First Charges Filed in Mueller Investigation - Page 5 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14857844
Hong Wu wrote:The fact that Manafort's charges have nothing to do with collusion with the Russian government seem to match up with this. Just my amateur analysis of course, in a forum that doesn't have a lot of this anymore.

Your totally unbiased and thorough analysis is always welcome, although you still don't seem to understand what Mueller is up to despite you've obviously read my post about his "prosecutorial artwork". Or maybe you stopped reading there?

However, this is a political and not a legal forum, so I'm rather interested in whether this is a game changer in US politics, and it definitely looks like that.
#14857898
4cal wrote:One of the good things about the Manafort indictment is that you see, a little bit, where Mueller's focus has to have been; the money.

There is always a money trail.

Yet, there is no money trail from Russia to Trump in these indictments. There is just a lot of punishment getting meted out to Paul Manafort. So what? Who cares?

4cal wrote:The huge problem for the Trump crime family is that the money is the only asset it has so it will show up quite easily if there is an examination of the process that points the investigators in that direction.

Trump would have been charged and convicted by the IRS years ago if that were the case. What you think is criminal is actually legal. That's why you shouldn't vote for Hillary Clinton and her ilk.

Hindsite wrote:However, I don't see why Trump would want to pardon any of these guys charged, because he hardly knew them.

Right. Manafort was a mole anyway, and he did what they wanted: preventing the NeverTrumpers from trying to take him off the top of the ticket, because they were so sure Trump would lose. They were afraid of Little Marco Rubio.

Hindsite wrote:The guy pleading guilty to giving the wrong date for a meeting with a Russian was only on one committee as an unpaid volunteer.

Right, and nobody knows who he was. He was just a gadfly.

Hindsite wrote:And that guy was not charged with anything related to the campaign, but for financial dealing dating back from 2006 to 2014 or 2015 while working for a pro-Russian outfit in Ukraine long before he volunteered to help the Trump campaign.

Right. They are hoping that Manafort will manufacture evidence and provide false testimony. They have nothing.

Beren wrote:However, this is a political and not a legal forum, so I'm rather interested in whether this is a game changer in US politics, and it definitely looks like that.

It's a nothing burger.
#14857900
Beren wrote:SO may be right and it's even good for Trump perhaps, maybe it's energising his base. Tell me if you feel energised bj.

I think it is awesome. Trump is awesome. The establishment is desperate and wants us to defend their mole, Paul Manafort. We should just hang Manafort. Then again, maybe we should put him before a firing squad. A firing squad would be more cool, because you could avoid using smokeless gun powder and have a big plume of smoke when we shoot him. We could let him have a last cigarrette too. That would just be so cool. Trump is so awesome.
#14857901
Potemkin wrote:Your post is correct, with the exception that the anti-Zionist turn of Soviet foreign policy occurred before Stalin's death, not after it. Stalin felt disillusioned with the new Israeli state once it started cuddling up to the USA - the Americans (rather wisely) decided to bribe the Israelis to join the Western camp as the Cold War started in the late 1940s, and they could out-bribe the Soviet Union, which was broke in the aftermath of WWII. The sudden volte-face in Soviet foreign policy caught many of the Soviet elite off-guard. It led, among other things, to the arrest of Polina Molotova, the wife of the Soviet Foreign Minister, though he himself managed to escape being purged by denouncing her as a 'Zionist agent'.

Now I don't claim to be an expert on post WWII Soviet Middle Eastern diplomacy, and on rereading my post I was surprised that I hadn't inserted the word "fully. However you must surely accept that the regime's treatment of its Soviet citizens was autonomous of its diplomatic policy to Israel. So the campaign against "Rootless Cosmopolitans" started in 1946 and went on right through the whole partition crisis. Mrs Molotov was arrested in December 48, not for supporting Israel I would suggest, but for supporting a Jewish Republic in the Crimea.
#14857973
Beren wrote:Trump's posted 12 tweets about the Dems, Podesta, Fake News, Benghazi, Halloween, and his great accomplishments in the last 8 hours since "...Also, there is NO COLLUSION!", a real tweet storm! He's awesome indeed!

Nothing burger. :lol:


The pervert in the White House spends half of his day telling us that he did nothing wrong….making him look more guilty than ever. Hallelujah!
#14857976
Trump tweets extremely much, especially when nothing burger happens. :)

Hillary hasn't tweeted anything since the day before yesterday, Obama's last tweet has been posted yesterday, but they don't tweet anything for a week or two sometimes.

And here is Merkel's last tweet:

She hadn't tweeted much before either, and she retweeted others mostly.

Here is her only one original tweet:

:lol:
#14858096
Beren wrote:Trump's posted 12 tweets about the Dems, Podesta, Fake News, Benghazi, Halloween, and his great accomplishments in the last 8 hours since "...Also, there is NO COLLUSION!", a real tweet storm! He's awesome indeed!

Trump is right. All this winning is exhausting.

For some additional legal analysis: The Manafort Indictment: Not Much There, and a Boon for Trump

Andrew C McCarthy wrote:Do not be fooled by the “Conspiracy against the United States” heading on Count One (page 23 of the indictment). This case has nothing to do with what Democrats and the media call “the attack on our democracy” (i.e., the Kremlin’s meddling in the 2016 election, supposedly in “collusion” with the Trump campaign). Essentially, Manafort and his associate, Richard W. Gates, are charged with (a) conspiring to conceal from the U.S. government about $75 million they made as unregistered foreign agents for Ukraine, years before the 2016 election (mainly, from 2006 through 2014), and (b) a money-laundering conspiracy.

I'm not fooled at all. I'm amazed that lobbyists make this much money, though. They do very little and are paid exhorbitantly. I wonder if they have all donated to the Clinton Foundation.

Andrew C McCarthy wrote:On first glance, Mueller’s case, at least in part, seems shaky and overcharged. Even though the Ukrainian money goes back to 2006, the counts involving failure to file FBARs (Counts Three through Nine) go back only to 2012. This is likely because the five-year statute of limitations bars prosecution for anything before then. Obviously, one purpose of the conspiracy count (Count One) is to enable prosecutors, under the guise of establishing the full scope of the scheme, to prove law violations that would otherwise be time-barred.

Right. It's total crap. They are scraping the bottom of the barrel here to try to blackmail Manafort into saying Trump had ties to the Russians. Manafort was the tie.

Andrew C McCarthy wrote:The offense of failing to register as a foreign agent (Count Ten) may be a slam-dunk, but it is a violation that the Justice Department rarely prosecutes criminally. There is often ambiguity about whether the person’s actions trigger the registration requirement, so the Justice Department’s practice is to encourage people to register, not indict them for failing to do so. It may well be that Manafort and Gates made false statements when they belatedly registered as foreign agents, but it appears that Mueller’s office has turned one offense into two, an abusive prosecutorial tactic that flouts congressional intent. Specifically, Congress considers false statements in the specific context of foreign-agent registration to be a misdemeanor calling for zero to six months’ imprisonment. (See Section 622(a)(2) of Title 22, U.S. Code.) That is the offense Mueller charges in Count Eleven. But then, for good measure, Mueller adds a second false-statement count (Count Twelve) for the same conduct — charged under the penal-code section (Section 1001 of Title 18, U.S. Code) that makes any falsity or material omission in a statement to government officials a felony punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment. Obviously, one cannot make a false statement on the foreign-agent registration form without also making a false statement to the government. Consequently, expect Manafort to argue that] Mueller has violated double-jeopardy principles by charging the same exact offense in two separate counts, and that the special counsel is undermining Congress’s intent that the offense of providing false information on a foreign-agent registration form be considered merely a misdemeanor.

See? This whole thing is politically motivated. Even Manafort can play victim now.

Andrew C McCarthy wrote:From President Trump’s perspective, the indictment is a boon from which he can claim that the special counsel has no actionable collusion case. It appears to reaffirm former FBI director James Comey’s multiple assurances that Trump is not a suspect. And, to the extent it looks like an attempt to play prosecutorial hardball with Manafort, the president can continue to portray himself as the victim of a witch hunt.

Exactly. Trump is just tearing it up.

Beren wrote:Trump tweets extremely much, especially when nothing burger happens. :)

Clearly, they have nothing on Trump.

Beren wrote:Hillary hasn't tweeted anything since the day before yesterday, Obama's last tweet has been posted yesterday, but they don't tweet anything for a week or two sometimes.

Per the 5th Amendment, they have the right to remain silent. Hillary Clinton commissioned this obviously false Russia narrative with campaign money. She ran it through an attorney--probably to assert Lawyer-Client privilege--but failed to disclose that payment to the FEC as the opposition research that it was. She violated FEC laws. It will be interesting to see if they prosecute her on that too. Probably not, because it is clear that the law doesn't apply to Hillary Clinton. Those of you who supported Hillary Clinton financially, they spent ten fucking million dollars on a complete bullshit dossier that the media wouldn't touch until Comey met with the president, making it newsworthy. I could write up that level of bullshit for $100k and feel guilty about it.

Then, the FBI started eavesdropping on Trump with a dossier they all knew was a fake. This is blowing up in their faces.

SonofNewo concurs.
Mueller, Manafort and the Papadopoulos Plea: Not What it Seems

Paul Manafort and Rick Gates were apparently interacting with Mercury Public Relations and The Podesta Group. Tony Podesta just resigned following the indictment--and he's not even named in it yet. John Podesta was Hillary Clinton's campaign manager. Yet, the media couldn't find this out and report it? Oh, wait! That's right! They collude with the the DNC and Hillary campaign.

What about Veselnitskaya? The media didn't know that she was working with Fusion GPS--the same firm that fabricated the phony dossier? She needed an immigration parole from high up in the DoJ--at Loretta Lynch's level. Her reasoning was that she was to provide defense counsel, yet she tried to lobby the Trump's on repealing the Magnitsky Act. Why isn't she being indicted? Is it because she's with Hillary?

What will this mean for Mike Pence? Pence is only VP because of Manafort. Pence and Manafort were buddy buddy. It will be interesting if Trump asks for Pence's resignation, but I think that is premature.

The Papadopolous story is interesting, because the plea indicates that the professor "claimed" to have ties to the Russians via its Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but does not establish that he actually did have such ties. The female seems to be Veselnitskaya again. "Source D" is the Byelorussian guy Millian who states that he was in regular contact with Papadopolous, and he was a source in this fake dossier financed by Hillary Clinton and the DNC.

All of this isn't leading to Donald Trump's door step. It's all leading back to Hillary Clinton.
#14858099
Blackjack is a higher quality poster than most people here, including me on politics, I'd have probably quit by now if he wasn't here.

So someone on /pol/ pointed out (yes, I know) that not only has Tony Podesta quit his lobbying firm to "fight this thing alone" but Clinton and John have been mum about Mueller's activities. Isn't that weird? Usually they have a lot to say.
#14858101
Lexington wrote:Sometimes I wonder who pays you.

I work in cloud computing. Regrettably, nobody pays me for my political views. I actually signed up on Patreon to give $5 a month to SonofNewo. He's not making much on it at this point, but there are people who make thousands a month making these YouTube videos. His analysis is far better than mine. I hope he does well.

I find it surprising that the anti-Trumpers seem to see no corruption behind the Clintons. It's really amazing to me.
#14858116
Zagadka wrote:Being anti-Trump does not mean someone is behind the Clintons.

But this is a Trump thread. Derailing it with moral equivalency with Clinton is getting tired.

That's going to keep happening since the Clintons paid for the Russian dossier that got this thing started. Usually people are decent enough to leave outlandish opposition research behind after an election ends, this time they demanded a special prosecutor over it. They got it and if the special prosecutor doesn't vindicate them this necessarily goes straight back to the Clintons and the DNC.
#14858120
Hong Wu wrote:That's going to keep happening since the Clintons paid for the Russian dossier that got this thing started. Usually people are decent enough to leave outlandish opposition research behind after an election ends, this time they demanded a special prosecutor over it. They got it and if the special prosecutor doesn't vindicate them this necessarily goes straight back to the Clintons and the DNC.

That's complete bullshit.

It’s important to note that these investigations predate Manafort’s time as head of the Trump campaign. In 2014, the FBI began an investigation into Manafort, including a wiretap. (That same year, Deripaska accused Manafort and Gates of taking $19 million from him that was meant to be invested in a cable network in Ukraine.) The investigation into Manafort was restarted in the spring of last year. BuzzFeed reports that the FBI is investigating wire transfers that were made in 2012 and 2013. In other words, even had he not worked with Trump’s campaign, Manafort might have faced an indictment like this anyway.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/pol ... cff9929db6

Comey and Rogers refused to answer scores of questions speculating on who in Trump’s orbit could be part of the wide-ranging investigation and spurned countless invitations to comment on news reports. But they made many key points over the course of several extraordinary hours of testimony.

The counter-intelligence investigation into Trump-Moscow links began in late July 2016 and is still ongoing
More than one person associated with the Trump campaign is under investigation for their ties to the Russian government
...
The Russian intervention in the election was “unusually loud”, as if Moscow did not care about being caught

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... ump-russia

What is the point of you just making up crap and pretending it's reality? It only confirms people's opinion of you as a waste of space.
#14858126
Zagadka wrote:Being anti-Trump does not mean someone is behind the Clintons.

But this is a Trump thread. Derailing it with moral equivalency with Clinton is getting tired.

A lot of people here supported Hillary Clinton. Maybe not you.

I'm not suggesting moral equivalence at all. I'm suggesting that the investigation ultimately leads to the Podesta Group, which has ties to Hillary Clinton and Russia. Hillary Clinton paid for the development of a phony dossier using a former MI-6 officer, who used his former assets in Eastern Europe to fabricate a Russia connection. I'm suggesting that Manafort has more ties to the Podesta Group than he ever had with Trump in his few months working for Donald Trump. I'm suggestion Manafort was ultimately inserted into the campaign in order to justify the deep state spying on the Trump campaign. I'm asserting that these complaints do not establish any ties between Trump and Russia. However, they are beginning to show how Clinton and the deep state manufactured a false narrative--some of which may be criminal.

Hong Wu wrote:That's going to keep happening since the Clintons paid for the Russian dossier that got this thing started. Usually people are decent enough to leave outlandish opposition research behind after an election ends, this time they demanded a special prosecutor over it. They got it and if the special prosecutor doesn't vindicate them this necessarily goes straight back to the Clintons and the DNC.

I'm beginning to think that the special prosecutor was a way of preventing the DoJ from investigating the Clintons. Just because there is an independent counsel doesn't mean the DoJ can't conduct its own investigation.

Prosthetic Conscience wrote:That's complete bullshit.

No it is not bullshit. Manafort has ties to the Podesta Group. More specifically, he knows John Podesta--Hillary Clinton's campaign manager as a business associate. Trump was not made aware of this tie when he hired Manafort. Hillary Clinton paid for the phony dossier and it was used to conduct a counter-intelligence operation against the Trump campaign, with Manafort being part of that Nexus. The second person who plead out was talking with an Eastern European business man who has ties to the MI-6 agent that was manufacturing the Russia story. There are too many impossible coincidences here.

In other words, there never was any tie between Trump and Russia. There was an attempt by the Clinton campaign to manufacture this political narrative, and now it has gotten out of hand. The deep state conducted a counter-intelligence investigation based upon a narrative they knew or should have known was phony. In other words, the spying was for all intents and purposes illegal.

Prosthetic Conscience wrote:What is the point of you just making up crap and pretending it's reality? It only confirms people's opinion of you as a waste of space.

The House Intelligence Committee has the banking records. The banks can't refuse those subpoenas, whereas Fusion GPS refused to testify. Now we know the truth about where this dossier came from. We know the chain of relationships and of events.

PC's quotation wrote:The Russian intervention in the election was “unusually loud”, as if Moscow did not care about being caught

This is because it wasn't Moscow. It was Hillary Clinton herself.
#14858142
Beren wrote:Who cares if Mueller brings down the Clintons too? They should retire anyways.


The leftist mob cares they have so my invested in the Clinton's at this point it's like they are fighting to keep whatever credibility hey have left. Look no further than this place to see that.
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