Summations Only

It is illegal for a campaign to accept any donation of value from a foreign entity (directly or indirectly), which includes money. Duh. The Clinton Foundation is not a campaign. Do you have evidence showing foreign-sourced money being transferred from the Clinton Foundation to the Clinton campaign, or a quid pro quo being established?Didn't think so. Irrelevant to the legality of the Clinton campaigns's actions. Thank you for emphasizing the truth of my point. Your quote does not mention the fundamental difference, the fact that Hillary's campaign did nothing illegal in obtaining the dossier.ABE Yes, the appalling lies in that quote do make me want to barf. To me the difference between legal and illegal is fundamental. Do you disagree?Edited by JonF, : No reason given.Edited by JonF, : No reason given.

Trump tweets:

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......If Republicans ever did [the Steele dossier] to the Democrats, there would be all hell to pay. It would be a scandal like no other!

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Trump is, of course, ignorant of the fact that a good part of the dossier was paid for by the conservative Washington Free Beacon.While I'm here, from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
Report on Russian Active Measures at the time led by a Republican):

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It is not illegal to contract with a foreign person or foreign entity for services, including conducting opposition research on a U.S. campaign, so long as the service was paid for at the market rate

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About a month later. Why is that important?

You got it. That would be no problem.ABE: Some liberals might not understand, burt those whose jobs it is to understand (the media) would. Ratings aren't an appropriate measure. Polls are the best we have. President Trump daily job approval for June 11, 2019: ABE 2: Edited by JonF, : No reason given.Edited by JonF, : No reason given.

Marc's gonna rightly jump on that.A campaign accepting a donation of information of value from a foreign entity is illegal.A campaign paying for information of value from a foreign entity is not prima facie illegal and is usually legal. If a foreign agent offered information of value, a campaign accepted it, and later paid the agent that might well be illegal. Contracting a foreign agent to provide information of value in the future for agreed-upon market value compensation is definitely legal. Even if (as in Hillary's case) there's a third party who holds the contract and decides to hire a foreign agent to collect the information.See the second part of Message 2910.

Yeah, no creationist would think of quote-mining that. ;-) Edited by JonF, : No reason given.

Fusion GPS is a US company. But still, retaining a foreign company to do research for a fee is legal. He should have asked if you had any evidence of illegal foreign dealings. Got any evidence of illegality or a coverup?Didn't think so.

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It has been determined since the 2016 election that the Clinton campaign and the DNC funded the infamous Steele dossier that relied on intelligence from the Russian government.

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Evidence?Didn't think so.Were any illegal or unethical actions involved?Edited by JonF, : No reason given.Edited by JonF, : No reason given.Edited by JonF, : No reason given.

Why?Oh, he said much more than that. He's an awfully slow learner. What about the question made it a loaded question? You really can't learn that it is illegal for a campaign to accept a donation form a foreign entity. In those instances she was not a campaign.And of course, your accusation is unfounded innuendo. No evidence, as usual. Senate report affirms intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia favored Trump over Clinton:

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The Senate panel called the overall assessment a “sound intelligence product,” saying evidence presented by the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency supported their collective conclusion that the Russian government had “developed a clear preference for Trump” over his opponent in the race, Hillary Clinton. Where the agencies disagreed, the Senate panel found those differences were “reasonable.”

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The intelligence community determined that the Kremlin intended to “denigrate” and “harm” Clinton, and “undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process” while helping Trump. The committee’s report backs that conclusion. It also supports the agencies’ findings about Russia’s tactics, which included cyberattacks and intelligence collection “against the U.S. primary campaigns, think tanks, and lobbying groups they viewed as likely to shape future U.S. policies.”

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The reason is obvious. Trump adores ruthless dictators. He's said several times he believes Putin's claims over the unanimous conclusions of our intelligence agencies. He's refused to record what he said in his meetings with Putin, illegal by at least two laws (the Presidential Records Act and the Federal Records Act ). He's easily manipulated; give him some meaningless pomp and circumstance, tell him billions are coming somewhere down the road, and he goes home happy with the wool over his eyes. Some of the dossier is true, some is false, some is unknown. BUt there's nothing illegal there.However, Trump said a lot more than two words:

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I think you might want to listen. There's nothing wrong with listening. If somebody called from a country, Norway, [and said] 'we have information on your opponent' - oh, I think I'd want to hear it.

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It's not an interference, they have information. I think I'd take. If I thought there was something wrong, I'd go maybe to the FBI - if I thought there was something wrong. But when somebody comes up with oppo [opposition] research, right, they come up with oppo research, 'oh let's call the FBI.' The FBI doesn't have enough agents to take care of it. When you go and talk, honestly, to congressman, they all do it, they always have, and that's the way it is. It's called oppo research," Trump said.

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BTW, they don't all do it. For which they are ridiculously unsuited. I see you have no comment on the polls I posted, including one from Fox. Way off topic, but when white supremacists hail Tucker Carlson as on of their own I listen.Edited by JonF, : No reason given.Edited by JonF, : Fixed a quote

Some evidence of Trump's love of despots: ”Credible evidence’ Saudi crown prince liable for Khashoggi murder: UN expert

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Riyadh maintains that Khashoggi's death was caused by a "rogue" operation, but Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia's crown prince and de facto ruler, has long been suspected of ordering the journalist's murder. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency reached the same conclusion in November.

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"No conclusion is made as to guilt,” Callamard wrote in her report, referring to bin Salman ” also known as M.B.S. ” and high-level government officials such as former top advisor Saud al-Qahtani. "The only conclusion made is that there is credible evidence meriting further investigation, by a proper authority, as to whether the threshold of criminal responsibility has been met."

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But the report, the result of a five-month investigation, continued: "Evidence points to the 15-person mission to execute Mr. Khashoggi requiring significant government coordination, resources and finances."

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Saudi Arabia has put 11 suspects on trial over the killing and is seeking the death penalty for five of them. Callamard in her report said that the closed-doors trial failed to meet international procedural and substantive standards, calling for it to be suspended.

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But not even the gentlest of criticism from the US government.

What the FEC chair says is not law, and she misspoke slightly. The FEC web site is clear:FEC | Candidate | Who can and can't contribute

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Campaigns are prohibited from accepting contributions from certain types of organizations and individuals. These prohibited sources are:

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• Corporations, including nonprofit corporations (although funds from a corporate separate segregated fund are permissible)
• Labor organizations (although funds from a separate segregated fund are permissible)
• Federal government contractors
• Foreign nationals

Contributions in the name of another

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As is the previously posted law itself:52 U.S. Code § 30121 - Contributions and donations by foreign nationals | U.S. Code | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute

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(a) Prohibition: It shall be unlawful for”

(1) a foreign national, directly or indirectly, to make”

(A) a contribution or donation of money or other thing of value, or to make an express or implied promise to make a contribution or donation, in connection with a Federal, State, or local election;
(B) a contribution or donation to a committee of a political party; or
(C) an expenditure, independent expenditure, or disbursement for an electioneering communication (within the meaning of section 30104(f)(3) of this title); or

(2) a person to solicit, accept, or receive a contribution or donation described in subparagraph (A) or (B) of paragraph (1) from a foreign national.

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Note the words "contribution" and "donation".

Of course the answer to "LIAR LIAR LIAR, WHAT WERE YOU DOING WHEN YOU SENT YOUR SON TO MEET WITH THE RUSSIANS?" is "not meeting with Russians or aware of any meeting".Duh. The law doesn't care what you can or cannot see. Thinking about running for office is not the same as being a candidate. A candidate is someone who's filed the appropriate paperwork. When Hillary was Secretary of State, she was not a candidate and not subject to that law. Trump was definitely a candidate in 2015-2016, and since Trump filed the appropriate paperwork immediately after his inauguration, he's been a candidate (with an organized campaign) since then and subject to the law I posted. Well, they certainly aren't the moronic fantasies you made up. Remember: But we realize that you and your ilk are deathly afraid of reality. The Tactics & Tropes of the Internet Research Agency (the Russian organization carrying out the campaig).:

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Broadly, Russian interference in the U.S. Presidential Election of 2016 took three distinct forms, one of which is within the scope of our analysis:

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1. Attempts to hack online voting systems (as detailed by a United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report)
2. A cyber-attack targeting the Democratic National Committee, executed by the GRU, which led to a controlled leak via Wikileaks of email data related to the Clinton Presidential campaign team
3. A sweeping and sustained social influence operation consisting of various coordinated disinformation tactics aimed directly at US citizens, designed to exert political influence and exacerbate social divisions in US culture

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This last form of interference, a multi-year coordinated disinformation effort conducted by the Russian state-supported Internet Research Agency (IRA), is the topic of this analysis.

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The other report referred to is at Documents: Senate Intelligence Committee Publishes Two Reports on Internet Research Agency (near the bottom)

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Between 2013 and 2018, the IRA's Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter campaigns reached tens of millions of users in the United States.

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• Over 30 million users, between 2015 and 2017, shared the IRA's Facebook and Instagram posts with their friends and family, liking, reacting to, and commenting on them along the way.
• Peaks in advertising and organic activity often correspond to important dates in the US political calendar, crises, and international events.
• IRA activities focused on the US began on Twitter in 2013 but quickly evolved into a multi-platform strategy involving Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube amongst other platforms.
• The most far reaching IRA activity is in organic posting, not advertisements.

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Russia's IRA activities were designed to polarize the US public and interfere in elections by:

• campaigning for African American voters to boycott elections or follow the wrong voting procedures in 2016, and more recently for Mexican American and Hispanic voters to distrust US institutions;
• encouraging extreme right-wing voters to be more confrontational; and
• spreading sensationalist, conspiratorial, and other forms of junk political news and misinformation to voters across the political spectrum.

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Surprisingly, these campaigns did not stop once Russia's IRA was caught interfering in the 2016 election. Engagement rates increased and covered a widening range of public policy issues, national security issues, and issues pertinent to younger voters.

• The highest peak of IRA ad volume on Facebook is in April 2017”the month of the Syrian missile strike, the use of the Mother of All Bombs on ISIS tunnels in eastern Afghanistan, and the release of the tax reform plan.
• IRA posts on Instagram and Facebook increased substantially after the election, with Instagram seeing the greatest increase in IRA activity.
• The IRA accounts actively engaged with disinformation and practices common to Russian "trolling". Some posts referred to Russian troll factories that flooded online conversations with posts, others denied being Russian trolls, and some even complained about the platforms' alleged political biases when they faced account suspension.

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No, it's because he sucks up to Putin, Kim, Duterte, and Mohammed bin Salman while insulting and alienating our allies. And yet they are the best data we have. No doubt there will be big changes, but that's waht we have. It's sad that you don't even trust Fox News.Edited by JonF, : No reason given.

Your "understanding" of the law is risible.Trump changed his answer as we've demonstrated.All politicians on both sides lie. Trump and the extreme right wing have taken brazen lying to previously unheard of and dizzying heights.As I explained above, her thoughts on running while Secretary of State are irrelevant because she was not a candidate at that time. If she did indeed receive information valuable to a campaign while SoS and used that information when she was a candidate, that might be illegal. Feel free to present evidence of such. Oh, you don't have any? Pity.Russia wants the US run by an ignorant illiterate egomaniac who's easily manipulated, and that's what they got.Edited by JonF, : No reason given.

Trump dismisses UN request for FBI to investigate Jamal Khashoggi's murder

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Donald Trump has dismissed a United Nations request for the FBI to investigate the murder of the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, suggesting it would jeopardise American weapons sales to Saudi Arabia.

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The president then cited a drastically overinflated figure for Saudi spending on US weapons that fact-checkers have previously noted does not match the official record.

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“I only say they spend $400bn to $450bn over a period of time, all money, all jobs, buying equipment,” Trump said.

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In fact Saudi Arabia last year signed “letters of offer and acceptance” for $14.5bn in military purchases from the US.

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Well, that makes it official.Anyone remember the $100 billion in sales to Saudi Arabia Trump claimed to have secured?Edited by JonF, : No reason given.Edited by JonF, : No reason given.

Yah, but it's meaningless.