To quote the opening paragraph: US law bans foreign nationals from making certain expenditures or financial disbursements for the purpose of influencing federal elections. US law also bars agents of any foreign entity from engaging in political activities within the United States without first registering with the Attorney General. And US law requires certain foreign nationals seeking entry to the United States to obtain a visa by providing truthful and accurate information to the government.
Legally, Russians can have an opinion about American politics. But they can't pay for ads and rallies and other political oriented activity.
Obviously there's realpolitik regarding these type of laws, and obviously the US has been the most perfect actor in the past either. In the real world, everyone does a little propaganda, as you say. But in the real world as well, sometimes the propaganda is "pushed too far" for a government's liking. It is pretty clear that Russia's propaganda "pushed too far" for the US government's liking. So, the US government has responded.
All in a day of geopolitics, I suppose. But calling it "oh, Russians dare to have an opinion!" is glossing it over. Most countries don't like it when foreign nationals mess a bit with their political internals. It seems like some of the comments here are bordering on "how dare the US intelligence agencies have an opinion on the Russian interference!", which seems naive to me.
What's concerning is when the President of the United States himself seems to be speaking and acting out against his own government's counterintelligence investigations and in favor of his own country's geopolitical adversaries.
Reality: Don Trump Jr. met with Russian agents in Trump Tower to negotiate receiving hacking assistance.
A few days later, Trump Sr. delivered his famous "Russia if you're listening ... [deliver what was discussed in that meeting] ... you'll be rewarded" line.
Reality: Don Trump Jr. met with Russian agent, who inexplicably got entry visa she shouldn't be getting by direct involvement of Obama State Department, and who falsely promised to provide him some dirt on Clinton, in Trump Tower, and the agent in fact attempted to lobby him to remove Magnitsky Act sanctions. As soon as the ruse became apparent, Trump Jr. left.
FTFY.
The information that Veselnitskaya pretended to have is the same information Mueller is talking about now - about foreign financing of US electoral campaign, which everybody agrees now would be a crime, and certainly something one would want to hear about. But there was no information, it was a lie.
Note that by all reports DNC hacking happened as early as 2015. Podesta emails were hacked in March 2016. Trump Jr. met Veselnitskaya on June 9, 2016, when all the hacking was already done. Unless Russians also mastered time travel, they couldn't really negotiate anything, as everything has already happened.
> Russia if you're listening ... [deliver what was discussed in that meeting] ... you'll be rewarded" line.
Fascinating. The full line is:
'Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,' Trump said. 'I think you'll be rewarded mightily by our press!'
You dropped the "by our press" part, because it didn't fit your narrative, and hoped I wouldn't notice? Or you genuinely didn't know what the full quote was?
And of course 30000 emails are the ones Clinton unlawfully concealed and then deleted from her records, which were supposed to be preserved, not the ones that were stolen from DNC or Podesta - which by then weren't published yet and Trump had no idea about.
Not to mention this was obviously a sarcastic joke.
But if that is what your "collusion" is, this is what mightiest security apparatus on a planet is busying itself for two years now - I think Trump is criticizing them way, way to mildly to reveal all the depth of the idiocy of this.
On Jun 3, 2016, at 10:36 AM, Rob Goldstone wrote:
> Good morning
> Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting.
> The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.
> This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump - helped along by Aras and Emin.
> What do you think is the best way to handle this information and would you be able to speak to Emin about it directly?
> I can also send this info to your father via Rhona, but it is ultra sensitive so wanted to send to you first.
> Best
> Rob Goldstone
On Jun 3, 2016, at 10:53, Donald Trump Jr. wrote:
> Thanks Rob I appreciate that. I am on the road at the moment but perhaps I just speak to Emin first. Seems we have some time and if it's what you say I love it especially later in the summer. Could we do a call first thing next week when I am back?
> Best,
> Don
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/07/11/us/politics/d...
There are no "sources present in the meeting" who are not themselves the subject of the investigation. Their claims as to what transpired are simply not trustworthy.
*With the exception the NSA, which declined to say anything.
This topic is extensively discussed in other threads, but what it has to do with the meeting in question?
> There are no "sources present in the meeting" who are not themselves the subject of the investigation.
Depends on what you call "subject". If you mean that they spoke to that person, that probably is not true for all Russian participants and Goldstone. If you mean those who Muller team would like to talk to, that's probably all of them, which is not surprising - it's the best way to catch somebody on a lie or omission (which is a federal crime, for which they already indicted two people - instant win). If you mean those Muller would especially love to indict in something, that's probably true for Kushner, Manafort and Trump Jr. If you mean somebody Muller can actually get something on - that's only Manafort, and for things having nothing to do with Trump and that happened when Trump didn't even know Manafort existed.
But basically you are implying nothing people present at the meeting say about what happened there is to be believed. But we're still talking about it, so presumably we should believe people that actually hasn't been there to tell us what happened there, and disbelieve people that actually been there when they say that's not what happened. All this without any actual evidence. Doesn't seem like a good idea.
I am curious if you believe this is OK
> “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump”
Sounds like something one should report to law enforcement.
Please list some examples of other US politicians accepting election assistance from foreign governments.
Barack Obama: famously promised to Medvedev to be more flexible after the election, in exchange for Russian not pressing on the missile defense issue when it could hurt Obama's position.
Hillary Clinton: accepted money donations from foreign politicians with US interests many times. The fact that Clinton Foundation and Clinton Campaign were big buddies is an open secret by now. Though of course that happened not only connected to elections, so attributing it specifically to elections would probably be very limiting to the scope.
I would also bring Steele dossier here, but the involvement of specifically foreign government here is unproven - while I'd give more than even chance that many of the allegations there were created by Russian intelligence sources, it may also be a regular "our man in Havana" type affair, so it's not entirely sure.
But I don't see why it specifically must be the government. If it's OK to accept dirt on your opponent (let's limit ourselves to dirt that is true and exclude fraud for now), then why is it not OK to accept it from a foreigner? It doesn't become less true because foreigner touched it. And if it's ok to accept it from a random foreigner, why it's not OK to accept it from a foreigner which is paid by foreign government?
What seems to be less OK is to solicit it in an explicit quid-pro-quo arrangement, either monetary or otherwise. Of which, in Trump's case, there's no indication (though the first example is a classic specimen).
While the investigation is not complete, already one Trump campaign member has plead guilty with his specific statement of the offense attached to the plea being all about collusion with the Russians.
Collusion is no longer in dispute, only the details and extent.
Right, so I’m not sure why you’re suggesting we should just sit here and do nothing about it.
There has always been Russian espionage. Not only that - there has been Russian (or Soviet, same difference) agents in Manhattan project, high positions in State Department (see Alger Hiss) and so on. Recent kerfuffle has nothing on that. Russia sees itself as a geopolitical foe of the US, of course they are spying on the US. In fact, US spied on Germany, Britain and Israel (and Israel spied back on US as we know, others probably too but were not caught) - and those are close allies! Of course Russians would do the same. It's not something new that "have risen" recently.
> The article also says that Russian agents organized and funded political rallies.
So? US and US-related organizations funded and organized political and quasi-political activities in many countries. So do many other countries - EU finances a wide variety of NGOs that do all kinds of political campaigns, so does the US. All this fainting about "oh, Russians dare to have opinion about US politics and tell us about it using Facebook! Oh horrors! Our democracy is dead!" just sounds bizarre. Yeah, we live in a global world, Russians can have opinion about US politics, and Americans can have opinion about Russian politics, and both can publish real opinions or any crap they like on Facebook. Making a conspiracy of the century out of it is insane.