Moose & Squirrel v Boris & Natasha: what's the deal with the rooskies and trumpland?

[AsburySkinsFan]

Once again the Right is the haven of all truth seekers!! As we have heard for the past year it isn’t about the content of the dossier, it isn’t about the content of leaks, or the content of Trump’s collusion but instead what is truly important is WHO leaked info and who paid!!

 

Oh wait...no it’s not.

And if ANYONE here thinks for a second that Trump didn’t have opposition reasearch done on Clinton then you’re a damn fool.

Heck, Trump’s own son met with the Russians for expressed purpose of gaining opposition research!

But, yes please lets forget all the details shall we.

 

It never gets old watching GOPers forgive treason when their party commits it, and then they get pissed when someone kneels during the anthem. Honestly, how warped does your mind have to be to continue to defend this clown? 

Edited October 26, 2017 by AsburySkinsFan

[twa]

Rather strong reaction to facts

[TradeTheBeal!]

2 minutes ago, twa said:

Rather strong reaction to facts

 

First time?

[Cooked Crack]

30 minutes ago, twa said:

 

Steele's work was not contracted until after the 'surrogate' dropped Fusion. 

 

I'm sure details don't matter

The FBI was interested in paying Steele too it seems. If your angle is the dossier was only for politics why did the Feds think paying this guy was a good idea?

[Llevron]

3 minutes ago, twa said:

Rather strong reaction to facts

 

Hard not to laugh at this one lol

[twa]

Just now, Cooked Crack said:

The FBI was interested in paying Steele too it seems. If your angle is the dossier was only for politics why did the Feds think paying this guy was a good idea?

 

Congress asked the same question...maybe answers will be forthcoming.

added

the FBI dropped him once the source was exposed...why?

Edited October 26, 2017 by twa

[AsburySkinsFan]

5 minutes ago, twa said:

Rather strong reaction to facts

Rather selective attention to facts on your part. Nothing but crickets out of you for a year but now you have a new “emails” to distract you from the fact that you voted for Trump and have yet to post post criticism or fact checking about Trump at all. 

 

I don’t care who paid for the opposition research contained in the dossier, I care whether the content is true. 

 

You, not so much apparently.

[twa]

Just now, AsburySkinsFan said:

Rather selective attention to facts on your part. Nothing but crickets out of you for a year but now you have a new “emails” to distract you from the fact that you voted for Trump and have yet to post post criticism or fact checking about Trump at all. 

 

I don’t care who paid for the opposition research contained in the dossier, I care whether the content is true. 

 

You, not so much apparently.

 

Why criticize when I publicly support impeaching him?

 

Who paid would interest you if the situation reversed and is relevant  as evidenced by the repeated false assertion the GOP paid for Steele's work.

[Cooked Crack]

8 minutes ago, twa said:

 

Congress asked the same question...maybe answers will be forthcoming.

added

the FBI dropped him once the source was exposed...why?

Steele was in hiding after it went public. There was no way he was going to be able to continue his work. I'd imagine his sources would somehow find themselves being thrown of balconies. Can't imagine the FBI wanted to be caught up in the political storm that would have followed.

 

3 minutes ago, twa said:

Who paid would interest you if the situation reversed and is relevant  as evidenced by the repeated false assertion the GOP paid for Steele's work.

If content of the document was being verified I'd be more interested in that. That's just me though.

[TradeTheBeal!]

Eye two support impeachment pubicly.

[AsburySkinsFan]

15 minutes ago, twa said:

 

Why criticize when I publicly support impeaching him?

 

Who paid would interest you if the situation reversed and is relevant  as evidenced by the repeated false assertion the GOP paid for Steele's work.

I’m telling you it doesn’t matter who paid for it. I didn’t care when I didn’t know, and I don’t care now. The ONLY reason that the GOPers  want to discredit the dossier is because they are afraid that it is true. If it didn’t worry GOP they would ignore it. 

 

As for your assertion that you publicly support impeaching him, well actions speak louder than words...ironically your words RE The Pumpkin King have been nothing but defensive.

[Larry]

1 hour ago, twa said:

 

Steele's work was not contracted until after the 'surrogate' dropped Fusion. 

 

I'm sure details don't matter

 

Oh, well, then, that makes a huge difference.  

 

One of them had a contract, and one used a verbal agreement.  

 

Did one of them use a check and the other use a credit card, by any chance?  

[AsburySkinsFan]

@Larry all twa is describing with the use of “surrogates” on this issue is a perfect set up for plausible deniability for the Republican who ordered the opposition research.

 

But again, we’re supposed to believe that all of this is a completely new turn of events on US politics. And again, all of this is being stirred by complicit Republicans who only want to muddy the waters of Trump’s Russian collusion investigation in the eyes of the public. 

 

BTW, what office does Hillary Clinton currently hold in the United States government? And what office does Donald Trump currently hold...Donald who hired TWO Russian agents and who’s own son met with other Russian agents with the exoeessed intent of gaining opposition research about Clinton from the Russian government?

 

Answer those questions for me and then lets talk about the seriousness we should give to who paid for the dossier.

[twa]

7 hours ago, Cooked Crack said:

Steele was in hiding after it went public. There was no way he was going to be able to continue his work. I'd imagine his sources would somehow find themselves being thrown of balconies. Can't imagine the FBI wanted to be caught up in the political storm that would have followed.

 

If content of the document was being verified I'd be more interested in that. That's just me though.

 

He wasn't doing more than compilation , not like he was in the field paying Russian officials.

 

Verification of details is always helpful and we await that for major parts of it.

 

@ ASF...why did Hillary's camp deny involvement? 

[LD0506]

[DogofWar1]

52 minutes ago, twa said:

@ ASF...why did Hillary's camp deny involvement? 

I think I got this one.

 

I don't think they lied about it.

 

So here is MaggieNYT's tweet accusing them of lying: https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/922962880206647297

 

Leaving that as text not embedding it because we've all seen it by now and the whole point of this post is that that's not an accurate accusation by Maggie.

 

First the whole "year" thing isn't really accurate, seeing as we knew that funding came from a Jeb Bush supporter first, then from Dems, as early as January, with the DNC mentioned no later than May in BBC reporting, and tweets showing that have been posted by Visionary throughout the year.

 

But now we come to Marc Elias' supposed lie.

 

Vogel wrote a piece on it following up on WaPo's story.  Important quote from the story.

Quote

Earlier this year, Mr. Elias had denied that he had possessed the dossier before the election.

 

 

Denial of possession of the dossier.  Specific language really.  What was the question asked to Elias?  Was he asked about the dossier specifically, or about raw intel, or what?  The quote suggests that Elias denied possessing the dossier.

 

And that denial is very likely true.

 

Indeed, the article itself basically says as much:

 

Quote

Anita Dunn, a veteran Democratic operative working with Perkins Coie, said on Tuesday that Mr. Elias “was certainly familiar with some of, but not all, of the information” in the dossier. But, she said “he didn’t have and hadn’t seen the full document, nor was he involved in pitching it to reporters.” And Mr. Elias “was not at liberty to confirm Perkins Coie as the client at that point,” Ms. Dunn said.

 

 

Which leads to this fairly succinct explanation in a tweet from N.Bertrand.

 

 

So it's very likely that Elias didn't lie, rather he was either asked a question specifically about the dossier and attempts to disseminate to news outlets, which he could truthfully answer, OR he was asked about raw intel and disseminating to news reports, which he answered with a suspiciously-specific-denial (likely to protect his client's and/or contractor's interests) and then also the truth about not pitching to news outlets.

 

In either case, the notion he outright lied appears to be significantly overblown.

 

Now what about Clinton campaign and DNC denials?

 

Well those denials haven't been shown to be false yet either.  Fusion GPS has been described as a sub-contractor for Perkins Coie.

 

The relationship appears to be that Clinton+DNC paid Perkins Coie to handle opposition research, Perkins Coie and Elias hired Fusion GPS who then hired Steele, who sent raw intel reports (but not the full dossier) back to Perkins Coie.

 

The key gap here is whether Clinton+DNC knew that Fusion GPS had been hired as a "subcontractor" of sorts.  Camps have denied it and there doesn't appear to be hard confirmation that Clinton+DNC were ever told about Fusion GPS' hiring by Perkins Coie.  The money flowed down, sure, and raw intel flowed up to at least Perkins Coie, but so far that's all that has been confirmed.

 

 

So is it possible that people are still lying about involvement in paying and knowledge of Fusion GPS?  Potentially, but it hasn't been shown like Maggie seems to think.  The connection is money but there is an information buffer of Perkins Coie that has not yet been bridged, at least as far as I have seen from the articles and tweets on the subject.

[twa]

Spin or fact?

 

 

Quote

 

Here Are The 10 Most Important Reported Claims About The Steele Dossier On Russia

There's a lot of misinformation swirling about that shoddy dossier on Trump and Russia compiled by Christopher Steele. Here's what's actually been reported on the matter.

http://thefederalist.com/2017/10/25/top-10-things-to-know-about-dossier/?platform=hootsuite

 

 

[DogofWar1]

1 hour ago, twa said:

Spin or fact?

 

Are you talking about what I've posted or your own Federalist article.  Because I'm just going based on what was written in the various articles and then actually NOT making assumptions beyond reporting.  The Federalist piece, however, makes some assumptions and innuendo about the dossier it supposedly is trying report accurately on.

 

The most glaring somewhat faulty accusation is that it has been discredited, without providing examples of things it has gotten wrong.  I think payments create questions, but questions are all it can create without more.  Are we talking salary for talking, or merely expenses to talk like paying for a lunch somewhere?

[AsburySkinsFan]

4 hours ago, twa said:

 

@ ASF...why did Hillary's camp deny involvement? 

Dunno, why is the Republican who started it staying anonymous? 

 

The real question is, how much of the dossier is true? You in all of your truth crusading seem to be ignoring that discovery. 

[Llevron]

Most I have seen TWA talk about Russia in like 9 months lol. Funky coincidence. Suddenly its supper important. 

[visionary]

 

 

 

Edited October 26, 2017 by visionary

[twa]

38 minutes ago, AsburySkinsFan said:

Dunno, why is the Republican who started it staying anonymous? 

 

The real question is, how much of the dossier is true? You in all of your truth crusading seem to be ignoring that discovery. 

 

From what is reported NO republican STARTED the Steele dossier.

 

How much is true is a good question.....what does the FBI say?

 

 

25 minutes ago, Llevron said:

Most I have seen TWA talk about Russia in like 9 months lol. Funky coincidence. Suddenly its supper important. 

 

 

The Hillary link triggered me like throwing a MAGA hat at ASF   

[LadySkinsFan]

It's a start by Twitter. They need to get rid of the bots.

 

And ban all election advertising. 

 

Same with FB.

[RedskinsFan44]

1 hour ago, twa said:

 

From what is reported NO republican STARTED the Steele dossier.

 

How much is true is a good question.....what does the FBI say?

 

Seems like your splitting hairs to avoid the fact that opposition research is pretty standard both intra and inter-party. The thing that makes the Steele dossier exceptional is the types of malfeasance intimated.

"As David Corn, who first reported on the dossier, wrote for Mother Jones in October 2016, the project originally began as opposition research by a U.S. firm (later identified as Fusion GPS) financed by a Republican. Steele (then identified only as a “former Western intelligence officer”) took over the project after its financing switched to a Democrat. As he began to look closer at Trump’s businesses and connections to the Russian government, he said, he grew increasingly alarmed, which eventually led him to bring his findings to the F.B.I. Corn did not name either the Republican or Democratic client."

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/10/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-dossier
 

Edited October 26, 2017 by RedskinsFan44

[BRAVEONAWARPATH]

Just because....for 3rd time. Forgive me mods.I now it's long.

https://www.justsecurity.org/44697/steele-dossier-knowing/

 

Quote

 

A Second Look at the Steele Dossier—Knowing What We Know Now

 

Step Two: Assessing the Substantive Content

As outsiders without the investigative tools available to the FBI, we can only look at the information and determine if it makes sense given subsequent events and the revelation of additional information.  Mr. Steele did not have the benefit of knowing Mr. Trump would win the election or how events might play out.  In this regard, does any of the information we have learned since June 2016 assign greater or less credibility to the information?  Were the people mentioned in the report real?  Were their affiliations correct?  Did any of the activities reported happen as predicted?

 

To a large extent, yes.

 

The most obvious occurrence that could not have been known to Orbis in June 2016, but shines bright in retrospect is the fact that Russia undertook a coordinated and massive effort to disrupt the 2016 U.S. election to help Donald Trump, as the U.S. intelligence community itself later concluded.  Well before any public knowledge of these events, the Orbis report identified multiple elements of the Russian operation including a cyber campaign, leaked documents related to Hillary Clinton, and meetings with Paul Manafort and other Trump affiliates to discuss the receipt of stolen documents.  Mr. Steele could not have known that the Russians stole information on Hillary Clinton, or that they were considering means to weaponize them in the U.S. election, all of which turned out to be stunningly accurate.  The U.S. government only published its conclusions in January 2017, with an assessment of some elements in October 2016.  It was also apparently news to investigators when the New York Times in July 2017 published Don Jr’s emails arranging for the receipt of information held by the Russians about Hillary Clinton. How could Steele and Orbis know in June 2016 that the Russians were working actively to elect Donald Trump and damage Hillary Clinton? How could Steele and Orbis have known about the Russian overtures to the Trump Team involving derogatory information on Clinton?

 

We have also subsequently learned of Trump’s long-standing interest in, and experience with Russia and Russians.  A February 2017 New York Times articlereported that phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Trump’s campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian officials in the year before the election.  

 

The New York Times article was also corroborated by CNN and Reuters independent reports. And even Russian officials have acknowledged some of these and other repeated contacts. Although Trump has denied the connections, numerous credible reports suggest that both he and Manafort have long-standing relationships with Russians, and pro-Putin groups.  In August 2017, CNN reported on “intercepted communications that US intelligence agencies collected among suspected Russian operatives discussing their efforts to work with Manafort…to coordinate information that could damage Hillary Clinton’s election prospects” including “conversations with Manafort, encouraging help from the Russians.”

 

We learned that when Carter Page traveled to Moscow in July 2016, he met with close Putin ally and Chairman of the Russian state oil company, Igor Sechin.  A later Steele report also claimed that he met with Parliamentary Secretary Igor Divyekin while in Moscow.  Renowned investigative journalist Michael Isikoff reported in September 2016 that U.S. intelligence sources confirmed that Page met with both Sechin and Divyekin during his July trip to Russia. What’s more, the Justice Department obtained a wiretap in summer 2016 on Page after satisfying a court that there was sufficient evidence to show Page was operating as a Russian agent.

 

While the Orbis team had no way to know it, subsequent reports from U.S. officials confirmed that Washington-based diplomat Mikhail Kalugin was an undercover intelligence officer and was pulled out of the Embassy and sent home in summer 2016.

 

The Orbis documents refer repeatedly to Paul Manafort’s “off-the-books” payments from ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s pro-Russian party, and Russian concerns that it may be a vulnerability that could jeopardize the effort.  According to the Orbis report, the Russians were concerned about “further scandals involving Manafort’s commercial and political role in Russia/Ukraine.” And, indeed, there have been further scandals since the Orbis reports were written. Those include Manafort being compelled in June 2017 to register retroactively as a foreign agent of a pro-Russian political parties in Ukraine, and Mueller and New York Attorney Generals’ reported investigation of Manafort for possible money laundering and tax evasion linked to Ukrainian ventures.

 

We do not have any reporting that implicates Michael Cohen in meetings with Russians as outlined in the dossier.  However, recent revelations indicate his long-standing relationships with key Russian and Ukrainian interlocutors, and highlight his role in a previously hidden effort to build a Trump tower in Moscow. During the campaign, those efforts included email exchanges with Trump associate Felix Sater explicitly referring to getting Putin’s circle involved and helping Trump get elected.

 

Further, the Trump Administration’s effort lift sanctions on Russia immediately following the inauguration seems to mirror Orbis reporting related to Mr. Cohen’s promises to Russia, as reported in the Orbis documents.  A June 2017 Yahoo Newsarticle by Michael Isikoff described the Administration’s efforts to engage the State Department about lifting sanctions “almost as soon as they took office.”  Their efforts were halted by State Department officials and members of Congress.  Following the inauguration, Cohen was involved, again with Felix Sater, to engage in back-channel negotiations seeking a means to lift sanctions via a semi-developed Russian-Ukrainian plan (which also included the hand delivery of derogatory information on Ukrainian leaders) also fits with Orbis reporting related to Cohen.

 

The quid pro quo as alleged in the dossier was for the Trump team to “sideline” the Ukrainian issue in the campaign.  We learned subsequently the Trump platform committee changed only a single plank in the 60-page Republican platform prior to the Republican convention.  Of the hundreds of Republican positions and proposals, they altered only the single sentence that called for maintaining or increasing sanctions against Russia, increasing aid for Ukraine and “providing lethal defensive weapons” to the Ukrainian military.  The Trump team changed the wording to the more benign, “appropriate assistance.”

 

Consider, in addition, the Orbis report saying that Russia was utilizing hackers to influence voters and referring to payments to “hackers who had worked in Europe under Kremlin direction against the Clinton campaign.” A January 2017 Stanford study found that “fabricated stories favoring Donald Trump were shared a total of 30 million times, nearly quadruple the number of pro-Hillary Clinton shares leading up to the election.”  Also, in November, researchers at Oxford University published a report based on analysis of 19.4 million Twitter posts from early November prior to the election.  The report found that an “automated army of pro-Trump chatbots overwhelmed Clinton bots five to one in the days leading up to the presidential election.”  In March 2017, former FBI agent Clint Watts told Congress about websites involved in the Russian disinformation campaign “some of which mysteriously operate from Eastern Europe and are curiously led by pro-Russian editors of unknown financing.”

 

The Orbis report also refers specifically to the aim of the Russian influence campaign “to swing supporters of Bernie Sanders away from Hillary Clinton and across to Trump,” based on information given to Steele in early August 2016. It was not until March 2017, however, that former director of the National Security Agency, retired Gen. Keith Alexander in Senate testimony said of the Russian influence campaign, “what they were trying to do is to drive a wedge within the Democratic Party between the Clinton group and the Sanders group.” A March 2017 news report also detailed that Sanders supporter’s social media sites were infiltrated by fake news, originating from “dubious websites and posters linked back to Eastern Europe,” that tried to shift them against Clinton during the general election. John Mattes, a former Senate investigator who helped run the online campaign for Sanders, said he was struck by Steele’s report. Mattes said, Steele “was writing in real time about things I was seeing happening in August, but I couldn’t articulate until September.” It is important to emphasize here that Steele’s source for the change in plan was “an ethnic Russian associate of Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump [who] discussed the reaction inside his camp.”

 

A slew of other revelations has directly tied many of the key players in the Trump campaign – most notably Paul Manafort, Carter Page, Michael Cohen, and Michael Flynn – who are specifically mentioned in the Orbis reports to Russian officials also mentioned in the reports.  To take one example, the first report says that Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was responsible for Russia’s compromising materials on Hillary Clinton, and now we have reports that Michael Cohen had contacted Peskov directly in January 2016 seeking help with a Trump business deal in Moscow (after Cohen received the email from Trump business associate Felix Sater saying “Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it. I will get all of Putin’s team to buy in on this.”).  To take another example, the third Orbis report says that Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort was managing the connection with the Kremlin, and we now know that he was present at the June 9, 2016 meeting with Donald Trump, Jr., Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and Rinat Akhmetshin, who has reportedly boasted of his ties to ties and experience in Soviet intelligence and counterintelligence.  According to a recent New York Times story, “Akhmetshin told journalists that he was a longtime acquaintance of Paul J. Manafort.”