Political Heretic
Removal without a trial is omitting due process. As for the Steele dossier, it has several unverified claims that were often treated as fact by the media and the Democratic party.Originally Posted by StoneByStone
It's OK to Be White
Enough evidence came out in the hearings. I'd be fine with having a trial too, I just don't think it's needed at this point to remove him.
Such as?As for the Steele dossier, it has several unverified claims that were often treated as fact by the media and the Democratic party.
Political Heretic
When considering that no president has been removed from office with only impeachment, a trial seems pretty essential.
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-ho...teeles-dossier
U.S. intelligence found no evidence that Carter Page, during a trip to Moscow in July 2016, secretly met with two associates of Vladimir Putin — Rosneft oil executive Igor Sechin and senior government official Igor Divyekin — as part of the effort to collude with the Trump campaign, as Steele reported.
Page did meet with a lower-level Rosneft official, and shook hands with a Russian deputy prime minister, the FBI found, but it was a far cry from the tale that Steele’s dossier spun.
Likewise, Steele claimed that Sechin had offered Page a hefty finder’s fee if he could get Trump to help lift sanctions on Moscow: “a 19 percent (privatized) stake in Rosneft in return.”
That offer, worth billions of dollars, was never substantiated and was deemed by some in U.S. intelligence to be preposterous.
The inaccuracy of Steele’s intelligence on Page is at the heart of the inspector general investigation specifically because the FBI represented to the FISA court that the intelligence on Page was verified and strong enough to support the FISA warrant. It was, in the end, not verified.
Another knockdown of the dossier occurred when U.S. intelligence determined former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen was not in Prague in the summer of 2016 when Steele claimed he was meeting with Russians to coordinate a hijacking of the election, the sources said.
Steele’s theory about who in the Trump campaign might be conspiring with Russia kept evolving from Page to Cohen to former campaign chairman Paul Manafort. None of those theories checked out in the end, as the Mueller report showed.
Again, Steele’s intelligence was wrong or unverifiable.
The salacious, headline-grabbing claim that Russians had incriminating sex tapes showing Trump engaged in depraved acts with prostitutes also met a factual dead end when the FBI interviewed the Georgian-American businessman who claimed to know about them. Giorgi Rtskhiladze told investigators “he was told the tapes were fake,” according to a footnote in the Mueller report. Rtskhiladze’s lawyer subsequently issued a letter taking issue with some of Mueller’s characterizations.
Steele had some general things right, of course, including that the Russians were behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s emails. Of course, there were public reports saying so when Steele reported this.
But even then, his dossier’s theory of how the hackers worked, who paid them and how they communicated with Trump was determined in the FBI spreadsheet and subsequent Mueller investigation to be far from accurate.
Even State officials, who listened to Steele’s theories in October 2016 — less than two weeks before his dossier was used to support the FISA request — instantly determined he was grossly wrong on some points.
Verified User
Steele merely offered the raw research that he compiled. Report is inaccurate because it implies conclusions. He was very accurate. There are some disputes.
Impeachment can not remove a president. It is just a conclusion that a trial should be held due to the evidence they have gathered. The Senate holds the trial. Nixon resigned when he saw he would lose the trial. Trump should have too but he thinks he has the trial fixed. He has it garlanded. He can rely on Moscow mitch to block and cheat as needed.
It's OK to Be White
Not at this point. We've never had a president caught in a scandal with this much evidence before impeachment hearings even started.
But which of this was treated as fact by the Democrats or media?https://thehill.com/opinion/white-ho...teeles-dossier
U.S. intelligence found no evidence that Carter Page, during a trip to Moscow in July 2016, secretly met with two associates of Vladimir Putin — Rosneft oil executive Igor Sechin and senior government official Igor Divyekin — as part of the effort to collude with the Trump campaign, as Steele reported.
Page did meet with a lower-level Rosneft official, and shook hands with a Russian deputy prime minister, the FBI found, but it was a far cry from the tale that Steele’s dossier spun.
Likewise, Steele claimed that Sechin had offered Page a hefty finder’s fee if he could get Trump to help lift sanctions on Moscow: “a 19 percent (privatized) stake in Rosneft in return.”
That offer, worth billions of dollars, was never substantiated and was deemed by some in U.S. intelligence to be preposterous.
The inaccuracy of Steele’s intelligence on Page is at the heart of the inspector general investigation specifically because the FBI represented to the FISA court that the intelligence on Page was verified and strong enough to support the FISA warrant. It was, in the end, not verified.
Another knockdown of the dossier occurred when U.S. intelligence determined former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen was not in Prague in the summer of 2016 when Steele claimed he was meeting with Russians to coordinate a hijacking of the election, the sources said.
Steele’s theory about who in the Trump campaign might be conspiring with Russia kept evolving from Page to Cohen to former campaign chairman Paul Manafort. None of those theories checked out in the end, as the Mueller report showed.
Again, Steele’s intelligence was wrong or unverifiable.
The salacious, headline-grabbing claim that Russians had incriminating sex tapes showing Trump engaged in depraved acts with prostitutes also met a factual dead end when the FBI interviewed the Georgian-American businessman who claimed to know about them. Giorgi Rtskhiladze told investigators “he was told the tapes were fake,” according to a footnote in the Mueller report. Rtskhiladze’s lawyer subsequently issued a letter taking issue with some of Mueller’s characterizations.
Steele had some general things right, of course, including that the Russians were behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s emails. Of course, there were public reports saying so when Steele reported this.
But even then, his dossier’s theory of how the hackers worked, who paid them and how they communicated with Trump was determined in the FBI spreadsheet and subsequent Mueller investigation to be far from accurate.
Even State officials, who listened to Steele’s theories in October 2016 — less than two weeks before his dossier was used to support the FISA request — instantly determined he was grossly wrong on some points.
By the way, there's also a big difference between being wrong, and asking someone to lie. Trump asked for a phony investigate, not to educate the public, but to making a political opponent look bad. And he did this with the office of the presidency, which is an abuse of power because it's using the office to enrich himself. The investigation would have been a "thing of value."
Political Heretic
The Clinton scandal had plenty of evidence before impeachment hearings.
When considering that Crowdstrike was the majority of the focus of Trump's conversation with Zelensky, that investigation would have been of value as well.
It's OK to Be White
I was really young when that was going on, but apparently at some point he lied under oath. If that's true, then he should have been removed.
That was a bullshit conspiracy theory Trump only wanted investigated for the same reason he wanted Hunter Biden investigated. It was all about optics to help Trump.When considering that Crowdstrike was the majority of the focus of Trump's conversation with Zelensky, that investigation would have been of value as well.
Political Heretic
There's plenty of reason to distrust Crowdstrike.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/...es-credibility
Controlled Opposition (01-21-2020)
It's OK to Be White
Political Heretic
MBFC has its own left leaning bias. But that tends to be true of many so-called fact checking sites.
It's OK to Be White
I haven't seen MB/FC go easy on left-wing sites either. A lot of the right-wing NPCs here say that Snopes is a left-wing site, but they debunk left-leaning fake news all the time too.
Anyway, Zero Hedge does regularly post conspiracy bullshit and even most Republicans have had to begrudgingly admit that the Crowdstrike conspiracy is a lie.
Political Heretic
Given Perkins Coie's connection in all this, it doesn't seem so conspiratorial to doubt Crowdstrike's neutrality.
It's OK to Be White
Maybe, but all of the evidence still points to this being bullshit.
Did you see Trump's epic rant on Fox & Friends where he sperged out for like an hour? At one point they asked if Trump was sure that the serve was in Ukraine. Trump's answer was "well that's what the word is." This is what Trump does. He repeats any conspiracy theory that he thinks is in his favor, the media (which everyone distrusts) correctly explains why he's wrong, the conspiracy nuts side with Trump anyway because they think he's an outsider, and before we know it, the conspiracy theory is being talked about seriously.
This is one of the ways Trump is so dangerous. His conservatard policies will come and go, but his post-truth culture will be with us for a long time.
Political Heretic
The media is pretty strongly trusted by about half of the country. And they are proven to be wrong numerous times, nonetheless.
That being said, I distrusted the media long before Trump. Distrust for a lot of mainstream media was more common among the left in the 90s and early 2000s. It's apparently not so common among them now, however.
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