A federal grand jury has approved

[Guest]

I think it's important for the Trump camp to realize that this is not all about Trump. It is about Russians systematically trying to influence the campaign. Whether or not he was 'complicit' (a word no criminal definition) personally is not the entire story.

Let't take Manafort, who Trump dismisses as follows:



In the indictment, the Grand Jury states that Manafort received tens of millions of dollars from Ukrainian sources between 2006 and 2015.

Nowhere have I seen Trump, or a member of his administration, express shock, anger, betrayal or outrage that Trump's campaign manger was, for 10 years prior to his campaign, an unregistered agent for a kleptocracy involved in massive human rights abuses and corruption. Forget, for just a moment, the argument that there is no current 'complicity' (again a nebulous term). What does it say about the President of the United States that he could care less that his campaign manager was an unregistered foreign agent for a kleptocracy that was unashamedly Putin's Poodle?

And this is the part of the Manafort narrative I find so troubling: Here is a man who, for 10 years, is driven by greed and avarice, shuffling money from foreign accounts into properties in the United States, and then taking loans out on the properties. This is a man whose life is defined by self aggrandizement and self-dealing. This is Manafort's own daughter's portrait of her father:

In a series of texts reviewed by Business Insider that appear to have been sent by Andrea to her sister, Jessica, in March 2015, Andrea said their father had "no moral or legal compass."

"Don't fool yourself," Andrea wrote to her sister, according to the texts. "That money we have is blood money."

"You know he has killed people in Ukraine? Knowingly," she continued, according to the reviewed texts. "As a tactic to outrage the world and get focus on Ukraine. Remember when there were all those deaths taking place. A while back. About a year ago. Revolts and what not. Do you know whose strategy that was to cause that, to send those people out and get them slaughtered."

And yet suddenly, this man who is so consumed with personal greed and power, whose daughter says he has "no legal or moral compass", decides that he wants to be Trump's campaign manager FOR FREE? And in June 2016 Manfort offers to give campaign updates to a Russian Oligarch with close ties to Putin?

Do Trump and his supporters think that this amounts to nothing? When Reagan ran for President in 1980, his campaign manager was William Casey, soon to head of the CIA. If William Casey found out that someone on Reagan's staff was giving campaign updates to a hostile foreign power, what do you think he would do?

To paraphrase Gerald Ford, if Ronald Reagan were alive, he'd be rolling over in his grave.

[_beastie]

Hint: a person with an ounce of grace would take the opportunity to laugh at him or herself when caught making such an idiotic error when calling a person an idiot.

[_Res Ipsa]

One of the strategies mentioned before the indictments were handed down was that going after a small fish could lead to a bigger fish. In the short term the announcement of the Papadopoulos plea bargain is the beginning of something direct and damming.

In the plea bargain, Papadopoulos is mentioned emailing at least 2 campaign officials that give him various levels of encouragement. Who are these officials? Why are they not named? Obviously Mueller's team knows their identities. You get the feeling that those officials will, at some point, be the recipients of either plea bargains or indictments.

The White House has dismissed Papadopoulos as a volunteer, which is interesting given the following from the plea bargain.

The government notes that the official forwarded defendant PAPADOPOULOS’s email to another Campaign official (without including defendant PAPADOPOULOS) and stated: “Let's discuss. We need someone to communicate that DT is not doing these trips. It should be someone low level in the campaign so as not to send any signal.”

Now I would like if a lawyer (Res Ipsa?) weighed in on this, but it seems to me that there is a lot in that little statement.
One, there seems to be an awareness that communicating with the Russians is something that should not see the light of day.

We need someone to communicate that DT is not doing this trips."

The next sentence is what makes the White House's dismissal of Papadopoulos as a low level volunteer so interesting:

It should be someone low level in the campaign so as not send any signal.

So it seems to me that they are showing a willingness to communicate with the Russians, and that is should be low level to protect 'DT' with deniability. Having two Campaign officials strategizing in an email about communicating with the Russians sounds an awful lot like conspiracy to me. (It's important to remember that the term 'collusion' is not used in indictments.) The other thing is that this did not stop with Papadopoulos, with 2 officials discussing this without including Papadopoulos in the correspondence.

Anyway, this is round one. I doubt very much that the identities of the Campaign officials will remain secret forever. But the very fact that they still are secret could very well mean that negotiations between Mueller and those 2 officials are still continuing. You don't rat down, you rat up.

I’m not sure what to make of that language from the e-mail. I really can’t tell what “signal” the author was trying to avoid. Maybe at some point we’ll get testimony or other information that provides context.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Not that any Conservative gives a crap or would bother to read more than two sentences related to anything that doesn't have a picture in it but here's a nice summary from Reddit:

https://np.reddit.com/r/politics/commen ... d/dp5zg6m/

From there you have solid jumping points to get smart on the players, the organizations, and the investigation. Getting a Conservative to devote some time on it is a pointless task, though. It's not happening.

- Doc

[_The CCC]

Substupid has never heard of the Wayback internet archives.
SEE http://archive.org/web/

cool how you don't even know how the Wayback works (a.k.a. doesn't automatically save everybody's tweets) or what I wrote in my post. But I get it, you're old.

You're an idiot. It saves relevant government publications that the Drumpf maladministration wanted silenced. Law enforcement has always had capability to get your old tweets if they have reasonable cause to suspect you committed a crime. Even the Russians know about E-mails being forever. IE; Clinton E-mails ring a bell? Whether you like it or not tweets are forever. I've told you before don't put anything on the internet you don't want public knowledge.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

The Utah NSA facility is an exabyte (probably larger) facility. Everything that can be captured is captured, compressed, and stored.

Google has similar facilities.

The idea that someone tweets something, then deletes it, and it's gone is not only wrong, but pretty ignorant about reality.

- Doc

[_subgenius]

Whether you like it or not tweets are forever.

Nope. Once again you haven't bothered to learn/read/understand about whatever citation you could quickly google in haste to "surely be correct". My original claim is not only fact but your insistence for continuing to look foolish is also a fact. The "Wayback" does not automatically archive the entire internet - nothing does.

For example:
Next time your grand kids are showing the wild frontier of the internet, ask them about ROBOTS EXCLUSION.
[Wayback] will not archive sites that disallow access, and it will remove access to previous versions of a disallowed page

Once again, you tumbleweed of the internet frontier, tweets are not forever.

[_Doctor Steuss]

Could someone link to an article about the tweets being deleted? I did a search, and all I can find is a few things from people Tweeting about it, and mostly things pointing out that he never used his Twitter account much to begin with (in other words, it was almost blank because he almost never used it).

In my defense (if this is something easy to find), I was up at 2 AM because a someone small snuck into his candy.

[_The CCC]

Substupid:

Tell that to the Russians.

[_subgenius]

The Utah NSA facility is an exabyte (probably larger) facility. Everything that can be captured is captured, compressed, and stored.

emphasis mine for the obviously ignorant about reality.

The idea that someone tweets something, then deletes it, and it's gone is not only wrong, but pretty ignorant about reality.

- Doc

Read my original claim and note that it is factual with regards to the idea that tweets can, in reality, be deleted forever. Does that mean someone can't take a screenshot, print it out, etc...? No, it does not...but if someone did NOT intentionally save the tweet by some other process - deleted forever. I would suggest you google ROBOTS EXCLUSIONS as well, even the NY Times uses them to prevent the Wayback from archiving their pages.....so, yeah - how the internet works.