Author Topic: Comey & Trump - NEVER believe anything a government official says without evidence  (Read 1222 times)

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Offline segnosaur

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As much as I dislike Trump, this includes Comey & the leaked dossier from months ago that implicated Trump in all sorts of scandalous Russian encounters.
Keep in mind that the current line of investigation is not into Trump himself colluding with the Russians, the investigation is whether Trump interfered with an existing investigation.

Had Trump not fired Comey, he would probably have not been under investigation (at least at this point).
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Maybe Comey is telling the truth (at least he volunteered to testify under oath).  But personal memos are not evidence.
Actually, they are.

Granted, its not as strong as (for example) a taped conversation, but the fact that the memos were written (and seen by others) shortly after the events occurred gives them a higher amount of gravitas than just a straight claim made weeks/months after.

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Comey is a trained lawyer.  He was also the head of the FBI, who you'd think would be smart enough to bring along a gadget James Bond-style to record conversions with Trump if he felt threatened rather than rely on he-said she-said.
Not sure if such recordings would be considered illegal in that situation. So even if he caught Trump saying "I'm guilty", Comey himself might have been subject to various laws regarding wiretapping/eavesdropping/etc.

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The GOP and their donors can't control Trump, and that's a huge threat to them and the trillions $$$ the special interests are worth, which is a massive amount power.
Even though the big donors can't "control" trump, he is friendly enough to their interests (big tax breaks to the rich, loosing financial/environmental regulations, etc.) that they don't need to.

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Consider that Trump is now in more legal trouble than W. Bush was ever in...and Trump has only been in office a few months! Consider that virtually the entire GOP was behind Dubya & his lies before Iraq, & almost half of the Democrats too
I think the reason that Trump is in more legal trouble than Bush is because, well, he's dirtier and more incompetent than Bush ever was.

There were many reasons to criticize Bush. But even at his worst, I don't think Bush was anywhere near as bad as Trump when it comes to lying, etc.
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My main point is:  do not believe anything on face.  WHERE'S THE EVIDENCE?
There's plenty of circumstantial evidence.

We know (for example) of the following links between Russia and various people within Trump's organization:
- Flynn lied about contacts with Russian officials
- Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort was a business partner of several Russian businessmen
- Eric Trump admitted that they don't get funding from American banks, but they get the financing they need from Russian banks
- Meetings between Trump's son-in-law and adviser Kushner and Russian banks and Russian officials prior to Trump being sworn in

We also have multiple U.S. intelligence agencies stating that the hackers involved in the U.S. elections were based in Russia.

Now, none of that is concrete proof of collusion. However, it is enough to sustain investigations. Which is the whole point... to build on evidence to see what crimes may have been committed.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03/connections-trump-putin-russia-ties-chart-flynn-page-manafort-sessions-214868
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/06/15/mueller_reportedly_investigating_kushner_s_financial_dealings_with_russia.html
http://nypost.com/2017/05/07/eric-trump-said-dads-golf-courses-were-funded-by-russia/

Now, as for Trump himself: As I pointed out, the main issue isn't whether Trump himself colluded with the Russians, but whether Trump attempted to influence the investigations into the other people. (Trump may himself have been involved but that doesn't appear to be the main problem right now.) So what evidence do we have that Trump may be guilty of interfering with the election? We have:

- Comey's testimony and memos. (Yes, its not hard proof, but the fact that he wrote things down ahead of time gives his testimony more weight than just a simple claim after the fact.)
- The fact that Comey himself was actually fired, along with conflicting claims about why he was fired. (If Trump couldn't keep his story straight, it kind of affects his credibility.)
- Reports that people like NSA chief Rogers and Director of Intelligence Dan Coats were asked by the whitehouse to make statements about how "the president was not under investigation". (Now, part of that information comes from 'anonymous sources'; however, they were reported in fairly respectable mainstream publications.)

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/5/22/15678342/trump-russia-probe