Summations Only

ROFL!
Percy, it is quite gracious of you to agree with what I am saying "now". Let me see if I can match that standard for graciousness and accuracy.Apparently "now" means 5 or so days ago when I posted this: I know you saw that message because you responded to it quoting only the question part of the quote. Let's see if I made any similar comments prior to that. So no, I have not recently decided that there is no crime of collusion on the books. That has been my understanding from the beginning. If I made statements that can be interpreted otherwise, surely those statements where I explicitly stated what I meant ought to shield me from "If NoNukes is now saying" crap. I am now saying and have been saying exactly the same thing. No, ICANT[1]. I am not arguing that there is a criminal offense called collusion. And yes it is perfectly okay to provide an example of collusion that fits the facts of this particular case. Your statement is mistaken.[1] Yeah, I know.Edited by NoNukes, : ClarifyEdited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Responding to your last two messages to me...Responding to your Message 1860: I was writing in the context of the Russia sanctions. I think a quid pro quo is necessary in this context, and I explained why. You say no quid pro quo is necessary, but you don't explain why, and since you never mention the Russia sanctions you may have been speaking generally, and if that's true then your comments don't really bear on what I said. Before a trial can begin in the Senate articles of impeachment have to be voted by the House. The House was under control of the opposite party when Clinton was impeached. At present the House is controlled by the same party as Trump, so impeachment seems very unlikely unless the House changes hands in November. The Senate is unlikely to change hands, so you're right that the bar for conviction is pretty high. The complaint was no biggie, you just can't be bothered doing a cut-n-paste. Anyway, I had already provided a cut-n-paste of Black's definition of conspiracy last Tuesday, and I did so again in my message yesterday. Plus your link to Black's was broken, I fixed it, you're welcome. There was already no "doubt about the matter" regarding the definition of conspiracy. The actual context was what a conspiracy regarding the Russia sanctions might involve, which you ignored.People working together toward an agreement is not a conspiracy unless a crime is involved, so unless Trump's recent actions on Russia sanctions involve a crime (e.g., doing it in return for help in upcoming elections) there's no conspiracy. In other words, unless he traded lightening up on the sanctions for some benefit to him there's no crime and no conspiracy, he's just acting within his prerogatives as president.Much more problematic would be if during the 2016 campaign Trump worked with the Russians toward some agreement beneficial to him, e.g., providing financial assistance or engaging in election fraud, both illegal under current campaign laws. Even if no quid pro quo was involved (Which seems strange. Why would Trump agree to help Russia out on the sanctions in return for nothing? Or why would Russia agree to help out in the election in return for nothing? Neither makes sense.), it would still be a crime. Trump has a problem keeping his mouth shut, and Rrhain's suspicions that Trump's campaign statements are hints of involvement with a Russian conspiracy might have merit.If Trump did engage in something so stupid as conspiring with Russia for help in the 2016 election, why would he do it? I wonder if his ego was involved. Expecting to lose and wanting the margin of loss to be as small as possible, maybe he conspired with Russia, knowing after his expected loss there would be too little concern or scrutiny to lead to an investigation.Responding to your Message 1861: So why the big hullabaloo when I said back in Message 1818 that "collusion, apparently, isn't illegal"?--Percy

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg - Wikipedia

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In imposing the death penalty, Kaufman noted that he held the Rosenbergs responsible not only for espionage but also for deaths in the Korean War:

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I consider your crime worse than murder... I believe your conduct in putting into the hands of the Russians the A-Bomb years before our best scientists predicted Russia would perfect the bomb has already caused, in my opinion, the Communist aggression in Korea, with the resultant casualties exceeding 50,000 and who knows but that millions more of innocent people may pay the price of your treason. Indeed, by your betrayal you undoubtedly have altered the course of history to the disadvantage of our country. No one can say that we do not live in a constant state of tension. We have evidence of your treachery all around us every day for the civilian defense activities throughout the nation are aimed at preparing us for an atom bomb attack.[31]

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Technically we weren't at war with Russia then.The definition in the Constitution doesn't require being at war: "... or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them aid and comfort. ... " (Article III section 3I'm sure there are plenty of laws governing passing classified information to the Russians or aiding them in other ways (not enforcing sanctions).Enjoy

As I have explained several times, saying that collusion is not illegal is a bleeping stupid thing to say in this context and in many other contexts. Modulus has explained why calling collusion is just fine. But as I have said several times, when folks accuse Trump of collusion with the Russians, they are invariably talking about working with the Russians to tamper with the election and not about collusion as a general thing.Given that context, saying that collusion is not illegal is akin to saying that there is no federal offense called "bushwacking an FBI officer". While I am sure that some dumbass would say something like that, such a speaker is an idiot.Is that clear? Absent some better rationale for saying that collusion is not illegal, and to date, your go-to response is that you are just posting what other folks are saying, making multiple quotes just adds to the list of folks I am saying are being silly.Hopefully, that is clear enough that you won't ask me what my position is again. If you disagree, fine. I'd appreciate a rationale. That's all I asked for at the start of this thread. Actually, my post did include the cut and paste I felt was necessary. Did I leave anything out that supported your ridiculous idea that conspiracy requires a quid pro quo? No, I did not. That's a flat-out lie. In addition to my summary of the definition, I also posted the elements of the crime of conspiracy and pointed out that a quid pro quo was not one of the elements. You apparently missed yet another point.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

That's true. However, at various times since the Cold War ended, we have had various stances with respect to Russia, and it is not cut and dried that we would list Russia as an enemy in the sense that treason would be an applicable charge. It is possible to commit espionage by giving away secrets to even friendly powers. We typically call such stuff espionage and not treason.Perhaps my reasoning above is not what would rule the day depending on what the actions involved are. I recall some John Walker betraying the US by selling extremely sensitive information on the US Navy to Russia. A betrayal yes, but treason? I am not sure. On the other hand, I doubt there was much push back on the issue of helping the Soviet Union acquire nuclear weapons. Perhaps the rule of law was not the most important fact it determining what someone who did that was charged with.In short, politics can play a role in this issue. If we read the history of the crime in the US, non-citizens have been convicted of treason. There is one civil war era treason conviction that had to do with the handling of a flag. So there is some ambiguity. You've made your call. I happen to disagree with it.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

You say, "there is no crime of collusion on the books," and I say, "collusion...isn't illegal." We seem to be saying the same thing, but you're reacting as if you see two blatantly contradictory statements. How so? Your sentence may be missing a word or two, but anyway, I thought Modulous' explanation was fine, as it was consistent with all the webpages I cited and quoted from. See Message 1846 and the end of Message 1849. Yes, of course. This makes little sense. Did you mean to say, "saying that collusion is *not* illegal"? I'll assume that's what you really meant. I can tell you feel very strongly about this. The only thing clear is that you seem very irritated. Yeah, this seems to indicate that you did earlier leave out the word "not". How is saying, "collusion is not illegal," any different from saying, "there is no crime of collusion"? You're welcome to your opinion that they're being silly, but they're also correct and you apparently agree with them. At the risk of further irritating you, I'm just repeating what I've read in many news articles and opinion pieces. Again, see Message 1846 for links and relevant excerpts. Actually, your post did not include the cut-n-paste I mentioned, for which you also posted a broken link. But I didn't say conspiracy requires a quid pro quo. What I actually did was try to think my way through the issue, and I tried to look at both sides. Quoting from my Message 1821 to Rrhain: You next say: I don't think so. Rather than me missing a point I think you failed to make one. Quoting from your Message 1856 after your excerpt from 8.20 CONSPIRACYELEMENTS: You wrote a paragraph about how actually carrying out the criminal act isn't necessary to it being a conspiracy, then simply tacked on the conclusion, "No quid pro quo is required." Your explanation was completely unrelated to quid pro quo. And anyway, I'm not claiming that a quid pro quo is required. In the case of the Russia scandal I do think that scenarios with a quid pro quo make the most sense, but I don't think it's required.This subdiscussion began simply with your Message 1818 where you responded to my "collusion...isn't illegal" comment by saying, "I find this position difficult to understand from a legal standpoint." After all these posts you still haven't made clear why you think this, since legally collusion is not illegal, or in your words, "There is no crime of collusion."--Percy

argh. you 2 are tiresome.Isn't this on the level of:1. all horses are animals
2. not all animals are horses?? are you even talking about the same things?1. all conspiracies are collusions
2. not all collusions are conspiracies

What I actually did was quote the elements needed to prove the crime of conspiracy from the website of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and then note that quid pro quo was not a required element. Please go back and read the post. Perhaps your head should be in a new position that does not obscure your view for this new attempt.

Apologies for not being more entertaining.For my part I just don't see what NoNukes problem is with my comment that "collusion...isn't illegal". It isn't. Tons of people have written news articles and opinion pieces saying so. Though widely believed I don't know if this is strictly true, but I don't think there's any harm in it since it would never be an issue in a courtroom, and it isn't the focus of disagreement. But because federal statute uses the term conspiracy and not collusion, the term collusion is left adrift from a legal standpoint. That's why article's have referred to collusion as an umbrella term or a political word, because conspiracy is the word used in federal statutes and is therefore a crime, while the word collusion isn't used in federal statutes and is therefore not a crime.And that is why Trump's legal team has Trump and his administration using the term collusion while at the same time making the point that collusion isn't illegal. Even though it's just a semantic game that in any legal fight involving judges and lawyers would have no effect, it does have an effect on public opinion.As the article What Is Collusion? Is It Even a Crime? says:

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Collusion is not a federal crime (except in the unique case of antitrust law), so we should all just stop using collusion as a short-hand for criminality. But that doesn’t mean that the alleged cooperation between the Trump campaign and Russia is of no criminal interest. To the contrary, if true, it may have violated any number of criminal prohibitions.

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For example, if Donald Trump Jr. sought dirt on Hillary Clinton from the Russians, he might be charged with conspiring to violate the election laws of the United States, which prohibit foreign nationals from contributing any thing of value to an electoral campaign.

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--Percy

But I never claimed quid pro quo was part of the definition of conspiracy. If you'd read my messages more carefully you'd know that. I even quoted the definition of conspiracy from Black's a couple of times, and it does not include quid pro quo as part of the definition, so of course I wouldn't say that it does.What I did say was that a quid pro quo seemed likely in the case of the Russia sanctions. It was Rrhain who introduced this subtopic, and in my last message to you I even quoted from my reply to Rrhain where I considered both possibilities. Perhaps you should read the messages you reply to more carefully and do a pre-send review/edit of your posts.--Percy

What you asked was whether convicting Trump of conspiracy required a quid pro quo. In response, I asked you why that would be true for Trump when it was not true for anyone else. I know you saw that exchange because you quoted it in a recent post. So why now pretend that I just posted the definition out of the blue?Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

You are very confused. If you identify the "recent post" I'll explain things for you.--Percy

My description of the post in question provides more than enough detail you to allow you to locate it. After all, the details are in the same post that contains the explanation that you initially denied was present. Any disinterested party that made the effort would see that my description of what you said was accurate.At this point, I am tired of having to repeatedly point to what I have said in response to your denials that I actually said it. We've gone through that exercise at least four times in this thread. Also, given that there is already a complaint that we are "uglying" up the forum, I am of a mind to drop this line of discussion for now. I'm sure we will butt heads in the future.I'm really going to try not to respond to whatever you say about this post. If I say you win, will that end things?Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

You can't find it, huh. The explanation you claim was there wasn't, and the claim you keep casting accusations about was never made. If you do say so yourself.What you should do is: a) Link to the post; b) Quote the relevant passages; c) Make your case.Doing now the kind of simple substantiation of claims that you refuse to do, the fact remains that, as I already clearly explained in Message 1866 yesterday, I explored the quid pro quo issue from both sides: Given how clearly I've laid all this out for you several times now I can only surmise that you've got a false recollection in your mind that you refuse to give up, even though it's contradicted by the message history, which explains why you refuse to link to any messages. Unable to admit error you continue making false allegations that I've made statements I haven't.As I said in Message 1866, your original point way back in your Message 1818 was that my statement "collusion...isn't illegal" was "difficult to understand from a legal standpoint." But you later said "there is no crime of collusion" (Message 1861), so I don't see where we disagree. All this discussion has been unnecessary.AbE: I see you edited your post, but you didn't describe what you changed, so either I somehow just missed this or you added this as an edit. Anyway, it seems like you're just making up one accusation after another, so if you stop making up accusations I'll stop pointing out how they're wrong. I'm seeking common ground based upon what we've really said, not capitulation.--PercyEdited by Percy, : AbE.

Percy responds to me:

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Again, US conspiracy law does not require the parties know about each other. That's why you buying stolen goods puts you on the hook, even if you don't know that the goods were stolen.

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Again, not a legal expert here, but just Googling this says they have to show you knew the goods were stolen in order to support a charge of conspiracy.

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But you're still responsible for the goods and have to return them. Plus, there is a reasonable standard involved. If you buy something out of the trunk of someone's car, a claim of "I didn't know it was stolen" is much more suspect. So when the Russians come to Trump specifically saying they have information about the Democrats and his representative in Trump, Jr. says that this is wonderful, how is that not illegal since it would be a violation of FEC regulations to take anything of value from them? And thus, conspiracy.

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We only conspired for a moment?

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I was only making the point that Carter Page didn't have much time to get a conspiracy going, but if did manage to engage in a conspiracy with Russia in the short time he was with the Trump campaign then you're of course right that this is more trouble for Trump.

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Again, we only conspired for a moment? And no, he was with the Trump campaign for more than a month. Trump named him as a member of his national advisory council in March of 2016. In July of 2016, he went to Moscow under the approval of the campaign. Page only left the campaign in September after his contacts with Russians became known.And since he was under investigation by the FBI since 2013, it wouldn't have taken much time to set up any conspiracy since he admits that he was a Kremlin advisor. If the FBI's concerns were valid, all it would take is for Page to merely talk to his Russian contacts. And let's not forget, the FISA warrant against Page was reauthorized three times. That means they kept on getting more actionable information: You need to provide justification for such a warrant during the first application which is only valid for a limited time. If you wish to keep up the surveillance, you need to have it re-authorized, but you can't use anything from the original justification nor can you use any new information you acquired from other sources. In order to continue the surveillance, you need to provide information that you acquired as a direct result of the surveillance you were authorized to do.For example, suppose I want to tap your phones. I need to provide justification to the FISA court to allow that and it will only last for a limited time. If I want to extend that, I can't use the original justification but must instead provide new information that I got from tapping the phones. Suppose you figured out that I was tapping your phones and you switched to communicating via written notes. If I acquired those notes by going through your garbage, that isn't justification for me to continue tapping your phones as the information I got didn't come from the phone tap.Page was not just passing through.

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Of course this brings us back to the question of why Trump is so favorably biased toward Russia. We need some hard evidence there.

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Because the Russians bailed him out. Both Eric and Trump, Jr. have admitted it. We have plenty of hard evidence of his real estate transactions with Russian oligarchs that scream of money laundering. Even if we can't directly prove the money laundering aspect, the fact that he was selling real estate to Russian oligarchs is well known and documented.As just a single example, in 2008, mere months after Trump filed for bankruptcy, he sold a Florida property to Dmitry Rybolvlev $100M for which he bought for only $40M. It was then sold off in separate lots by Rybolovlev through shell companies. This smacks of money laundering, but the fact is that Trump was doing business with the Russians despite his claims that he never has (and in another ironic moment, Trump *admits* that he did this deal as proof that he's never had any dealings with Russia.)There are another 63 people with Russian passports/addresses who bought Trump property in South Florida.And let's not forget that Trump was in negotiations to open up a Trump hotel across the way from the Kremlin back in 1987 (as was reported in _Art of the Deal_). He gave an interview in 2013 where he said, "The Russian market is attracted to me." Well, of course since he started in on Russian buyers in 1996 when he became involved with the Vector Group which owns Douglas Elliman Realty, a brokerage for Russian oligarchs wanting US property. The CEO of the Vector Group, Howard Lorber, made an appearance on _The Apprentice_ in 2005.So Trump was once again trying to build a hotel in Moscow and claims he was in negotiations with the mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov. But as the US ambassador to Russia, John Beryle, describes him, "Corruption in Moscow remains pervasive with Mayor Luzhkov at the top of the pyramid. Luzhkov oversees a system in which it appears that almost everyone at every level is involved in some form of corruption or criminal behavior."But once again, it fell through.Trump is biased toward Russia because they bailed him out. He has massive business ties to Russian oligarchs. This is not speculation.

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I was unable to verify that Trump "started crowing about the sanctions" immediately after the Kushner meeting, but Trump of course started working on reducing the Russia sanctions after taking office.

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You don't recall Trump talking about being friendly with the Russians? How that was distinguishing him from Clinton? How he can make a deal and she can't? The sanctions against Russia for invading Urkaine were damaging the Russian economy. When he hired Manafort, he started making statements to recognize Russian's annexation of Crimea (July 2016)...whereas he had previously stated that Obama was "not strong" in not doing more.With regard to the additional sanctions for the election interference, Conway made a statement that the reason Obama imposed the sanctions was to "box in" Trump: And let's not forget Trump's signing statement regarding the new sanctions where he called them "unconstitutional" and tried to claim that they were about the invasion of Ukraine, not the election.

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I agree that Trump's favorable treatment of Russia and Putin is highly suspicious, but it seems very weak evidence. It feels like more direct evidence is needed.

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Why? What is it you need? A videotape of Trump and Putin directly saying they will work together to get Trump elected?Remember, we have direct evidence that Putin ordered the attack on our elections. And in US law, conspiracy does not require the right hand to know what the left hand is doing. Thus, Trump doesn't have to be in direct communications with the Kremlin in order for there to be conspiracy. They told the hackers who then provided the goods to Trump who should have known that it was illegal to transact with. That's conspiracy.You don't even need to successfully carry it out. If I'm looking for the goods from the middleman who was ordered by the boss to commit the crime to get the goods and they can't get them, that's still conspiracy. We're trying to do something that is illegal.

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Still, Manafort is only charged with money laundering so far. Speculation isn't evidence, so we'll have to wait for the Mueller report to see if there's evidence of conspiracy concerning Manafort.

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As we know, Trump changed his mind regarding the Russian sanctions in reference to the Ukraine after Manafort came on board. He then conflated the new sanctions regarding the election tampering with the invasion of the Ukraine. What did Manafort do to bring Trump around?

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I don't doubt the existence of Russian spying efforts on all facets of our government, especially the significant ones like State, but as far as we know Russian efforts to hack into Clinton emails were not successful.

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You don't have to be successful in order to engage in conspiracy.

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Of course, the Russians didn't have to hack Clinton's emails, we made them available on-line, though redacted, of course.

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And who did that? Who insisted that they should be made public?

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Ignoring any suspicion that Trump had information from Russia regarding their attempts to hack Clinton, it was a transparent attempt to tell Russia to go after Clinton.

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He was playing to a crowd.

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"Your honor, my client is too stupid to have committed the crime"?And you're trying to take this in isolation, ignoring all the other connections with the Russians.

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I can see Mueller using things said during campaign speeches as supporting evidence for other charges, but not as crimes themselves.

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The things said are part of the conspiracy which is part of the crime. You're trying to have it both ways, saying you need evidence that they said something while disallowing things that were said. Again, it seems that the only thing that will satisfy you is a videotape of Putin and Trump charting out every step of the way.

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When you said Trump's been in debt to Russians for many, many years I thought you meant that in the sense of debt he can't repay, thus giving Russians leverage over him.

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He owes $130M to DB which is involved in Russian money laundering.And that's just what we know of for just that interaction.And even if he owed nothing materially, he's still "in debt" to them given how they rescued him from bankruptcy. And now he's in a position to return the favor. And we haven't even gotten into the dossier which lists other means of leverage over Trump (which is why all the complaints from Nunes and the Republicans about how the dossier is the reason for investigating the Trump campaign and how it's all tainted is so disingenuous...there's plenty of evidence indicating a significant need to investigate without the details from the dossier.)

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What we know so far mostly involves Deutsche Bank, not Russian banks or oligarchs.

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What more do you need? Again, you seem to be only willing to consider it if we had a videotape of Trump taking a briefcase stuffed with cash from Anton Vayno.DB laundered money for the Russians. They got caught and were fined $670M+ for it......and Trump has called off the US investigation into it.And none of this has anything to do with the question of obstruction.