Before the election the Republican's held the house and were likely to hold it again. If it became public that there was FISA surveillance related to Republican campaign you would have to expect a House investigation. There was also a chance that Trump would be elected. You would assume if he was elected there would also be an executive investigation into the FISA surveillance which is what we see from the OIG and now the DOJ via Durham.
There are going to be very strong incentives for these investigations to try and dig up anything that would look like foul play. Even if you try and do everything by the book you risk burning what is presumably a useful investigative tool. I can't see how the next best option which would be try and get sealed warrants from a normal court is so much poorer that this loss would offset all the political risk.
Nobody thought Trump was going to win, the Senate was expected to go blue, and House Republican control notwithstanding, that probably drove a lot of their internal, err, can I call it optimism? And if everyone involved believed there was something there to find, it's easy to understand why they'd just keep pushing, figuring that once they found something concrete, the methods used to get there would get lost in the noise.
I'm just speculating, but this may have played out rather differently had Trump had a two-digit lead for most of the run-up to the election.
Anyway, if I'm right that they justified their actions because they were never expected to see daylight, that's particularly scary because it suggests that maybe this behavior is standard operating procedure. Invent fake dirt on your perp and hand it to the FISA court, use the FISA warrant to get the real dirt on your perp, do some parallel construction, and you're golden! They've got carte blanche, as long as (a) they get their guy or (b) their guy doesn't have any power to come back at them. Yuck. That sort of thing can be dangerous to a democracy.
* There are some rotten things at the FBI that should be fixed.
* Russians interfered with our elections in 2016, and will keep attempting to do so.
I don't get why he's so in the tank for Russia.
If I recall correctly he was also defending Wikileaks against the charge that it timed its releases to hurt Hillary Clinton. Even if you agree with Wikileaks' general agenda, it's obvious they were timing things for maximum impact.
It's the same with Russian interference. It's actually their job to interfere, and it would be easy for him to acknowledge that and still maintain his criticism of targets.
The Republican minority report from the House intelligence committee also agrees Russia meddled in the 2016 election.
We should be concerned if it did happened regardless of political ideology.
It'd be much easier to focus efforts on simply discrediting how much it really mattered. Most reports said the Russians spent around $20M on ads which considering both sides campaigns had about a billion each, not to mention the invaluable endless free media coverage over two years most presidential elections take... you can draw your own conclusions.
It's about sowing doubt and creating a world where there are no 'facts', because then those who lie are on a level playing field with those who deal with the truth.
As an aside, I have absolutely no idea why Trump is being impeached. Every time I open Google News all the top headlines are "Impeach Trump!". But I never see anything about why exactly he is being impeached. Granted, I haven't really read any of these articles, more than just skimming, but I'd expect at least something in the title or summary that I see in Google News. Very bizarre thing going on. When Clinton was impeached it was very clear it was related to Monica Lewinsky and lying under oath. But regarding Trump, I mostly just see articles about who wants him impeached. Nothing about why. Anyone know the particular reason Trump is being impeached? What law he violated?
UPDATE: I googled it, and someone claims he pressured Ukraine to investigate Biden's son. Perhaps impeachable, but not obviously so. I guess that's why the reason is not more widely promoted, since on the face of it does not sound particularly egregious, compared to what other presidents have done.
No.
You could read the articles of impeachment themselves if you want to inform yourself: https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2019/12/politics/impeach...
"It is absolutely illegal for anyone to solicit, accept, or receive anything of value from a foreign national in connection with any election in the United States."
"he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to look into a discredited conspiracy theory that it was Ukraine and not Russia that interfered in the 2016 presidential election by hacking the Democratic National Committee."
And the document further continues the narrative that Trump is having outside powers interfere with the US election,
"These actions were consistent with President Trump’s previous invitations of foreign interference in United States elections."
So, it is definitely related to the overall narrative of Trump colluding with foreign powers to have them interfere.
Also weird, dems been pushing to impeach Trump for quite awhile, but this is a recent event. It looks like the Dems have been on an impeachment hunt in search of a reason. Which also makes this allegation weird. Searching for reasons to impeach also sounds contrary to law and order, which is the reason given for impeaching Trump in this document.
None of this to say I like the guy or even believe the allegations to be false. However, the impeachment does not seem to be carefully following due process, which is much more undermining of rule by law than whatever Trump may have done.
And the obstruction charge is quite verifiable as well.
This is very thorough, and not credibly rebutted anywhehere: https://docs.house.gov/billsthisweek/20191216/CRPT-116hrpt34...
A bunch of testimonies sounds convincing, but that depends on whom the people are and what they exactly observed. E.g. why would the ambassador to the UK know what Trump said to Ukraine? I personally am still not getting a solid feeling from all this.
You'd really want to go read and review some of this. There are some decent summaries like
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/12/10/case-impe...
This is no 'conviction'. He has been impeached, and that's forever, as with Clinton. More likely than not, he will not be removed from office.
No one really knows what the political consequences are, but the people running the investigation felt compelled to act since what he was doing represents a clear and present threat to free and fair elections.
However, as the article says, the Dems are rushing the impeachment process, which as you say will most likely not remove Trump from office (nor imprison). So, I really don't understand what is the point of this whole thing. How does Trump's behavior present a threat to free and fair elections, and how does this impeachment stop the threat?
Trump may find out Biden's son is doing illegal activities, or that Russia wasn't as meddlesome as supposed, and while that may influence the election, it is unclear to me how learning such information is in itself a bad thing for our system of government, i.e. a threat to free and fair elections.
And the very implication of the articles of impeachment, that Trump could gain something of value from Ukraine, has the implication that what Trump is seeking may actually be correct. In which case, Trump's requests certainly should be followed through by the Ukraine minister.
This whole thing makes less and less sense the more I dig into it, and I understand even more why all the news articles are so light on details.
No. : "New York Times Forced To Retract Longstanding '17 Intel Agencies' Lie About Russian Hacking":
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-30/new-york-times-for...
Ann Coulter addresses details and history of the "17 intelligence agencies" claims in her book "Resistance Is Futile!: How the Trump-Hating Left Lost Its Collective Mind":
https://www.amazon.com/Resistance-Futile-Trump-Hating-Left-C...
The sole sources of the claims were found to be only John Brennan and James Clapper.
This line implies two totally different things and has been used by politicians and biased medias to mislead the public.
One thing is Russians interfered the elections in 2016 by buying ads and spreading misinformation, which did happen.
The other thing is Russians interfered the elections in 2016 by working with the Trump campaign. There is no evidence for this even after FBI violated many protocols in their investigation.
One example of media spreading misinformation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdIkgWdAq3Q
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-campaign-russia-govern...
Here's another one about something much smaller and more local than the election:
https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-trolls-senate-intelli...
They were trying to get Americans to fight in the streets, and organized a protest and counter protest!
There are many reasons and they are nicely documented at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_20...
From 2017, we influenced the French election: http://www.theamericanmirror.com/obama-meddles-french-electi...
American involvement in other other countries's leadership is so prevalent that there is a Wikipedia page for it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
There certainly have been plenty of instances of the US doing very bad things globally (your second link is very much legit), but I guess the stated goal of spreading democracy is better than whatever straight up authoritarian states like Russia are peddling, even if it can be frustrating when things fail to live up to the ideal.
I think you can certainly argue for less US involvement abroad and still view Russia's actions in a very, very poor light.
1. On social media, the IRA (Russia's Internet Research Agency) posed as Americans on Twitter and Facebook, and was ordered to amplify and provoke political and social discord in the United States. They organized political rallies (including "Blue Lives Matter") and fake Facebook groups, complete with convenient memes, unwittingly shared by people like Donald Trump Jr., Kellyanne Conway, Michael Flynn, etc.
2. The GRU hacked into email accounts owned by volunteers and employees of the Clinton campaign. They also hacked into the DNC and DCCC and released the stolen emails and documents to Wikileaks.
3. There were 140 contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian government officials around the 2016 election.
I suggest you read the Mueller report if you're actually curious about this.
We can both blame the FBI for domestic misbehavior, and simultaneously recognize that, as LBJ put it, "Dammit, it's treason!" when Nixon and Kissinger interfered in foreign policy in order to sway an election. Or when Trump and Giuliani do it.
1. Flawed warrant applications were made
2. Those flawed warrants revealed a criminal conspiracy at the highest levels of a presidential campaign, that has sent many people to prison. It is documented very well in the Mueller report. Further good background is the Crowdstrike report on the DNC hack.
This is gaslighting of the worst kind. The procedural errors made by the FBI while investigating the crime pale in comparison to the crime itself and this is a deliberate attempt to conflate the two. I have read Greenwald for the better part of two decades when he was writing independently on a Wordpress site and I have no idea what has happened to him.
It's unfortunate that that aligns him, now, with the gross political opportunism of a group of people who generally DO support an invasive government intelligence and law enforcement--as long as it is working in their favor.
Now that it is in their interest to publicly attack this apparatus, they happily do so. As soon as it's working for them again, they'll wrap themselves in FBI hats and American flags again.
One wants to say to Greenwald: "Read the room, man! You're supporting people who oppose your beliefs and would happily throw you in jail!"
But of course a big part of being Greenwald being Greenwald is he sticks to his guns no matter how the room reads.
There was no "criminal conspiracy".
These were all criminal individuals acting criminally, and not in concert to achieve anything together.
Their crimes indeed indicate this.
I get it you hate Trump, but this shit should scare you.
Re, for example: https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/15/politics/trump-associates-con...
As an aside, Glen Greenwald is in my opinion one of the last remaining true journalists that hasn't been overcome with partisan slant.