[paraclete]

The most amazing response by Mueller occurred when he was asked about Christopher Steele reporting to the FBI that senior Russian officials told him that there was extensive evidence of conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. He replied that it was beyond his purview. That's just astonishing to me. You would have thought they would have jumped all over that, but instead they completely ignored it.

"Russian officials told him". It is good he didn't join in their disinformation campaign. How Putin would have reveled to bring down a US President even one as friendly as Trump. I wonder why GHB didn't include Russia in his axis of evil afterall each was a Russian client state, but then George wasn't the brightest kid on the block , he relied too much on intelligence, what an oxymorn that was

[jlisenbe]

It is good he didn't join in their disinformation campaign.

How do you know that's true?

[paraclete]

How do you know that's true?

he obviously kept his nose out of it, knowing he couldn't indict a sitting president

[jlisenbe]

OK. You are talking about Mueller. I thought you were referring to Steele. But if there was a disinformation campaign, shouldn't that have been part of his investigation which was, after all, supposed to be about Russian interference in our election?

[talaniman]

The most amazing response by Mueller occurred when he was asked about Christopher Steele reporting to the FBI that senior Russian officials told him that there was extensive evidence of conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. He replied that it was beyond his purview. That's just astonishing to me. You would have thought they would have jumped all over that, but instead they completely ignored it.

You were so astonished that you missed that Steele/FISA warrants were part of another investigation by someone else? What else did you miss?

[jlisenbe]

You were so astonished that you missed that Steele/FISA warrants were part of another investigation by someone else? What else did you miss?

I noticed the guy who was charged with investigating Russian interference in our 2016 election deciding NOT to investigate an absolutely jaw-dropping allegation of Russian interfering in the 2016 election. I don't believe it was being investigated by anyone else when Mueller received his commission.

But I commend you for your persistence in making excuses for the anti-Trump crowd. Just another example of Trump Derangement Syndrome.

[tomder55]

The real investigative work is underway by AG Barr,Dunham and his team. Inspector

Clouseau proved to be as incompetent as I expected . It became clear that this was not the Mueller Report . It was the Andrew Weissman dossier and Weissman was brought on to the team to cover up Any so called limitations to Mueller's "perview" was self imposed ,or imposed on him by the ring leaders of the cover up. He had no problem going back years before his appointment to take down Manafort . Almost none of the charges against Manafort or Gates related to so called Russian interference or collusion. So let's put this lame excuse of beyond his perview to rest for good.

How in hell could he investigate it if he did not get into the origins of the charges ? The Steele dossier Christopher Steele ,Glenn Simpson ,Fusion GPS ,their paymasters at the Evita campaign and the DNC ,and the involvement of persons like Alexander Downer ,and

Joseph Mifsud were all central at the outset of the FBI probe/spying on the Trump campaign .Why was he even grilling

George Papadopoulos if not for investigating the origins ?
BTW ,if you think Mueller's lame feeble perfomance in testimony was some age related issue ;I refer you to his stonewalling in front of the same congressional committees when the FBI covered up the emperor's abuses related to the IRS scandal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5x6P...lgW3NuzkKLkPCY

[talaniman]

Nice try Tomder, conflating a bunch of stuff together to make the narrative that Mueller found NOTHING! He wasn't there for style points, and clearly refuted the big lie of the dufus being exonerated of collusion and obstruction, and confirmed the main issue of the RUSSIANS interfered and the Dufus welcomed it.

I get you have questions about other things, clearly still under scrutiny in other quarters, and the dominant party and sycophant Barr can check it out, but on this REPORT the conclusions are clear and verified by even the Dufus intel community. Moron Moscow Mitch is blocking any efforts to deal with THAT issue.

[tomder55]

exoneration happens when a conviction is reversed and is not in the "purview" of a prosecutor .Mueller's use of the term was just more nonsense. Either he found evidence that warrants an indictment or he didn't .And he said a number of times he didn't . Whether there was Russian "interference " or not is all well and good . What Mueller did not establish was that Trump conspired with the Russians in their efforts .

How could any of that be established when Mueller all but denied in testimony of ever hearing of Glenn Simpson ? He did not know that Simpson met with

Natalia Veselnitskaya immediately before and immediately after the Trump Tower meeting , Did he interview Julian Assange to find out if WikiLeaks really got the "hacked" DNC emails from the Russians ? NO.
Part one of his report was vague on how Wiki got them . Assange denies his source was Russian .Further he said he'd welcome being interviewed about he obtained the DNC material . Did Mueller or the FBI take possession of the DNC server ? or did the FBI allow the DNC to use their own people at

CrowdStrike, to clean up the server even though it was allegedly evidence in a criminal case ? When evidence from the DNC server was submitted to the FBI it was heavily redacted so we really do not know and there is no proof given that the GRU through Guccifer 2 was the hacker .The report's language was that (GRU)Unit 26165 officers appear to have stolen thousands of emails and attachments

He allowed CrowdStrike and the Democratic Party’s legal counsel to decide what investigators could and could not see ;surrendering the ability to independently vet their claims. The government also took CrowdStrike's word that "no redacted information concerned the attribution of the attack to Russian actors."

Mueller does not even present sufficient evidence that the Russian government was behind it . He says the social media campaign waged by Russian was done by an alleged private entity called Internet Research Agency (IRA).Mueller never established the link between IRA and the Russian government.

So you will excuse me if I find the claim of Russian interference and Trump conspiring with them less than established .

[talaniman]

Didn't bother to read the report, nor listen to the testimony. If you did you would not be making the lack of evidence against the dufus for conpiracy a talking point, nor the lack of evidence against the Russians some incompetence against the report. There is a whole detailed section of the Russian interference, and most of those things were turned over to the FBI and since you cannot indict a sitting president the Mueller Team chose not to pursue what evidence they did have on that subject. Administration obstruction, destroying evidence and non response was cited in the report, as well as testimony. I think you have gotten to the point of allegations without factual background that is readily available to the public, so no excuse for such a diatribe, but none of us is privvy to the redacted portions of the report, or the details of the other investigations in progress which is at least 9 by my count, and 14 as reported by some.

Just want to bring up the FBI release that just came out citing the role of Russia in hacking all 50 states election data, and still you don't even acknowledge Moscow Mitch obstructing even Bi partisan measure nor connect the dots or raise a peep to the money trail that leads to his back pocket from previously sanctioned Russian oligarchs and companies. Naw the right and repubs ain't got a peep to say about any of those things. Wonder why?

[jlisenbe]

Bi partisan measure

I must be missing something here. It got one republican vote in the House. In what way was it bi-partisan?

There are some measures being considered in the Senate that are bi-partisan. Maybe that was your reference?

[talaniman]

All these different threads. Sometimes I forget which one I'm on.

So why is Moscow Mitch stopping legislature to protect us in this cyberwar against countries interfering in our election?

https://www.salon.com/2019/07/26/msn...ussia_partner/

[tomder55]

You can attribute too old age and feebleness that Robert Mueller didn't know there is no such thing as "exoneration" in our justice system and our laws and that no prosecutor has ever "exonerated" anyone. But even scarier, the House Judiciary Chairman didn't know that?

[talaniman]

Well the dufus and Barr sure took it and ran with it for weeks before we got the lowdown it was a LIE! If there is no such thing, then can we assume that the dufus is GUILTY of obstruction and the conspiracy allegation needs a deeper look? Why Not? Maybe review my posting on the subject and my opinion that there is plenty of stuff we could charge the dufus with before he leaves office as I don't buy the DOJ policy that a sitting Prez can't be indicted.

[jlisenbe]

can we assume that the dufus is GUILTY of obstruction

In our country, no, you cannot assume that.

[talaniman]

Sure you can but not in a court of law and we are not and there is enough evidence to say dude dufus is dirty!

[tomder55]

The Dem bill is political theater . Notice how the Dems made this an issue right before the Mueller testimony where the only coherent thing he said was that there continues to be an election threat . Show me one voting machine that was compromised in 2012 . For all the bluster ;you can't find one . Money was already allocated from previous spending bills for election infrastructure support and many states have yet to implement the provisions of that bill .
https://www.wsj.com/articles/states-...article_inline

The truth is that their bill has nothing to do with election security .It is the opposite . It is actually a bid to seize control of local elections, prohibit measures that prevent voter fraud, and compel the use of ballot handling procedures that are easily manipulated.

Under the provisions of H.R. 1, all jurisdictions are required to use no-fault absentee ballots, which can be conveniently filled out and submitted from home. They have given rise to a practice called ballot harvesting, in which activists track down voters, "help" them fill out their ballots, and then offer to submit them.How can the nationwide imposition of no-fault absentee ballots possibly be construed as an election security measure to counter Russian meddling ?

How does a law that prevents states from implementing voter id laws have anything to do with securing the ballot from Russian meddling ? If anything it removes a protection . It makes the ballot less secure .

Compelling states to accept votes from convicted and even currently imprisoned felons does nothing to prevent Russian interference.

And I have not even scratched the surface about all the provisions in the bill intended to nationalize our election system replacing it with a Democrat wish list . Just look at all the sub-titles of the bill to see how comprehensive a change this bill would be to our electoral system .

https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-...ill/1/all-info

They can fool you into thinking this is about Russian meddling .But it doesn't fool me .

[talaniman]

https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-...ummary-content

So which of these provisions did you abject to along with repubs and why? Here is the blocked Senate bill.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-...bill/1540/text

I know, a lot of reading between innings!

[tomder55]

I don't buy the DOJ policy that a sitting Prez can't be indicted.

neither do I . I find the legalities of the decision dubious.

I do not believe the Framers intended to insulate a sitting president from indictment.

It has been in place for a long time ;long before Trump. .

However while Mueller says that it would have been unfairly prejudicial to Trump to recommend charges when the president would not have been able to defend himself ;he somehow thinks it was perfectly fair to Trump for Mueller to publish his evidence in a document written for exploitation by congressional Democrats and the media.

[tomder55]

You were so astonished that you missed that Steele/FISA warrants were part of another investigation by someone else? What else did you miss?

Clearly us missed that the Mueller investigation predates the Barr investigation into the origins . He is outright lying when he says it was not in his purview. He was clearly given the mandate in the appointment letter by Rosenstein.