Here's the main question I have about Trump/Russia collusion...

[Qball]

I've loosely followed this latest development in the scandal that wasn't involving Junior meeting with a Russian lawyer who claimed to have info on Hillary or whatever. It's likely not going to lead anywhere, but it is a development.

Here's the question that I want answered before I even consider taking this entire narrative seriously: what private information about Hillary was released that we can link to Trump or any of his campaign surrogates, and what evidence do we have that this information proved so damaging that she wound up losing the election?

I don't know about anybody else, but it struck me a long time ago that the media seems to want to talk about the collusion narrative in a very clipped, non-contextual fashion. They never really want to bring up what exactly came of the collusion -- they only want to use it as a pretext for not accepting the outcome of the election.

Was it the revelation that members of the media were collaborating (or, colluding) with the DNC and Hillary campaign on messaging? Was it that Donna Brazile was feeding questions to Hillary Clinton? Was it that Debbie Wasserman Schultz had basically sided with Hillary's campaign to help her win the primary? Was it that the DNC wanted to play up Bernie Sanders' Jewish background going into the WV primary to turn out the vote for Hillary? Was it that the DNC was paying people to go to Trump rallies specifically to cause a commotion?

Leaving the question of collusion aside for a second, isn't this similar to how liberals acted in 2012 when that video of Mitt Romney came out talking about the 47% of people who wouldn't vote for him? Nobody tut-tutted judging him because the video was filmed secretly and missing footage and was leaked to the press. So, why is principle all of a sudden important? The DNC basically colluded with one campaign and the media to get their desired candidate. I think two things can be true at once: whoever hacked them was wrong, but they deserve absolutely no sympathy.

Anyway. Combine the above revelations from the Podesta and DNC e-mails with the stuff that came out about Hillary's time at the State department and having her handling of official government business on her private e-mail server. Was the Trump campaign behind any of this?

I paid fairly close attention to the election and it seemed to me Trump...just talked a lot of shit. Crooked Hillary. Private e-mail server. Deleted 33,000 e-mails under subpoena. Lied about Benghazi. Been in Washington 25 years and hasn't done anything. Full of empty promises. Stayed married to a man accused of raping multiple women.

This is pretty standard stuff to hit Hillary Clinton with. Nothing from Trump implied insider-baseball. I think that's kind of why so many of his attacks proved effective.

More to the point, outside of the e-mail thing -- which the media reluctantly covered even when it became clear it was a real scandal -- how much time did the media devote to revelations that came from these e-mails or any other line of attack from Trump? I don't think the media, writ-large, devoted a combined week of coverage regarding any particular line of attack against Hillary.

Compare that to the Access Hollywood tape, or women accusing him of sexual assault, or Trump not releasing his taxes, or Trump allegedly pretending he didn't know who David Duke is, or Trump talking about a Muslim ban, or Trump saying illegal immigrants are rapists and drug dealers, or any of the other controversies that came out of the campaign.

If anything, I think the lesson is that the media thought they could control the narrative by underreporting it. They weren't particularly interested in exploring the implications of her having a private e-mail server, so they figured they'd only talk about it if they had to, and nobody would care because they didn't care...because they wanted her to win.

But to keep it real: somebody went back and found daily footage of Trump joshing around with Billy Bush on the back of a bus from eleven years prior, released it 2 days before the second Presidential debate, and the media talked about it and played it on a loop for weeks. I think I speak for a silent majority when I say I don't give a fuck about Russia meddling in the election and whether Trump had anything to do with it. Hillary broke federal law and committed perjury and y'all were still more than willing to play dirty pool to help her ass win. It backfired so now you're trying to undermine Trump with this bullshit you know won't amount to anything. Fuck. Off.

 

[BULLDOG]

To answer your first question, it doesn't matter.

If you try to hire someone to murder your spouse, the murder doesn't have to happen. You are still guilty even if nobody died..

If you plan to rob a bank, but the guard scares you off at the last minute, you are still guilty of bank robbery, even if you didn't get any money.

A prostitute doesn't have to actually fuck the cop before she is guilty of prostitution.

If a presidential candidate colludes with a foreign government in an effort to effect our elections, He's guilty of collusion,no matter what happens after that.

 

[LoneLaugher]

Long winded nutters are the worst.

 

[Defiant1]

To answer your first question, it doesn't matter.

If you try to hire someone to murder your spouse, the murder doesn't have to happen. You are still guilty even if nobody died..

If you plan to rob a bank, but the guard scares you off at the last minute, you are still guilty of bank robbery, even if you didn't get any money.

A prostitute doesn't have to actually fuck the cop before she is guilty of prostitution.

If a presidential candidate colludes with a foreign government in an effort to effect our elections, He's guilty of collusion,no matter what happens after that.

Collusion isn't a crime.

 

[Qball]

To answer your first question, it doesn't matter.

If you try to hire someone to murder your spouse, the murder doesn't have to happen. You are still guilty even if nobody died..

If you plan to rob a bank, but the guard scares you off at the last minute, you are still guilty of bank robbery, even if you didn't get any money.

A prostitute doesn't have to actually fuck the cop before she is guilty of prostitution.

If a presidential candidate colludes with a foreign government in an effort to effect our elections, He's guilty of collusion,no matter what happens after that.

You're comparing apples to oranges. In each of your examples you're assuming the criminal act actually took place. In this case, we're talking about collusion because a few agencies are, you know, pretty sure they know Russia was behind it. But there's a legitimate argument to be made that we can't even say that for certain.

Each of your examples encompass a crime based on intent, which is spelled out in the law. "Colluding" is a broad term that doesn't implicate any specific statute but may warrant impeachment if it's true, although, I have a sneaking suspicion that if the tables were turned and the Clinton campaign actually managed to get dirt on Trump's dealings with a foreign country, the primary goal would be to hold Trump accountable for it, not the source of the information.

 

[Luddly Neddite]

"..daily footage of Trump joshing around with Billy Bush on the back of a bus from eleven years prior .."

Here's an interesting little factoid about that -

At the very moment he was bragging about getting away with being a serial, habitual sexual predator ... while he was decided whether or not to sexually assault that young woman, his 9 months pregnant wife was at home in NYC.

Now, imagine how she felt when that tape went public. How do you think she felt when she learned that trump was doing to other women exactly what he had done to her?

Then there's the other side of that -

What will it be like for the youngest when he hears that and does the very same math his mother already did? Or, for that matter, when he starts seeing the photos of his mother naked and when he finds out she was a whore and porn actress and took off her clothes for any man who had the $$$? If he doesn't know already, how will he deal with it when his school mates print the photos off their father's computer? Or when he looks at pics of daddy and mommy with actual heads of state and knows that every single one of those people saw his mother naked. Indeed, anyone on the planet with a computer saw his mother naked.

Quite a sleazy bunch - many marriages and divorces and affairs and more affairs and what the hell was he doing with Auntie Ivanka?

And yeah, he sold out his own country to Russia.

 

[Luddly Neddite]

To answer your first question, it doesn't matter.

If you try to hire someone to murder your spouse, the murder doesn't have to happen. You are still guilty even if nobody died..

If you plan to rob a bank, but the guard scares you off at the last minute, you are still guilty of bank robbery, even if you didn't get any money.

A prostitute doesn't have to actually fuck the cop before she is guilty of prostitution.

If a presidential candidate colludes with a foreign government in an effort to effect our elections, He's guilty of collusion,no matter what happens after that.

Exactly.

If the guy breaks into your house but doesn't find anything to steal, he still broke in.

"Collusion" is not, in and of itself, a crime but there are plenty of other crimes. And the damn fools just keep incriminating themselves. Agent Orange thinks he's such a high roller but he couldn't make a deal to save his life.

 

[Hossfly]

"..daily footage of Trump joshing around with Billy Bush on the back of a bus from eleven years prior .."

Here's an interesting little factoid about that -

At the very moment he was bragging about getting away with being a serial, habitual sexual predator ... while he was decided whether or not to sexually assault that young woman, his 9 months pregnant wife was at home in NYC.

Now, imagine how she felt when that tape went public. How do you think she felt when she learned that trump was doing to other women exactly what he had done to her?

Then there's the other side of that -

What will it be like for the youngest when he hears that and does the very same math his mother already did? Or, for that matter, when he starts seeing the photos of his mother naked and when he finds out she was a whore and porn actress and took off her clothes for any man who had the $$$? If he doesn't know already, how will he deal with it when his school mates print the photos off their father's computer? Or when he looks at pics of daddy and mommy with actual heads of state and knows that every single one of those people saw his mother naked. Indeed, anyone on the planet with a computer saw his mother naked.

Quite a sleazy bunch - many marriages and divorces and affairs and more affairs and what the hell was he doing with Auntie Ivanka?

And yeah, he sold out his own country to Russia.

Wowee! For a second there I thought you were describing the actions of Obama's mommy.

 

[BULLDOG]

To answer your first question, it doesn't matter.

If you try to hire someone to murder your spouse, the murder doesn't have to happen. You are still guilty even if nobody died..

If you plan to rob a bank, but the guard scares you off at the last minute, you are still guilty of bank robbery, even if you didn't get any money.

A prostitute doesn't have to actually fuck the cop before she is guilty of prostitution.

If a presidential candidate colludes with a foreign government in an effort to effect our elections, He's guilty of collusion,no matter what happens after that.

Collusion isn't a crime.

If you believe anything Eric Boling says, you're dumber than I thought
Fox News host's Mostly False claim collusion isn't a crime

 

[BULLDOG]

To answer your first question, it doesn't matter.

If you try to hire someone to murder your spouse, the murder doesn't have to happen. You are still guilty even if nobody died..

If you plan to rob a bank, but the guard scares you off at the last minute, you are still guilty of bank robbery, even if you didn't get any money.

A prostitute doesn't have to actually fuck the cop before she is guilty of prostitution.

If a presidential candidate colludes with a foreign government in an effort to effect our elections, He's guilty of collusion,no matter what happens after that.

You're comparing apples to oranges. In each of your examples you're assuming the criminal act actually took place. In this case, we're talking about collusion because a few agencies are, you know, pretty sure they know Russia was behind it. But there's a legitimate argument to be made that we can't even say that for certain.

Each of your examples encompass a crime based on intent, which is spelled out in the law. "Colluding" is a broad term that doesn't implicate any specific statute but may warrant impeachment if it's true, although, I have a sneaking suspicion that if the tables were turned and the Clinton campaign actually managed to get dirt on Trump's dealings with a foreign country, the primary goal would be to hold Trump accountable for it, not the source of the information.

Read it again. In none of my examples does the planned act occur.

 

[Defiant1]

To answer your first question, it doesn't matter.

If you try to hire someone to murder your spouse, the murder doesn't have to happen. You are still guilty even if nobody died..

If you plan to rob a bank, but the guard scares you off at the last minute, you are still guilty of bank robbery, even if you didn't get any money.

A prostitute doesn't have to actually fuck the cop before she is guilty of prostitution.

If a presidential candidate colludes with a foreign government in an effort to effect our elections, He's guilty of collusion,no matter what happens after that.

You're comparing apples to oranges. In each of your examples you're assuming the criminal act actually took place. In this case, we're talking about collusion because a few agencies are, you know, pretty sure they know Russia was behind it. But there's a legitimate argument to be made that we can't even say that for certain.

Each of your examples encompass a crime based on intent, which is spelled out in the law. "Colluding" is a broad term that doesn't implicate any specific statute but may warrant impeachment if it's true, although, I have a sneaking suspicion that if the tables were turned and the Clinton campaign actually managed to get dirt on Trump's dealings with a foreign country, the primary goal would be to hold Trump accountable for it, not the source of the information.

Read it again. In none of my examples does the planned act occur.

But the acts being planned are crimes.
Last time I checked planning to beat your political opponent isn't a crime.
And the only limit on foreign nationals is donations.

 

[BULLDOG]

To answer your first question, it doesn't matter.

If you try to hire someone to murder your spouse, the murder doesn't have to happen. You are still guilty even if nobody died..

If you plan to rob a bank, but the guard scares you off at the last minute, you are still guilty of bank robbery, even if you didn't get any money.

A prostitute doesn't have to actually fuck the cop before she is guilty of prostitution.

If a presidential candidate colludes with a foreign government in an effort to effect our elections, He's guilty of collusion,no matter what happens after that.

You're comparing apples to oranges. In each of your examples you're assuming the criminal act actually took place. In this case, we're talking about collusion because a few agencies are, you know, pretty sure they know Russia was behind it. But there's a legitimate argument to be made that we can't even say that for certain.

Each of your examples encompass a crime based on intent, which is spelled out in the law. "Colluding" is a broad term that doesn't implicate any specific statute but may warrant impeachment if it's true, although, I have a sneaking suspicion that if the tables were turned and the Clinton campaign actually managed to get dirt on Trump's dealings with a foreign country, the primary goal would be to hold Trump accountable for it, not the source of the information.

Read it again. In none of my examples does the planned act occur.

But the acts being planned are crimes.
Last time I checked planning to beat your political opponent isn't a crime.
And the only limit on foreign nationals is donations.

International law is clear on the subject of foreign intervention into the domestic affairs of another state. Chapter I, Article 2, paragraph 7 of the United Nations Charter states that nothing in the Charter authorizes the signatories “to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state.”[4] The only exception to this non-intervention principle is found in Chapter VII, which authorizes the United Nations to intervene against “the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression.”[5]

In 1965 the United Nations General Assembly reaffirmed, and seemingly expanded, the principle of non-intervention in a resolution. The resolution states: “No State has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal […] affairs of any other State.”[6] It goes on to state that every “State has an inalienable right to choose its political, economic, social and cultural systems without interference in any form by another State.”[7]

 

[lola35]

I've loosely followed this latest development in the scandal that wasn't involving Junior meeting with a Russian lawyer who claimed to have info on Hillary or whatever. It's likely not going to lead anywhere, but it is a development.

Here's the question that I want answered before I even consider taking this entire narrative seriously: what private information about Hillary was released that we can link to Trump or any of his campaign surrogates, and what evidence do we have that this information proved so damaging that she wound up losing the election?

I don't know about anybody else, but it struck me a long time ago that the media seems to want to talk about the collusion narrative in a very clipped, non-contextual fashion. They never really want to bring up what exactly came of the collusion -- they only want to use it as a pretext for not accepting the outcome of the election.

Was it the revelation that members of the media were collaborating (or, colluding) with the DNC and Hillary campaign on messaging? Was it that Donna Brazile was feeding questions to Hillary Clinton? Was it that Debbie Wasserman Schultz had basically sided with Hillary's campaign to help her win the primary? Was it that the DNC wanted to play up Bernie Sanders' Jewish background going into the WV primary to turn out the vote for Hillary? Was it that the DNC was paying people to go to Trump rallies specifically to cause a commotion?

Leaving the question of collusion aside for a second, isn't this similar to how liberals acted in 2012 when that video of Mitt Romney came out talking about the 47% of people who wouldn't vote for him? Nobody tut-tutted judging him because the video was filmed secretly and missing footage and was leaked to the press. So, why is principle all of a sudden important? The DNC basically colluded with one campaign and the media to get their desired candidate. I think two things can be true at once: whoever hacked them was wrong, but they deserve absolutely no sympathy.

Anyway. Combine the above revelations from the Podesta and DNC e-mails with the stuff that came out about Hillary's time at the State department and having her handling of official government business on her private e-mail server. Was the Trump campaign behind any of this?

I paid fairly close attention to the election and it seemed to me Trump...just talked a lot of shit. Crooked Hillary. Private e-mail server. Deleted 33,000 e-mails under subpoena. Lied about Benghazi. Been in Washington 25 years and hasn't done anything. Full of empty promises. Stayed married to a man accused of raping multiple women.

This is pretty standard stuff to hit Hillary Clinton with. Nothing from Trump implied insider-baseball. I think that's kind of why so many of his attacks proved effective.

More to the point, outside of the e-mail thing -- which the media reluctantly covered even when it became clear it was a real scandal -- how much time did the media devote to revelations that came from these e-mails or any other line of attack from Trump? I don't think the media, writ-large, devoted a combined week of coverage regarding any particular line of attack against Hillary.

Compare that to the Access Hollywood tape, or women accusing him of sexual assault, or Trump not releasing his taxes, or Trump allegedly pretending he didn't know who David Duke is, or Trump talking about a Muslim ban, or Trump saying illegal immigrants are rapists and drug dealers, or any of the other controversies that came out of the campaign.

If anything, I think the lesson is that the media thought they could control the narrative by underreporting it. They weren't particularly interested in exploring the implications of her having a private e-mail server, so they figured they'd only talk about it if they had to, and nobody would care because they didn't care...because they wanted her to win.

But to keep it real: somebody went back and found daily footage of Trump joshing around with Billy Bush on the back of a bus from eleven years prior, released it 2 days before the second Presidential debate, and the media talked about it and played it on a loop for weeks. I think I speak for a silent majority when I say I don't give a fuck about Russia meddling in the election and whether Trump had anything to do with it. Hillary broke federal law and committed perjury and y'all were still more than willing to play dirty pool to help her ass win. It backfired so now you're trying to undermine Trump with this bullshit you know won't amount to anything. Fuck. Off.

Nice to see where your outrage lies on the women being sexually assaulted; someone worked from home scale. Nice to see you think committing perjury is a criminal offense but sexually assaulting women is just "joshing." No one has tried to undermine POTUS, they just quote him.

 

[Chuz Life]

The crimi al charge of Collusion require at LEAST an agreed upon plan to break the law, to commit fraud, to steal, to kill, etc.

Someone offering dirt on a political opponent EVEN TO HELP WIN AN ELECTION, is not a crime... because it involves no fraud, no deception, no criminal tampering with voting equipment, etc.

So sit and spin on that, snowflakes!

 

[Defiant1]

To answer your first question, it doesn't matter.

If you try to hire someone to murder your spouse, the murder doesn't have to happen. You are still guilty even if nobody died..

If you plan to rob a bank, but the guard scares you off at the last minute, you are still guilty of bank robbery, even if you didn't get any money.

A prostitute doesn't have to actually fuck the cop before she is guilty of prostitution.

If a presidential candidate colludes with a foreign government in an effort to effect our elections, He's guilty of collusion,no matter what happens after that.

You're comparing apples to oranges. In each of your examples you're assuming the criminal act actually took place. In this case, we're talking about collusion because a few agencies are, you know, pretty sure they know Russia was behind it. But there's a legitimate argument to be made that we can't even say that for certain.

Each of your examples encompass a crime based on intent, which is spelled out in the law. "Colluding" is a broad term that doesn't implicate any specific statute but may warrant impeachment if it's true, although, I have a sneaking suspicion that if the tables were turned and the Clinton campaign actually managed to get dirt on Trump's dealings with a foreign country, the primary goal would be to hold Trump accountable for it, not the source of the information.

Read it again. In none of my examples does the planned act occur.

But the acts being planned are crimes.
Last time I checked planning to beat your political opponent isn't a crime.
And the only limit on foreign nationals is donations.

International law is clear on the subject of foreign intervention into the domestic affairs of another state. Chapter I, Article 2, paragraph 7 of the United Nations Charter states that nothing in the Charter authorizes the signatories “to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state.”[4] The only exception to this non-intervention principle is found in Chapter VII, which authorizes the United Nations to intervene against “the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression.”[5]

In 1965 the United Nations General Assembly reaffirmed, and seemingly expanded, the principle of non-intervention in a resolution. The resolution states: “No State has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal […] affairs of any other State.”[6] It goes on to state that every “State has an inalienable right to choose its political, economic, social and cultural systems without interference in any form by another State.”[7]

International law, lol

Why aren't they investigating then?

 

[LoneLaugher]