I would have to rehash the entire chain of events to reply. Can;t do that. Mueller is building upon some questionable things that were done before he even arrived. The issue of an american citizen being tapped through a fisa warrant rather than an article 3 warrant will become more important if mannafort and flynn go to trial. you can intercept as collateral but once the collateral person becomes a target themselves you need to get a regular criminal warrant to proceed- if they are an american citizen. Mueller is working off of information that may have been obtained illegally or at least the defendant has defenses to raise here. He has done additional investigation but if he has warrant problems then he will need to be able to convince the court that he still would have initiated an investigaition without the information he got illegally. I am not going to try the case here. I am just saying what I said yesterday. This isnt all going to be about watching mueller shoot fish in a barrel. The dirty deeds of the obama administration will come out too and they will not be pretty. The public is going to end out being concerned about interference in elections for sure- including interference by a politicized obama administration using the government apparatus to find dirt on camp trump. I can only repeat that mueller has a conflict of interest right out of the gate. And your comment about rice, powers, comey, loretta, clapper being lawyers- suggesting that the would not violate the law or have not already...wow. I will pass and let others comment. They are all dirty bigly. Might be good to follow current events. holy shiite!!
Here are my brief thoughts on this subject. I believe that Mannafort was under surveillance (and a legal wiretapping court order) for his activities long before he was involved in the Trump campaign. Naturally when Mannafort became involved in the Trump campaign this encompassed conversations with others including Trump. I expect that Mueller is going to have a number of Trump family associates prosecuted but no member of the Trump family. Will this take Trump down? I very much doubt it. He'll just tweet about it.
If we follow the law, and we have competent legal representation (I left that part out earlier ) we will be just fine. But we know there are instances when we didn't follow every nuance of the law (we J-walked) but our transgressions did not, in the eyes of those who might have prosecuted us, rise to a level of criminal intent and damage to justify the time and effort to prosecute. No prosecutor looks forward to the prospect of trying to convince a jury that the defendant, a proven J-walker, caused real harm and deserves to be jailed. A conviction would be unlikely whenever the jury's credulity must be stretched and bent in an attempt to prove intent and damage. This latter situation, I would guess, is quite close to the Hillary email business. Politicians are not bound by the same constraints and requirements for good judgement that prosecutors are. Politics can warp our otherwise good judgement; hence endless hearings for the purpose of political grandstanding on matters that should have been cut and dried. The Issa IRS hearings would be a flawless example. There are many other good examples ever since Newt Gingrich and the K-Street Gang stopped doing the peoples business and turned the House into a rancorous group of foot stomping, toy throwing, pre-schoolers.
Mueller will never be able to get rid of Trump just because he may have sold some condo's to Russians hiding hot money. His only hope for glory is to get something on the Trump kids and use it to blackmail Trump. For all I know, that is already happening, as we are watching Trump turn into Jeb Bush in slow motion. Trump could have counted on the MAGA brigades to exact terrible vengeance on any republicans who tried to impeach him. I am beginning to wonder if his continuing betrayals of his base are being forced on him in order to disillusion his supporters and clear the way to get rid of him. Hopefully Bannon or Don Jr has told him we are looking at the DACA amnesty as a litmus test of whether or not to stick with him. There is no point risking getting set upon by antifa mobs and cops, getting dumped by a hot GF or getting fired from your job if Trump is going to be another republican cuck.
Correct all the way round. Mannafort has been under surveillance since 2014- which raises various important and unsettling issues. Did the government have a regular non-fisa warrant? And how is it that Clapper did allegedly-by his own comments- did not know about all the non-fisa and fisa warrants in process against trump associates and campaign associates? Remember that clapper was the one who testified that regular americans were not being tapped to his knowledge and then had to admit that he was lying through his arse- so what is his credibility here? Zero. And Obama's knowledge? And correct, he does not want to come up empty handed in his investigation so will come up with a collection of minor crimes by underlings and try to stick it to them. It is a given that flynn will take a hit on the failing to register as an agent for turkey. They can't get mannafort in a full trial but if they offer him a relatively painless plea deal he will take it. Assuming the government had followed due process by having a proper warrant- which cannot be assumed yet. Part of the problem in prosecuting mannafort is that he will go after rice and powers to show a political motive and the government does not want to go down that road. Mannafort has defenses. That is all i am saying. It is not an easy shot. As you say though, smacking underlings around does not necessarily lead to trump's door nor does it establish collusion even on the part of the underlings. talking to ruskies is not illegal. you have to establish more than that. Just as a little mental exercise, imagine if the whole mueller machine was unleashed on to hillary's situation -including the foundation pay-to-play scheme- just imagine how many indictments a politically motivated person like mueller would have come up with. Note also that there was a pile of crimes by Clintons underlings such as huma that went untouched. Even comey conceded that some of the emails that huma forwarded to the pervert contained classified info.
It does seem to me that there should be sanctions for government officials who lie to congress. Clapper is an admitted liar, yet nothing happened to him. Comey clearly lied to congress on multiple occasions. Again, nothing. I am having a hard time imagining how any of this would have worked out any differently if Hillary had been elected.
It seems Manafort and Flynn both have sufficient resources available to hire competent legal counsel. I wouldn't waste sleep worrying abut them. If it turns out they are both as innocent as little lambs, then I'll be damn angry at the way they've been treated. I'll be on their side. In the meantime, since I have none of that "inside" information you seem to have, I just have to wait. P.S. -- Where can I come by that nice inside information? Beitbart, Infowars, Facebook, Tweets, I suppose. Obviously I am not spending enough time with social media.
I guess clapper should have known, whatever. I haven't a clue about any of that stuff, but since you seem to be an expert, Wouldn't you do the FISA thing when dealing with a foreign agents? (Like Manafort and Flynn for example)
You have lost the thread and context and purpose of my comments. To recap for you, yesterday someone- as usual- was gloating over all the fun of watching mueller's latest moves. I simply made the point that this is not "going to be all about watching mueller shoot fish in a barrel." That we are beginning to arrive at the point where uncovering the obama administration's interference in elections will also get more attention and that part may not be as fun for the lefty gloaters. That's all. And I stand by those comments 100%. And some of what you call "inside" information is available to any idiot who wants to think- just as when I said repeatedly that we needed to look no further than rice and powers to know who was doing the unmasking. WHO THE HELL DID YOU THINK WAS DOING IT? Now that we have established that- move on to thinking about who had knowledge of it.
Could not agree more. What is your view on those warrants. Shouldn't they have been via the FISA court in the case of Manafort and Flynn since they were both foreign agents? But it seems logical, since they are both also U.S. citizens, the investigators could have gone either route. I think both the acting AG and Obama personally warned the new Trump administration about Flynn. Is that what you meant by "unmasking".