US Prepares Charges To Seek Arrest of WikiLeaks' Julian Assange (cnn.com) 369
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: U.S. authorities have prepared charges to seek the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, U.S. officials familiar with the matter tell CNN. The Justice Department investigation of Assange and WikiLeaks dates to at least 2010, when the site first gained wide attention for posting thousands of files stolen by the former U.S. Army intelligence analyst now known as Chelsea Manning. Prosecutors have struggled with whether the First Amendment precluded the prosecution of Assange, but now believe they have found a way to move forward. During President Barack Obama's administration, Attorney General Eric Holder and officials at the Justice Department determined it would be difficult to bring charges against Assange because WikiLeaks wasn't alone in publishing documents stolen by Manning. Several newspapers, including The New York Times, did as well. The investigation continued, but any possible charges were put on hold, according to U.S. officials involved in the process then.
The U.S. view of WikiLeaks and Assange began to change after investigators found what they believe was proof that WikiLeaks played an active role in helping Edward Snowden, a former NSA analyst, disclose a massive cache of classified documents. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said at a news conference Thursday that Assange's arrest is a "priority." "We are going to step up our effort and already are stepping up our efforts on all leaks," he said. "This is a matter that's gone beyond anything I'm aware of. We have professionals that have been in the security business of the United States for many years that are shocked by the number of leaks and some of them are quite serious. So yes, it is a priority. We've already begun to step up our efforts and whenever a case can be made, we will seek to put some people in jail." Meanwhile, Assange's lawyer said they have "had no communication with the Department of Justice."
The U.S. view of WikiLeaks and Assange began to change after investigators found what they believe was proof that WikiLeaks played an active role in helping Edward Snowden, a former NSA analyst, disclose a massive cache of classified documents. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said at a news conference Thursday that Assange's arrest is a "priority." "We are going to step up our effort and already are stepping up our efforts on all leaks," he said. "This is a matter that's gone beyond anything I'm aware of. We have professionals that have been in the security business of the United States for many years that are shocked by the number of leaks and some of them are quite serious. So yes, it is a priority. We've already begun to step up our efforts and whenever a case can be made, we will seek to put some people in jail." Meanwhile, Assange's lawyer said they have "had no communication with the Department of Justice."
It's not his arrest that is a priority (Score:5, Insightful)
but rather to stop the world from hearing inconvenient truths and all the wrongs the U.S. is doing. Making an example out of Assange won't help anything though, there will just be someone else stepping up. Assange is not the problem, you are.
Of course (Score:2, Insightful)
You're absolutely right: this is about covering up past, present, and future abuses of power. But I think there's a bigger lesson here, and most of slashdot isn't going to like it:
The government doesn't work for you, no matter how loud they shout it.
Re: It's not his arrest that is a priority (Score:5, Insightful)
"The world" has already been told everything it really needed to know. After the cablegate and Snowden revelations there should have been a massive backlash against the US. All countries, beginning with the EU, should have by right severed all connections with the US and imposed sanctions. People should have taken to the streets in protest day and night. What happened? Nothing. The whole world shrugged it off save for a few voices that were quickly marginalized and ridiculed. Apathy rules. All is lost.
So the real crime is... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not being the NY Times, or rather, not being a part of the elite propaganda cartel. Damn the Constitution....full prosecution speed ahead.
Seriously, and this is why I don't give a fuck about any laws anymore. Laws are there for you, not the elites. And the worst crime you can do in America, is to reveal the crimes of the elites to the masses.
No, the real crime here is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Wikileak published documents showing massive corruption in the democratic party. The big news organizations did not publish those leaks, they told their listeners it was illegal to even view them.
Re:No, the real crime here is... (Score:5, Insightful)
The big news organizations didn't publish on it? Yeah, I forgot only the little guys like Time [time.com] or CNN [cnn.com] ran with stories from it.
(/sarcasm) The big news organizations if anything failed to report clearly enough on the DNC e-mails. Too many bernie-bros who were convinced it proved the Clintons used their Benghazi military to crush Sanders, rather than "There was nothing much interesting in them."
As for not publishing the e-mails themselves, that's kind of the SOP. Wikileaks publishes everything down to social security numbers and GPS coordinates of informants in war zones, responsible news organizations attempt to hide private details like phone numbers. No shit they didn't publish the leaks directly, that would have been irresponsible.
Re:No, the real crime here is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Well fuck me running, I bet none of the millions of people who voted for Hillary over Sanders would have voted for her had she given an unprepared response on the death penalty! She probably would have screamed some racist remarks and literally vomited had she not been given the heads up on that...
Our standards for what counts as shocking corruption have been raised by Trump's hourly conduct, but even without that, this is not a big deal.
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Re:So the real crime is... (Score:5, Informative)
Not being the NY Times, or rather, not being a part of the elite propaganda cartel. Damn the Constitution....full prosecution speed ahead.
Seriously, and this is why I don't give a fuck about any laws anymore. Laws are there for you, not the elites. And the worst crime you can do in America, is to reveal the crimes of the elites to the masses.
Well no, the real crime was playing an active role in helping Manning commit his crimes (ie leaking).
If Snoewden decides to steal classified docs, and then decides to give them to you, then you're in the clear. You didn't commit a crime, you just published what he gave you.
If you actively encourage someone to steal those specific docs, or if Snowden asks you for help on how to steal the docs, and you help him, then you've become an accomplice in Snowden's crime.
This is where Assange supposedly got into trouble, not for publishing the NSA docs, but for assisting (probably advising) Snowden in how to steal and disclose them. Now whether those charges are legit is another question.
Note that this is also relevant to Trump and his taxes, as a reporter if someone sends you Trump's taxes then you're in the clear to publish. But you're in trouble if you start advising them on how to steal them, or possibly even if you announce "can someone leak Trump's taxes to me". You go from being a publisher to an active participant in the act.
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The crime happens when you solicit sources for classified documents. Which is legally distinct from being a media organization that just happened to get a drop of documents. There was a whole storyline in "The Newsroom" that covered it. In the past there was some talk that Assange's interactions with Manning in IRC may have crossed the line.
If Trump irks Putin then he's not going to get Snowden. That leaves Assange as the scapegoat to "prove" he's not a Russian puppet. If I was Snowden I'd be quite happy to
This is meaningless..... (Score:4, Insightful)
As he's not going to leave that embassy that he's been living in for the last few years willingly unless he's forced out. And that doesn't seem like that's going to happen anytime soon. So unless President Von Clownstick cuts some sort of "amazing" deal with Ecuador that makes it worth their while to kick him out, this is nothing but a stunt by the Justice Department that doesn't mean anything.
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I don't know, I think the US has the capability to "peck" a bit harder (whether at Ecuador or the UK) than Sweden does.
I do find it funny, after all of those years of railing against the evils of Obama, who never moved against him, and then helping get Trump elected, Trump's administration moves against him within its first 100 days ;)
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The Trump administration has "moved against [Assange] within its first 100 days"? Uh, no. They've _announced_ that they were going to mode against him but much like the carrier, it may take some time before they actually start moving in the stated direction.
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Haha, so in reality they're actually moving away from charging him, but plan to double back and actually charge him once they've resolved previous commitments to Australia? ;)
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Another aspect of this: the US can, if they charge him, continually toll the statute of limitations because Assange isn't present. Which means that the charges will remain until Assange dies. Which, if he doesn't leave, will be in the embassy. Also: how many elections do you think Ecuador will have before Assange dies?
The funny thing is, had he just faced up to the charges in Sweden, he would have long since been done with serving his time, then left to the shelter-state of his choice, since Obama never saw
Re:This is meaningless..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Erm, you're assuming that he wouldn't have been extradited to the US before getting to Sweden, which was always his issue. Not dodging Swedish "justice".
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If that was his issue, he's an idiot.
He voluntarily moved to Sweden after the leaks. When Sweden became too hot for him, he voluntarily went to the UK. If you're trying to avoid being extradited to the US, the UK is about the last place you should go.
So, when he faced serious criminal accusations in Sweden, suddenly he was in danger of being extradited to the US. When the UK found the Swedish extradition request to be completely proper (including accusing him of things that are felonies in English l
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https://www.theguardian.com/me... [theguardian.com]
That's going to be tought to prosecute (Score:5, Interesting)
The US would have to prove that Assange directed the leakers to collect and transfer the leaked information to him. Other than this article I haven't seen any indication of such a level of control or oversight by Assange on his sources. They have chosen to commit espionage and have voluntarily chosen WikiLeaks. This article brings forth a claim of Bradly being directed by WikiLeaks but I have not seen that before not even during Bradley's trial and considering CNN's current reputation for creating "news" I doubt this unsubstantiated claim. So I'm having a hard time seeing how they charge him with anything that could stick.
As to the Clinton campaign emails, last I heard WikiLeaks still insists they were provided by a disgruntled DNC staffer, not the Russians. But even if from the Russians, WikiLeaks did nothing illegal. They simply published information they had been provided, regardless of the source. They did not steal the data.
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And as a non US citizen not residing in the US is suppose that he still has to comply with US law?
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Yes. Eichman committed no crimes in Israeli but was still executed in Israel.
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Correct. Just like a non-French citizen not residing in France has to comply with French law, and a non North Korean citizen not residing in North Korea has to comply with North Korean law. You "have to" comply with the laws of any nation, to the extent that that nation is likely to be able to enforce its laws against you.
Re:That's going to be tought to prosecute (Score:5, Insightful)
The Supreme Court has overturned pretty much everything except, maybe, temporarily holding someone quiet to prevent revealing an imminent D-Day style invasion, and even theoretical at that.
If he paid or aided, then he becomes a spy. If he just received and published, he is safe. The statement he has no First Amendment right because he is not a US citizen is an embarrassing statement by a US official. A law is a law and Congress shall make no law. The idea of making something illegal outside the jurisdiction of the US which cannot even be made illegal inside the US is contradictory seven ways from Sunday.
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The statement he has no First Amendment right because he is not a US citizen is an embarrassing statement by a US official.
If they want to try him in the US then they must do so in accordance with US law. The first amendment would protect him in a US trial on US soil whether he is a citizen or not. This is why they really try to avoid criminal proceedings against the prisoners at Gitmo.
Re:That's going to be tought to prosecute (Score:4, Insightful)
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The US would have to prove that Assange directed the leakers to collect and transfer the leaked information to him
IANAL but he wasn't even in the US to my knowledge so its hard to see how they would even have jurisdiction.
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Other than this article I haven't seen any indication of such a level of control or oversight by Assange on his sources.
Do not forget that we are now in the Age of Alternate Facts.
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I would think he has some time to serve in the UK first for violating the terms of his house arrest. But who knows with the current government.
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Well, and that is why it took so long to charge him: generally, prosecutors believed that he was protected under 1A, "but now believe they have found a way to move forward."
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The recent court cases against British and other foreign bankers in the US, leading to extraditions, have already basically laid the basis for jurisdiction over Assange should he be charged with passing classified material under US law...
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Sucks to you, I am not even an American citizen, your laws don't apply to me. Now book be a plane back to China.
Which as I understand it does happen from time to time. Usually as some kind of exchange to get one of our own assets back or for some other kind of political agreement.
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The problem is proving he 'induced' manning. Unless you can get manning to testify against him its going to be hard to pin anything on him.
You helped manning steal classified documents
No he just gave them to me. ...
good idea ... (Score:5, Insightful)
"We've already begun to step up our efforts and whenever a case can be made, we will seek to put some people in jail"
Hello Secret US various services, you actually broke the law(s), performed illegal operations and basically fucked up your internal security.
Do you have members you would like to nominate for internment or...?
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Operatives of intelligence agencies often break the laws of other countries. And when discovered, they get indicted, arrested, charged, and imprisoned if possible.
If you think this is newsworthy, or represents a policy change, you really know little about international relations.
Four plus years later? (Score:2, Interesting)
Guess the trumped up rape charges didn't pan out
First Amendment (Score:3, Insightful)
This was never a first amendment issue. It was an espionage vs whistle blower issue.
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"..responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people.. "
Anybody have the exact quote? (Score:5, Insightful)
Anybody have the exact quote from Sessions?
Attorney General Jeff Sessions said at a news conference Thursday that Assange's arrest is a "priority."
"We are going to step up our effort and already are stepping up our efforts on all leaks," he said. "This is a matter that's gone beyond anything I'm aware of. We have professionals that have been in the security business of the United States for many years that are shocked by the number of leaks and some of them are quite serious. So yes, it is a priority. We've already begun to step up our efforts and whenever a case can be made, we will seek to put some people in jail."
I'm very suspicious when the news media writes their own sentence and then quotes a single word from someone. Was Sessions talking specifically about Assange, or about leakers? Assange is not a leaker, he's a publisher of the things leakers leak. It's perfectly reasonable for the Justice Department to go after people who are entrusted with US government secrets who then leak them.
Without the full question and answer, then it looks like Sessions could have just as easily said "we're going after leakers" and then CNN says "Assange is a leaker, therefore Sessions is going to arrest Assange," despite Sessions not saying or meaning that.
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How do you figure that? Sessions always struck me as a LAW IS THE LAW kind of guy. You may not like him, but if you're pattern matching him to Jean Valjean rather than Inspector Javert then I think your pattern matcher needs recalibration.
I don't see the dificulty (Score:5, Funny)
You just go in and arrest him at the embassy. I mean - he's in London, we just go in and take him.
Wait, did you say that the Ecuadorian Embassy is actually sovereign land and to send a police or military force in to arrest and remove him would be an act of war? Well, you don't need to worry about that. We've just proven, by way of 59 cruise missiles, that even sovereign nations who do bad things are no barrier to the will (or should I say whim) of the United States. And they don't even have to go in by hand - I think a targeted drone strike would have a limited number of civilian casualties. And London doesn't have any room to complain, since they were perfectly fine with all the drone strikes in middle eastern countries where there were known criminals and we (usually) limited the civilian casualties.
I don't see how this is going to be difficult - the US just needs to apply traditional tactics used on physical terrorists to the new crop of information terrorists.
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Wait, did you say that the recent elections in Ecuador elected a president who said one of his first priorities would be to kick that etiolated freeloader out of the embassy? I wonder if they'll throw him from the balcony and see which police force catches him?
That would be an alternate fact; in the real world Guillermo Lasso was the losing candidate.
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Doing so is essentially a severing of diplomatic ties with Ecuador, and would almost certainly provoke a response in kind, i.e. the forced closure of the British Embassy in Quito. Is Assange worth it? Apparently, Britain doesn't think so.
Assange is a US citizen? (Score:5, Insightful)
What am I missing here? I thought Assange isn't a US citizen. He also wasn't on US soil when he received, nor when he published the material. How is the US juridical system involved, then?
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That doesn't matter - may I refer you to the case of the NatWest three and Navinder Singh Sarao, a day trader based in London who is about to be extradited to the US.
People who have never stepped foot in the US have been extradited to the US to face charges.
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What am I missing here? I thought Assange isn't a US citizen. He also wasn't on US soil when he received, nor when he published the material. How is the US juridical system involved, then?
Imagine an American conspired with a Swede to murder someone in Sweden. I assume Sweden would be free to charge him an seek his extradition in much the same manner. The question is whether the other country decides to grant that extradition request.
That's why there was so much outrage when the CIA kidnapped someone from Italy to take them to Guantanamo. If the US wanted to arrest that individual they should have asked Italy to extradite them, but the US doing it without asking? That's why Italy charged the
Hero's look like anachists. (Score:2)
I don't understand what authority the US has to arrest a foreign national, in a foreign embassy, on foreign soil.
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They have no authority.
They do, however, have the authority to request the foreign country to extradite him or her and the foreign country must then decide whether that extradition can proceed.
The foreign country will refuse the request either because it's politically expedient to refuse or, alternatively, it's not possible for them to extradite for the particular reason due to their laws. On the whole, countries are sensible and do not request extradition unless there's a reasonable chance the extradition
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IANAL, but as I understand it:
Assange is accused of rape in Sweden, and Sweden has asked the UK to extradite him. The UK found the request valid, and sought to get Assange to send him to Sweden, when he fled to the Ecuadorean embassy. He has clearly violated UK criminal law.
If the Brits get him, they have to send him to Sweden. Sweden will deal with him and ship him back to the UK. It's illegal for Sweden to do anything else. At that time, he faces UK justice for the UK laws he violated, and possi
Unbelievable Arrogance (Score:5, Insightful)
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Foreign governments charge US citizens with espionage all the time (not to mention other crimes) and, of course, demand extradition. Furthermore, the US has mutual extradition treaties with many countries and will extradite US citizens if certain conditions are met. Likewise, the US lives
Obama had his chance (Score:2)
I would have liked to see Assange pardoned and this matter cleared up. Obama had eight years to do this but dragged his feet, leaving Assange in legal limbo, because it was politically the most expedient thing to do.
An excuse to basically surpress an inconvenience (Score:2)
Assange did indicate he was in the process of releasing a series of leaks that actually demonstrate illegal activities by the CIA and this may be a pre-emptive strike to supress that data b
Let's hope they do arrest him (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm going to go out on a limb here and hope they DO arrest him.
Why, you ask?
So the dead man switch is activated and all of the horrible, nasty stuff that has been laying there, waiting to be exposed comes to light.
That'll shake up the establishment.
How can it be illegal? (Score:5, Interesting)
It is the hubris of the American Department of Justice to think that American law extends globally. The U.S. State Department warns US travelers that US law does not apply overseas and that US law does not protect them overseas. They recognize the sovereignty of the foreign countries. Why does the U.S. Department of Justice think they have the reach to pluck Assange out and prosecute him. Additionally every publisher that published excerpts from those documents is equally guilty, and many of those are on U.S. soil. Why aren't they being prosecuted? Because the US wants Assange on the general principle that Wikileaks is the actual enemy. But there will be serious unintended consequences on attempting to kidnap and prosecute Assange. The torrent (figuratively and literally) of data that will be released will be shocking. And Wikileaks has under Assange (before he holed up in the embassy) been a reasonable steward for the leaked data; at times wikileaks redacted data that identified people directly that would have resulted in loss of individuals lives. A mass data dump will not be so thoughtful.
The moral of this story (Score:3)
If you ever embarass the United States Government, there is no limit to the amount of time, resources and, if necessary, dirty or downright illegal tricks to ruin your life.
Their reaction, however, pretty much legitimizes the Wikileaks documents as no one puts this much effort into removing a source vs disproving false information.
It's hilarious the USG would rather go after the messenger vs leading by example and just following the rules.
Quit doing illegal shit and there won't be much to report on will there ? :|
Poor Assange! (Score:3)
After all his efforts to help Trump get elected! He's been claiming for years the U.S. was out to get him, and he couldn't return to Sweden to face his rape charges because if he did they'd extradite him. But through all that time, the Obama administration never made any move to charge him with anything.
Then Trump comes into office with help from Assange. And hardly three months later, they're preparing to charge him. I don't think you got what you were hoping for!
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Betrayal? Really?
You pay any attention whatsoever to the campaign? Trump isn't an Assange fan. Nobody in power is an Assange fan.
Arrest is still probably better than being droned by Clinton, at least.
Re:BETRAYAL (Score:4, Informative)
You realize that that "droned by clinton" story was fake, don't you?
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Not to mention Trump has stepped up the bombing in that region, something his supporters said Clinton would do but Trump wouldn't. You can go back to articles from just a month ago and find them all over defending Assange and WL, yet now they're totally fine with this. As usual, his supporters change their position just as often as he does.
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It's just standard behavior of authoritarian followers.
I wish more people had understood what Altemeyer was saying.
Re:BETRAYAL (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed. A Post-ABC poll [washingtonpost.com] conducted in 2013 found 22% of Republicans and 38% of Democrats supported punitive strikes against Syria for using chemical weapons. In 2017, under Trump? The number from the Democrats only dropped one point, to 37%, but the number for Republicans totally reversed, to 86% support.
Re:BETRAYAL (Score:5, Informative)
You realize that that "droned by clinton" story was fake, don't you?
"Droned by Obama" isn't fake, though. [google.com]
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Re:BETRAYAL (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, not quite fake. Snopes [snopes.com] has it as "unproven".
When asked about it, Clinton said "I don't recall that" which is not the same thing as a denial. Remember, she is a lawyer and plausible deniability comes with the territory.
She replied (watch the video) that if it she had said it, it would have been a joke. People can choose to believe her or not believe her but it's not 100% certainty it's fake.
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Which was a fake story. That never happened. That story came from "True Pundit", which is a website famous for fake news stories.
Re:BETRAYAL (Score:4, Insightful)
He's doing things he was always going to do. You elected a guy whose sole reason for winning was to enrich himself and his family. And you fell for it all over a bunch of stupid dog whistles.
But! But! Duh emails! Benghaziiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!
Trump and his family are laughing at you and the rest of the alt-right all the way to the bank.
Re: BETRAYAL (Score:3)
How is that different from the Clinton/Bush family?
Re: BETRAYAL (Score:2)
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Re:BETRAYAL (Score:5, Informative)
After the election, we started to hear "the Russians hacked the elections"
This is factually incorrect. These allegations were mainstream news many months before the elections. However, the more accurate phrasing is influencing rather than hacking because the latter suggests that the influencing was mainly done by hacking voting computers or something similar, which is not an accurate description of the allegations.
..and for some reason the Russian story lived into Q2 2017.
The reason that this story lives on is that evidence is still being uncovered that it is true. There is also strong evidence that the US secret services know more about this than has been revealed to the public, and the efforts to keep this information from being uncovered have sometimes been a bit clumsy.
And any current activities of the Trump administration cannot undo the activities of the Trump election campaign.
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Actually you do hear how Hillary blew the campaign with stupidity from the left. Just read an article on cnn yesterday about it.
However assange released information on Hillary weeks before the election putting him as a firm supporter of trump (who has never paid a contractor in full) and Putin.
Hillary should shut up. She lost to Trump that should be a big enough clue that enough people don't like her that she shouldn't do anything but watch her grandkids.
Hillary of course isn't that smart.
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Hillary couldn't beat a junior senator with almost no voting record, and she couldn't beat Trump. But that is all the Russians fault. The Left needs to keep telling themselves that it was the Russians to make themselves feel better about their loss to Trump.
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Well Trump is consistent in not doing any of the things he had campaigned to do.
I have to wonder (Score:3)
Well Trump is consistent in not doing any of the things he had campaigned to do.
Scott Adams notes out that people watch the same scenes and think they're viewing a different movie.
Looking at the anti-Trump rhetoric on this thread, I'm starting to wonder if that's literally true. It's gotten so blatantly obvious that I'm starting to wonder about the basic sanity of some people.
1) Bomb the shit out of ISIS
2) Build the wall (ongoing)
3) Withdraw from TPP
4) Suspend immigration from terror-prone areas (ongoing)
5) Rework health care (ongoing, 2nd round coming up)
6) Rework the tax code (ongoin
Snowden??? (Score:2)
I'm wondering how Snowden got into the mix here. I thought Greenwald and company were the conduit for snowden
Re:BETRAYAL (Score:4)
While you are wrong about the part with Trump being not very bright. He has clearly shown that he is very intelligent, just a amateur when it comes to his new position.
I am kind of surprised at this development. I thought leaks being posted to wikileaks where a key component in his election. He was practically beating Hillary over the head with print outs from wikileaks during the campaign. It seems to me instead of trying to hang his buddy Assange, he would be better off trying to plug the leaks to start with.
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OK, so he's smart but a liar who isn't concerned with even appearing to be consistent so long as the current lie appears to be beneficial.
You're trading 'stupid reactionary bully' for 'sleazy, brassy con man'.
I'm not sure it's a binary choice, I think there's a spectrum there.
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Well, either way you want to term it....he's STILL better than Hillary.
Re: BETRAYAL (Score:4, Interesting)
So, what is the failure about the Obama economy? Do you object to the massive deficit reduction? The decrease in unemployment? The millions of people who could finally afford health care? The growth of the economy as a whole?
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Well pretty much the whole thing. The deficit was actually doubled under obama, more than all other presidents before him combined. So there was no massive deficit reduction but an actual increase.
The number of unemployment did go down but the number not in the labor force actually went up by 13.5%. As for the number of actual jobs created, obama numbers are actually lower than Reagan.
I think the health care has been covered but lets by all means drag it out again. The number on health care did go
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I am no supporter of Obama, although I did vote for him over McCain for his promise of less war, and am glad we didn't have McCain, but he didn't fulfill many of his promises, so I didn't vote for him over Romney. But he did OK better than you show..
spending didn't double under Obama, Bush hid $2.7 Trillion of his spending, that Obama didn't. [nytimes.com]
> The number on health care did go up. But since you had no choice any more it had to go up.
Went up at a slowed rate. People payed their bills, thus taking many of
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Please don't bring any of your TDS issues into the tread. If you wish to talk about Trump's relationship with Assange we can. But I will not indulge you any more in what Trump is or isn't, in you option.
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He's proving himself to be a real Republican, after all of America (me included) thinking of him as a "RINO" for the last two years.
Republicans, when out of power,
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Republicans are like priests - can be quite uplifting to hear them speak but don't put them in charge of your kids
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The way I read this is you are saying, "Democrats Bad, Republicans Bad." Sounds like to me you are saying we need a third party. If that is what you are saying then I couldn't agree more.
I honestly can't remember the last time I voted for a republican or a democrat, willingly. I've always voted for a third party. Although a lot people seem to think I'm a die hard Trump supporter because I don't want to see him fail or impeached. I don't want to see him fail because if he does we are really fucked.
Re:BETRAYAL (Score:5, Informative)
"The Trump Organization" is actually his father's apartment rental company, Elizabeth Trump & Son Co; he later renamed it after running it for years, as he wanted to diversify. His self-reported wealth in 1982 was $200M, when his company was still tied with his father. According to this calculator [dqydj.com], that would be worth $4B today if invested in the market. Of course, that's not all that he got from his father - his father gave him (undisclosed) amounts of loans and gifts during his lifetime, and after his father's death in 1999, Donald and his siblings received most of Fred's assets; a portion of the real estate holdings alone were sold in 2003 for half a billion dollars. Much of Trump's other assets have come from his name - simple licensing rights (Trump pegs the value at $3,3B, Forbes says $253M); $241M from celebrity apprentice; etc. He also ditched a huge amount of debt through bankruptcy; before the proceedings, the Trump Organization owed $9B and Trump personally nearly $1B. When he settled with the banks after selling off assets, those figures were around $5B and $1B, respectively.
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Yet he turned a few millions from his father into Billions. His father was never worth as much as he is. If that's a failure or someone else's success, I'll take that any day.
If Trump took the few millions and put them into an S&P500 index fund on Day 1 and never worked another day in his life, he would've ended up with a networth more than TWICE larger than what he has now. Not exactly a good example of "success".
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"to me counts as extremely good evidence he's not a fool"
It's definitely extremely good evidence that 10s of millions of American voters are utterly stupid
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and by that I mean the ones that voted for him
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By the way, in case it matters, I didn't vote for Trump.
Re:BETRAYAL (Score:4, Insightful)
TBH, I didn't vote for Trump either, but I would like to point out that a large part of the people who did vote for him, were sick and tired of being called "troglodyte haters". Hillary's "Basket of Deplorables" comment was just another symptom of the stupid elitism of the useful idiots of the left. And they are idiots, because they continue the same tired name calling, and repeating debunked claims. It is as if they are completely devoid of any other means of communication.
"Racist"
"Nazi"
"Russians"
"Misogyny"
"Cheeto"
Luckily for them, most of the Republicans are inept stooges who are more concerned with "tightening their grip, while systems slip through their fingers"
Many Americans are tired of the two existing parties and have completely given up politics as a solution to any real problem.
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Right, people who call others stupid elitists and useful idiots are "sick and tired" being called "troglodyte haters." Well, guess what? If they want to stop being called troglodytes and haters, they should stop calling people names, stop hating on others, and learn what the fuck the words they're saying mean.
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If you think the right wing doesn't name-call the people who disagree with them, you're both inbred & retarded.
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It almost worked with Ronnie Reagan
If you think John Hinckley, Jr. was acting out of a sense of patriotism, then you're the fucking idiot. Hinckley was a batshit-crazy "Taxi Driver" wannabe who was trying to impress the object of his obsession, Jodie Foster. He considered killing Jimmy Carter, then switched to Edward Kennedy, before finally settling on Reagan.
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You know what they say, even a stopped clock can be right twice a day.
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Snicker.