Welcome to DU! The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards. Join the community: Create a free account Support DU (and get rid of ads!): Become a Star Member All Forums Issue Forums Culture Forums Alliance Forums Region Forums Support Forums Help & Search
 

mr_lebowski

(33,643 posts)
Mon Jul 16, 2018, 02:15 PM Jul 2018

Thought experiment I'm posting on FB to a RW group I'm in: Imagine it was ClintonRussia instead!

Last edited Mon Jul 16, 2018, 03:58 PM - Edit history (1)

I have a little thought experiment for you ... Imagine Clinton had won the election. Imagine she is a rich real-estate investor and owns a 'Clinton Tower'. Imagine the RNC and Steve Bannon's emails and documents were hacked by Russian Military, and damaging information spread across the internet about Trump, in the months before the election, in order to help Clinton (whom we KNOW was the favored candidate of Putin).

Imagine she won the Electoral Vote, but lost the Popular vote to Trump by 3,000,000, but that she is now also facing an investigation into charges that her campaign officials, and possibly she herself, conspired to spread round the aforementioned stolen Trump documents and communications. Let's also imagine the investigation is being led by HIGHLY respected former 12-year FBI Director (and member of the Democratic Party, so she has no partisan excuse for rejecting his findings).

The experiment is this ... let's take a look at what is actually publicly known about the possible Clinton/Russia conspiracy, and consider just HOW MANY of us, if the shoe were on the other foot ... would honestly proclaim 'there's no evidence!'.

So, on to the known facts:

We know that Russia orchestrated a massive theft of information from the Republican Party and the Trump campaign, and used that information to help Hillary Clinton win the election.

We know that Clinton publicly asked Russia to do exactly what it did — to hack Trump’s emails — and we know that Clinton repeatedly praised Vladimir Putin, at considerable political cost, in the aftermath. We know that a prominent Clinton associate, Terry McAulliff, appeared to have advance warning of the release of the hacked emails.

We know that the willingness to cooperate with the Russians wasn’t an idiosyncratic musing of Clinton’s, but suffused the top ranks of her campaign: Clinton’s inner circle — including Podesta, Terry McAulliff, and Chelsea Clinton. — eagerly took a meeting with Russian operatives promising dirt on Trump. And we know Clinton herself dictated the statement lying about the purpose of the Clinton Tower meeting.

We know, from Clinton’s own testimony, that she fired the director of the FBI to end his investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 election. We know that Clinton has wanted to fire both her attorney general and her deputy attorney general because she feels they’ve failed to protect her from the investigation. Tellingly, the Clinton administration has moved from arguing that the president did not obstruct justice to arguing that by definition, the president cannot obstruct justice.

We know in that in 2008, Chelsea Clinton said of the Clinton organization, “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets.” We know that in 2014, Chelsea Clinton added, “We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.” We know that from 2003 to 2017, “buyers connected to Russia or former Soviet republics made 86 all-cash sales — totaling nearly $109 million — at 10 Clinton-branded properties in South Florida and New York City.”

We know that due to her past bankruptcies and general financial profligacy, there was only one bank willing to make loans to Hillary Clinton in recent years: Deutsche Bank. We know Deutsche made a number of very sizable (9 figure) loans to her during her time in the financial wilderness. And we also know that this bank has been fined a SIZABLE amount of money by regulators ...
We know that Deutsche was fined many, many millions of $$$ that they were found to have been laundering money ... And this was the behalf of wait for it ... yup, RUSSIANS.

We know that the time period of Deutsche Bank's offences coincides almost perfectly with when they were also handing Clinton money like it grew on trees, the only bank that would TOUCH her at the time.

We know that the recently (and quite suddenly) retired Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's SON ... WORKED at Deutsche, and took part in getting at least one of Clinton's large loans approved.

We know that John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign manager (and now-jailed for serious financial crimes, including offering a position in Clinton's administration to a banker, in exchange for a $6M loan), had ties to the Kremlin and was deeply in debt to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch closely connected to Putin. We know Podesta was in communication with Deripaska’s team during the election, and that he asked, of his powerful position in Clinton’s campaign, “How do we use [it] to get whole?”

We know that Russia’s efforts to help Clinton went far beyond hacked emails — they included social media campaigns to inflame racial divisions on her behalf, armies of bots meant to elevate news stories helping her and hurting Trump, and even efforts to compromise state voting machines.

We know that the Clinton campaign interfered in the Democratic National Committee’s drafting of its platform to soften the language on Russia and Ukraine. We know that Chelsea Clinton's husband sought a secret communications channel with Russians so the US government couldn’t hear their negotiations. We know that Clinton has personally fought both her administration and her party to stop sanctions punishing Russia for electoral interference.

We know that Clinton's pick for National Security Advisor Terry McAulliff, has pled guilty to charges he lied to the FBI about his communications with Russia during the campaign, in exchange for his cooperation/testimony. A highly-placed DNC official (and long-time Clinton crony) has also pled guilty to similar charges. Also pleading out to Russia-related lying to the FBI was her campaign's top Foreign Relations advisor, Huma Abedin. Interestingly, Ms. Abedin, in April 2016, while drunk in the UK, blabbed to an Australian Intelligence officer that 'Russia Has Dirt On Donald Trump', which is what is believed to have prompted the start of a formal investigation into a possible Clinton conspiracy with Russia to influence the election.

That said, it's also possible that information about suspicious financial transactions between known-Russian entities and the Clinton campaign, reported by the Intel Services of an unknown Baltic State ally, was involved in the decision to start investigating.

We also know that Clinton Admin official Chelsea Clinton's Husband had to revise her Security Clearance forms over 10 times, in large part in order to include more and more of her contacts with Russia-related persons in the past months and years that she'd conveniently 'forgotten'.

We know that there is no single issue that has bedeviled the Clinton administration as long or as much as Clinton’s connections to Russia. We know that since the election, Clinton has bucked both her party and decades of American foreign policy to try to protect Russia from sanctions, pull American support back from both NATO and the European Union, and forge a closer personal relationship with Putin. We know Clinton insisted on the Helsinki meeting with Putin over the objections of her staff and despite the absence of any clear agenda.

There are also many more possible elements to this story but that remain murky at this time, which include, but are not limited to: Suspicious communications between a Server in Trump Tower and the shady Russian outfit Alfa Bank

Shout out to the original article that most of this compilation of facts came from:
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/7/16/17573692/trump-putin-meeting-helsinki-mueller-russia

What do you guys think?

2 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight: NoneDon't highlight anything 5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
Thought experiment I'm posting on FB to a RW group I'm in: Imagine it was ClintonRussia instead! (Original Post) mr_lebowski Jul 2018 OP
If this were anyone but Trump Runningdawg Jul 2018 #1
Tomorrow aka-chmeee Jul 2018 #2

aka-chmeee

(1,129 posts)
2. Tomorrow
Mon Jul 16, 2018, 03:09 PM
Jul 2018

Everything in this post from "So, on to the known facts" to "Shout out, etc." will be gospel to 40% of American voters.

Latest Discussions»General Discussion»Thought experiment I'm po...