New York Times: Steele Dossier Disinformation

[Shady]

Looks like even the NYT has realized the so-called Steele dossier is an exercise in disinformation and partisan politics.

“But the release on Thursday of the report by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, underscored what had grown clearer for months — that while many Trump aides had welcomed contacts with the Russians, some of the most sensational claims in the dossier appeared to be false, and others were impossible to prove. Mr. Mueller’s report contained over a dozen passing references to the document’s claims but no overall assessment of why so much did not check out…

Interviews with people familiar with Mr. Steele’s work on the dossier and the F.B.I.’s scramble to vet its claims suggest that misgivings about its reliability arose not long after the document became public — and a preoccupation of Trump opponents — in early 2017. Mr. Steele has made clear to associates that he always considered the dossier to be raw intelligence — not established facts, but a starting point for further investigation.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/19/us/politics/steele-dossier-mueller-report.html

Better late than never!

Edited June 10, 2019 by Shady
Spelling

[BubberMiley]

Actually uncorroborated has never meant "disproved " 

And is there anyone out there at all who can say with a straight face that they don't think the piss tape is real?

[Shady]

23 hours ago, BubberMiley said:

Actually uncorroborated has never meant "disproved " 

And is there anyone out there at all who can say with a straight face that they don't think the piss tape is real?

There you go again.  Somebody has to PROVE that they're innocent of slanderous claims.  It's absurd and goes against the foundation of our justice system.   I don't know if the tapes are real or not.  But who cares?  Why do you gotta go around peeping into what consenting adults do in their bedrooms?  Since Clinton I was told that what happens in people's bedrooms is their own business.  Stop being a prude man.  What two adults wanna do together on their own time isn't any of my business.

[BubberMiley]

I just asked if anyone believes it isn't true. It gave you the opportunity to exclaim how it must be all lies, but you didn't. Cutting your losses after being humiliated by the Ford tape, I guess.

 

Edited June 11, 2019 by BubberMiley

[WestCanMan]

53 minutes ago, BubberMiley said:

I just asked if anyone believes it isn't true. It gave you the opportunity to exclaim how it must be all lies, but you didn't. Cutting your losses after being humiliated by the Ford tape, I guess.

 

1) Has it been that long since Shady was wrong? Have you been waiting all this time to use this comeback or do you just keep using it over and over?

2) I'll take a crack-smoking Rob Ford over a tea-sipping Trudeau any day of the week.

Edited June 11, 2019 by WestCanMan

[WestCanMan]

On 6/10/2019 at 11:28 AM, BubberMiley said:

Actually uncorroborated has never meant "disproved " 

And is there anyone out there at all who can say with a straight face that they don't think the piss tape is real?

The fact that it's "uncorroborated" is kind of a big deal, but it's a much bigger deal that they faked corroboration by leaking the story to a reporter and then using the resulting story as corroboration, and that they pretended to have enough intel/evidence to start this whole investigation to begin with and yet at the end they don't appear to have enough evidence to justify the investigation (and it's use as a public smear campaign), let alone make any kind of a case against Trump.  

[BubberMiley]

9 minutes ago, WestCanMan said:

The fact that it's "uncorroborated" is kind of a big deal, but it's a much bigger deal that they faked corroboration by leaking the story to a reporter and then using the resulting story as corroboration, and that they pretended to have enough intel/evidence to start this whole investigation to begin with and yet at the end they don't appear to have enough evidence to justify the investigation (and it's use as a public smear campaign), let alone make any kind of a case against Trump.  

I keep using it over and over. It brings me joy.

You don't really know what was in the dossier, what was corroborated, what wasn't, who initiated it (the GOP), and you act as though the dossier was the reason for the Mueller inquiry. It was not.

The only thing you know for sure is that if Mueller was confident that Trump is not a criminal, he would say so.

[Shady]

1 hour ago, BubberMiley said:

I just asked if anyone believes it isn't true. It gave you the opportunity to exclaim how it must be all lies, but you didn't. Cutting your losses after being humiliated by the Ford tape, I guess.

 

Lots of people don't believe it's true.  Millions.  So what?  

[BubberMiley]

24 minutes ago, Shady said:

Lots of people don't believe it's true.  Millions.  So what?  

Nope. Actually no one.

[Carlus Magnus]

On ‎6‎/‎10‎/‎2019 at 7:39 AM, Shady said:

Looks like even the NYT has realized the so-called Steele dossier is an exercise in disinformation and partisan politics.

So, the United States Department of Justice ordered multiple warrants and the Federal Bureau of Investigations spent nearly 3 years time, 30 Million Dollars and the work of 40 Agents on Foreign Dissinformation, paid for by the Democrat National Committee and the Democrat candidate for POTUS.

 

Does that pretty much sum it all up ?

 

 

[Shady]

2 hours ago, BubberMiley said:

Nope. Actually no one.

Actually yep.  Lots.  Anyways wake me up when impeachment starts.

[BubberMiley]

5 hours ago, Shady said:

Actually yep.  Lots.  Anyways wake me up when impeachment starts.

Then who? 

[WestCanMan]

On 6/11/2019 at 12:17 PM, BubberMiley said:

I keep using it over and over. It brings me joy.

You don't really know what was in the dossier, what was corroborated, what wasn't, who initiated it (the GOP), and you act as though the dossier was the reason for the Mueller inquiry. It was not.

You aren't lying but you're being as disingenuous as you can possibly be. It's slimy as hell.

I do know exactly what was in the dossier: unverified, uncorroborated, information that came from foreign agents/informants who were paid by Fusion GPS with money that they received from Perkins Coie, which came from Hillary, disguised as payments for things that were legal. IE, things that didn't involve collusion with foreigners (something that's theoretically a crime, but only when Republicans are accused of it. When Dems are known to have done it it's somehow ok).

I know what was corroborated - nothing that qualifies as evidence of collusion. I also know that Steele leaked information in order for it to come back around as independent corroboration. That's known by the FBI to have happened and it's critical information that they withheld from the FISA court.

The GOP initiated the Trump dossier that Hillary paid for, but the covert, overseas part of the dossier was initiated after Hillary took it over.

The dossier wasn't "the only reason" why the inquiry was started, but it played a huge role in the acquisition of the FISA Warrant and it's subsequent renewals. More importantly, the validity of the dossier was lied about in order to obtain the FISA warrants. That's not speculation. That's fact.

Quote

The only thing you know for sure is that if Mueller was confident that Trump is not a criminal, he would say so.

Here's the thing about a properly functioning democracy: the police only investigate people when a crime is known to have been committed. The strategy of "You show me the man and I'll find the crime" is not a part of a functioning democracy. It's also not proper to run a smear campaign against a person in the form of a highly publicized sham of an investigation.

Did Mueller find evidence of some sort of crime? He says that he did. But no one with access to all the dirty little secrets of the investigation is being specific about what there is evidence of. If there was  a useful amount of evidence of a serious crime then for sure Schiff would come out and say it. Schiff and the Demmies are being vague for a good reason: they don't have anything substantial to talk about.

 

 

[BubberMiley]

Weren't you the one tryng to pretend Schiff and the Dems have seen the redacted report?

BTW the dossier was initiated from within then GOP. Even Trump supporters don't normally dispute that. They just don't like to talk about it at all.

Edited June 16, 2019 by BubberMiley

[Carlus Magnus]

On ‎6‎/‎16‎/‎2019 at 4:36 AM, BubberMiley said:

BTW the dossier was initiated from within then GOP. Even Trump supporters don't normally dispute that. They just don't like to talk about it at all.

There is some indication that this all started with the GOP.  John McCain's fingerprints are all over the operation.  They should pay the price for it as well as the Dems.  Right now no one is paying the price for injecting Russian disinformation into the 2016 election.  

[BubberMiley]

Pay the price for getting information? Again, you do know the difference between getting information and getting information that was acquired illegally from a hostile foreign government, don't you? One is considered no big deal and the other is considered treason (just so you know).

Edited June 18, 2019 by BubberMiley

[Carlus Magnus]

I absolutely agree.  I consider what the HRC and DNC did treason(+select GOP).  They utilized and corrupted our 5 eyes intelligence for political purposes.  Then, they got the FBI and DOJ to open an investigation.  And all this was based on Russian disinformation funneled to Christopher Steele, a british agent and paid for by Hillary and the DNC.  It also brought in the Australians and Italians.  

 

 

[BubberMiley]

20 hours ago, Carlus Magnus said:

I absolutely agree.  I consider what the HRC and DNC did treason(+select GOP).  They utilized and corrupted our 5 eyes intelligence for political purposes.  Then, they got the FBI and DOJ to open an investigation.  And all this was based on Russian disinformation funneled to Christopher Steele, a british agent and paid for by Hillary and the DNC.  It also brought in the Australians and Italians.  

 

 

Talking to foreigners isn't treason. Working with a foreign power is. Try and keep up.

[Shady]

8 hours ago, BubberMiley said:

Talking to foreigners isn't treason. Working with a foreign power is. Try and keep up.

No, neither of them is necessarily treason.  Nothing at all has been shown to be treason.  Trump Derangement Syndrome is a terrible thing.  Seems like you’ve got a problem with wikileaks and whoever hacked Hillary’s illegal private server, and the DNC.  Wasn’t anyone on the Trump campaign.  I think it was wrong for Trump to suggest that he’d take information provided to him he foreign sources.  But I think it was worse that Hillary and the Dems actually did it.

[BubberMiley]

Working with an adversarial foreign government is treason. You have to get over your deranged love for everything Trump. You were conned. Accept it.

[Dougie93]

Political dirt on your opponents is first amendment protected, receiving information cannot be treason, it would only be treason if the information a) was classified, and b) was passed to a hostile foreign power. 

The Democrats embarrassing political foibles are not a national security issue and they certainly were not a classified state secret.

Also bear in mind, classification is not even a law, classification is only by executive order, so the funny thing is, once you are President, you can say anything is or is not classified on a whim, to include retroactively, the President can pass secrets to Russia, simply by signing another executive order which says they're not secrets anymore, or even they never were secrets in the first place.

In America, all speech is constitutionally protected by default up to the threshold of Brandenburg v. Ohio, from there a prosecutor has to prove why something is not free speech, and for treason that starts with first proving that the accused was in violation of a solemn oath which they undertook, then proving that the speech was classified by  executive order, then proving that the accused knowingly passed it to a hostile foreign power.

None the less, a President could at anytime step into the proceedings and by executive order retroactively render any classified speech to not be classified, because it's only the President who makes things classified, and it's totally arbitrary what is or is not classified, at his discretion.

Unlike the United Kingdom for example, there is no Official Secrets Act in America.

This makes it extremely challenging to convict any American of treason, and the treasonous founders designed it that way on purpose, as the republic itself was founded by treason and they certainly knew that they were traitors by definition at the time.

Thus, even when the FBI has caught a traitor red handed, rarely do they actually charge them with treason, usually they charge them with espionage under the 1917 Espionage Act.

Furthermore, as the President can arbitrarily and retroactively declassify things on a whim, it's practically impossible to convict a sitting President of treason, which is why there is impeachment.  

Before you can convict the President of anything national security classification related, first you have to make him back into a private civilian by removing him from office for High Crimes and Misdemeanors by trial in the Senate.

To summarize;

Step 1.  Prove a case of treason wherein classified information was knowingly passed to a hostile foreign power.

Step 2.  Take it to the Senate for trial.

Step 3.  Senate convicts for High Crimes and Misdemeanors and removes the President from office.

Step 4. Now the FBI can lay the charges against the private citizen who is no longer the sitting Chief Executive.

Step 5. President Pence pardons him.

Step 6. President Pence cruises to victory in 2020 in the backlash against impeachment, replaces Ruth Ginsberg with Amy Coney Barret, then Red Team takes their 6-3 majority at the SCOTUS to go after Roe v. Wade.

 

Edited June 19, 2019 by Dougie93

[bush_cheney2004]

5 hours ago, BubberMiley said:

Working with an adversarial foreign government is treason. You have to get over your deranged love for everything Trump. You were conned. Accept it.

 

Nonsense....many levels of U.S. public and private institutions work with many foreign governments, "adversarial" or not.   There are even legal provisions for registration as a foreign agent in the United States.    Believe it or not, FDR "worked with" Joseph Stalin, Nixon with Brezhnev, and Reagan with Gorbachev.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, my employer worked extensively with Russia and other nations to demil their munitions under contracts funded by the U.S. government.

Treason !  

Edited June 19, 2019 by bush_cheney2004

[Shady]

5 hours ago, BubberMiley said:

Working with an adversarial foreign government is treason. You have to get over your deranged love for everything Trump. You were conned. Accept it.

If that's the case then Obama would be guilty for working with Russia and Iran.

[BubberMiley]

How did he work with their governments to influence an election? 

Or are you just misunderstanding what people are talking about again?

[Dougie93]

3 hours ago, bush_cheney2004 said:

 

Nonsense....many levels of U.S. public and private institutions work with many foreign governments, "adversarial" or not.   There are even legal provisions for registration as a foreign agent in the United States.    Believe it or not, FDR "worked with" Joseph Stalin, Nixon with Brezhnev, and Reagan with Gorbachev.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, my employer worked extensively with Russia and other nations to demil their munitions under contracts funded by the U.S. government.

Treason !  

The closest analogue is actually JFK and Khrushchev, JFK had almost the exact same position that Trump has invoked, to the point wherein when Khrushchev met Kennedy for the first time, he said "I got you elected"

JFK had to deal with the same Russia! Russia!! Russia!!! hysteria that Trump is dealing with, as Kennedy said "my God, the press is egging me on to start World War Three".

Edited June 19, 2019 by Dougie93