The Real Collusion Bubble Is About To Burst

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Prof Triggernometry
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Democrats, Russians and the FBI
Did the bureau use disinformation to trigger its Trump probe?


By The Editorial Board
Oct. 25, 2017 6:49 p.m. ET

It turns out that Russia has sown distrust in the U.S. political system—aided and abetted by the Democratic Party, and perhaps the FBI. This is an about-face from the dominant media narrative of the last year, and it requires a full investigation.

The Washington Post revealed Tuesday that the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee jointly paid for that infamous “dossier” full of Russian disinformation against Donald Trump. They filtered the payments through a U.S. law firm (Perkins Coie), which hired the opposition-research hit men at Fusion GPS. Fusion in turn tapped a former British spook, Christopher Steele, to compile the allegations, which are based largely on anonymous, Kremlin-connected sources.

Strip out the middlemen, and it appears that Democrats paid for Russians to compile wild allegations about a U.S. presidential candidate. Did someone say “collusion”?

This news is all the more explosive because the DNC and Clinton campaign hid their role, even amid the media furor after BuzzFeed published the Steele dossier in January. Reporters are now saying that Clinton campaign officials lied to them about their role in the dossier. Current DNC Chair Tom Perez and former Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz deny knowing about the dossier arrangement, but someone must have known.

The more troubling question is whether the FBI played a role, even if inadvertently, in assisting a Russian disinformation campaign. We know the agency possessed the dossier in 2016, and according to media reports it debated paying Mr. Steele to continue his work in the runup to the election. This occurred while former FBI Director James Comey was ramping up his probe into supposed ties between the Trump campaign and Russians.

More pertinent questions here:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/democrats-russians-and-the-fbi-1508971759
 
Democrats, Russians and the FBI
Did the bureau use disinformation to trigger its Trump probe?


By The Editorial Board
Oct. 25, 2017 6:49 p.m. ET

It turns out that Russia has sown distrust in the U.S. political system—aided and abetted by the Democratic Party, and perhaps the FBI. This is an about-face from the dominant media narrative of the last year, and it requires a full investigation.

The Washington Post revealed Tuesday that the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee jointly paid for that infamous “dossier” full of Russian disinformation against Donald Trump. They filtered the payments through a U.S. law firm (Perkins Coie), which hired the opposition-research hit men at Fusion GPS. Fusion in turn tapped a former British spook, Christopher Steele, to compile the allegations, which are based largely on anonymous, Kremlin-connected sources.

Strip out the middlemen, and it appears that Democrats paid for Russians to compile wild allegations about a U.S. presidential candidate. Did someone say “collusion”?

This news is all the more explosive because the DNC and Clinton campaign hid their role, even amid the media furor after BuzzFeed published the Steele dossier in January. Reporters are now saying that Clinton campaign officials lied to them about their role in the dossier. Current DNC Chair Tom Perez and former Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz deny knowing about the dossier arrangement, but someone must have known.

The more troubling question is whether the FBI played a role, even if inadvertently, in assisting a Russian disinformation campaign. We know the agency possessed the dossier in 2016, and according to media reports it debated paying Mr. Steele to continue his work in the runup to the election. This occurred while former FBI Director James Comey was ramping up his probe into supposed ties between the Trump campaign and Russians.

More pertinent questions here:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/democrats-russians-and-the-fbi-1508971759

Oh. Ok.
 
Maybe the WSJ editorial board should read the WSJ news pages. Steele wasn't even hired until AFTER the DNC had been hacked by the Russians. The entire reason he was brought on board to begin with was his expertise in Russia.

The idea that it's suspicious that an investigation into Russian espionage would involve Russian sources is ludicrous, but of course Vette is a ludicrous person.
 
source

The implication that Trump allies are drawing from this is a bit more dubious. They are claiming the Steele dossier can be discarded entirely as a work of propaganda from a Clinton campaign hack, and even that the Post’s piece is proof that Clinton was colluding with foreigners to influence the election. There are three problems with this interpretation of the news.

The first is that the Clinton campaign did not fund the research alone. Fusion’s work investigating Trump and Russia actually began in September 2015, during the Republican primary. According to Vanity Fair’s Howard Blum, “the funding came from a ‘Never Trump’ Republican and not directly from the campaign war chests of any of Trump’s primary opponents.” Clinton’s camp only started picking up the tab in April 2016, according to the Post, which makes it hard to dismiss the dossier’s entire contents as the results of a secret Democratic plot.

Second, the notion that the Clinton campaign paying Steele is the same as Trump (allegedly) colluding with Russia is laughable. The former involves paying an experienced private investigator — remember, Steele is a retired British agent — to conduct research. The latter involves working with a hostile foreign government to influence the outcome of a US election, and potentially aiding and abetting a crime (the hack and theft of Clinton campaign and DNC emails) in the process.

Third, and most importantly, attacks on the provenance of the Steele dossier would only matter if it were the only real source of allegations about Trump and Russia. It’s not. We know, for example, that Russia engaged in a massive information campaign designed to help bolster the Trump campaign, including by spamming pro-Trump and anti-Clinton messages through US social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. We know that the Trump campaign employed several people, including former campaign manager Paul Manafort, who have known financial ties to the Kremlin or its allies. We also know that Donald Trump Jr. took a meeting with a Kremlin-linked attorney who promised dirt on Clinton and said Moscow wanted to help Trump. These things all raise profound questions about Trump’s ties to Russia independently of the Steele dossier.

What’s more, the Steele dossier itself has been deemed credible at the highest levels of the US intelligence community, to the point where both Presidents Obama and Trump were briefed on it before its existence was made public. Independent intelligence experts have pointed out that many of its claims — though not the pee tape — have been confirmed by subsequent investigations. “Steele and his company appear serious and credible,” John Sipher, a 30-year veteran of the CIA, wrote at Slate in September. “Well before any public knowledge of these events, the [Steele dossier] 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 reportedly discuss the receipt of stolen documents.” Put most simply, the new Washington Post story just doesn’t do what Trump and his allies claim. The Clinton campaign may have helped fund the Steele dossier — and then lied about doing so — but the reasons to worry about Trump’s possible collusion with Moscow didn’t start with the dossier, and don’t end with it.
 

Tell us Dreck Tattooed Thug who VOX is

Dont be a MAD COW
mad-cow.jpg
 
I'd say their analysis is right on the money judging by the circle jerk you two have got going on.

Didn't mean to interrupt. Please continue. It is entertaining to watch.

:cool:
 
DrunkTattooedThugs typical

Throws shit out

Has no clue about the shit

When shown the shit

Pretends its not shit
 
I'd say their analysis is right on the money judging by the circle jerk you two have got going on.

Didn't mean to interrupt. Please continue. It is entertaining to watch.

:cool:

Information Allocation Specialist

The only INFO you disseminate is BULL SHIT!
 
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