Mega-Thread: Mueller investigation

[Breccia]

Axios reports that "Person A" is one of Manafort's and Gates' colleagues still in Ukraine.

Who they were still talking with, while Manafort was Trump's campaign head.

Oh, and Van Der Zwaan recorded the calls.

[Elegiac]

Axios reports that "Person A" is one of Manafort's and Gates' colleagues still in Ukraine.

Who they were still talking with, while Manafort was Trump's campaign head.

Oh, and Van Der Zwaan recorded the calls.

Before the Trumpkins saunter on in to claim this doesn't mean anything:

[Tijuana]

How about you just do it on an honest level? The amount you spend on Facebook ads, or indeed per month, doesn't necessarily measure the scale of the operation. Especially when we're talking about 13 people who were getting $1m a month and we know for a fact that there were many more doing similar things in Russia. It's OK though, you're doing everything possible to draw faulty conclusions to try to negate an argument nobody is making based on these indictments. Nobody is saying these indictments are anything but what they are. Some of the first of many to come from an investigation that is heating up as more and more guilty parties offer to cooperate in order to lessen their sentences.

Relax, in another month or two you'll have a new set of indictments to try to minimize.

I'm sorry but, your argument is full of holes. Scale matters. Look at how the left feels about voter fraud. We are told it doesn't matter, because the scale of the fraud, is too little to change the outcome of the election. This is the same thing. The amount of money Russians spent on ads, and the amount of Russian trolls posting on forums, PALES in comparison to how much Americans spent on ads, and how much Americans trolled each other on the internet. Your argument is without merit, sorry. None of this changed the outcome, and no prominent Democrat official has said otherwise, save a few crazies.

Please keep telling us how this is "winding up" rather than nearing it's end. I love it. I continue to be amazed and amused by these assertions. Please never stop.

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And I've already explained why spending isn't the metric you should be looking at but viewers reached. I'm also not making the argument that Russia outspent the Clinton campaign. You can keep pushing the $42k figure as if it's all that was spent all you want (ignoring what the Trump campaign spent as well), to claim Russia had zero impact is ridiculous.

You keep failing to understand my core point. And it's getting pretty tedious. EVERYTHING the Russians did, on both a micro and macro level, was done badly, and was dwarfed by the legitimate campaign actions of others. That is just a fact.

[Breccia]

More info on the matter: as previously discussed, Van Der Zwaan's father-in-law is German Khan. Khan is one of three oligarchs in control of Alfa Bank, and of course has strong ties with Putin.

Alfa Bank was the bank mysteriously pinging Trump Tower during the election.

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Little more info here and there: the charge Van Der Zwaan plead guilty to normally carries a fine of up to $250,000 and up to five years in jail.

The judge is talking about a deal with under $10,000 fine and up to six months in jail.

He might also need to fight deportation on this, which would suck, because his wife is pregnant.

[Shadowmelded]

You keep failing to understand my core point. And it's getting pretty tedious. EVERYTHING the Russians did, on both a micro and macro level, was done badly, and was dwarfed by the legitimate campaign actions of others. That is just a fact.

Everything except, you know, actual view count, which matters if you're trying to influence people. I know I know "but the 42k" but as I keep pointing out, there's a lot more activity than just the 42k. Would love to see your numbers on Clinton's digital impact though, was having trouble earlier finding any.

[Shalcker]

Since the topic is the Mueller investigation and not Clinton's emails, I will continue to talk about the Mueller investigation, and not Clinton's emails.

Let's hear it from Ted Lieu:



Also, NYTimes reminds us that Skadden got this contract basically illegally. In addition to being paid with money stolen from Ukraine by pro-Russian members of the Party of Regions (fled town, committed suicide, etc etc), they broke the laws of Ukraine by being "paid" only $12k for their work, but were later given over $1 million -- way over the legal limit, and cheating anyone else competing for the bid. Yep, Manafort's team broke the laws with the money going in both directions when working for Russia.

You keep making same mistake; it's "working for Ukraine".

Timoshenko thing was 100% Ukrainian politics through and through.

[SirBeef]

I'm sorry but, your argument is full of holes. Scale matters. Look at how the left feels about voter fraud. We are told it doesn't matter, because the scale of the fraud, is too little to change the outcome of the election.

Apples to oranges and you know it. Stop being disingenuous just to make a fucking point. You could spend $1 on an ad that can be seen and shared with 10s of millions of people. That is fare more influential than a few to dozen illegal votes cast for a national election.

[Thekri]

I'm sorry but, your argument is full of holes. Scale matters. Look at how the left feels about voter fraud. We are told it doesn't matter, because the scale of the fraud, is too little to change the outcome of the election. This is the same thing. The amount of money Russians spent on ads, and the amount of Russian trolls posting on forums, PALES in comparison to how much Americans spent on ads, and how much Americans trolled each other on the internet. Your argument is without merit, sorry. None of this changed the outcome, and no prominent Democrat official has said otherwise, save a few crazies.

Please keep telling us how this is "winding up" rather than nearing it's end. I love it. I continue to be amazed and amused by these assertions. Please never stop.

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You keep failing to understand my core point. And it's getting pretty tedious. EVERYTHING the Russians did, on both a micro and macro level, was done badly, and was dwarfed by the legitimate campaign actions of others. That is just a fact.

False equivalence all the way. If voter fraud could be reasonably seen to be intentionally promoted by a political candidate, then it would be a huge deal regardless of scale. Since it mostly occurs on the very local level, and seems to be about equally biased either way, it really isn't worth the massive amount of effort it would take to root it out, more importantly it isn't worth the collateral damage to legitimate voters, which is why most sane people oppose a lot of these "Anti-Voter Fraud" bills. Now there is a legitimate approach to voter fraud, it is not ok to do, we just shouldn't go crazy with it.

Russian influencing our election is completely different. This is a foreign government making a direct attack on how we govern ourselves, this can get to an existential crisis level really fast if we don't nip it in the bud now, and hard. I do agree with you that I don't think it changed the outcome, I am not attacking the legitimacy of Trump's presidency, and I haven't see many people make the argument it wasn't legitimate. It is like arguing that Japan only seriously damaged one portion of one fleet in one branch of our military at Pearl Harbor. We still had plenty of military power left (In fact enough to essentially burn Japan to the ground in less then 4 years), but that really wasn't the point.

[apeiron1234]

I don't want to get anyone's hopes up but... I think this is another nothingburger with extra cheese! The condiments just aren't adding up!

[solinari6]

Something to keep in mind about these facebook numbers vs votes. It is estimated that 126,000,000 people were exposed to these russian bot ads. The electoral college was decided by around 80,000 votes across a few states.

We can't figure out the exact percentages unless facebook told us how many people were exposed to those ads in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, but the point stands ... it wouldn't take a lot of minds changed in those couple states to sway the election.

[Garnier Fructis]

And I commented back to you regarding the people on the board that think that and I was agreeing with you that their opinion is wrong?

Well, in that case I totally missed your point. My bad.

[Thekri]

I don't want to get anyone's hopes up but... I think this is another nothingburger with extra cheese! The condiments just aren't adding up!

I am starting to doubt you are actually a serious Trump supporter.

[Shalcker]

You keep failing to understand my core point. And it's getting pretty tedious. EVERYTHING the Russians did, on both a micro and macro level, was done badly, and was dwarfed by the legitimate campaign actions of others. That is just a fact.

I've seen good joke about it on Twitter:
ME: * laughing uncontrollably*
DEM: ... this isn't a joke.
ME (still laughing): I'm sorry, I'm sorry... it sounded like you said 13 Russians speaking broken English had a more effective messaging campaign than Hillary Clinton.

[Dontrike]

I've seen good joke about it on Twitter:
ME: * laughing uncontrollably*
DEM: ... this isn't a joke.
ME (still laughing): I'm sorry, I'm sorry... it sounded like you said 13 Russians speaking broken English had a more effective messaging campaign than Hillary Clinton.

It's almost like people are paint drinking retarded, especially when they have a group mentality and love to believe anything put in front of them. When you have people in a country believing dumb shit like vaccines causing autism, chemtrails existing, the earth is flat, and that there are lizard people ruling the government you can see how it would be pretty easy to fool them.

[Shalcker]

It's almost like people are paint drinking retarded, especially when they have a group mentality and love to believe anything put in front of them. When you have people in a country believing dumb shit like vaccines causing autism, chemtrails existing, the earth is flat, and that there are lizard people ruling the government you can see how it would be pretty easy to fool them.

So, you're saying American cronyism and corruption led to Clinton messaging being worse then Russian one despite somewhere between hundred and thousands times more money spent?

And her understanding of America being worse then guys who just watched "House of Cards"?

[Ripster42]

The latter is obviously geopolitics. At that point, Trump was still trying to get Russia to help with ISIS. You act as if it's bad to put the country before himself. That's a pretty bizarre stance to take.

Trump admitted to Russian meddling in January of 2017. He he has never, and will never, admit that it changed the election, because it didn't. NO sane person thinks that. Even Wolf Blitzer doesn't think that. Hillary Clinton might say she does, but I sort of doubt she does, deep down inside.

Again, 42k in Facebook ads is factually insufficient to change an election where 2 billion fucking dollars was spent on ads.

That's great an all, but trump in nov 2017 said he didn't believe there was actually russian interference.

[Dontrike]

So, you're saying American cronyism and corruption led to Clinton messaging being worse then Russian one despite somewhere between hundred and thousands times more money spent?

No, I'm saying people like to believe stupid and crazy things, like those conspiracy theories I said before, and think that they have found the real truth and no one else can possibly have it right. They are so tired of not having anything figured out that the feeling of having something, anything, figured out means they will latch on to it like a leech and touting how believable it is, even though it really isn't.

People want to be right about something, they want to know the "real truth" even when they are looking down a rabbit hole that has nothing in it.

Stupid people exist and they believe stupid things. It's not that hard to think that Clinton, which most didn't like to begin with, would make people think she is some supreme evil being. She's not. People were conned easily this past presidential election, because people, in general, are fucking stupid.

And her understanding of America being worse then guys who just watched "House of Cards"?

Whatever that means, ma'am. She totally forgot that people are fucking stupid, especially in groups. The fact she thought people wouldn't fall for Trump is her downfall, and honestly we all thought people were far smarter than that, but unfortunately people were so easily tricked that you could probably tell them a blue pen is red and they'd believe it.

[Breccia]

Fun times. Trump just took another swing at Jeff Sessions.

Question: If all of the Russian meddling took place during the Obama Administration, right up to January 20th, why aren’t they the subject of the investigation? Why didn’t Obama do something about the meddling? Why aren’t Dem crimes under investigation? Ask Jeff Sessions!

I'd like to see the "crimes" Trump refers to. It'll be tough for him to say "the Democrats committed a crime of letting Russia attack the election" without destroying his narrative of "Russia didn't attack the election".

Also, hey, how're those sanctions coming? Still nothing? That's neat.

[Tijuana]

I've seen good joke about it on Twitter:
ME: * laughing uncontrollably*
DEM: ... this isn't a joke.
ME (still laughing): I'm sorry, I'm sorry... it sounded like you said 13 Russians speaking broken English had a more effective messaging campaign than Hillary Clinton.

LOL

/10lols

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Your argument is full of assumptions and faulty logic. Please, keep explaining to us how much of an expert you are on election meddling though.

By all means tell me what those faults are, unless you are only here to lob personal attacks.

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False equivalence all the way. If voter fraud could be reasonably seen to be intentionally promoted by a political candidate, then it would be a huge deal regardless of scale. Since it mostly occurs on the very local level, and seems to be about equally biased either way, it really isn't worth the massive amount of effort it would take to root it out, more importantly it isn't worth the collateral damage to legitimate voters, which is why most sane people oppose a lot of these "Anti-Voter Fraud" bills. Now there is a legitimate approach to voter fraud, it is not ok to do, we just shouldn't go crazy with it.

Russian influencing our election is completely different. This is a foreign government making a direct attack on how we govern ourselves, this can get to an existential crisis level really fast if we don't nip it in the bud now, and hard. I do agree with you that I don't think it changed the outcome, I am not attacking the legitimacy of Trump's presidency, and I haven't see many people make the argument it wasn't legitimate. It is like arguing that Japan only seriously damaged one portion of one fleet in one branch of our military at Pearl Harbor. We still had plenty of military power left (In fact enough to essentially burn Japan to the ground in less then 4 years), but that really wasn't the point.

But there IS no way to reasonably see that one candidate promoted Russian meddling. You dont' have a single, solitary shred of evidence for that. Maybe Mueller does, maybe he doesn't, but we in the public don't know yet.

You don't think tiny bits of voter fraud are worth "massive amount of effort it would take to root it out", yet you are willing to spend MILLIONS of dollars chasing Democrat fantasies in regards to Russian meddling? That doesn't even make sense, unless you are an all-in partisan hack.

How does dirt being dug up, "an attack on how we govern ourselves". Nobody has to believe the dirt, dude. There is legitimate mud slinging every campaign.

At the end of the day, we know for fact no votes cast were changed. We know for a fact that no vote totals were changed. How people CHOSE to vote, will never, and can never be illegitimate. You can't say a person's vote doesn't count, just because you think they saw a Facebook ad, in a blue state, after the election was over. Sorry, that's just nonsense.

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Apples to oranges and you know it. Stop being disingenuous just to make a fucking point. You could spend $1 on an ad that can be seen and shared with 10s of millions of people. That is fare more influential than a few to dozen illegal votes cast for a national election.

But in your premise, and the premise of the guy I was responding to, we have to accept that 80 million dollars in LEGITIMATE Facebook ads DIDN'T get seen or shared, but only the Russian ones did. That is LUDICROUS and just a bizarre failure of logic, to think that is what happened.

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Everything except, you know, actual view count, which matters if you're trying to influence people. I know I know "but the 42k" but as I keep pointing out, there's a lot more activity than just the 42k. Would love to see your numbers on Clinton's digital impact though, was having trouble earlier finding any.

But you don't have the numbers on the view counts for the 80 fucking million legitimate dollars spent, do you? You don't. So you are talking nonsense. You are literally claiming, that ONLY Russian ads were shared or liked. You are denying the impact of the real ads, that were not illegal. Why? Why are you doing that?

Show the numbers in a comparison, or stop droning on about how 42k was spent oh so smartly, in blue states, that it somehow over rode 80 freaking million dollars in real ads.

[Breccia]

For latecomers to the party, Vox has a good article summing up the public information about the ridiculous lengths Trump has gone to, to prevent what he swears up and down is an investigation into an innocent man. Here's a chunk of the middle:

Here’s are the main elements of the case:

Many of the Russian government’s political interventions abroad are clumsy and inept (see the anti-Macron stuff from the 2017 French presidential election and the bulk of the “troll farm” stuff). But the WikiLeaks email drops of 2016 were very well-executed and well-timed to step on two major stories: first the Democratic National Convention and later the Access Hollywood tape. Perhaps the Russians got lucky (twice) or they executed well because they were helped by an expert American political operative.

As it happens, the expertise of Trump’s campaign chair, Paul Manafort, is in American and foreign electioneering. Manafort helped Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush win presidential elections before he moved into lobbying and took his political skills abroad. He spent a decade dispensing expert political advice (for a steep price) to a Russian proxy party in Ukraine. So it’s not like the Russians would have no idea whom to ask, or that nobody on the Trump team was comfortable, broadly speaking, with the idea of working with Moscow.

We also know specifically, due to Donald Trump Jr.’s infamous “if it’s what you say I love it” email, that not only Manafort but also Trump’s son and his son-in-law were eager to collaborate with the Russian government on the 2016 election.

Trump spent more than a year on the campaign trail consistently praising Vladimir Putin and defending him from critics, incurring political risks with no obvious upside for himself.

During the transition, Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn, was very eager to conduct talks with Moscow about a warming of relations. Jared Kushner was trying to create some kind of secure backchannel line of communication to Moscow that would be impenetrable by American intelligence.

Trump took the exceptionally risky move of firing FBI Director James Comey. After that backfired, he took repeated stabs at leaning on Attorney General Jeff Sessions and/or Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to resign, which would give him more direct control over Mueller.

Trump’s allies on the House Intelligence Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee have been trying to help him with various attacks on the FBI, the Justice Department, and the whole idea of an inquiry rather than by constructing some plausible alternative narrative that would explain all the weird shit referenced above.

Also noteworthy, this:



Basically, anyone arguing that no one candidate was asking for collusion more than any other, is not just laughably false but blatantly lying.

The author goes onto mention Trump's long and continuing history of lack of transparency, refusal to follow rules and laws, and his ability to hide secrets -- for example, getting his tabloid-owning friend to buy exclusive stories of his affairs, then sit on them. And of course, there's his track record for the truth, which is minimal.

He concludes:

The one place I do agree with Mueller skeptics is that liberals shouldn’t get their hopes up that the special counsel will “save” them or the country from Trump. Trump appeared on national television and explained to an NBC News audience that he improperly used his powers of office to remove the FBI director in an effort to shield his friends and associates from criminal scrutiny. The institutional Republican Party shrugged that off, and eventually, the public moved on.

My guess is that whatever revelations are forthcoming from Mueller will fit a similar pattern — most people already have a negative view of Trump, so it’s hard to move the needle too much more on public opinion, and the whole GOP has already wagered so heavily on the Trump experiment that they’re not going to pull the plug regardless of what happened.

But politics aside, the suspicion of illicit collaboration between the highest-ranking members of the Trump campaign and the Russian pro-Trump information operation is well-founded, and the ongoing criminal investigation into that possibility is steadily bearing fruit. There’s no earthly reason for journalists to adopt a stance of preemptively exonerating Trump when, so far, suspicion has been validated at nearly every turn.