 60 Senators.

And no, not Manafort, someone caught up in the net.

Okay, I'll look that up.

Flynn admitted to it, but of course he is changing his story, because the DoJ is favorable to it, not that it matters really, he's truly fallen off the wagon. But lets not rehash this, its over and done.

No no... you don't get to say something and say let's not rehash it.

Flynn's defense team was going to rescind his guilty plea due to ineffectual counsel and the lack of Brady materials. They only pulled that out of the docket (with the option to refile if necessary) when the DOJ determined after a review to drop the case, as there was no crime.

The point is its not on level with domestic terrorism threat, nobody so far has shown up to a pizzeria with an AR-15 to see the Russian operatives yet.

That was your point.

Mine was that there are equal opportunity crazies on both sides.

I think rating AOC on level is crazy. Yeah you might view her a a radical leftist and as you're American that sort of political spectrum is understandable. But there is still a significant difference. Honestly AOC is would be closer to a sort of D teaparty variant

No. Everything she want's to do is numb fuckingly crazy and no where near a "teapary variant".

[whemblycthulhu]

Aug 14, 2020 14:05:13 GMT -5 Disciple of Fate said:

Aug 14, 2020 13:59:02 GMT -5 whemblycthulhu said:

And...news just broke that Durham has gotten a plea deal from FBI Clinesmith, who defrauded the FISA court. According to the court documents, looks like Clinesmith is cooperating.

That means, he's spilling the beans regarding the Russian investigation and the Special Counsel.

Gird your loins ya'll.

Spilling the beans, as in saying he made a mistake? Really not seeing any bigger pattern for Durham to exploit so far. You know Barr (he downplayed this part) and Trump will make a big show of this investigation, but in the end it will most likely falter with some slaps on the wrist for improper procedures or some such.

Clinesmith literally altered, not accidentally, the an email from the CIA to state the exact OPPOSITE that of what the CIA stated in federal court (FISA).  Clinesmith wasn't just some "lower level" workerbee.  He was the #2 FBI lawyer (not agent...lawyer...tasked to make sure the agent's actions follow the law) behind the top FBI lawyer (James Baker).  Clinesmith was part of all of the Crossfire Hurricane (CH) investiation AND part of the Mueller team.  Clinesmith's own attorney alluded that the rest of the upper echelon of FBI knew this because Clinesmith actually included the original email in the investigative records.  But, when filing FISA applications, that email was altered to make it look like Page wasn't a source for the CIA.

This information from the CIA should have stopped the Page FISA application in its tracks.

If knowledge of Clinesmith’s criminal act extended beyond Clinesmith himself, that would call into question the accuracy of every submission under oath made by members of CH. Not just the FISA applications, but all the affidavits offered in support of search warrants across the entire scope of the CH investigation... including everything done by Mueller Special Counsel’s Office (SCO) since many FBI agents and other personnel carried over from the DOJ/FBI investigation of CH to the SCO investigation of CH.

Every material misstatement or omission would then be a potential overt act in furtherance of a conspiracy.

We're literally in the "fruits of the poisoned tree" territory here...

[Disciple of Fate]

Our perspectives are so far apart on these things that there is no real point in carrying this further for the sake of our time. Just as this nugget about the plea deal, there is a massive gulf in the picture being painted and their admission of it being unintentional mistake (i.e. the person thought it was ok even though it wasn't, which is quite the trend in law enforcement, a bigger problem than just this investigation). We will see what the report drops right before the election (or more likely what Barr says and the report drops after the election). Again though, my assumption is slaps on the wrist, maybe someone loses their position and gets moved somewhere else. I assume that's the plea deal, he prevents himself from getting a record as he already resigned earlier.

To close up, here is another perspective on the above statement of yours for example: www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/us/politics/kevin-clinesmith-durham-investigation.html#commentsContainer

SPOILER: Click to show

The lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, 38, who was assigned to the Russia investigation, plans to admit that he altered an email from the C.I.A. that investigators relied on to seek renewed court permission in 2017 for a secret wiretap on the former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, who had at times provided information to the spy agency. Mr. Clinesmith’s lawyer said he made a mistake while trying to clarify facts for a colleague.

...

Mr. Clinesmith had written texts expressing opposition to Mr. Trump. But prosecutors did not reveal any evidence in charging documents that showed Mr. Clinesmith’s actions were part of any broader conspiracy to undermine Mr. Trump. And the Justice Department’s independent inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, has found that law enforcement officials had sufficient reason to open the Russia investigation, known inside the F.B.I. as Crossfire Hurricane, and found no evidence that they acted with political bias.

...

“Kevin deeply regrets having altered the email,” Mr. Clinesmith’s lawyer, Justin Shur, said in a statement. “It was never his intent to mislead the court or his colleagues as he believed the information he relayed was accurate. But Kevin understands what he did was wrong and accepts responsibility. ”



Mr. Clinesmith, who resigned over the matter last year, was expected to be charged in federal court in Washington with a single felony count of making a false statement. A spokesman for Mr. Durham declined to comment.

...

In a report made public last year, Mr. Horowitz revealed that the applications were riddled with serious errors and omissions. Among other things, he had learned of a troubling series of events in which Mr. Page’s association with the C.I.A. was not accurately conveyed to the Justice Department and ultimately kept from the judges who approved the surveillance warrants.

Mr. Page had for years provided information to the C.I.A. about his contacts with Russian officials. In C.I.A. jargon, he was known as an operational contact — someone who agrees to be debriefed by agency personnel but cannot be assigned to collect information.



That relationship might have given law enforcement officials reason to be less suspicious of him. And the F.B.I. was told about it: A C.I.A. lawyer provided a list of documents in the August 2016 email at the heart of the case against Mr. Clinesmith that explained Mr. Page’s relationship with the agency.



But an F.B.I. case agent who learned about Mr. Page’s ties to the C.I.A. played them down while preparing the first wiretap application, according to the inspector general’s report. At the time, Mr. Clinesmith was not involved in determining whether Mr. Page was a C.I.A. source, people familiar with the case said.

But later in 2017, a supervisory F.B.I. agent handling the third and final renewal application asked Mr. Clinesmith for a definitive answer on whether Mr. Page had been an agency source, according to Mr. Horowitz’s report.



Mr. Clinesmith incorrectly said that Mr. Page was “never a source” and sent the C.I.A.’s information to the supervisor. He altered the original email to say that Mr. Page had not been a source — a material change to a document used in a federal investigation.



The agent relied on the altered email to submit the application seeking further court permission to wiretap Mr. Page, the inspector general wrote. By changing the email and then forwarding it, Mr. Clinesmith misrepresented the original content of the document, which prosecutors said was a crime.



Mr. Clinesmith’s argued that he did not change the document in an attempt to cover up the F.B.I.’s mistake. His lawyers argued that he had made the change in good faith because he did not think that Mr. Page had been an actual source for the C.I.A.



Mr. Clinesmith’s lawyers also argued that their client did not try to hide the C.I.A. email from other law enforcement officials as they sought the final renewal of the Page wiretap. Mr. Clinesmith had provided the unchanged C.I.A. email to Crossfire Hurricane agents and the Justice Department lawyer drafting the original wiretap application.

Mr. Clinesmith was among the F.B.I. officials whom Mr. Mueller removed from the Russia investigation after Mr. Horowitz found messages they had exchanged expressing political animus against Mr. Trump. Shortly after Mr. Trump’s election victory, Mr. Clinesmith texted another official: “I honestly feel like there is going to be a lot more gun issues, too, the crazies won finally. This is the tea party on steroids. And the GOP is going to be lost.”



In another text, he wrote, “viva le resistance.”



Mr. Clinesmith told the inspector general that he was expressing his personal views but did not let them affect his work.



Mr. Clinesmith also argued against the prospect of wiretapping another former Trump campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos, who served two weeks in jail on a charge of lying to the F.B.I., according to the Horowitz report. The inspector general said the bureau never sought to surveil him.

Aug 14, 2020 15:31:52 GMT -5 whemblycthulhu said:

No. Everything she want's to do is numb fuckingly crazy and no where near a "teapary variant".

From over in Europe you could just as easily reverse that statement, political spectrum and all that.

[semipotentwalrus]

While we're at it whembly, got any thoughts on why a top-level Republican strategist would refer to the supposedly non-existent Southern Strategy as a matter of course in an offhanded comment that didn't need any explanation?

I'd also still like an answer to what the equivalent domestic terror group to Qanon is in the Democratic party.

[Emblematic Wolfblade]

Aug 14, 2020 16:25:59 GMT -5 semipotentwalrus said:

While we're at it whembly, got any thoughts on why a top-level Republican strategist would refer to the supposedly non-existent Southern Strategy as a matter of course in an offhanded comment that didn't need any explanation?

I'd also still like an answer to what the equivalent domestic terror group to Qanon is in the Democratic party.

His answer to the qanon question was AOC.

[whemblycthulhu]

Aug 14, 2020 16:25:59 GMT -5 semipotentwalrus said:

While we're at it whembly, got any thoughts on why a top-level Republican strategist would refer to the supposedly non-existent Southern Strategy as a matter of course in an offhanded comment that didn't need any explanation?

I have no idea whom you're referring to, but he's wrong.

I'd also still like an answer to what the equivalent domestic terror group to Qanon is in the Democratic party.

Antifa
Democratic Party
Wolfblade, aka "PedoAnalLover"

[semipotentwalrus]

Antifa is not a domestic terror group. Try again?

On the Southern Strategy:

www.pbs.org/newshour/show/longtime-gop-strategist-says-hell-work-with-democrats-to-defeat-trump

Then again, you won't accept Lee Atwater's word for it either, so y'know...

[Emblematic Wolfblade]

Aug 14, 2020 16:38:34 GMT -5 whemblycthulhu said:

Aug 14, 2020 16:25:59 GMT -5 semipotentwalrus said:

While we're at it whembly, got any thoughts on why a top-level Republican strategist would refer to the supposedly non-existent Southern Strategy as a matter of course in an offhanded comment that didn't need any explanation?

I have no idea whom you're referring to, but he's wrong.

I'd also still like an answer to what the equivalent domestic terror group to Qanon is in the Democratic party.

Antifa
Democratic Party
Wolfblade, aka "PedoAnalLover"

LMAO, if that were true, I would have shot up your house or something equally awful. Try an actual terrorist group

Oh, and ANTIFA still is responsible for exactly 0 killings, and all domestic terrorism in 2018 (iirc) was committed by right-wing groups. I still cannot fathom how you can defend the abuse of children when you have children of your own. The only reason I can think of is you perhaps abuse them.

[semipotentwalrus]

You know what'd be really cool?

If you'd stop the name-calling. It's not helping.

EDITed because I did it too.

[Emblematic Wolfblade]

He deserves nothing but contempt. He's earned it. He's supported the vilest of policies repeatedly and downplayed how awful the things he supports are.

[semipotentwalrus]

To what end? What do you achieve?

[Emblematic Wolfblade]

Aug 14, 2020 19:16:40 GMT -5 semipotentwalrus said:

To what end? What do you achieve?

What does debating despic achieve? We all know he isn't arguing in good faith, nor has he ever, nor is debating him actually going to change his mind. He's going to deny any evidence and maintain his American Exceptionalism viewpoint.

[Emblematic Wolfblade]

If anyone is interested, here's a map showing how USPS has been affected by the recent attempts to shut it down: