Grassley publicly accuses Schumer of lying knowingly to the American people

[JakeStarkey]

Xelor has it right: "There apparently is nothing going one with Trump himself, but all around him there are individuals who've misrepresented the mere fact of their having had dialogues with a known/suspected Russian spy, at least one of whom happens to be the ambassador."

Those individuals are going to turn on each other.

And if Trump has obstructed any investigation in any way, that is going to come out.

 

[cnelsen]

Grassley is astounding. He knows as well as I do that the matter of Trump's not being a "person of interest" in the "Russia" investigation and who else may be the subject(s) of it can be likened to that of the eye of a hurricane. There apparently is nothing going one with Trump himself, but all around him there are individuals who've misrepresented the mere fact of their having had dialogues with a known/suspected Russian spy, at least one of whom happens to be the ambassador.

Quite simply, if one's job necessarily calls for one to interact with the likes of Sergei Kislyak, and one knows from the briefings one received from the IC that Russia/Putin implemented a campaign to interfere in the U.S. electoral process, why attest to having had no contact with the man (or any other Russian official)? I mean really. Does one forget that such meetings are a natural part of one's job and that one has been doing one's job? I'm sorry, but I don't see one innocuous reason for misrepresenting basic binary facts the way several Trump Administration players have and in the climate in which they have done.

Consider the scenario where one and one's partner last night willfully participate in S&M intimacies that include striking one's partner, and one is asked did you hit someone yesterday. The truthful answer is "yes." The question wasn't did one strike another in anger; it was whether one struck someone. Answering truthfully allows one to explain the nature of the hit and move on. Answering untruthfully can lead to all sorts of other questions -- inquiries that didn't need to be pursued had one merely told the truth from the start -- if/when it's discovered that one did in all likelihood hit someone.

What's been going on with the Trump Administration and its key players is, right now at least, a matter of those individuals being discovered to have misrepresented simple truths, which in turn has engendered a storm of doubt and questions. This didn't need to be; and it wouldn't be had those individuals been unequivocal and honest in their remarks. But they didn't, and here we are.

C'mon, Xelor, you are smarter than that. You are way out in Merchant of Venice territory, here. If the police were looking for a person who had violently committed assault during a mugging on the street the night before and happened to ask the S&M couple whether he had hit anyone the night before, they, knowing the intent of the question, are not bound to disclose their private, irrelevant sex lives in order to cooperate.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Xelor has the right of it, cnelson has nothing but confusion.

 

[toobfreak]

A thirteen minute vid by a homer far right Republican without time or date or url?

Just for Stanky

I'm getting tired of all of these old fucks! I am starting to believe that you could take honest, ordinary, decent people right off the street, put them in the Congress' place and in 5 minutes have a government working 1200% better!!!

 

[cnelsen]

Xelor has the right of it, cnelson has nothing but confusion.

Whereas Stanky just tired.

 

[cnelsen]

A thirteen minute vid by a homer far right Republican without time or date or url?

Just for Stanky

I'm getting tired of all of these old fucks! I am starting to believe that you could take honest, ordinary, decent people right off the street, put them in the Congress' place and in 5 minutes have a government working 1200% better!!!

Well, I can't argue with you there.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Xelor has the right of it, cnelson has nothing but confusion.

Whereas Stanky just tired.

cnelson, you could not hold your own against, Xelor. Tough to be you, yes.

 

[IsaacNewton]

“If a nation expects to be ignorant & free, in a state of civilisation, it expects what never was & never will be. The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty & property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.” - Thomas Jefferson -

We desperately need to free the press from the iron-grip of the hostile and disloyal Jewish ethnic monopoly, agreed.

That is how tyrants think.

If you don't like how a business is run you start one to compete and overtake or put them out of business. You don't use the government to force your worldview on them. This is what Trump is attempting to do. That the Republicans in Congress are not stopping it is a very bad omen for American democracy.

 

[g5000]

I don't know if Trump directly colluded with Russia to win the election, but he has been collaborating with them every since.

He's a traitor.

 

[usmbguest5318]

Directly to Grassley's point about Comey not having told the American people that Trump was not the subject of the FBI's investigation, the reason is simple and well understood by attorney. Comey kept mum on the matter because (1) the person involved holds the office of the POTUS and (2) because as an attorney, ethically by publicly saying something instead of saying nothing, he puts his integrity and, possibly his livelihood, at risk because of what's called the duty to correct, which is something he'd have created were he to have said publicly that Trump wasn't under investigation and later that status ceased to be so.

That may seem strange to people outside of certain professions such as the law, accountancy, financial advising, and medicine to name a few, but the reality is that when there exists a state of uncertainty about the direction/outcome an undertaking will produce, one must not publicly attest to the status of the undertaking. One can, however, in privileged confines discuss the undertaking and give one's professional thoughts about it. This is why Comey could tell Trump and Congress that Trump wasn't under investigation, but not the general public. The duty to correct, along with the practical risk that doing so may "tip off" potential suspects, is part of why the DoJ does not generally remark upon ongoing investigations.

 

[cnelsen]

“If a nation expects to be ignorant & free, in a state of civilisation, it expects what never was & never will be. The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty & property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.” - Thomas Jefferson -

We desperately need to free the press from the iron-grip of the hostile and disloyal Jewish ethnic monopoly, agreed.

That is how tyrants think.

If you don't like how a business is run you start one to compete and overtake or put them out of business. You don't use the government to force your worldview on them. This is what Trump is attempting to do. That the Republicans in Congress are not stopping it is a very bad omen for American democracy.

Breaking up the media cartel would be resistance to tyranny.

 

[cnelsen]

Directly to Grassley's point about Comey not having told the American people that Trump was not the subject of the FBI's investigation, the reason is simple and well understood by attorney. Comey kept mum on the matter because (1) the person involved holds the office of the POTUS and (2) because as an attorney, ethically by publicly saying something instead of saying nothing, he puts his integrity and, possibly his livelihood, at risk because of what's called the duty to correct, which is something he'd have created were he to have said publicly that Trump wasn't under investigation and later that status ceased to be so.

That may seem strange to people outside of certain professions such as the law, accountancy, financial advising, and medicine to name a few, but the reality is that when there exists a state of uncertainty about the direction/outcome an undertaking will produce, one must not publicly attest to the status of the undertaking. One can, however, in privileged confines discuss the undertaking and give one's professional thoughts about it. This is why Comey could tell Trump and Congress that Trump wasn't under investigation, but not the general public. The duty to correct, along with the practical risk that doing so may "tip off" potential suspects, is part of why the DoJ does not generally remark upon ongoing investigations.

But Comey had no problem leaking when he felt it suited him, so his protestations of propriety seem just a tad flat.

 

[usmbguest5318]

Grassley is astounding. He knows as well as I do that the matter of Trump's not being a "person of interest" in the "Russia" investigation and who else may be the subject(s) of it can be likened to that of the eye of a hurricane. There apparently is nothing going one with Trump himself, but all around him there are individuals who've misrepresented the mere fact of their having had dialogues with a known/suspected Russian spy, at least one of whom happens to be the ambassador.

Quite simply, if one's job necessarily calls for one to interact with the likes of Sergei Kislyak, and one knows from the briefings one received from the IC that Russia/Putin implemented a campaign to interfere in the U.S. electoral process, why attest to having had no contact with the man (or any other Russian official)? I mean really. Does one forget that such meetings are a natural part of one's job and that one has been doing one's job? I'm sorry, but I don't see one innocuous reason for misrepresenting basic binary facts the way several Trump Administration players have and in the climate in which they have done.

Consider the scenario where one and one's partner last night willfully participate in S&M intimacies that include striking one's partner, and one is asked did you hit someone yesterday. The truthful answer is "yes." The question wasn't did one strike another in anger; it was whether one struck someone. Answering truthfully allows one to explain the nature of the hit and move on. Answering untruthfully can lead to all sorts of other questions -- inquiries that didn't need to be pursued had one merely told the truth from the start -- if/when it's discovered that one did in all likelihood hit someone.

What's been going on with the Trump Administration and its key players is, right now at least, a matter of those individuals being discovered to have misrepresented simple truths, which in turn has engendered a storm of doubt and questions. This didn't need to be; and it wouldn't be had those individuals been unequivocal and honest in their remarks. But they didn't, and here we are.

C'mon, Xelor, you are smarter than that. You are way out in Merchant of Venice territory, here. If the police were looking for a person who had violently committed assault during a mugging on the street the night before and happened to ask the S&M couple whether he had hit anyone the night before, they, knowing the intent of the question, are not bound to disclose their private, irrelevant sex lives in order to cooperate.

But the context at hand isn't a police investigation. For instance, re: Sessions, it was a Congressional hearing in which he volunteered that he'd had no contact with Russian officials when the fact of the matter is that he had, regardless of the context. He could have said something to the effect of "In the course of my job as a senator, I occasionally met with Russian officials, but otherwise I had no contact with them."

Now did he say that? No. And he's an attorney, so it's not as though precision and context aren't things he knows well to include in his statements. Moreover, you know as well as I that as an attorney, he'd demand that his clients (or in a prosecutorial role, a witness) answer the question they were asked -- by telling "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the the truth" -- and not to infer anything about its intent. The same principle applies in my example and to Session's, just to name one individual, testimony.

What makes Sessions, Flynn and maybe Kushner's (I don't recall the situational details of his attestations) paltering worse is that they volunteered their attestations of having had no contact with Russian officials. Quite simply, they didn't have to voluntarily tell anything other than "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the the truth," yet that's exactly what they did. So, no, I'm not in "Merchant of Venice" territory. Would that Sessions et al to have heeded Portia's caution before uttering their assertions about their interactions with Russians.

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart.
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!
― William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

 

[usmbguest5318]

Directly to Grassley's point about Comey not having told the American people that Trump was not the subject of the FBI's investigation, the reason is simple and well understood by attorney. Comey kept mum on the matter because (1) the person involved holds the office of the POTUS and (2) because as an attorney, ethically by publicly saying something instead of saying nothing, he puts his integrity and, possibly his livelihood, at risk because of what's called the duty to correct, which is something he'd have created were he to have said publicly that Trump wasn't under investigation and later that status ceased to be so.

That may seem strange to people outside of certain professions such as the law, accountancy, financial advising, and medicine to name a few, but the reality is that when there exists a state of uncertainty about the direction/outcome an undertaking will produce, one must not publicly attest to the status of the undertaking. One can, however, in privileged confines discuss the undertaking and give one's professional thoughts about it. This is why Comey could tell Trump and Congress that Trump wasn't under investigation, but not the general public. The duty to correct, along with the practical risk that doing so may "tip off" potential suspects, is part of why the DoJ does not generally remark upon ongoing investigations.

But Comey had no problem leaking when he felt it suited him, so his protestations of propriety seem just a tad flat.

Leaking isn't the point of anything I wrote. You know it isn't. Don't try conflating the two. Even if it were, where is the uncertainty about the activity Comey authorized his pal to disclose? About whose actions does it pertain?

 

[usmbguest5318]

“If a nation expects to be ignorant & free, in a state of civilisation, it expects what never was & never will be. The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty & property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.” - Thomas Jefferson -

We desperately need to free the press from the iron-grip of the hostile and disloyal Jewish ethnic monopoly, agreed.

That is how tyrants think.

If you don't like how a business is run you start one to compete and overtake or put them out of business. You don't use the government to force your worldview on them. This is what Trump is attempting to do. That the Republicans in Congress are not stopping it is a very bad omen for American democracy.

Breaking up the media cartel would be resistance to tyranny.

Metaphorically, sure, one can talk about "tyranny of the press" much as one might talk about, say, the "tyranny exercised by time." Insofar as the context of this discussion is government, governmental policy and the people who enact, promulgate and enforce government policy, there's really no place for such florid language re: the media because it has no actual power it can bring to bear to impose any tyrannical courses of action (policy) upon anyone, except perhaps the employees of respective media organizations. As always, context is "everything."

 

[JakeStarkey]

What movie is that from?

Keep telling yourself that.

View attachment 135284

I do! To date it's all you got

The GOP, not the Dems, are running the investigations of Trump, his associates, and the Russians, and you ignore reality. That will make it hurt even more for you folks when the findings come out.

You said Romney was going to win. You said McCain was going to win. You said X and Y and Z would happen immediately if Trump were elected. The AltRight Right are traitors to America and its ideals.

Talking to yourself too special

Only a silly like you thinks that, jc456. Trump has stumbled out of the gate, and right now the Senate AHCA revision is stumbling. Nothing new except for the ongoing investigations into RussiaGate and American-Russian collusion.

 

[usmbguest5318]

Below are my notes after having listened to Grassley's remarks. Hopefully they are understandable without my having to convert them into a "proper" essay.

• Transparency is important because it affords accountability. How dare he say that when transparency is more anathema to the current Administration and man holding the office of POTUS than to any in recent memory. I mean really. Tax returns undisclosed. Pretending to be someone who he is not. No video cameras at press briefings. Does Trump even know what “transparency” and “accountability” mean?
• Conspiracy theories abounded as a result of Comey not telling the U.S. people Trump wasn’t the subject of investigation. Conspiracy theories abounded before he didn’t share that information and his doing so wouldn’t have done a damn thing to reduce their quantity; it’d have only altered the nature of the ones that’d have emerged in the wake of his having done so.
• Russia makes a career out of undermining democratic systems. Trump’s lying combined with his efforts to discredit the media does exactly that. Grassley ridiculed Russia’s leaders and described them as autocrats, yet Trump won’t do anything remotely like criticizing Russian leaders. On the contrary, he hosts them in the White House and invites only Russian press.
  
  Trump's actions, and those of some of his Administration appointees, are what's playing into Russia's hand. No POTUS like the scrutiny of the press. Partisans surely don't like the press chiding "their guys." Be that as it may, without exception, what I've observed is a lot of griping about editorial content in the MSM, not about actual reporting. The fact of the matter is that it is the adult audience's responsibility to be able to distinguish editorial content from non-editorial content.
• • THE ROLE OF THE MEDIA IN DEEPENING DEMOCRACY
    
  • The Role of Media in Democracy: A Strategic Approach
    
  • The Fourth Estate
    
  • Normative Theories of the Media
• “Matter” or “investigation.” In the context of the FBI Director speaking about the nature of activities the FBI has in process, it makes no difference. Investigate is what the FBI does; all the operational activities it performs are pursuant to an investigation. That’s what the “I” in “FBI” stands for. It doesn’t matter what they are “looking at,” they are investigating.
• Grassley commented on the length of the investigation, noting that it’s been a year and nothing has been publicly presented regarding its findings. Well, the thing’s ongoing. Moreover, consider the Aldrich Ames investigation. That took just under a year and it involved just one American -- a midlevel government employee -- acting in concert with his wife (another “regular” person, so to speak), not wealthy, well connected people in powerful positions as are the potential subjects of the “Russia” investigation.
• Grassley and other members of Congress knew Trump wasn’t the subject of the investigation, yet neither he, his fellow Congresspersons, nor their staffs leaked that detail. If Grassley or any of his peers, then as apparently by his speech he does now, felt that detail was so important for the American people to know, he could have found a way to get that pearl of info leaked. It’s not as though Congress members don’t leak information when it suits them.
  • Bush, Congress Call Truce Over Leaks
    
  • Congressional leaders call for halt to 'cascade of leaks' - CNNPolitics.com
    
  • What’s the Worst That Could Happen to a Member of Congress Who Leaks Secret Information?
• Who first disclosed it? Trump. Why Trump and nobody else? Because as POTUS, he gets final say on what among the executive branch’s affairs must and must not be kept undisclosed.
• Grassley remarked upon the vagueness of one of Comey’s statements. What temerity Grassley has. I’d be a billionaire if I had a dollar for every vague statement made by a Congressperson, Congressional staffer, Administration (any president’s administration) employee or POTUS. Hell, I get tired of listening to them solely because they don’t say much that’s not vague, ambiguous or unequivocal, except, of course, when they condemn someone who’s not “on their side.”

 

[cnelsen]

Grassley is astounding. He knows as well as I do that the matter of Trump's not being a "person of interest" in the "Russia" investigation and who else may be the subject(s) of it can be likened to that of the eye of a hurricane. There apparently is nothing going one with Trump himself, but all around him there are individuals who've misrepresented the mere fact of their having had dialogues with a known/suspected Russian spy, at least one of whom happens to be the ambassador.

Quite simply, if one's job necessarily calls for one to interact with the likes of Sergei Kislyak, and one knows from the briefings one received from the IC that Russia/Putin implemented a campaign to interfere in the U.S. electoral process, why attest to having had no contact with the man (or any other Russian official)? I mean really. Does one forget that such meetings are a natural part of one's job and that one has been doing one's job? I'm sorry, but I don't see one innocuous reason for misrepresenting basic binary facts the way several Trump Administration players have and in the climate in which they have done.

Consider the scenario where one and one's partner last night willfully participate in S&M intimacies that include striking one's partner, and one is asked did you hit someone yesterday. The truthful answer is "yes." The question wasn't did one strike another in anger; it was whether one struck someone. Answering truthfully allows one to explain the nature of the hit and move on. Answering untruthfully can lead to all sorts of other questions -- inquiries that didn't need to be pursued had one merely told the truth from the start -- if/when it's discovered that one did in all likelihood hit someone.

What's been going on with the Trump Administration and its key players is, right now at least, a matter of those individuals being discovered to have misrepresented simple truths, which in turn has engendered a storm of doubt and questions. This didn't need to be; and it wouldn't be had those individuals been unequivocal and honest in their remarks. But they didn't, and here we are.

C'mon, Xelor, you are smarter than that. You are way out in Merchant of Venice territory, here. If the police were looking for a person who had violently committed assault during a mugging on the street the night before and happened to ask the S&M couple whether he had hit anyone the night before, they, knowing the intent of the question, are not bound to disclose their private, irrelevant sex lives in order to cooperate.

But the context at hand isn't a police investigation. For instance, re: Sessions, it was a Congressional hearing in which he volunteered that he'd had no contact with Russian officials when the fact of the matter is that he had, regardless of the context. He could have said something to the effect of "In the course of my job as a senator, I occasionally met with Russian officials, but otherwise I had no contact with them."

Now did he say that? No. And he's an attorney, so it's not as though precision and context aren't things he knows well to include in his statements. Moreover, you know as well as I that as an attorney, he'd demand that his clients (or in a prosecutorial role, a witness) answer the question they were asked -- by telling "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the the truth" -- and not to infer anything about its intent. The same principle applies in my example and to Session's, just to name one individual, testimony.

What makes Sessions, Flynn and maybe Kushner's (I don't recall the situational details of his attestations) paltering worse is that they volunteered their attestations of having had no contact with Russian officials. Quite simply, they didn't have to voluntarily tell anything other than "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the the truth," yet that's exactly what they did. So, no, I'm not in "Merchant of Venice" territory. Would that Sessions et al to have heeded Portia's caution before uttering their assertions about their interactions with Russians.

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart.
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!
― William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

Speaking of the Devil, Al Franken was the villain questioning Sessions at the time you refer to. The context was clearly whether Sessions had colluded with Russians on behalf of the Trump campaign (a completely baseless and disgraceful charge in the first place). To that, Sessions answered 'no'. Anyone now trying to claim Sessions was attempting to mislead by his answer is displaying bad faith and demonstrating he is driven by some other agenda than the good of the country.

 

[cnelsen]

re: the media because it has no actual power it can bring to bear to impose any tyrannical courses of action

It can. It does. And it has. The subject of this thread is an example. Were it not for the press, in collusion with traitors in the intelligence community, and the leaks, fake or otherwise, we would not now be forced to endure this national humiliation.

 

[usmbguest5318]

Grassley is astounding. He knows as well as I do that the matter of Trump's not being a "person of interest" in the "Russia" investigation and who else may be the subject(s) of it can be likened to that of the eye of a hurricane. There apparently is nothing going one with Trump himself, but all around him there are individuals who've misrepresented the mere fact of their having had dialogues with a known/suspected Russian spy, at least one of whom happens to be the ambassador.

Quite simply, if one's job necessarily calls for one to interact with the likes of Sergei Kislyak, and one knows from the briefings one received from the IC that Russia/Putin implemented a campaign to interfere in the U.S. electoral process, why attest to having had no contact with the man (or any other Russian official)? I mean really. Does one forget that such meetings are a natural part of one's job and that one has been doing one's job? I'm sorry, but I don't see one innocuous reason for misrepresenting basic binary facts the way several Trump Administration players have and in the climate in which they have done.

Consider the scenario where one and one's partner last night willfully participate in S&M intimacies that include striking one's partner, and one is asked did you hit someone yesterday. The truthful answer is "yes." The question wasn't did one strike another in anger; it was whether one struck someone. Answering truthfully allows one to explain the nature of the hit and move on. Answering untruthfully can lead to all sorts of other questions -- inquiries that didn't need to be pursued had one merely told the truth from the start -- if/when it's discovered that one did in all likelihood hit someone.

What's been going on with the Trump Administration and its key players is, right now at least, a matter of those individuals being discovered to have misrepresented simple truths, which in turn has engendered a storm of doubt and questions. This didn't need to be; and it wouldn't be had those individuals been unequivocal and honest in their remarks. But they didn't, and here we are.

C'mon, Xelor, you are smarter than that. You are way out in Merchant of Venice territory, here. If the police were looking for a person who had violently committed assault during a mugging on the street the night before and happened to ask the S&M couple whether he had hit anyone the night before, they, knowing the intent of the question, are not bound to disclose their private, irrelevant sex lives in order to cooperate.

But the context at hand isn't a police investigation. For instance, re: Sessions, it was a Congressional hearing in which he volunteered that he'd had no contact with Russian officials when the fact of the matter is that he had, regardless of the context. He could have said something to the effect of "In the course of my job as a senator, I occasionally met with Russian officials, but otherwise I had no contact with them."

Now did he say that? No. And he's an attorney, so it's not as though precision and context aren't things he knows well to include in his statements. Moreover, you know as well as I that as an attorney, he'd demand that his clients (or in a prosecutorial role, a witness) answer the question they were asked -- by telling "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the the truth" -- and not to infer anything about its intent. The same principle applies in my example and to Session's, just to name one individual, testimony.

What makes Sessions, Flynn and maybe Kushner's (I don't recall the situational details of his attestations) paltering worse is that they volunteered their attestations of having had no contact with Russian officials. Quite simply, they didn't have to voluntarily tell anything other than "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the the truth," yet that's exactly what they did. So, no, I'm not in "Merchant of Venice" territory. Would that Sessions et al to have heeded Portia's caution before uttering their assertions about their interactions with Russians.

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart.
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!
― William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

Speaking of the Devil, Al Franken was the villain questioning Sessions at the time you refer to. The context was clearly whether Sessions had colluded with Russians on behalf of the Trump campaign (a completely baseless and disgraceful charge in the first place). To that, Sessions answered 'no'. Anyone now trying to claim Sessions was attempting to mislead by his answer is displaying bad faith and demonstrating he is driven by some other agenda than the good of the country.

I suggest you review Sessions' AG confirmation hearing testimony. Upon doing so, you'll be reminded that Sessions volunteered information about his interactions with Russians and the information he volunteered was factually untrue.