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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
We are fully confident in our reporting. It represents the core of what the First Amendment protects, informing the people of the inner workings of their government; in this case, briefing materials prepared for President Obama and President-elect Trump last week.
We made it clear that we were not publishing any of the details of the 35-page document because we have not corroborated the report's allegations. Given that members of the Trump transition team have so vocally criticized our reporting, we encourage them to identify, specifically, what they believe to be inaccurate.
edited 11th Jan '17 10:11:45 AM by tclittle
"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."I just finished reading the entire 35 page document at Buzzfeed. You can find it here
. The most serious allegations are found in the memo labelled "Report 2016/166" (page 34 of the Buzzfeed document), namely that Trump's close associate Michael Cohen met with members of the Russian govern't in Prague for the purpose of paying East European hackers to work against the Clinton campaign. Probably the second most serious allegation is that people close to Trump have been exchanging information with the FSB in Moscow going back 8 years. Trump's associates allegedly provided Russia with information on the financial dealings of certain Russian oligarchs in the US. Finally, there is the allegation that the Russians have (undisclosed) compromising material on Trump, including "perverted sexual acts" (the water sports incident was part of this, but not all of it).
It's not clear to me that any of this violates US law, but it's pretty serious. If true, it pretty clearly compromises Trump and his colleagues and makes it clear that he is not able to fulfill the responsibilities of being President. The paying of the money is the only thing that might be impeachable, but I'm not a lawyer.
I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.And: Does the party in control of Congress view the acts as more important than loyalty to their group identity?
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"McCain confirms the leaked document is the one he gave to the FBI
.
It is real in the sense that it is an official document, it has not been confirmed how much of the content is true. But the BBC is saying they have video of some of the things in the document, so the showers are probably true.
According to NBC
, the dossier came from opposition research during the campaigns from anti-Trump Republicans (such as McCain); not from intelligence agencies, hence the relatively numerous spelling errors and such pointed out therein.
The actual Intelligence report on Trump's connections to Russia hasn't been shown to the public, and the Trump team is most likely exploiting the confusion between the two to deflect from the genuinely damaging allegations that might contain.
edited 11th Jan '17 12:01:37 PM by CaptainCapsase
, ![]()
the democrats had it during the general election campaign, and the RNC had it during the primaries; it was shopped around to them, they didn't use it though, which leads me to believe they weren't able to back up the claims well enough to take the risk of it backfiring.
It appears to me to be yet another example of an outrageous story distracting people from very real and very seedy dealings by Trump and conthat are kept low key. If I had to guess it's the cabinet hearings; Tillerson likely has it in the bag, though honestly he's one of the least offensive picks.
edited 11th Jan '17 12:11:26 PM by CaptainCapsase
I'm trying to hedge my bets with this document. It's definitely seems more credible then "random internet rumor" but I'm definitely going to wait until we have some hard evidence (and if the BBC does indeed have the videos and releases them, that would likely qualify) backing it up before I'm going to start operating from the base assumption that it's accurate.
If it is though....
Well, the notion of "golden showers" being the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back and destroys a Presidency before it even officially starts is fundamentally ludicrous....which would continue the precedent established by real life over the past year or so. Even if this isn't what does it, given the overall implausibility of recent events I fully expect Trump's downfall to come at the hands of some completely random thing that isn't even close to his worse scandal and just happens to tick off the right people at the right time.
Trump's law firm just won the Russia Law Firm of the Year Award.
And apparently Trump said this during the press conference:
Here's an article with some more highlights from the conference,
including this:
(A recent Pew poll found that 60 percent of Americans would like Trump to make the documents public.)
Paraphrasing using someone else's words but apparently something like this happened today:
Rubio: "Putin assassinated 200+ members of the press, and has killed at least 30,000 civilians."
Tillerson: "These things happen."
There is much worse. This guys is an obvious Russian stooge.
"Well, obviously, it wasn't perfectly fine human sperm, otherwise we wouldn't have ended up with Trump.
Maybe it was Orangutang instead?"
Come on, this is exactly what some on the right do to Obama and Michelle, calling them apes and such. I think we can hold ourselves to a higher standard? Let's criticize what the guy actually says and does (of which there is PLENTY), and refrain from childish name-calling.
edited 11th Jan '17 1:15:25 PM by speedyboris

For comparison, here's Obama's first press conference. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxGPPK3e4bc
edited 11th Jan '17 9:13:45 AM by iflewaway
something