Quote (IceMage @ May 19 2018 11:29am)
I think the FBI leaking(not another Comey press conference) that some campaign officials under Trump were being investigated would've hurt his campaign. The Trump base of course would immediately dismiss it, but there's a lot of Republican/independent voters who held their nose to vote for the guy. That might've been the tipping point for some of them to say "fuck it, I'm sitting this one out". Not every Republican is paranoid of institutions like the FBI.
Having the FBI simultaneously give Hilldog a free pass on her emails while revealing- whether by leak or announcement- that they're spying on Trump: That's not a recipe for boosting Hillary. Not without
evidence.
We
had Paul Manafort's foreign connections get exposed during the campaign, in no small irony from the DNC collusion with Ukraine, and the result was Trump simply cut him loose. Did it hurt Trump much? Not really. And Flynn and Page were likewise expendable. But if all the FBI could substantiate was 'we are vaguely suspicious over wikileaks', well, I think we need to crank the clock back a couple years and put ourselves into a contemporary mindset. One mantra I keep repeating is that we can't anachronistically apply our russia hysteria lens from the past year to the months of the election. Nobody was hysterical over russia at the time. Wikileak's emails were all the rage. Hillary's deflections to Russia were very slow and clumsy to take off, and driving a wedge with the berniecrats. Giving people
more reason to distrust the establishment and prove high level conspiracies, man, that would just not be wise. I don't think that given where the country was 2 years ago, that it would do more harm than good.
And again, this is all moot because everyone already expected Hillary to win handily and nobody was lining up to take severe risks to help her. If they were, they'd have stopped Comey from his announcement about the emails being reopened and let the FBI eat shit for the coverup affter Hillary won. As Comey himself explained, the expectation that Hillary would win either way was in his mind.
Quote
Considering all the evidence we know of publicly, it would've been negligent for the FBI to not start the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. That's plain as day, it's hard to believe anyone would even dispute that.
Fender has a point, you constantly make assumptions in favor of Trump and co. and against FBI and co.
I dont buy that. In a reasonable world of an apolitical FBI doing their jobs free of corruption and abuse, investigators wouldn't dare go near such an incredibly volatile investigation without having iron clad probable cause and strict discretion/quarantine. And everything we've seen since then shows they had neither. At best they cut every corner and were needlessly careless and then failed to stop low level staff from leaking. But it stretches credulity to chalk up the steele dossier, unmasking, strzok's texts, extensive surveillance and the oodles of FBI leaking all to benign neglect when we already
know McCabe was a politically motivated liar and we're about to drop the hammer on Comey in a couple weeks. And again, there's other plot holes for the FBI to explain: If such a thin basis is all it took to merit an investigation, why didn't all the other shit going on merit the same scrutiny? Ukraine, Cui Tiankai, Muh Russian Uranium Megamillions, the Clinton Foundation. They had an actual whistleblower claiming Russians conspired to bribe the Clintons and sent her millions after she visited Putin's private cottage, but Flynn gets on the shitlist for having a public dinner next to Jill Stein?
It should have been the
FBI making the assumptions in favor of Trump and co. It should have been top officials saying '
This is far too dangerous for us to investigate on such a flimsy basis, we need a real probable cause, otherwise we simply give it benefit of the doubt. And if we do get reason, we must be incredibly careful to avoid even the appearance of impropriety.'
instead we got a clusterfuck of leaks, grandstanding and the 4th amendment getting bent over the pommel horse
also you have to acknowledge: Comey admits he was put into a situation where he was forced to make one of two decisions that would harm the FBI's reputation, either the appearance of a coverup or political interference. He chose the latter, saying he felt it was actually less damaging to the FBI as an institution to meddle in politics than to face the distrust of a public who thought the FBI was cheating to help Hillary. Thats how serious Comey took the threat. And you're dismissing it out of hand and saying it would have helped Hillary if the FBI blatantly interfered to hurt Trump and say they're spying on him!? Like I said, I don't think it would have just caused an uproar and backfired, I think the militia nutters would have stormed the FBI headquarters.
This post was edited by Goomshill on May 19 2018 12:02pm
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