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Comment by somebehemoth | Hacker News Reader

False.

"The Mueller report does establish that, in fact, members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities."

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/opinion/mueller-trump-cam...

Edit: Since the comment I am replying to is no longer present and I got downvotes for my comment: the person claimed there was "no evidence [anyone] conspired with Russia" so I linked to an article in the NYT by a law professor that contradicts this claim in detail. No evidence _is_ a false claim.

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Note this link points to an OpEd.

At least I believe the NYT isn’t so far gone as to publish such a claim outside of the editorial section, but I may be wrong.

For a different perspective, read what Glenn Greenwald has to say on the subject, in a piece titled “Robert Mueller Did Not Merely Reject the Trump-Russia Conspiracy Theories. He Obliterated Them.” [1]

Edit: I actually took the time to read the editorial. It is a collection, in my opinion, of dubious claims about standards of evidence being too high as the reason Mueller and his massive team could not bring a single solitary charge against Trump or the campaign related to Russian interference in the election.

Please remember how this all started, with a dirty dossier obtained from the Russians by the DNC, with a counter-intelligence operation claiming without evidence the President could be a Russian patsy. And yet here we are, still entirely unable to expose truth to the lie.

[1] - https://theintercept.com/2019/04/18/robert-mueller-did-not-m...

>Please remember how this all started, with a dirty dossier

Nope, it began when some foreign diplomats gave us a heads up that George Papadopoulos was bragging abroad that the Russians were going to help Trump by releasing dirt on Clinton. That the investigation was predicated on the dossier is a common misconception. If you are getting news from sources that get this basic fact wrong, you may wish to downgrade those sources' credibility in your estimation.

If Papadopoulos was so central, why did the FBI not interview him until late January 2017?

It seems as though the Papadopoulos origin was drummed up once the Carter Page origin story fell apart.

All media sources were reporting on the dossier as the origin until it fell apart.

What does the date of the interview have to do with whether or not he was central?

Not sure why you were downvoted, you are correct. It says as much on Page 1 of the Mueller Report:

> In late July 2016, soon after WikiLeaks's first release of stolen documents, a foreign government contacted the FBI about a May 2016 encounter with Trump Campaign foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos. Papadopoulos had suggested to a representative of that foreign government that the Trump Campaign had received indications from the Russian government that it could assist the Campaign through the anonymous release of information damaging to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. That information prompted the FBI on July 31, 2016, to open an investigation into whether individuals associated with the Trump Campaign were coordinating with the Russian government in its interference activities.

That happened in “late May 2016” right around the time that Fusion GPS hired Steele.

Note that Steele and Bruce Ohr were already in cahoots for several months by then, and Steele was already established as an CI with the FBI (a cover he later blew).

Papadopoulos met Professor Mifsud in London in March, and later Misfud said he had ties to the Kremlin and he claimed Russia had dirt on Clinton. Papadopolous sent an email two weeks after the London bar meeting saying Misfud introduced him to the Russian Ambassador to England and that the Ambassador might be able to help setup a meeting between Trump and Putin.

It was what Mifsud told Papadopolous that he would later talk about with the Greek or Australian diplomat that would be reported back to the FBI.

Interestingly, there are reports that Mifsud is actually a western intelligence officer, and has no links to the Kremlin whatsoever.

Yes, Steele had good relationships with our intelligence community. I don't see how that bears on the beginning of the investigation.

I haven't seen anything actually credible that Mifsud was western intelligence.

Chris Steele (an agent of a foreign government) was dead-set on preventing Trump from becoming President.

He had high level contacts at the FBI and DOJ which he was in contact with throughout early 2016.

Hopefully one day it will become fully clear what Steele was telling Bruce and Nellie Ohr, up until the very day before the FBI opened their investigation, when Nellie met Chris at the Mayflower Hotel on July 29, 2016.

But we do know at least that it was lies, mostly (Russian?) lies, that Steele was feeding the FBI. And we know certainly those lies had a bearing on the character and direction of the investigation, and on the methods employed to attempt to gather evidence (FISA), even if it is not the publically admitted initial basis for starting the investigation.

Mifsud, for his part, has gone to ground and isn’t taking interviews.

I'll stick with the actual quote from the actual report:

"the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in it's election interference activities."

Regardless of what any opinion piece wants to claim, in America you are innocent until proven guilty. Beyond a reasonable doubt is not just something done just for fun, but an important legal standard:

Beyond a reasonable doubt - The standard that must be met by the prosecution's evidence in a criminal prosecution: that no other logical explanation can be derived from the facts except that the defendant committed the crime, thereby overcoming the presumption that a person is innocent until proven guilty.

[self-censored]

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