The Robert Mueller Investigation

[Anastasis 23392]

8 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

Correct.  All law enforcement actions must be 100% by the book; otherwise, the subjects of the investigations are by definition innocent of all charges.  It's the law or something.

Yes. The most invasive of surveillance operations against US citizens need to abide by the policies and procedures that are intended to protect 4th amendment rights.  That is apparently an extreme minority viewpoint on the surly these days. 

[WhatTheBuck 28705]

1 hour ago, Anastasis said:

I’ll eat my crow when the report drops and says it was all by the book. In the meantime, you guys do the same thing y’all did when we had two rounds of McClatchy Prague.

Hypocrite. You're a Trump supporter. Don't pretend that doing things "by the book" is a standard you give two shits about. You don't like the message so you try to shoot the messenger. It's simple human psychology but something you should have grown out of by adulthood. But your orange overlord hasn't so why should we expect anything more from you?

If the Trump campaign wasn't consorting with Russian spies then Steele wouldn't have had anything to report on. If you interact with foreign spies then you should expect to get surveilled by the FBI. That's a good thing. Don't take the side of foreign spies. 

[jimmyjazz 45546]

3 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Yes. The most invasive of surveillance operations against US citizens need to abide by the policies and procedures that are intended to protect 4th amendment rights.  That is apparently an extreme minority viewpoint on the surly these days. 

You actually agreed with that statement.  LMAO.

NO, the actions of law enforcement don't determine guilt or innocence, for fuck's sake.  Good lord.  They may render a judgment impossible, but that's 2 different things.

[Anastasis 23392]

10 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

You actually agreed with that statement.  LMAO.

I agree with the statement in my post in my own words. I know that you struggle with reading comprehension. If it helps you can drop the “yes”. 

Edited July 9, 2019 by Anastasis

[David Dennison 18647]

17 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Yes. The most invasive of surveillance operations against US citizens need to abide by the policies and procedures that are intended to protect 4th amendment rights.  That is apparently an extreme minority viewpoint on the surly these days. 

That's why the FISA warrant process is so exhaustive.

[Anastasis 23392]

Just now, David Dennison said:

That's why the FISA warrant process is so exhaustive.

And why it’s important to follow precisely those policies and procedures. 

 

Look guys. We’ll see the report soon enough and then y’all carry on calling me a liar and a trump and whatever names you want. I have the sense that that is how this is going to play out on this thread not matter the findings. 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23356]

You’ve been carrying water for a Devin Nunes conspiracy theory for over a year.  What did you think would happen?  

Completely predictable it would blow up in your face. 

But whatabout Prague?!??!?

[jimmyjazz 45546]

45 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

I agree with the statement in my post in my own words. I know that you struggle with reading comprehension. If it helps you can drop the “yes”. 

I don't struggle with reading comprehension at all -- you write poorly.  Nothing after "yes" did anything to contradict my sarcastic assertion.   You agreed with it, and now you're back-pedaling.

Pro tip:  you are nowhere NEAR as clever as you think you are.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23356]

 

[Anastasis 23392]

Lol. You got me man! I retract any indication that I agree with your sarcastic assertion which has nothing to do with the discussion at hand. Hope you feel like you reestablished yourself after your dishonest horse shit immediately up thread. 

[Captainant 27435]

6 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Lol. You got me man! I retract any indication that I agree with your sarcastic assertion which has nothing to do with the discussion at hand. Hope you feel like you reestablished yourself after your dishonest horse shit immediately up thread. 

Be best.

[jimmyjazz 45546]

7 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Lol. You got me man! I retract any indication that I agree with your sarcastic assertion which has nothing to do with the discussion at hand. Hope you feel like you reestablished yourself after your dishonest horse shit immediately up thread. 

I'm pretty sure the vast majority of contributors on this thread feel that law enforcement should abide by the rules.  I certainly do.  Where we first get crossed up is that you think the rules are by definition flawed, so you don't care if LE conforms, that's simply not enough for you.  

Any deviation from the rule of law, no matter how inconsequential, drives you off into the batshit libertarian ditch.  Forget for the moment that we have seen no clear evidence of such deviation -- merely the possibility of such a deviation, combined with your distaste for the laws as written, leads you to castigate anyone who even differs slightly from your allegedly informed opinion, with no self-reflection possible.  It's an ethos, I suppose.

[retread 2951]

Oh

 

[Anastasis 23392]

NYT chimes in with their angle on OIG developments: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/09/us/politics/ig-russia-investigation-steele.html

Justice Dept. Watchdog Is Preparing to Deliver Verdict on the Russia Investigation

 

Michael E. Horowitz, the Justice Department’s inspector general, has maintained a reputation for being above the partisan fray.CreditTom Brenner/The New York Times

Michael E. Horowitz, the Justice Department’s inspector general, has maintained a reputation for being above the partisan fray.CreditCreditTom Brenner/The New York Times

By Adam Goldman, Charlie Savage and Matthew Rosenberg

• July 9, 2019
• •  

WASHINGTON — Inside a London office building in early June, three investigators for the Justice Department’s inspector general took a crucial step toward clearing the political fallout from the Russia investigation: They spent two days interviewing Christopher Steele, the former British spy whose now-infamous dossier of purported links between Trump associates and Russia ended up in the hands of the F.B.I. ahead of the 2016 election.

The investigators pored over Mr. Steele’s old memos and his contemporaneous notes from meetings with F.B.I. agents in the fall of 2016, according to a person familiar with the investigation. They asked Mr. Steele to explain in detail how he had validated his sources inside Russia, how he communicated with them, and how he decided which of their claims to include in his reports. They spoke at length about Mr. Steele’s work with the F.B.I. on other Russia-related investigations and his contacts with a senior Justice Department official.

The interview was a key step in the investigation by the inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, into the facts underlying a bitter partisan feud: Did F.B.I. officials do anything wrong in 2016 when they sought to understand the Trump campaign’s links to Russia — including how they used information from Mr. Steele?

That question has hovered over the Russia inquiry for two years as President Trump and his allies repeatedly assailed the investigators who scrutinized him and his advisers. Attorney General William P. Barr, who has accused the F.B.I. of “spying” on the Trump campaign, has begun his own review that will include intelligence agencies as well.

But the investigation by Mr. Horowitz, who has maintained a reputation for being above the partisan fray, may have a better chance of being accepted across party lines as credible. Mr. Horowitz, who is expected to release a much-anticipated report of his findings in the coming weeks, is believed to be weighing whether to recommend that the Justice Department tighten rules for any future counterintelligence investigations of a presidential campaign, which was a novel dilemma in 2016, according to people familiar with aspects of his investigation.

Mr. Horowitz’s previous scrutiny of law-enforcement actions in 2016 has provided fodder to both Republican and Democratic critics. He found fault with the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey for public comments in 2016 about the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server, but not with the decision to pass on charging her.

Mr. Horowitz also uncovered text messages between the F.B.I. employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page criticizing then-candidate Donald Trump. He sharply rebuked the pair but said he had found no evidence that the pair had acted with bias in the Clinton investigation.

At the center of Mr. Horowitz’s current investigation is Mr. Steele and how the F.B.I. used his reporting in its investigation of the Trump campaign.

The president’s allies have vilified Mr. Steele, whose sources said Mr. Trump’s campaign was colluding with the Kremlin and that Russia has a compromising sexual video of Mr. Trump taken inside a Moscow hotel room. No evidence of such a recording has surfaced.

Mr. Trump’s allies have sought to conflate the much broader Russia investigation with the dossier and have increased their attacks since the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, concluded that while the campaign welcomed and expected to benefit from Russia’s election interference, the evidence did not prove any conspiracy.

Investigators working for Mr. Horowitz have asked witnesses about whether the F.B.I. properly opened the Russia investigation and how the bureau handled a pair of informants, including Mr. Steele, whose work was financed by Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Reuters first reported the investigators’ interview of Mr. Steele. They have conducted more than 100 interviews and have begun drafting their report, Mr. Horowitz wrote to lawmakers last month.

Mr. Horowitz is expected to answer whether Mr. Steele’s information played a role in opening the Russia investigation, code-named Crossfire Hurricane. Former law enforcement officials have insisted it did not, saying they opened the inquiry in July 2016. The Steele dossier did not reach the relevant agents until Sept. 19, 2016, nearly two months later, people familiar with the matter have said.

But the primary focus of the inspector general’s inquiry is the role that Mr. Steele’s information played in investigators’ effort to obtain court permission to wiretap Carter Page, a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved the application on Oct. 21, 2016, about a month after Mr. Page had left the campaign, and the wiretap order — one of 1,559 the court issued that year — was renewed three times in 2017, including twice by Trump-era Justice Department officials.

In August 2016, a month before agents on the Russia investigation received the Steele dossier, they had already started discussions with the Justice Department about seeking a wiretap order targeting Mr. Page, according to people familiar with the investigation’s timeline. Agents identified Mr. Page as a potential conduit between the campaign and Moscow, if there was any, because he had close business ties to Russia, had traveled there in July after joining the campaign, and had been targeted as a potential recruit by Russian intelligence agents in 2013 — yet did not seem concerned when the F.B.I. talked to him about it.

Still, the arrival of the dossier in September kicked the deliberations over whether to seek a wiretap order into a higher gear, according to people familiar with the Russia investigation. By adding further weight to their reasons to be suspicious of Mr. Page, Mr. Steele’s information helped officials overcome bureaucratic reluctance stemming from fears that any leak of the existence of such a wiretap would be politically radioactive.

Agents sought a warrant, mentioning in their application a claim from the dossier: One of Mr. Steele’s sources said that when Mr. Page was in Russia that July, he had supposedly met with the Kremlin-linked president of an energy firm and discussed energy cooperation between the United States and Russia and the prospects of lifting Western sanctions against the Kremlin related to its incursions in Ukraine.

Investigators flagged, in a lengthy footnote in the wiretap application, that Mr. Steele’s research was funded by someone “likely looking for information that could be used to discredit” Mr. Trump’s campaign. They did not specifically identify the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Mr. Trump’s allies have called it an abuse to use political opposition research in a wiretap application, especially without naming its funders.

The F.B.I. has defended its use of the material, saying Mr. Steele was a veteran intelligence professional who had helped the bureau obtain credible information in previous investigations. The footnote was a sufficient red flag because it “highlights for the court that this could have been opposition research, that that’s what the source was conducting,” Sally Moyer, an F.B.I. lawyer, said in private congressional testimony last fall.

Mr. Horowitz is also scrutinizing a related issue: whether law-enforcement officials adequately took into account new information as they sought to renew the wiretap. It is not clear, for example, when the F.B.I. figured out for certain that the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign had funded Mr. Steele’s research; investigators never updated the language describing his research in their three renewal applications.

Moreover, by January 2017, F.B.I. agents had tracked down and interviewed one of Mr. Steele’s main sources, a Russian speaker from a former Soviet republic who had spent time in the West, according to a Justice Department document obtained by The New York Times and three people familiar with the events. After questioning him, F.B.I. officials came to suspect that the man might have added his own interpretations to reports from his own sources that he passed on to Mr. Steele, calling into question the reliability of the information.

But it remains unclear whether that source was the origin of any of the claims about Mr. Page that made it into the wiretap application — and, if so, whether the F.B.I. ever told the surveillance court.

His investigators’ questions suggest that the inspector general is exploring several additional lines of potential criticism of the F.B.I. They asked Mr. Steele whether the bureau was overly reliant on the Russian expertise of outsiders like him. Mr. Steele told them that he believed the F.B.I. probably was underequipped to judge the inherently murky intelligence he was relaying.

They also asked about Mr. Steele’s relationship with Bruce Ohr, a senior Justice Department official who was not working on the Russia investigation. After the F.B.I. formally terminated its confidential source relationship with Mr. Steele because he had spoken to the media about what he was hearing from his sources inside Russia, Mr. Ohr functioned as an intermediary for subsequent informal communications as the bureau continued to scrutinize Trump-Russia ties, including attempting to verify other claims in Mr. Steele’s dossier.

In all, the Page wiretap application has likely become among the most scrutinized wiretap applications in history. James A. Baker, the F.B.I. general counsel at the time, who also agreed to cooperate with the inspector general, would not comment on the substance of his interactions with Mr. Horowitz’s inquiry but has said in other forums that F.B.I. officials knew that everything they did would be second-guessed.

During a congressional deposition last fall, Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio and a Trump ally, asked Mr. Baker why he took the unusual step of personally reviewing the original warrant application.

“I anticipated being — sitting here in rooms like this down the road, I seriously did, and I knew that it was — I knew that it was sensitive,” Mr. Baker replied, according to a transcript. “I knew that it would be controversial.”

[notre dame joe 172]

8 hours ago, WhatTheBuck said:

Hypocrite. You're a Trump supporter. Don't pretend that doing things "by the book" is a standard you give two shits about. You don't like the message so you try to shoot the messenger. It's simple human psychology but something you should have grown out of by adulthood. But your orange overlord hasn't so why should we expect anything more from you?

If the Trump campaign wasn't consorting with Russian spies then Steele wouldn't have had anything to report on. If you interact with foreign spies then you should expect to get surveilled by the FBI. That's a good thing. Don't take the side of foreign spies.  

I needed a good laugh before bed.  You probably believe that Steele had a book with a chapter on when he must disappoint his patrons. 

[HenryJames 65886]

 

[Anastasis 23392]

15 hours ago, jimmyjazz said:

I'm pretty sure the vast majority of contributors on this thread feel that law enforcement should abide by the rules.  I certainly do.  Where we first get crossed up is that you think the rules are by definition flawed, so you don't care if LE conforms, that's simply not enough for you.  

[batshit civil liberties ditch rant]

I think that the very existence of the broad surveillance apparatus, and especially to the extent that it impacts American citizens, is unacceptable.  Past that, I believe that the 4th amendment protections in place are far inadequate.

I think that there are numerous examples of the protections that are in place being inadequately implemented by the intelligence agencies including the NSA and the FBI. These issues are ongoing and widespread. See the recent NSA OIG report for just one example, or the numerous reports that they can't figure out effective and consistent implementation of the controls. For years. Numerous examples, with common thread going back to Bush at least.

I think that there are examples of these agencies displaying an "institutional lack of candor". (See the wide spread NSA abuse that Rogers revealed in 2017 (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/11/us/politics/nsa-surveillance-trump.html  and FISC ruling:https://www.scribd.com/document/349261099/2016-Cert-FISC-Memo-Opin-Order-Apr-2017-4#download). The institutions, nor their leaders (See Clapper testimony) can be trusted to vigorously protect the 4th Amendment rights of Americans. Our elected officials cannot even provide the necessary oversight when they bother (see Clapper, See CIA spying on the Senate staffers on intelligence committee).

And you want to talk about whether the rules are flawed or not? LOL. The entire system, from it's basic infrastructure, to the processes that regulate it, to the agencies use of it, to our elected officials ability to provide adequate oversight of it, is flawed. But sure, if the rules that are intended to protect American's rights are not working, either because they are inadequate or because they are not systematically adhered to, they are indeed flawed and insufficient.

[/batshit civil liberties rant]

I think that at a minimum what will come out of the OIG report in terms of recommendations is a CAPA plan addressing a) shortcomings in the current policies and procedures, and/or b) violations of the current policies and procedures. Auditors gonna audit. I think that both a) and b) likely occurred.  We'll see what the report says and what the recommendations are.

[GW Hayduke 1952]

Not only did the FBI break rules to get Trump, but the entire system is against Trump! Trump is just a poor victim!

[Anastasis 23392]

Just now, GW Hayduke said:

Not only did the FBI break rules to get Trump, but the entire system is against Trump! Trump is just a poor victim!

Yeah, that is not anywhere close to what I am saying.  And I've been saying the same shit long before Trump was President.  

[Zavala 1384]

1 hour ago, GW Hayduke said:

Not only did the FBI break rules to get Trump, but the entire system is against Trump! Trump is just a poor victim!

Are you OK with the Trump administration FBI using surveillance on Democrat politicians?

[Chooky 13299]

1 minute ago, Zavala said:

Are you OK with the Trump administration FBI using surveillance on Democrat politicians?

If they employed paid lobbyists for hostile foreign countries who were incentivised to push for favorable legislation for those countries then fuck yeah and fuck yes and fuckin' A. And multiple fuck yaz if an asshole traitor like that was going to be appointed to a position that ran something like our nation's security. Yes. What a stupid fucking question. You'd have to be either a mongoloid or a former Soviet patriot to say no. 

[jimmyjazz 45546]

4 minutes ago, Chooky said:

What a stupid fucking question. You'd have to be either a mongoloid or a former Soviet patriot to say no. 

imgur

/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" />

[Longhorn_Fan68 33833]

One week till the big day!

[David Dennison 18647]

2 hours ago, Anastasis said:

Yeah, that is not anywhere close to what I am saying.  And I've been saying the same shit long before Trump was President.  

So we agree, FISA and the Patriot Act need to go.

 

[Longhorn_Fan68 33833]

https://www.insider.com/mueller-report-rewritten-trump-russia-mark-bowden-archer-2019-7

[triplehorn 2664]

Trump tweeting about Deutsche Bank today, seemingly out of the blue. 

nothing to see here or anything

oh yeah, about DB and your son-in-law ?  know him ? yeah.

Edited July 11, 2019 by triplehorn

[Captainant 27435]

It's also a verifiable lie that the most prestigious banks wanted his business lol. Nobody wanted to touch him after he sold junk bonds to finance his boondoggle of a casino in atlantic city.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23356]

Kinda saw this coming 

 

[retread 2951]

[Hugo Stiglitz 23356]

Yep, this is another fuck up by the democrats. 

[retread 2951]

Aunt Nancy and Nadler talk a good game a couple of times a month. That's about it.

[triplehorn 2664]

Watch what happens with this:

 

Bob Van Voris July 11, 2019, 4:41 PM PDT Updated on July 11, 2019, 5:25 PM PDT

Two committees of the Democrat-controlled U.S. House of Representatives defended their subpoenas to Deutsche Bank AG and Capital One Financial Corp. for President Donald Trump’s personal financial records.

The House Financial Services Committee and Intelligence Committee urged the federal appeals court in New York to reject Trump’s attempt to block the subpoenas, arguing that Congress has broad authority to investigate and that the demands for Trump’s records are proper.

The committees “are investigating serious and urgent matters concerning the safety of certain banking practices, money laundering in the financial sector, foreign influence in the U.S. political process, and the counterintelligence threats posed by foreign financial leverage,” they argued to the court.

U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos in May refused to block the subpoenas, saying since the president, his family and his business were unlikely to convince a judge that the congressional subpoenas are improper, he wouldn’t intervene to stop them. The banks took no position and are sitting on the sidelines while Trump and the House fight it out.

The federal appeals court in Washington is set to hear oral arguments Friday over a House subpoena issued to Trump’s accountants, Mazars USA LLP. The New York court is scheduled to review the Deutsche Bank and Capital One subpoenas on Aug. 23

The case is Trump v. Deutsche Bank AG, 19-1540, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (Manhattan).

_________

This could be what brings it all down for Trump family and beyond.  Untold volumes of illicit cash/paper trails/money laundering/transnational mob pulling the strings (Putin/Russia for starters).

If there's any reason to delay starting formal impeachment, Congress getting the goods from DB is it.  If DB is the linchpin to unlocking the web of cash and associations over a decade or more for Trump world, this is something not even Mitch could ignore.

Keep in mind Mueller already went to DB over a year ago.  I'm curious if one or more of his farmed out investigations are centered around evidence derived from DB.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23356]

Just now, triplehorn said:

Watch what happens with this:

Seems to be the ongoing strategy for the democrats while they sit on the box of smoking guns that is the Mueller Report.

Any money laundering or financial crimes they find in Trump’s finances will be small potatoes compared to the malfeasance described in the Mueller Report.  Trump’s crimes detailed in there are egregious threats to national security.   

He order the investigation of an attack by Russia on American democracy shut down because it would make him look bad.  It puts everything this country is about in jeopardy if he isn’t held accountable.  Things many people have fought and died to persevere are on the line.   Shooting someone on 5th Avenue would be a less serious crime IMO. 

[retread 2951]

12 four-day weeks left for the House in 2019. DOTUS is running the clock out, and the Ds continue to play prevent D.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23356]

2 minutes ago, retread said:

12 four-day weeks left for the House in 2019. DOTUS is running the clock out, and the Ds continue to play prevent D.

Ds are running the clock out too.  They have been the entire time. 

Edited July 12, 2019 by Hugo Stiglitz

[DDD Dad 14250]

They really just need to open impeachment inquiry hearings and stop dancing around using other means to try to get information.  Cleans up all of the subpoena issues with general oversight powers.

[Anastasis 23392]

Why does he need another week to prepare for longer testimony?  This is his baby. He should be able to speak to it from every angle. 

[triplehorn 2664]

33 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Seems to be the ongoing strategy for the democrats while they sit on the box of smoking guns that is the Mueller Report.

Any money laundering or financial crimes they find in Trump’s finances will be small potatoes compared to the malfeasance described in the Mueller Report.  Trump’s crimes detailed in there are egregious threats to national security.   

He order the investigation of an attack by Russia on American democracy shut down because it would make him look bad.  It puts everything this country is about in jeopardy if he isn’t held accountable.  Things many people have fought and died to persevere are on the line.   Shooting someone on 5th Avenue would be a less serious crime IMO. 

Sometimes you come across as a reverse 11th level troll.  It's not fucking small potatoes.  

There are some important differences between obstruction of justice and involvement in money laundering with transnational criminal organizations (TCOs).  Financial crimes are digital/paper crimes with money trails that provide unambiguous hard evidence that is very difficult to defend in court and in public opinion.  It appears likely DB is the premier global hub of this kind of criminal activity.  Going after it publicly and legally, tying in the likes of Trump, Kushner, and Epstein, for starters, stands to begin to dismantle the machine.  Eliminating Trump alone is like pruning a weed.  The DB component is going after the roots of a vast global shadow economy.  Additionally, tying impeachment of Trump to the international criminal financial web stands to vault the visibility of said web to a level where actual steps are taken to dismantle/regulate it to begin to squash malevalent TCO's.

DB appears to already grasp what is in store.  Mueller approaching them was the harbinger.  Then Congress subpoenaed DB over Trump.  At the same time, DB cuts off its relationship with Epstein.  Then suddenly last week DB announces it's laying off 20% of its workforce internationally (>18,000 employees).  It's a clue as to where this is going.

[retread 2951]

3 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Why does he need another week to prepare for longer testimony?  This is his baby. He should be able to speak to it from every angle. 

There was some reporting on CNN that the alotted time wouldn't allow for sufficient questioning. Some members wouldn't even be able to ask questions. IDK. Clown show.

[jimmyjazz 45546]

3 minutes ago, triplehorn said:

Then suddenly last week DB announces it's laying off 20% of its workforce internationally (>18,000 employees).  It's a clue as to where this is going.

Wasn't DB already struggling?  I'm not convinced they are prepping for massive fines so much as trying to keep the ship afloat.

Now, how you sink a bank is another question.  It's like running a casino into the ground.  (Ahem.)

[Hugo Stiglitz 23356]

1 hour ago, triplehorn said:

Sometimes you come across as a reverse 11th level troll.  It's not fucking small potatoes.  

There are some important differences between obstruction of justice and involvement in money laundering with transnational criminal organizations (TCOs).  Financial crimes are digital/paper crimes with money trails that provide unambiguous hard evidence that is very difficult to defend in court and in public opinion.  It appears likely DB is the premier global hub of this kind of criminal activity.  Going after it publicly and legally, tying in the likes of Trump, Kushner, and Epstein, for starters, stands to begin to dismantle the machine.  Eliminating Trump alone is like pruning a weed.  The DB component is going after the roots of a vast global shadow economy.  Additionally, tying impeachment of Trump to the international criminal financial web stands to vault the visibility of said web to a level where actual steps are taken to dismantle/regulate it to begin to squash malevalent TCO's.

DB appears to already grasp what is in store.  Mueller approaching them was the harbinger.  Then Congress subpoenaed DB over Trump.  At the same time, DB cuts off its relationship with Epstein.  Then suddenly last week DB announces it's laying off 20% of its workforce internationally (>18,000 employees).  It's a clue as to where this is going.

All I'm saying is play it out in your head.  What happens if hard evidence is discovered?  They can't indict him while he's in office and AG Barr isn't going to report impeachable offenses to the Judiciary Committee.  Moreover, if the congressional committees discover crimes on their own they aren't going to impeach him based on that alone.  They would need something like a Mueller report to give it credibility and Barr has made it pretty clear he's there to protect Trump.  Additionally, with impeachment, things like the timing of the crimes and whether or not they had implications on national security come into play. 

Trump obstructing the investigation of the Russia attack while he was in office meets every criteria imaginable for impeachment and removal.  It was him betraying the public's trust while in office to protect an adversarial government that attacked our democratic institutions.  It doesn't get much worse when it comes to national security crimes than abusing your power to break the law to protect the Russian government while they dismantle our democracy.  

 This isn't going anywhere before the election.  

 

Edited July 12, 2019 by Hugo Stiglitz

[babysdaddy 2718]

30 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

Wasn't DB already struggling?  I'm not convinced they are prepping for massive fines so much as trying to keep the ship afloat.

Now, how you sink a bank is another question.  It's like running a casino into the ground.  (Ahem.)

Yes.  DB laying off employees has absolutely fuck all to do with this. But Triple gonna Triple

[triplehorn 2664]

38 minutes ago, babysdaddy said:

Yes.  DB laying off employees has absolutely fuck all to do with this. But Triple gonna Triple

Yes or no.  Is there an association between the corners of banking where DB is cutting operations and the type of banking practices where DB has come under scrutiny for either their own or others' criminal activity?

[Hugo Stiglitz 23356]

DB has been an international organized crime front for decades.  

[triplehorn 2664]

2 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

DB has been an international organized crime front for decades.  

So has Donald Trump and Trump Org

[DixonHur 11167]

2 hours ago, retread said:

12 four-day weeks left for the House in 2019. DOTUS is running the clock out, and the Ds continue to play prevent D.

All a prevent defense does is prevent you from winning. - John Madden

[David Dennison 18647]

2 hours ago, retread said:

12 four-day weeks left for the House in 2019. DOTUS is running the clock out, and the Ds continue to play prevent D.

Bill Clinton's impeachment proceedings started in October. He was impeached in December.

[DixonHur 11167]

1 minute ago, David Dennison said:

Bill Clinton's impeachment proceedings started in October. He was impeached in December.

Starr Report came out in September.  Mueller report came out in April.

[triplehorn 2664]

13 minutes ago, DixonHur said:

All a prevent defense does is prevent you from winning. - John Madden

Inapt analogy, imo.  Time doesn't expire this Christmas.  The most relevant time is Spring/Summer into Fall 2020.

 

8 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

Bill Clinton's impeachment proceedings started in October. He was impeached in December.

Once this gets officially lit, it can burn fast and hot.  And unlike DOJ, which has codes around announcing indictments/timing prosecutions so as to not make major waves that could influence elections, Congress is under no such restriction.  The House needs to time a torrential shit storm on TrumpCo for 2020, not before this Christmas.  That makes it front and center fresh for Nov 2020 elections and minimizes GOP Senate ability to neutralize it and punishes GOP Senate for their cover-up and complicity.

Edited July 12, 2019 by triplehorn

[David Dennison 18647]

6 minutes ago, DixonHur said:

Starr Report came out in September.  Mueller report came out in April.

So?