If the FBI can use the Russia thing on a presidential candidate, they can use it on anybody.
https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-paul-manafort-russia...
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/manafort...
Because apparently we're going to pretend that NBCnews is somehow not a reputable news source, the link to the actual document so we can stop trying to change the subject:
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5677512/Manafort-...
Page 6, copy and paste the blacked out text:
>The same is true with regard to the Government’s allegation that Mr. Manafort lied about sharing polling data with Mr. Kilimnik related to the 2016 presidential campaign. (See Doc. 460 at 6). The simple fact that Mr. Manafort could not recall, or incorrectly recalled, specific events from his past dealings with Mr. Kilimnik – but often (after being shown or told about relevant documents or other evidence) corrected himself or clarified his responses – does not support a determination that he intentionally lied.
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5677512/Manafort-...
If you have an issue with that site you can go to literally dozens of others, how about the BBC?
Now, please answer my question.
Fuzzy thinking around it was and is being used to excuse extraordinary abuse of the law and legal system.
To be illegal, information sharing has to violate some law. This does not. It is simply not illegal to share information with Russia citizens, the Russian government, or anyone affiliated with Russia.
Not even "secret" information, unless that information is governed under very specific laws. All this media puffery is absolute manipulation, and your distributing it shows that you either don't understand the law or don't wish to.
I can't tell if you're intentionally stating falsehoods with the hope nobody will fact check you, or if you're just completely ignorant of the law. He was accused and convicted of acting as an unregistered foreign agent. Is it absolutely, unquestionably illegal to be a political operative for a foreign government and not register. For good reason. He broke the law, he went to prison. It was entirely illegal.
And NONE of that has anything to do with the original question or answer. Which is: what proof is there that he gave polling data to the Russians. Which I provided, and you still haven't refuted.
I assert strongly that no one on earth should care in the slightest.
Sharing non-classified information is completely legal. Working for a foreign business is legal. Getting paid is legal. Almost everything is legal.
Acting as an foreign agent without disclosure is illegal, in limited scope. The FARA violation related to Ukraine.
For example, Fusion GPS paying Veselnitskaya, using her to lobby _against_ the magnitsky act, and also supplying the infamous "dossier" which was paid for by the DNC.
The whole thing is a cobweb or power players who use connections and ignorant US media to parrot back narratives, divide events into political tribes, and isolate people from the truth. It's a dumpster fire where people end up believing things that are untrue and they don't even know why.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/analysis-mueller-and...
Thus, this is the thinnest conceivable gruel for spying on a campaign with FISA warrants, framing an incoming national security advisor, multiple impeachment efforts, four years of media hysteria deeply interned with leaks and special council, and countless lives ruined. In the course of history, there are simply no excuses for this kind of casual slander, excepting smack dab in the middle of an outrageously powerful police-bureaucratic state.
There was plenty of legitimate crime going on but the standard for a president shouldn't be conviction beyond a reasonable doubt. His open encouragement of Russian hacking even under the guise of "sarcasm" was grotesquely inappropriate. His refusal to confront Russia was shameful. His continued conspiring with his agents in Ukraine were plain as day and showed his willingness to break any rules he could to meet his ends.
Trump, who won his campaign on ludicrous conspiracy theories spent his final days in office fomenting insurrection and suing relentlessly to overturn the election based on lies. His crimes done in broad daylight are 1000x worse than the ones we can't thoroughly prove.
We have to remember that many journalists in the west are funded by the security apparatus or any of it subsidiaries.
The government finally connects the line from Trump’s campaign to Russian intelligence [2]
[1] https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/548447-treasury...
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/04/15/governmen...
Aaron Maté and Glenn Greenwald discusses this on the Grayzone
What you think is irrelevant, US intelligence classifies the data as sensitive. The fact is that Manafort lied about sharing the data with Kilimnik, that Barr tried to keep it a secret.
But lets see what the Senate report actually says:
"It is our conclusion, based on the facts detailed in the Committee's Report, that the Russian intelligence services' assault on the integrity of the 2016 U.S. electoral process[,] and Trump and his associates' participation in and enabling of this Russian activity, represents one of the single most grave counterintelligence threats to American national security in the modem era."
Trump and his associates' participation in and enabling of this Russian activity
Where can I read about that classification for this polling data?
That part of the report your are quoting is from the addendum of the senators Heinrich, Feinstein, Wyden, Harris and Bennet, all five are members of the Democratic party, so it is not what the report concludes, it just their viewpoints. Nice try.
What the report does concludes is
"The Committee found that Manafort's presence on the Campaign and proximity to Trump created opportunities for the Russian intelligence services to exert influence over, and acquire confidential information on, the Trump Campaign. The Committee assesses that Kilimnik likely served as a channel to Manafort for Russian intelligence services, and that those services likely sought to exploit Manafort's access to gain insight info the Campaign. Taken as a whole, Manafort's high-level access and willingness to share information with individuals closely affiliated with the Russian intelligence services, particularly Kilimnik, represented a grave counterintelligence threat."
Likely is something you use when you don't have hard evidence.
I see that you get your talking points from Mate. But the fact that he or you don't have access to classified info doesn't mean you get to decide that the data is not sensitive. Manafort lied about it and both he and Kilimnik tried to tamper witnesses, that's not something one does over top-level polling data.
That fact that Mueller didn't get enough hard evidence to secure a conviction doesn't mean that there is no evidence. Clinging to 'Russia hoax' doesn't do justice to the amount of circumstantial evidence there is. Lawfare [1] did a much more honest attempt at discussing the report then Mate/Greenwald will ever do.
[1] https://www.lawfareblog.com/collusion-reading-diary-what-did...
But doesn't X amount circumstantial evidence together prove collusion? Not necessarily, you still need to weigh each circumstantial evidence.
Lets take the WikiLeaks example, assume that it is 100% true that it was the GRU that was feeding WikiLeaks with the stolen documents. Trump campaign benefited from those leaks and Trump encouraged WikiLeaks to do more, does this prove Russian collusion? No. There is no proven coordination between the Trump Campaign and GRU via WikiLeaks. GRU could have played on these events during the 2016 election and used that to benefit the candidate they would prefer, assuming Trump. Putin is on the record for criticizing the US interventionist policies, policies that Clinton represents, and they could have used this opportunity to help the Trump campaign and the Trump campaign gladly accepted this opportunity to get an advantage, but I would say that should be viewed as interference from GRU, not collusion with the campaign.
That is why the claim from the Senate report that "Kilimnik may have been connected the GRU's hack" is interesting, but the report doesn't provide any evidence only speculation on redacted material. That is of course impossible to asses the truthiness of.
Usually socialist in the west, that supported the USSR, are anti-Russia today because the perceive Russia as nationalistic and conservative. It is okay to criticize Sanders past political praise of USSR, but mixing that up with Russia today is just nonsense.
The current President of Russia (and now dictator for life) dislikes communism because it was an economic failure that didn't sustain his dictatorship.
Soviet was expansionist to spread communism around the world.
Russia interfere in countries that has a large Russian minority, like Crimea or Georgia. Not really the same as how the Soviet Union worked.
Russians can now travel freely. Orthodox Church is no longer forbidden.