Even when the minimal executive action of firing those involved is taken (for example, firing Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Clinesmith) the media will attack the enforcers and give comfort to the perpetrators. It’s clown world.
"And in fact when I decided to just do it I said to myself, I said, “You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should’ve won.”"
And if you want to read about how the investigation was properly predicated, here's the IG report: https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2019/o20012.pdf
The existence and thoroughness of this report begs the question as to why the Durham investigation was ever needed in the first place.
These are not "hoaxes", but facts discovered through investigation and detailed extensively in at least 9 reports. In total, they show the Russians hacked the Democrats to help the Trump campaign, the Trump campaign welcomed the help, the campaign publicly asked Russia for the help, and when the help came from Russia, the campaign used the help to their advantage, and they hoped for more. Then when the investigation into said help happened, they obstructed it, tried to shut it down, and called it a "hoax", which you repeat here. Everything I've said is supported by hundreds of pages of reports: The Mueller report, the Senate Intel Committee report on the 2016 election, the IG report, and yes even the Durham report corroborates what I'm saying.
Taken in total, it's impossible to conclude these reports support the theory that Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, and the Trump campaign's welcoming and support of that interference was a hoax.
> Comey brought incredible disgrace to the FBI thru his actions and leadership during the “investigation”.
No argument there.
You’re like Steele still claiming the dossier wasn’t just absolute fictional trash.
The extent to which the country was tore apart by 3 years of witch-hunting “investigation” and the way the FBI willfully lied and buried the truth due to their blind hatred of Trump is the only thing criminal that happened.
Steele didn’t have 4 government investigations to back his dossier, the main point of which was proven by the Mueller report volume 1.
> the way the FBI willfully lied and buried the truth due to their blind hatred of Trump is the only thing criminal that happened.
This assertion is at odds with the IG report, in which Horowitz finds no political bias on the part of the FBI that would have impacted their investigation.
I’m sorry, but again, I have reports from Mueller, Horowitz, Rubio, and Durham to back my position. I will weight their reports and evidence against the evidence and reports you’ve provided and come to a decision accordingly based on the facts.
They applied the full force and technology of the United States spying apparatus and all the Mueller report proved was that they found nothing.
Brennan briefed Obama and Biden on the Clinton campaign’s dirty plan right from the start, and they ran with it. They knew it was a Clinton plan and had no evidence to back it up, and lied to Congress, and lied to the American people about it.
Those are the established facts, but there will always be people like the Peter Strzoks who will never admit how wrong they were, or how much harm they did.
Then they followed it up in 2020 with 51 intelligence officer / signatories lying to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop. They’re not done lying and cheating, and the FISA abuses we know about are just the tip of the iceberg.
As far as the the investigation goes, the Steele Dossier doesn't factor into it because it wasn't the predicate of the investigation. IG Horowitz found no problem with the way the investigation began. The Steele Dossier is a distraction, and the IG report is the final word on it. That you disagree is immaterial to the results of the IG investigation.
> Brennan briefed Obama and Biden on the Clinton campaign’s dirty plan right from the start, and they ran with it.
Again, the IG and Durham looked into the role Obama played, and found nothing worth pursuing. They certainly didn't find what was alleged by Trump, which was that Obama White House spied on the Trump campaign. Your talking points are out of date and out of line with the results of concluded investigations.
> Those are the established facts, but there will always be people like the Peter Strzoks who will never admit how wrong they were, or how much harm they did.
We don't need to listen to Strzok or Page or anyone else, because the IG report says that there was no political bias in the predication of the or in the course of the investigation. Since you seem to be reluctant to read the report I linked, here's the relevant part of the executive summary:
As part of our review, we also sought to determine whether there was evidence that political bias or other improper considerations affected decision making in Crossfire Hurricane, including the decision to open the investigation. We discussed the issue of political bias in a prior OIG report, Review of Various Actions in Advance of the 2016 Election, where we described text and instant messages between then Special Counsel to the Deputy Director Lisa Page and then Section Chief Peter Strzok, among others, that included statements of hostility toward then candidate Trump and statements of support for then candidate Hillary Clinton. In this review, we found that, while Lisa Page attended some of the discussions regarding the opening of the investigations, she did not play a role in the decision to open Crossfire Hurricane or the four individual cases. We further found that while Strzok was directly involved in the decisions to open Crossfire Hurricane and the four individual cases, he was not the sole, or even the highest-level, decision maker as to any of those matters. As noted above, then CD AD Priestap, Strzok's supervisor, was the official who ultimately made the decision to open the investigation, and evidence reflected that this decision by Priestap was reached by consensus after multiple days of discussions and meetings that included Strzok and other leadership in CD, the FBI Deputy Director, the FBI General Counsel, and a FBI Deputy General Counsel. We concluded that Priestap's exercise of discretion in opening the investigation was in compliance with Department and FBI policies, and we did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced his decision. We similarly found that, while the formal documentation opening each of the four individual investigations was approved by Strzok (as required by the DIOG), the decisions to do so were reached by a consensus among the Crossfire Hurricane agents and analysts who identified individuals associated with the Trump campaign who had recently traveled to Russia or had other alleged ties to Russia. Priestap was involved in these decisions. We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the decisions to open the four individual investigations.
> Then they followed it up in 2020 with 51 intelligence officer / signatories lying to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop. They’re not done lying and cheating, and the FISA abuses we know about are just the tip of the iceberg.
This is a deflection. Please read the reports if you want to learn something. Your information is out of date and inaccurate.
My own thinking is that when you exempt yourself from constitutional constraints, as Trump did in lying about the election and inciting a riot, it's game on. I'd be curious to hear a counter-rationale other than the obvious (and equally true) "B...b...but FISA is just as unconstitutional" or the equally-true "But Trump hadn't yet done that at the time the FBI investigated his campaign." His relationship with Paul Manafort alone was arguably sufficient to put the "By any means necessary" school of thought into action. If Trump didn't wish to be treated like a caotive Russian asset, he might have tried not acting exactly like one.
At this point, I agree with those who suggest that America cannot survive a competent Trump. So given the hypothetical future appearance on the campaign trail of a similar character with all of his faculties intact, I may have to revisit the question.
When confronted with the NYT ad, reactions from over 30% of the electorate fall into one of four categories: "Wait, what? I never heard of that. Must not be a big deal," "Fake news, the ad never actually accused anyone by name," "Meh, he didn't really mean it," and "Hell yeah, fry 'em all and let God sort 'em out."
So it's not clear that anyone else's warnings could have made a difference. It was up to the Deep State to stop him. They failed. Not much of a Deep State, I guess.
- people who had spent a lot of time in authoritarian dictatorships and recognized his personality in the dictators of those countries.
- people who are familiar with history, and saw that he mirrored the personalities of historical dictators.
- people who are familiar with cluster B personality disorders, who correctly recognized his narcissistic psychopathy.
- people who were close to him, like his family, who warned us about how he treats people close to him.
- people who went into business with him, who were unilaterally screwed over by his business practices.
- Hillary Clinton.
Listening to any of these people, or even better, all of these people, would have saved us from this whole mess.
Notably, all of these people are saying the same things today, and he's still the front runner of the Republican party. So really, the problem isn't Trump anymore, it's that a lot of people actually want a dictatorship, because they perceive they can use it to their political advantage. That's where we are now. There are no more excuses about who the man is. Trump wants to be a dictator, and Republicans like that idea. There's no more assumed good faith to be had here.
Exactly, that's my point. It has been clear for a long time who Trump is and what he stands for. Long before he ever ran for office. A great many people are either fine with his positions, indifferent to them, or vote without bothering to inform themselves about the candidate they're voting for.
Once that cohort grows to dominate the electorate, there's nothing (legal) that anyone else can do. Hence the "fair means or foul" part of the question. But it may not matter: he can't be stopped by fair means if he actually does represent the values of the electorate, and if he is stopped by foul means, his supporters will pick someone even worse.
Let me say that again: If a democrat you like says somebody is Hitler, then all is fair to stop him.
Brilliant! I hope you're getting paid for this.
And yeah, Hitlers are not hard to identify. They are psychopaths who find their way into positions of leadership. Like Trump. There’s nothing special or unique about Hitler —- he wasn’t the first and he won’t be the last. But we don’t need Democrats to identify them.
you may find such things as "The Russian govemment directed extensive activity, beginning in at least 2014 and carrying into at least 2017, against U.S. election infrastructure' at the state and local level." and "The Committee found that the Russian government engaged in an aggressive, multi-faceted effort to influence, or attempt to influence, the outcome of the 2016 presidential election."
[1] https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...
[5] https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...
Those on the list 'signed up', so it can be expected they knew what they were in for. They also have more power in society then the rest of us and should be held accountable.
Plenty of wealthy people (and not wealthy) commit crimes for no other reason than greed - a lust for money, or power and no concern about hurting others to get it. There is no "structural reason" that drives them to commit crime.
OP lives in an idealist world where humans are intrinsically good and never made choices that hurt other people or society, if they do, it's because they were "forced into it".
Clearly that's not based on reality.
How did New York deal with crime in the late 90s? Not by ignoring it.
Do you think the problem is too much transparency? To use your example of the NYPD in the 90's (though I think you've probably got the wrong part of the decade if you're looking for the high water mark of crime), was it notably less corrupt than it is today, or was it just more opaque?
But how did the NYPD deal with crime in the 90's? Wasn't it by the kinds of privacy abuses called out in this report? By shaking down suspected criminals through stop and frisk?
Violent crime in NYC dropped precipitously with the “Broken Windows” style of law enforcement during Giuliani’s terms as mayor (1994-2002). The advertised theory was to enforce even small crimes like property owners leaving broken windows unrepaired. Hypothetically, the expectation that laws are being enforced makes people more likely to obey laws at all levels. (jokingly: or maybe people were so busy coming into compliance that they ran out of time for murder.)
There’s obviously debate, criticism, etc., regarding the cause but the theory has been applied to programming among other places with some success.
Actually, pretty much yes, or at least, that would have been a better strategy than some Giuliani BS.
Crime declined nation wide, and it had nothing to do with any local policies. My favorite theory is that leaded gasoline was causing crime spikes. But there are competing theories, and I think people have concluded that it isn't a single factor.
One coworker was mugged and beaten. Walked up to cops. They told him if he wasn’t gone in 30 seconds they’d take him in on a PI.
Crime doesn’t exist if it’s unreportable.
On the upper end, if you have no priors and your career and family will be blown up because you want to do a political favor for someone that results in destroying the public trust, it probably does matter.
Given how frequently this happens I wouldn’t be so sure. You also have to care about destroying the public trust and this is literally a thread about yet another instance of the FBI destroying public trust. Also, you don’t have to have a corrupt intent to take actions that destroy public trust.
Incarcerations isn't the only form of punishment.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Here is the list for 2021 from Wikipedia. There are only two "first-world" countries there.
At least 18 countries performed executions in 2021:[13][36][37]
Americas (1 country): United States (11)
Asia-Pacific (5 countries): Bangladesh (5), China (unknown), Japan (3), North Korea (unknown), Vietnam (unknown)
Europe (1 country): Belarus (1+)
Middle East and North Africa (8 countries): Egypt (83+), Iran (314+), Iraq (17+), Oman (unknown), Saudi Arabia (65), Syria (24+), UAE (1+), Yemen (14+)
Sub-Saharan Africa (3 countries): Botswana (3), Somalia (21+), South Sudan (9+)In decades of considering State privacy abuses and their roots, I haven't come across an analysis that so succinctly encapsulates the whole of causes+outcomes as this one. It is one of the most Modern America things I have ever read.
A lot of people think the other way around, where it's unfathomable that anyone would commit a crime of their own volition were it not for the weight of an unjust world upon them.
One way to do that is to make it clear that committing a crime is very likely going to result in punishment, which is what the US does.
I'd argue that some people have incentives to ignore the systematic reasons behind crime. Slave labor in the US is partly dependent on prisoners. Crime keeps people fearful and distrustful of each other. Crime is used to justify increased control and monitoring of the public and the abuse of prisoners. Crime enables a huge underclass of Americans who pay taxes but aren't allowed to vote. Sadistic cowards keep politicians elected who are "tough" on criminals and they vote against things we know would actually reduce crime whenever those solutions aren't also needlessly cruel.
The law equally applies to everyone, no matter the reason for it.
For this statement to hold, it requires the most absurd definition of "punitive" imaginable.
There are countries where talking negatively about the wrong people is grounds for execution.
There are countries where theft is punished by amputation of a limb.
There are countries where not flushing a public toilet that you used, is a punishable offense.
All of these countries are much more punitive, and almost all of them have much less crime than the United States.
The four countries with a higher per capita population are: El Salvador, Rwanda, Turkmenistan, and Cuba. (Omitting American Samoa, because that's a US territory).
None of those are major countries, so the statement "The US is the most punitive major country in the world" absolutely holds water.
If you want an idea of how crazy high incarceration rates are in the states, just compare the prison population per 100,000 inhabitants with its neighbors:
Canada - 85
Mexico - 174
USA - 505
China's prison population is lower, but they have "administrative detention" which isn't included.
How to lie with statistics.
This is the same for many other countries but not the case for the US. Also your first two examples applies to really small list of countries (Iran and S.A.) and their current governments are the disgrace of the world and are not really an example to take (like going too extreme and something the US shouldn't "I guess" be compared too).
Vote for a candidate who's running on a platform of holding the spy agencies accountable to the people, like Robert Kennedy Jr. Then watch as he suddenly gets shot like his father and uncle, who also ran on platforms of holding the CIA accountable.
While on the one hand, it’s amazing to see RFK speak so boldly, on the other hand, should he be elected, I would fully expect some significant event to derail his administration. While getting shot seems too brazen, it definitely sends a message to any future hopefuls that such behavior is still not tolerated.
Ima stop you right there. The only thing you need to give weight here are the indictments that were brought as a result of the investigation, because that's what was promised. I've read the report from front to back, and it's filled with BS, omissions, and it even attempts to relitigate cases Durham lost in court on the merits. It's a pathetic way for a prosecutor to capstone his career.
Read the Mueller report and the Durham report side by side. They are night and day in terms of quality of evidence, completeness, and clarity of reasoning. In fact, doing so reveals just how the Durham "investigation" was really an exercise in motivated reasoning, whereas the Mueller investigation was a serious, sober investigation of where the facts pointed.
> None of those five convictions "involved a conspiracy between the campaign and Russians"[162] and "Mueller did not charge or suggest charges for [...] whether the Trump campaign worked with the Russians to influence the election".[163]
The investigation led to other crimes, like being pulled over for a broken taillight and then getting busted for possession.
It's really not, because the investigation was still properly predicated. Durham finds this and the IG finds this. It doesn't matter what the Clinton campaign did or didn't do, because the investigation wasn't based on their actions. That it was is the lie of the predication of the Durham investigation, and that he didn't find it and prosecute it is his "failure" in the eyes of right wing media. Why was Durham needed when we have an IG?
> None of those five convictions "involved a conspiracy between the campaign and Russians"[162]
Note that "conspiracy" was never seriously alleged by detractors (collusion was the accusation), and to the extend it was, it was never allowed to be investigated (by Rosenstein and then Barr, both appointed by Trump). They very carefully boxed Mueller into investigating a conspiracy without being able to prove it (by investigating finances, which were considered a "red line" and off limits for investigation).
Second, you omit the fact that the Mueller report notes that it faced lies to investigators, witness tampering, destruction of evidence, and obstruction of justice at the hands of POTUS. Their main catch, Trump's campaign manager Paul Manafort, was in the process of being flipped when Trump dangled and ultimately granted a pardon, in a blatant act of obstruction of justice and witness tampering.
It was later found by the Republican-chaired Senate Intel Committee that Paul Manafort was literally exchanging internal campaign data with a Russian intelligence officer during the 2016 campaign, as the Russians were in the process of targeting Americans through Facebook psyops (which the Mueller report proved). So there's your collusion.
There's also the matter of how the report was released, causing a federal judge to call into question the truthfulness of the AG Barr (calling his handling of the report and redactions issued "misleading"). Barr notably shut down the investigation as soon as he was confirmed by the Senate. Many people's opinion of the investigation was set due to those lies and omissions, maybe your own.
SC Mueller was appointed due to the fact that the AG Sessions was compromised (having lied to the Senate about his Russia contacts as part of the Trump campaign), and Trump was obstructing justice into the already ongoing investigation (by firing the head of the FBI, and citing the fact he was under investigation as the reason for doing so). So really, the biggest problem with the Mueller investigation was that it was investigating a person who ultimately had control over the investigation, who was also the only person who the investigation couldn't hold accountable (due to DOJ policy of not indicting a sitting POTUS).
His organization misrepresented the findings of a Lancet study to claim that vaccine-derived COVID-19 immunity “becomes negative”. [0]
His organization has circulated false claims about tetanus vaccines being part of a conspiracy to render women infertile. [1]
His organization spread debunked claims about MMR vaccines and autism in the black community as part of an effort to discourage COVID-19 vaccine use in the black community. [2]
His organization misrepresented a government study to spread the false claims that the flu vaccine made COVID-19 infection more likely, as propaganda against the flu vaccine. [3]
[0] https://www.factcheck.org/2023/03/scicheck-posts-make-false-...
[1] https://www.factcheck.org/2022/07/video-revives-old-debunked...
[2] https://www.factcheck.org/2021/03/scicheck-rfk-jr-video-push...
[3] https://www.factcheck.org/2020/04/no-evidence-that-flu-shot-...
[0]: https://apnews.com/article/robert-kennedy-jr-presidential-ca...
Vaccines aren’t things to be “believed” in like unicorns. They are medical treatments with risk profiles and side effects and billions of dollars of profits on the line. Some of them are pretty great overall!
He isn't anti-vaccine. He has a problem with a specific vaccine and how it was rolled out (sometimes with limited but relevant force).
I would call that view the only reasonable view. The sheer number of people who will now forever be vaccine sceptics that would never have been before is proof of that. The Pfizer vaccine was presented as being ~95% effective. I am the only person I know personally that has not had COVID. My 100 or so acquaintances are all vaccinated with an extra dose of natural immunity. No wonder people are sceptical, even an idiot can see that it wasn't doing much of anything to stop you from getting covid.
Did it decrease severity? Hard to tell given that almost everyone was vaccinated in my area.
I normally don't comment on vaccines since it is so toxic, hearing the solution from his mouth that made sense however has made it a priority, even as a Canadian.
Which one specific vaccine would that be?
The way things were handled created -many- new vaccine sceptics and that will have a lasting impact for many years to come.
When you tell people their concerns of a specific vaccine are invalid and then claim they are anti-vaccine, you are lying. Why would anyone paying attention then trust you?
Also, some high ranking politicians are on record stating they wouldn't take a vaccine if it was created while Trump was president. Nobody ia dismissing their entire campaign based on these statements.
Thanks for picking one point of my long post and ignoring the other points btw.
Because its not true.
Pretty much everything he’s ever said about any vaccine, but in another branch of this thread I’ve done a short list of some of his more recent lies about COVID-19 vaccines, MMR vaccines, tetanus vaccines, and flu vaccines. (Perhaps the star of that list being the lie about MMR vaccines used to discourage black people from taking COVID-19 vaccines.)
Which all also underlines that the claim that he is against “a specific vaccine” is…not accurate.
You can't change it, but you can learn about it.
Is the FBI a necessary evil or merely a force for corruption?
I haven’t seen a good argument they’re necessary — and they’ve been involved in illicit political corruption since their founding, less than a century ago.
FISA court investigated the FBI...
Did you miss that point or did you purposely want to make a non-constructive comment.
I went to jail for a crime I wasn't guilty of simply because some rogue police decided to commit a raft of felonies to try and gather evidence against me. When I put that to the judge he told me that "the police are allowed to commit crimes to gather evidence."
I tried going to the prosecutor with it and they will just laugh you out of the building. It's not a crime if you can't get the prosecutor to prosecute it. And the prosecutor's office almost never brings criminal cases to court on their own, they rely on the police for 99% of their work. If they went around prosecuting the police they wouldn't get any more cases and they would put themselves out of business.
People get off on murder charges because of this, like that lady that killed her infant but the cop searched her trunk without a warrant or probable cause. She obviously killed it, but the only evidence was inadmissible, so she walked.
Evidence gathered in violation of a constitutional law is often inadmissible.
But if you look at situations in which police gathered evidence in violation of a statute (e.g. committed a felony that wasn't additionally a constitutional violation), then I could count on one hand the number of times evidence has been excluded in courts across the USA in the last 100 years.
source: I play a lawyer on TV. (not really)
The prosecutor works for the government. No business involved. They will be just fine if there are no cases.
No crime, no need to pay for a prosecutors office (or a lot of cops).
A variant of ‘use it or lose it’, which is the standard in gov’t and large Corp budgeting.
https://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=633
Another fun one is that if you join their conspiracy, they can charge you for crimes they committed as part of that conspiracy.
Here's a single page post format copy:
https://thecriminallawyer.tumblr.com/post/19810672629/12-i-w...
So to see friends and coworkers punished for it makes them bitter. They double down in their resolve. Instead of changing behavior, they double down and promise themselves to be more careful to avoid punishment.
Additionally, at some point in this cycle, they decide that those in charge, the ones punishing them, are more akin to impostors who have infiltrated government and are twisting it into something it shouldn't be. They begin their own loosely-organized "resistance", and seek to undermine the very checks and balances that miraculously allowed a few FBI agents to be punished for transgressions.
In their own heads, you see, they're the heroes.
Reform is impossible, once the organization has grown large enough to develop its own anti-reform "immune system". Which, I suspect, is almost a 100 years old at this point.
> how can they prevent tax dollars from funding ongoing criminal activity?
Don't pay your taxes. If your landlord were using your rent money to murder undocumented immigrant children, would you ask "but how can I make sure he just buys his groceries with that rent money"?
Hell no. You just stop giving him the money. Or maybe you just keep handing it over and whining "there's nothing I can do". I dunno.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/10/john-durhams-igor-da...
Because the agencies that enforce them... Don't enforce them.
The government ran an investigation into government corruption and found itself free of corruption.
Police lie to everyone. It's legal and there are no real consequences for it due to all the immunity they enjoy. People should realize the FBI are not the version you see in Hollywood. They are just police with more power, less oversight, and their image and stature mean lies they tell are much more likely to be believed and that much more difficult to counter.
In recent cases, all levels of the FBI were complicit. Removing funding may only take away resources from useful areas while guilty parties are free to continue their bad behavior at the risk of only a stern talking to by Congress every few years when they promise this will certainly be the last time this happens. Throw some agents in jail along and see if the behavior continues?
Imagine you or I caught lying to the FBI, lying to the courts, and then lying to Congress. What would our fate be? Certainly not continuing on with the status quo.
Since DOJ has no interest in keeping itself accountable, what can be done? Can individuals who were caught up in this file criminal or civil complaints with any hope of relief? For someone not caught up in this, how can they prevent tax dollars from funding ongoing criminal activity?