Special Investigation and Russian Electioneering
One of the more looming stories over the American political climate these days that takes over pretty much everything else is the special investigation into the Trump campaign and potential collusion with Russian attempts to influence the US presidential election of 2016. There is a lot of information in the public domain about this story, including most recently Mueller seeking a revision of Paul Manafort's home confinement release after alleging that Manafort attempted to contact potential witnesses to conceal evidence relating to the various charges he faces.
You can find a decent overview of most of the publicly available information on the related wikipedia page.
So let's try to wrangle with all that public information. Please list, vet, and weigh the evidence you think is most important when it comes to the Special Investigation of the Trump campaign. Does it look like collusion with Russian electioneering happened or is this story mostly about finding incidental crimes of sloppy political first timers? What role do you think Russia played or tried to play in the 2016 election based on this publicly available evidence? What evidence would you like to see before making a judgment?
I think this is very much a story about redefining the limits of behavior we will allow from political leaders in this country. I don't think Trump sat down in a room somewhere and planned how to co-ordinate with Russia on how to win the election, but there is clear evidence of many people in the Trump campaign of (at best) looking the other way for their own benefit.
Trump has literally been live on national television calling on Russia to recover Clinton's missing emails, claiming they would be "rewarded" by the press. This was a "joke", he was just being sarcastic! Getting focused on the legal aspect here is a bit silly though, because then we start glossing over the fact that the President of the United States explicitly asked a foreign power to intervene on his behalf to get him elected.
Cue the arguments that "The US interferes in elections too!" and "everyone does opposition research".
Then we get to the whole Trump Jr. meeting, which has evolved from a laughably transparent farce into potentially serious legal problem. It started with Trump Jr. claiming that they discussed adoptions, the thinnest possible veiled codeword for the Magnisky act. From there the story (quickly) changed to reveal that Trump Jr. was in fact seeking "dirt" on Clinton from a Russian lawyer. Well, that's not ideal but again "everyone does oppo. research", right? Except most people aren't dumb enough to take info from lawyers who later admit they are Russian informants. Now the obvious has come out (through Guiliani's spectacular lawyer-fu) that Trump dictated the initial (incredibly incomplete / inaccurate) response to the meeting.
All the while, we're focused on whether NFL players should stand for the national anthem or some bullshit.
What does all this mean though? I'm not sure. We can argue (and I'm sure Trump supporters will) all day whether this or that constitutes a crime or impeachable offense, or even whether it's a bad thing or not.
I'm afraid in all the noise that is political discussion in the world today, we're losing sight of some fairly basic facts.
It's not OK with me to have a President, whatever his other strengths or failings, who might be indebted to any foreign power due to their personal business.
It's not OK with me that the Russians hacked the databases of one of the national parties in an effort to influence US voters in ANY direction, nor that they infiltrated state voter databases and lord knows what else.
It's SUPER not OK with me that our response to said hacking has been uncoordinated and ineffective (nor that we use any sort of electronic voting machine that doesn't physically record votes, but that's another story)
That said, I'm not sure that Trump has actually committed an impeachable offense other than trying to cover all this up -- which of course, if the democrats try to pursue without some rock-hard evidence (and even then...) will lead to one of the sharpest divides in modern American political history.
Meanwhile, we continue to grow further apart as a nation and many looming problems (climate change, job-loss due to automation, or even alleviating the real, narrowly-focused, detrimental effects of illegal immigration on workers by employers etc.) remain wholly unaddressed
How would you feel about congress trying to formally charge the president with obstruction of justice and then basically saying "we're not going to remove you from office for it" (as would be possible if Democrats win the house and the senate stays roughly where it is now)? Would it just be a repeat of the response in the Clinton years when Republicans were seen by many moderates and democrats to have been vindictively going after Bill for partisan reasons rather than where the evidence led them?
I'd imagine that would go very poorly and make the partisanship of the Clinton-era look like a happy walk through the park---unless Mueller is sitting on an email of Trump trying to contact Putin or something---which of course is why the Democrats will probably go down that path if they win.
The sole argument I've heard that makes some of the issues I've outlined above even marginally OK in my book is imagining what would have happened if Clinton won. At one point, I imagined it as "just four more years of Obama, perhaps with more hawkishness", but I think that is a gross miscalculation. With Clinton in power and Trump sitting in the wings posing conspiracies about the election outcome, I think the Russians would have kicked their propaganda machines into even higher overdrive, and the right-wing media would be having field day picking apart Clinton at every chance they got. Essentially, Trump getting elected provided a release to the pressure-cooker. Impeaching him (or attempting to do so), without some fairly incontrovertible evidence turns the pressure-cooker right back on.
Let him stay on for four years (unless, of course you find that Trump-Putin email or the like). Focus on reaching out to people and addressing the problems that have led to so much anger and resentment. Work on making dialog possible between people of differing viewpoints (shoutout to ~). Someday, in the not so far future, cable TV will die like the dinosaur it is. If the "comment" section of your average Fox News or WaPo report is any indication, we are ditching a broken vehicle for political communication for one that doesn't have a steering-wheel (yet). And finally, can we stop reporting on every little dumb thing Trump does? It only empowers him.
I think part of the difference is that Bill Clinton didn't do anything illegal except for the lying/perjury (which is still bad, and I'm not trying to condone his affair on his wife, just saying that it's not illegal)(also I'm not an expert on Clinton's impeachment so correct me if I'm wrong). While on the other hand there are a lot of laws the try to regulate elections to be fair and control outside influence - but they're largely enforced by the honor system unless something cracks the exterior shell of election privacy. That shell has been cracked with Trump and we're finding an unfortunately huge amount of questionable innards. If Trump's only crime was perjury on some minor unethical but legal private activity, and Democrats were hounding it like a pit bull to force impeachment, I would agree with you that there would be legitimate partisan concerns.
Thank you @arghdos, the Politico link about immigration you mentioned (last link in above comment) has been the most enlightening thing about immigration that I've read in years.
Says a youtube video published by Wiki-Leaks, who have a clear bias, but was later denied by Hersh.
Also, we're then in the unenviable position of distrusting a strong body of evidence from our intelligence agencies concluding that Russia meddled, hacked, whatever in the 2016 elections... only to trust the word of Hersh that the FBI (one of said intelligence agencies, we can no longer trust, apparently) has a report detailing a conspiracy re: Seth Rich and Wikileaks. A story that even Fox retracted.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but it seems to me you start at an inconsistency in publicly available facts add some personal bias against the government and (understandably) Podesta and then claim that we can't trust the word of the entire intelligence apparatus of the US.
Which, if so -- what the hell are we going to do about it anyways?
Fair enough on the timeline, but doesn't the fact that Hersh has refused to comment on it lend some credence to the idea that whatever he said in that unauthorized recording isn't something he'd stake his journalistic career on? He doesn't seem to be the type to be cowed into silence.
RE: the intelligence communities. I think one thing we've absolutely learned during the Trump era is how easy it is for bureacrats to leak information to the press -- we're then left with the conclusion that the entire intelligence community either is in cahoots with Comey / Mueller or hasn't leaked anything other than stuff about the Clinton investigation?
I've got to run for the moment, so forgive the short reply
Even on the off chance that they didn't hack the DNC emails, Russia has still obviously been trying to influence our elections and create discord in our society. The 13 Russian nationals being arrested and just watching the troll bots on twitter confirms that. It was also obvious that they were doing the same thing during the French elections. I don't particularly remember them doing anything during Brexit, but I would be surprised if they didn't try to influence that as well.
So you're just going to use classic whataboutism to completely ignore that an outside country is interfering with our democracy?
I've been going back and forth over the past day about how to approach this comment, and whether to.
The comment you made in the parent chain leading to this one? That one seemed fair. It was reasonable, even-handed, and didn't seem like you were really out to get anyone. This one though ... I'm inclined to agree with @deadaluspark that you seem more interested in dismissing his comment entirely for a small part of his comment. I don't know if that was your intention, especially because you later come back strong and address his follow-up comment to this, but (obviously since I've posted this) I thought I should point this moment out anyway.
So simply put: this comment eventually led to a productive place, but it got us to a very precarious place.
Strictly speaking, what deadaluspark did in that comment isn't a classic whataboutism. They aren't just saying it's hypocritical of us to be concerned with Russia's actions. They're saying it's part of the broader geopolitical climate and should be taken somewhat for granted, so they would prefer to prioritize issues that more directly impact their family. A classic whataboutism would be saying only that it is hypocritical to be concerned.
They are also not completely ignoring the fact that an outside country tried to interfere with our democracy. That should be clear from all the other comments in this thread this person has made, most especially their top-level comment-chain. Now you eventually got this point resolved, but I would be really careful when it comes to making these sorts of almost strawman style questions. It can lead to really bad places really fast.
I really appreciate your perspective, but I think I still disagree. I believe the comment I replied to is classic whataboutism (not all of the comments afterwards are, mostly just that one).
Here's my reasoning:
From wikipedia: "Whataboutism (also known as whataboutery) is a variant of the tu quoque logical fallacy that attempts to discredit an opponent's position by charging them with hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving their argument, which is particularly associated with Soviet and Russian propaganda. When criticisms were leveled at the Soviet Union during the Cold War, the Soviet response would be 'What about...' followed by an event in the Western world."
My stated position is the Russia interfered in our election. Their position is largely just sowing doubt about about Russian interference or downplaying it.
The first line of the response was "And America created a social network for Cuba with intent of spreading anti-Castro/pro-US propaganda.". In my opinion that is a "what about..." that's followed by an event in the Western world, do you agree? This line was mostly why I called them out on whataboutism.
The next line is "I would be far more concerned if what they were doing wasn't par for the fucking course and if our country actually had an ethical/moral leg to stand on in that regard but we fucking don't because our country has been involving itself illegally in other countries elections for fucking DECADES." That is also an "attempt to discredit an opponent's position by charging them with hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving their argument"
In the next sentence they use the phrase "pointing us instead at a boogeyman to worry about". That is also just dismissing the argument by painting it as a presumably false boogeyman.
The next two sentences are mostly appeals to emotion, but are somewhat valid.
No parts of the comment really address Russia interfering in our elections, other than saying that we're just as bad and we have other problems to deal with. Every sentence tries to downplay the issue of Russian election meddling.
Whataboutism has seen a HUGE increase in use over the past year or so. I've personally found that calling it out is the best way to deal with it. What should I have done otherwise? How would you have responded to that comment? I would be glad to learn a better way of dealing with comments like that.
Oh I don't think it's inappropriate to point out what was, in your eyes, the apparent use of the tactic (and I agree they did a bit of whataboutism). My comment is more about the hyperbolic response you used to call it out. I'd refrain from the hyperbole. It's the hyperbole that can get us into trouble (which, again, this thread did not go that way--which is great!).
I hope I pointed out clearly enough initially what I thought the hyperbole was, but it's worth mentioning again that I think you're kind of right to call them out for whataboutism here, and that they aren't completely ignoring the importance of the story.
I guess I don't know where they aren't completely ignoring the importance of the story before my comment.
Like, they say "I actually took the time to respond to your points and wasn't just dismissive." but no where in that comment did they accept or deny Russian interference in our elections. They just brought up that we do terrible things too. To me, that is completely dismissive.
Although, after thinking about it more I do think you're right that my comment was too much of a "shutdown". I think in the future, I'll call out whataboutism but somehow also give an easier way to continue the conversation. Maybe something like "You're using classic whataboutism to try and deflect that fact that an outside country is interfering with our democracy. Do you not think they're interfering, or do you just not think it's something to worry about? It doesn't matter that the US is bad too, because Russian election meddling has a high chance of making the US even worse. It's much harder to fix ourselves while someone is actively sabotaging us."?
I actually think I might have picked up the habit of just shutting people down because on Reddit a lot of them are literally Russian propaganda bots and they'll just ignore any arguments anyways.
Thanks for the discussion.
Yeah, Reddit is a PTSD experience for just about everyone I think. I think the way you put it in this comment would have been great too. I think you're nailing the head here: it is probably more about "shutting down" conversation than about hyperbole/whatever.
They actually didn't say anywhere in this comment chain that they agreed that the story was important (not until later when responding to someone else, did that come up directly in this comment chain). So that isn't on you. I was reacting largely because this user and I had already had an exchange elsewhere in this thread where they did seem to agree there was some importance to the story worth addressing, but they didn't really know how it should be addressed.
Ok, so you do care that Russia is interfering with our democracy, but you think we should mostly ignore it because we do the same thing and we have bigger fish to fry?
I guess that's our fundamental difference. I think any country interfering in our democracy is hugely importantly. Having outside powers trying to divide and control us affects our ability to fix any of our other problems. I mean, just look at all of the places that the US has tried to control. It almost always turns out extremely terribly. Why would Russia trying to control us turn out any differently?
I just wanted to say that this point makes a great deal of sense to me. Too much coverage focuses on Russia an is simply an excuse to hammer the "I don't like Trump, let's get him out" button. However, I don't follow all the way to not caring about Russia's influence operations, if only because they've been laid bare in a way that the American equivalents are much harder to explore. Both are important, one is simply harder to see because it's not reported on 24/7.
That's fair. It's incredibly frustrating to see the all or nothing reporting on the Russian influence on both sides. Either it's a "Witch Hunt" or it (implicitly) "swung the election".
It's seems unlikely to me that Facebook ads and sparsely attended foreign rallies really changed a whole lot of peoples minds (though, with the thin-margins in key states one will always wonder the unknowable).
What I am particularly upset about is how the whole infiltration into state voter databases / companies that make voting machines gets swept up into all this mess. That is a concrete, relatively simple, issue that should be vitally important to everyone -- if you can't reasonably and securely vote, you don't even have our thin veneer of money-driven democracy.
While I agree with your other points I'd like to critique one.
I don't think buying ads was about changing minds, but rather mobilizing the people who would vote a certain way and giving them a certain kind of advertisement aimed towards people who won't do research and are easily swayed by a simple "you will lose this 'freedom' if you don't vote a certain way in the upcoming election."
Hmm, that's a good point -- the aspect of sowing division and depressing/boosting turnout among certain groups was definitely a part of the strategy.
I would love to see some sort of research on the effectiveness of such efforts however. Probably very difficult to do in an election context, but there's probably some analogue out there
"Why should they/we give a fuck about Russia when our government can't even stand up for us?"
Because our government is going to be standing up for us even less if Russia wins. Corporate money in politics is a huge problem. It's not quite as bad as Russian money in politics (mainly because corporations don't have hit squads that murder journalists), but it's still really bad. A ton of people have been railing on corporate money in politics for years. The answer to "money in politics is bad" isn't to just yell "well fuck it, lets go all the way and let international money into our politics too!"
My main problem with your argument is that you're not saying "Russian interference is bad, and we should deal with that, but here's all these other problems we need to deal with too", instead you're saying "why should they/we give a fuck about Russia when our government can't even stand up for us?"
We can't ignore the major problem of Russian interference just because we have other problems too.
To further your point, the U.S., specifically SOS Clinton, was actively working against Putin during the Russian "elections."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/democracy-post/wp/2017/07/21/did-the-united-states-interfere-in-russian-elections/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.d9245770aa88
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/17/sunday-review/russia-isnt-the-only-one-meddling-in-elections-we-do-it-too.html
https://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/clinton-putin-226153
I think whataboutism is never a valid argument strategy because it's purpose is two-fold: 1) change the conversation so the topic that was brought is not discussed and 2) establish an impossible bar whereby no one can point out wrong-doing unless they are completely without fault.
Although pointing out "whataboutism" may be perceived as negative by some, it's necessary if we want to have a meaningful on-topic conversation.
Not OP but have enjoyed the discussion we've had elsewhere in this thread. My understanding was that Assange thew the "we've been comprised" switch a long time ago so anything coming out of wikileaks has been suspect for...a long time. But there is still some debate on that I'm finding.
So just something to be aware of I suppose:
http://nymag.com/selectall/2016/11/wikileak-hashes-dont-match-so-whats-going-on.html
And reddit discussion:
https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/5fest8/has_there_been_any_resolution_to_the_mismatched/
You have to trust someone at some point or you're just flailing around. Ask yourself not who to trust, but who has something to gain and that tends to be a good compass for identifying where biases reside.
RE: Wikileaks -- it's really hard to get a read on what's been happening there, as others in this thread have pointed they've possibly been compromised for some time. And then you get shit like this (and more) -- which what are you even supposed to make of that? It reads like a post out of T_D.
The one question I still have for you is the whole leaking concept. If the intelligence community was running some giant conspiracy about Russian meddling in the 2016 election, don't you think we'd hear about it along the lines of the Strozk texts? That would essentially be the Holy Grail for Trump no? It's a huge dangling prize for the first FBI agent or the like who could prove it, and Trump is known to reward loyalty.
I'll trust the guilty pleas and indictments. They're evidence enough to me that the investigation is bearing fruit.
I think it's important that we remember this is not simply at the Presidential level (although that's certainly the most concerning revelation). Election tampering is at every level, and it says something that the majority of Americans expect to see Russian interference in the 2018 midterms. So while we focus on the Mueller investigation and the latest outrages of what Don Jr did and did not say or the reasons he met with those attorneys to begin with, Congress still has not made any move to release funds to combat what will likely be one of our largest domestic issues for the forseeable future, but is instead focusing on whether or not people with Hispanic last names can vote in elections. We need to pull away from the palace intrigue and focus on infrastructure.
I know you might take issue, but there's far more evidence that the DNC hack came from Guccifer2.0 and thereby the Russian GRU, than from Seth Rich.
I don't know man. I don't trust much of what Jullian Assange says anymore. He's been caught holding back info that's hurtful to conservatives and been shown to be in personal touch with the Trump campaign. If you're going to disregard the entire US intelligence community, that's a weird guy to be in full-throated support of.
That last link is from a tiny outlet on the far-right and a journalist that is pretty defensive about Russia ever doing anything wrong, if his twitter account is to be believed. That's a bit of a stretch to hang the complete disregard of everything all the extra-governmental sources say about Guccifer2.0 on. I personally don't know enough about the subject to dive into the specifics myself. But I do know and trust the Ars Technica senior security editor, and if he says he goes along with the standard story, I'd need real clear proof from just as trustworthy a source. No offense if that rings hollow for you, but that's the way I feel.
The GRU reportedly have an incredible system to hide and obscure their actions, but the guys using it aren't all the smartest around and make mistakes with they way they use it. It would make sense that researchers could pierce that veil. After all, most security failures these days turn out to be configuration errors, user errors, or social engineering.
I think you'd be hard pressed to find a more suitable FBI agent to lead the investigation.
I'm not saying they're without fault, just that of those with the right credentials to do the job, I can't think of anyone more qualified than a prior director of the FBI, decorated military officer, and, most importantly for those wanting to make this whole thing partisan, a well-regarded Republican.
Please recall that both Rs and Ds applauded the choice until only recently when Trump and Murdoch started their PR campaign.
Perhaps. I sincerely hope not.
I also don't like the OWS/BLM infiltration and the other stuff you listed, and agree the U.S. government can be shady AF, especially the FBI. However, I don't think we can ignore the case or the evidence just because we don't love how every prior case was handled by the prosecutor. Objectively, I think one can make the case that being the FBI Director is pretty much certification that they're the "best" cop in the country. If not "the best" then certainly one of the best since they don't make poorly qualified cops FBI directors.
I'm curious who you would have put in charge of the investigation. If Mueller isn't the right choice, who would you choose?
I don't mean to derail, but the Flint water situation is over halfway fixed and should be all done by early 2019. A lot of the city has clean water.
Good response. I share those concerns.
When I was a kid growing up there was this sense of civics that I find lacking now. It tends to be poopoo-ed by the Right and the Left is obsessed with identify politics still for some reason (making broad generalizations of course). The Boomers got a lot wrong IMO but some of the things from the 60s that permeated the 70s and early 80s were great. There seemed to be a general optimism that large institutions could be used to for good and people set out to see that through. I'm struggling to put a better description together of what I'm talking about so I might let it bounce around the old noggin a bit more :)
I had a class in college that was mandated for all incoming students about Civics. I thought very little of it at the time but in retrospect I think it's one of the best classes I ever took.
I think there is a substantial and important difference between taking what someone says with a grain of salt and dismissing anything to do with the narrative they promote. I think you're right that John Podesta is not the best champion of any narrative about Russian intervention in the 2016 election, which is why it's important to look at what people who aren't John Podesta are saying that either supports or undermines his claim.
It's a pretty tough sell these days to claim that Russians had done absolutely nothing in the 2016 election cycle, especially because Facebook has flat out admitted and testified to Russian-purchased advertising content to further drive a wedge in an already divided electorate using and engaged in various Facebook groups. It's a fair point to say "well, that isn't impacting a lot of people," but it impacted some people and that's important to realize and grapple with.
I think there is a lot of conflation with this topic between people who wanted their side to win and what may have been outside the rules of fair, domestic play to get there, and I hope that I framed the starting point of this discussion in away to sidestep a lot of that conflation.
I appreciate the heavy doses of skepticism you've introduced to this debate when it comes to the backgrounds and previous decision-making under public pressure of the central investigators (and one investigator turned witness) of this particular story. And by most accounts, Mueller's investigation is proceeding at a breakneck pace. But what process could be better? We know that the congressional investigations are a joke with the party in control of them totally disinterested in investigating the matter or spending any resources to keep anything similar from happening again, despite being the same party so deathly concerned about the integrity of the electorate from voter fraud.
One good thing I see coming out of Trump's election is the fact that he showed the power of populism. If he had actually done things to improve the lives of regular people (which I feel his is utterly incapable of comprehending, let alone doing, by virtue of his being born into and living a life of wealth), I wouldn't mind him so much. Instead, he's more concerned with his ego and pandering to Fox News voters by finding every scapegoat imaginable rather than addressing income inequality in any meaningful way. And no, a few dollars fewer taken in taxes every paycheck doesn't cut it.
Exactly. Trump's populism is ugly, and relies on the darker aspects of tribalism (To hell with the other guy). Bernie's populism took the same anger and tried to do something constructive with it (let's fix this mess together).
My SocDem is showing.
One of the things about your point of view I'm struggling to reconcile with is the already successful guilty pleas which seem to have gotten Mueller more evidence for more indictments (I'm thinking especially of Michael Flynn, and Rick Gates, et al). What role do you think these guilty pleas have in your mind as far as how much to trust the information coming from Mueller's investigation?
Here is the complete list of criminal charges associated with the probe. The accounts I've read usually suggest that the guilty pleas were intentionally lighter charges than what they could have been charged with to encourage cooperation. Most of the charges were for false statements (i.e., the cover up) rather than any smoking gun themselves.
Which leads to the more obvious question about the cover up. Even if there was nothing necessarily illegal uncovered yet to cover up, what should be done about the fact that so many senior officials were willing to so blatantly and obviously lie about what was done?
Is it that? Or is it 'We can't look backward because it would take so long to go back and hold every single corrupt official accountable that it would be meaningless wasted time, and the best way to address it is by fixing it going forward'?
I get it, but I mean, does it always have to be a Godwinization?
Sorry, I did get that. This is what I get for spending so much time on a site that uses it as a go-to argument. :)
Reddit is a PTSD experience.
Very much this... even once you're out of the reddit warzone you still find yourself hitting the deck every time there is a loud noise. It's going to take us all a long time to adjust to "normal" online life again where civil discussions with people of opposing views can be had. :(
The Russian influence on the election I classify as info terrorism. And like regular terrorism, can't be shoved back into Pandora's box. The problem to me is that people are just believing pixels in front of their eyes with no discernment.
I wish there was an NPR type of compare and contrast rumor site that could classify and grade content and sources. That wasn't The Onion, that is. X)
It likely happened to some degree IMO just based on the timing of public statements by those connected with the campaign and Wikileak releases. That's not a legal argument of course, just my own observation. I think they are VERY SLOPPY political first timers and that's why this is coming back to bite them so hard. But more than anything, Mueller is uncovering years and years of criminal activity undertaken by Trump and his cohort - lots of money laundering for Russians.