After the nearly 1,000 pages of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election came to an end, the committee’s Republicans and Democrats offered their views on the evidence surfaced in the years-long investigation.
“The American people also deserve better than a double standard in which information related to Russian interference in U.S. elections remains heavily redacted while information that might cast doubt on investigations into that interference is released wholesale.”
I can’t rightly say I am surprised by this, so I won’t.
There is no statute of limitations on treason or espionage. There is a 10 year statute of limitations on numerous crimes related to fraud. My expectation - really the only thing I truly, desperately want from the Biden administration - is that whomever Biden appoints as AG unleashes the hounds of hell against anyone and everyone who was involved in Trump and Putin defrauding the United States in the last election.
I also want Biden to sign an executive order stating that an increased state of hostility existed between the United States and Russia due to their attacks on us beginning in 2014. Even better would be an act of Congress stating the same. We need to give prosecutors and judges the legal cover to request, and to impose, the death penalty for those who have committed treason against the United States by colluding and cooperating with Russia’s attacks on US elections and other US interests.
So it looks like we’ll go right through to election night with the Repukes simply continuing to argue by assertion there was no collusion, no collusion when there clearly was and it’s documented by the facts in a bipartisan report. Disgusting.
I think this is reasonable to hope. Biden has said he won’t forgive and forget. And once Trump is out of power the stories about the corruption we don’t know about yet will start to come out and become a deluge. The pressure to investigate and prosecute will be irresistible.
IMO, the fact that they are continuing to hide Russia’s efforts in the 2020 election is FURTHER sign of collusion.
“Yes, the Campaign hired as Campaign Manager a man who had close connections to a Russian intelligence officer and he passed internal polling data to said officer, but we could not find definitive evidence that the Campaign was aware that the individual was doing so. In conclusion, there was no collusion.”
“We are forward looking, not backwards looking”, Barack Obama upon his election when asked if he would reviewed the lies, crimes and incompetence of the Bush administration including Bush’s stealing money for levies to protect New Orleans and the lying America into the Iraq War.
Hopefully on this Biden is different than Obama.
The people the GOP will convince were convinced.
IIRC the statute of limitation on fraud begins from “date of discovery” but IANAL.
Indeed. The act of hiding it is itself collusion with Russia.
“Except for an introductory paragraph — noting that ‘Russia is actively interfering again in the 2020 U.S. election to assist Donald Trump’ — it was redacted.”
The “Speech or Debate Clause” of the US Constitution (Article I, Section 6) guarantees that any Senator or Representative can un-redact anything – even classified national intelligence – without legal jeopardy.
Granted, McConnell could try to discipline Wyden under Senate Rules, but that could prove politically suicidal to him and the GOP majority.
(Alternatively, a House Democrat could spill the beans, without any fear of reprisal from Speaker Pelosi.)
I think we all should just take a deep breath and wait for Bill Barr’s summary.
GOP: Did Trump secretly meet a guy wearing a bearskin hat in Gorki Park? No. Were microfilms exchanged? No. Were the fingerprints of Mata Hari ever found on the steering wheel of a Volga? No. Ergo no collusion.
I am with Wyden.
Follow the money!
Follow. The. Money.
American businessman requests intake interview with FSB or GRU.
So a Russia-linked weirdo professor (Mifsud) tells a drunken Trump campaign advisor (Papadopolous) that the Russians have hacked emails that they’re going to release to help Trump/hurt Hillary.
The drunken Trump campaign advisor can’t remember whether he told anyone else in the campaign about the hacked emails, but he obviously did because there’s all kinds of chatter about them in the weeks and months that followed. It is publicly reported that the Russians hacked the emails of John Podesta and the DNC. Russia starts releasing the emails under the guise of Guccifer 2.0, and later starts to launder the documents through Wikileaks instead.
The candidate himself personally approved the Russian hacking and openly solicited further Russian hacking of his opponent, in public, promising Russia would be “richly rewarded.” Trump confidante Roger Stone starts reaching out to Wikileaks – a well-known purveyor of Russian propaganda materials and narratives – to coordinate the timing of their release. A witness eventually sees Trump talking on the phone with Stone, following which Trump announces that Wikileaks will be releasing more emails soon.
In the meantime, a washed up Republican political operative (Manafort) with decades of experience and operations in the former Soviet Union and oodles of ties to Russian intelligence agents, including one in his employ (Kilimnik) and another to whom he owes something like $10 million (Deripaska), mysteriously volunteers to go to work for the Trump campaign. For free. When the drunken combative “campaign manager” (Lewandowski) gets fired for one too many embarrassing spectacles, Manafort assumes the role of campaign manager, assisted by his equally Russian-compromised young partner (Gates). He promptly reaches out to his Russian intelligence agent employee to explore how he can monetize the situation.
Then the manager of the pop star son of a Russian oligarch with close ties to Putin reaches out to Don Jr., saying that a very high official in the Russian prosecutors’ office wants to meet as part of Russia’s efforts to support the Trump campaign. Jr. replies that he loves it, takes the meeting with Manafort in tow inside the offices of Trump Tower. But when the expected dirt is not immediately handed over on the spot, Jr. is too stupid to realize that the supposed high official (Veselnitskaya) is telling him about the kinds of things Russia wants to get out of the relationship. Throughout the summer, the campaign keeps making noises about wanting the hacked emails to be released.
Late in the afternoon of August 2, Manafort has a meeting with Trump and Giuliani. A few hours later, he and Gates meet with Kilimnick in a club inside the Kushner family’s deeply indebted property at 666 Fifth Avenue. At the meeting, Manafort gives Deripaska highly valuable internal polling data, discusses the Trump campaign’s strategy for winning the election, and identifies the states and people the campaign intends to target to pull it off. Deripaska promptly departs with the information in hand. Manafort is soon fired because of all his mobbed-up Russian/Ukrainian shit.
Then in early October, the Trump campaign gets an hour or so of advance notice that NBC is about to play the “grab 'em by the pussy” Access Hollywood tape. Stone and Trump have a phone call, and Stone goes to work convincing Wikileaks to put out the rest of the emails right away as a distraction from the pussy tape. It works, as Wikileaks dumps the documents into public approximately 30 minutes after the tape is aired.
Sure seems to me like a lot of collusion there. Not to mention criminal conspiracy.
I do think he told others, but it’s also possible that the “weirdo Russian” told other people, as well. If so, it might imply that they actually wanted people across the campaign to know and talk about it.
Wyden also criticized the committee’s failure to investigate Trump’s financial interests as they related to counterintelligence.
“In short, the Committee did not follow the money,” he wrote.
But the money most assuredly did follow certain members of the committee.
