[user3939382]

It's one universe -- this activity within the government you're citing culminated in the Mueller investigation's final report, which read "insufficient evidence of a criminal conspiracy". Let me translate that for you: the whole thing was a hoax from day 1, discussed non-stop by our de-facto state media corporate press, and pushed non-stop for years on the American public by the DNC which is the source of those documents.

The dossier that was used as a basis for launching all of this in the first place: "Main Steele dossier source Igor Danchenko was FBI operative: court document" https://nypost.com/2022/09/14/main-steele-dossier-source-igo...

Actually it was discovered that the Clinton campaign paying for "opposition research" was in turn the source of that fake dossier.

The whole thing was made up, that's not even controversial at this point. The fact that you're on here citing those documents as if it wasn't just proves the pervasiveness of the corruption of our system of democracy and media.

Here's coverage on all of this from the journalist that broke the Snowden story and is maligned by our state/corporate/fascist media outlets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-lg5RU8xAI

[chimprich]

Quote from Mueller's report: "The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion".

...but you seem to have ignored that.

[apstls]

This is effectively a strawman argument. My comment, and the one I was responding to, are discussing Russian meddling (as in election interference efforts) while you are discussing Trump-Russia collusion, a (very, very) small subset of the actual topic we were discussing.

I do not understand your hand-wavey dismissal of the documents I linked to, as I do not understand how you could have checked their contents and came away believing they all discussed Trump-Russia collusion. For example, the indictment I linked to is very clear, direct proof of election interference activities performed by an offensive cyber unit within the Russian military and never makes any implications of involvement by Trump.

Regarding Trump-Russia collusion - since you brought the topic up - the things you are asserting still seem potentially dubious.

A decision to not indict and prosecute is not based on whether it is more likely that the crime was committed than not, but whether or not it can be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, especially in a scenario like this. It is not 50% sure, not 80%, closer to 99% sure. If you read the Mueller report is is most definitely not a conclusive exoneration of Trump. You cannot honestly argue that collusion did not occur because Mueller did not indict.

Opposition research is research funded by opposition. That does not imply that the output of the research must therefore be asserting the opposite of the reality of its subject matter. I don’t understand this point.

Somebody who was a source for Steele, who is ex-Western intelligence, also being a source for other components of Western intelligence like the FBI seems wildly unsuspicious. Of course, the Post tries to spin it anyway, which is unsurprising for media outlets in general today, but particularly unsurprising for this particular outlet.

Basically, I am not saying that collusion did or did not occur, because I do not know. And if we do truly live in the same universe, you do not know either, you just think you do.

[user3939382]

A very very small subset? I don’t think so, they accused the President of being a foreign agent for Moscow and talked about it in the media non stop for years.

The source of the dossier was charged for lying to the FBI. The funds for it were tied back directly to the Clinton campaign. I don’t see any ambiguity here, at all.

I can’t conclude collusion didn’t occur simply because there’s no evidence for it? Do you hear yourself?

Let’s be real dude. You’re an anti-Trump neoliberal whose been gobbling up this media propaganda, you’ve made it part of your identity, and you will twist and say anything to defend it. Your ears and mind is closed. You’re repeating the same line as before this mountain of evidence came out that this whole story line was a hoax. If someone really doesn’t want to be convinced of something they won’t be, that’s what’s going on here. You’re not looking for the truth, you’re trying to defend your tribe.

It’s exactly this type of tribalism that the uniparty in DC uses as a diversion to rob our country blind and it needs to stop.