You think the president's rhetoric on twitter or at a campaign rally is on the same plane as giving orders to his top officials in a secret oval office briefing?



Its not normal or acceptable for an outgoing president to try to burn down the house on the way out and undermine the incoming administration's foreign policy. Obama broke centuries of precedent of civilized transitions when he was the one who initiated the death spiral. Obama shot first, Trump reacted. Obama had the clear opportunity to be a conciliatory statesman who bridged the partisan divide, and he already knew that his officials had been spying on Trump being the scenes on bogus pretenses. He instead let slip the dogs of war, put roadblocks in front of the transition and told his FBI officials to go nuts pursuing Trump's team.

You keep going around accusing people of being cultists but you're the one who bought into a baseless conspiracy theory for years while I kept debunking it at every turn and everything turned out to be exactly what I said it was. Who are the cultists, the skeptics using critical thinking to dismiss unreasonable theories and rumors, or the folks who sit at their computers spamming F5 in hopes of deliverance?
Dispassionately looking at facts is what you should have done from the get-go. All the evidence, logic and signs were in place and available 3 years ago to figure out precisely what happened. I had already laid out what happened with the Flynn storyline on PARD in the first months of Trump's term. It didn't take any big secret, you could just read between the lines of the news and see what had evidence, what was self-serving rumormongering and what should be treated as incredulous conspiracies that made no sense.

Your claim was that the only crime was perjury, this is not true. Somebody committing a FARA violation may typically result in a fine, but somebody not reporting significant financial ties before assuming a very important national security position and attempting to influence policy in favor of the country he has those financial ties to has the potential to be far more than a FARA violation. Those are giant red flags that somebody may be compromised and are more than enough to merit an interview before closing the investigation.

Can you expand on what you mean by "Flynn was covering up for the administration", because the concern was Pence covering up for the administration by making it public that Flynn did not discuss policy.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Jun 24 2020 02:17pm

There's no way to know for sure what these notes mean. If everyone thought the calls were legit why would Obama, for a second time, ask whether information should be withheld from Flynn?

You're free to hold the belief that transition officials should be undermining current administration policy, but recognize that most reasonable people don't believe that. Shockingly, even if a Democrat is the current president.

It's hard to have real discussions when you guys just make up the rules as you go along. Normal standards of behavior simply get tossed aside if it helps you justify whatever the Trump team did.



Absolutely. The president being blatantly corrupt still counts if it's done in public.

Russiagate wasn't a baseless conspiracy theory... there were endless numbers of reasons to be suspicious about the Trump team's connections to Russians. Just because the FBI didn't find a conspiracy doesn't magically make all that incriminating evidence disappear. I can't remember everything you said at the time, but most people in Trump cult world thought the Russia stuff was completely meritless, which turned out to be an absurd position given Manafort's connections, Don Jr. trying to conspire, Papadopolous's conversation with Mifsud, Trump Tower Moscow deal, etc etc. Most of your commentary was not accurate, you just got the big question of a conspiracy right, even though that wasn't the most reasonable position at the time.

The rest is just made up nonsense. We can't have a real discussion when you introduce alternative facts.

This post was edited by IceMage on Jun 24 2020 02:45pm

"Just because they were actually innocent doesn't make that circumstantial evidence disappear"
"Your position wasn't reasonable even if you used the facts and evidence available at the time to come to the correct conclusion"

Conspiracy theorists so desperate to find the meat missing from their nothingburger were just digging away at every spurious connection to Russia even if it was readily explained and debunked. Does the phrase "and...he just...he tweeted it out" bring back any memories? It was like Trump said, they would have gone after him for having Russian dressing on his salad, not that he's eaten a salad in his life. There was no legitimate basis to investigate, no incriminating evidence, no conspiracy. But there was proof of misconduct by officials and politicians and campaigns fudging their rules, fabricating evidence, twisting the law, violating due process, all out of their disorganized individual biases, political grievances and self-serving agendas. You like to ignore how we witnessed the actual evidence piling up exposing the FBI as a pit of vipers under Obama, then turn around and claim that the weight of debunked rumors should condemn Trump. Its a nothingpounder with cheese.

the only entity that is qualified to investigate this is NASCAR right?

Again, it's just pointless to have discussion when you're so detached from reality. This drivel might make a good Hannity segment but it's simply contrary to the available evidence.

right wingers calling people conspiracy nuts.. is so out of whack.. LOOOL

Trump didn't like a negative headline, and Flynn was therefore told to "kill the story". So he denied it. The natural assumption would be that he was covering up for his boss, a concept that the Russians well understand. It's far-fetched to assume that the Russians would "know" Flynn lied to Trump / Pence (if he did even lie), because Flynn was clearly representing the administration's viewpoint on the call. If Flynn was doing what Trump wanted, why would he then "lie" to Trump / Pence? In short, the Russians wouldn't even think of the situation as leverage because they would assume it was politics as usual. Diplomacy requires a degree of secrecy and discretion.

So Flynn denied it to who? Pence? The media in general?

Did Flynn lie to the administration? That's the administration's story, but it strikes me as odd considering they knew exactly what he was supposed to be calling to discuss.

The alternative is that Flynn was being a good soldier and killing the story like the big boss wanted. He modified his story to fit the admin's narrative and had to take the fall.