Discredited Russian collusion theory

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He didn't indict anyone for actually colluding with Russia, it was all process crimes relating to the investigation, and the investigation was opened based on false claims from the Steele dossier. No dossier, no investigation, no process crimes to indict anyone on, it was all smoke and mirrors.

From Putin's perspective

Make Alaska Russian Again

Putin must *really* be pissed orf about Russia selling Alaska.

Correct.

If you were to ask an Aboriginal Alaskan you'd probably come away with the impression that Alaska is neither American nor Russian.

What about the 20 odd Russians indicted?

The investigation may not have gone where the Democrats wanted it to go politically, but it didn't exactly go nowhere.

Real information about real interference was uncovered. That isn't smoke and mirrors.

If where an investigation is going to go is supposed to be a foregone conclusion, there would never be a point to having any investigations. This assumption that just because it didn't go where wanted renders it bogus is, to me, ridiculous. We'd always have to know the real story before investigating anything, which basically means we'd never investigate anything at all. You investigate to find out what the truth is, not because you already know the truth and only need proof.

As for those process crimes, if there was nothing to uncover, why would anyone engage in a process crime to start with? People went to jail rather than tell their truth. Why? Sure, they knew they would get pardons, but why spend any time at all in jail if there was nothing to hide? There is still smoke coming from those woods, and pretending there isn't requires some selective vision. I accept that we will likely never know if that smoke is just a normal campfire or something more serious, but its still there.

We've gone in circles on this concept before, so maybe I just don't know how to get you to see the concept, or maybe your fundamental world view will always reject it, but my professional field might not even exist if it hadn't been determined that a certain amount of investigation is necessary just to help people keep their noses clean, and if following barely there leads wasn't known to be important. It doesn't matter what caused the suspicion. It matters what you find. Within limits, of course, to prevent undue burdens on freedom, but we have those.

I think you're failing to distinguish between the Russian Collusion story, that the Trump campaign actively sought out and cooperated with Russian intelligence in some sort of quid pro quo arrangement, and the more general Russian interference story, which I don't think anyone is really contesting other than the effectiveness (what they did was crude and not terribly persuasive). Aside from my issues with the evidence, the actual collusion between the media, the security state, and the Clinton campaign, and the general false media narrative here, this whole thing really is the Democrat's version of the stolen election lie, they can't admit to having run a bad candidate and a terrible campaign, so they come up with excuses for how the election was stolen from them, this being just one among many.

Why wasn't the Steele dossier and it's contents more thoroughly scrutinized prior to opening an investigation then? People who saw it in 2016 were raising doubts about it then, why would the FBI investigate the allegations in the document before authenticating the document itself?

If you ask the hundreds of minority groups and tribal groups living in Russia who were once independent kingdoms they would probably agree with the indigenous Alaskans (and indigenous Hawaiians for that matter).

Yep.

I will look into the FBI question.

I have a question for you: is the term “Russian collusion” being used by the right in away similar to CRT is used by the left? Getting hung up on the terminology seems to me to miss the fact that Mueller reached no conclusion at all on if the Trump campaign actually colluded (probably because they were stonewalled); only stated they had no evidence of it; and never looked at Trump himself at all.

Not really, and in fact most of the fiercest critics of the Russian collusion narrative have come from the left, notably Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Aaron Mate, Michael Tracey, and a few others, in fact FOX actually brings these guys on to explain it to their viewers both because they're the most knowledgeable, and because their cross partisan alignment gives them additional credibility. I don't think I'm just harping on terms here, I see a lot of people kind of interchangeably talking about collusion and interference as if they're the same thing and one proves the other, when that just isn't the case.

Also, I don't attach the meaning to the term "stonewalled" that you seem to, it's the smart play when talking to cops or prosecutors in any capacity, as has been mentioned, the only indictments here were for process crimes, which in and of itself may have discouraged cooperation. I certainly wouldn't talk to any sort of investigator without a lawyer, regardless of whether or not I had anything to hide, and I'd likely have said as little as possible just to avoid giving them any rope to hang me with.

Wow, when you see this at CNN, you know it's really over:

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/11/18/poli ... index.html

I'd certainly hope so after 5 years. But you know, if the key people behind it all admitted it was a sham. A lot of people who stood by it would continue to stand their ground.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... th-russia/

No, where there's smoke, there's fire.

And here's another:

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/11 ... andal.html