Like.. did you read the article? Gloating about how all of America's labor and corporate leaders came together to save democracy? Such a conspiracy that citizens from opposing camps were so concerned about Trumps unfounded election lies that they opposed them uniformly.
Not sure if you are sarcastic or not, but unifying labor and business interests has been the (successful) strategy of the Democratic Party for 30 years. Bill Clinton was the trailblazer of the strategy, and maligned for it from the more anti-business left.
> A large group of the country's richest and most powerful people colluded to change voting rules all across the country for the purpose of achieving a specific desired outcome in an election.
Like redrawing electoral districts, no one changes election laws because they are a good person. Everyone who redraws electoral districts and changes election laws claims it's because they are a good person.
Ah yes the ole regime change by way of getting more people to vote and making it easier to vote. Very sneaky tactic. Very undemocratic and nefarious. Very scary.
A regime change that operates by simply telling FB there's increased Russian propaganda? A boogyman that powerful I'm sure he's responsible for everything!
When the FBI gives you specific guidelines on what to be vary of, shortly before a news story that fits all their criteria drops, you listen. I doubt it was a taken as a friendly heads-up by Facebook, given the numerous accusations, threats of additional regulations, and congressional grillings in the years prior.
When the then-head of the FBI released a particular public statement in 2016, many believed it swayed the election. On the other hand, you might claim the FBI was simply telling the American public something.
I disagree with labeling either “regime change”, but the influence such an institution wields can’t be taken lightly. Claiming Facebook could simply have ignored the warnings without any consequences would be disingenous.
I think “shortly before” is a fair interpretation of the following quote:
> …'hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert. We thought there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election, we have it on notice that basically there's about to be some kind of dump that's similar to that'."
> He said the FBI did not warn Facebook about the Biden story in particular - only that Facebook thought it "fit that pattern".
The timing (“there’s about to be… [a] dump”) sounds like an important part of the identified pattern, or else it wouldn’t have been mentioned in the quote.
If that’s all it takes to effect a coup, it’s not a coup. That’s all they are doing is telling. A completely normal and legal part of their whole existence. Not my fault you’ve misunderstood how entities in society function and FB wants to continue to suck.
It would be a societal issue, not rogue actors. What you’ve described is completely unalarming to me (even in its exaggerated form). In fact I have no idea how if this is so alarming to you, you aren’t nonstop writing books about everything as bad and worse the justice department does.
I’m not sure if you’ve accidentally responded to the wrong comment, or completely misread mine. I’m not the original commenter, hence the note on disagreeing with them on “regime change” and the magnitude of FBI’s influence, while still thinking they’ve exercised some degree of that influence over the past two elections.
If you believe that e.g. James Comey’s 2016 October surprise is completely unalarming and “just how society functions”, I think you’ll find that many in society disagree with you.
Also, I’m sorry, but you completely lost me with your second paragraph. I don’t know what you’re referring to with rogue actors and me writing books.
> the US intelligence community executed a regime change operation against us all by knowingly spreading misinformation
This is how trump got elected in the first place, if not for Comey putting his finger on the scale HRC wins easily.
In this case the story about Hunter's laptop was complete bullshit, and it's good it didn't have a chance to affect the election the way the bullshit about HRC's emails did.
FBI has the laptop and only they can tell you. We know it contained real emails. There is enough evidence that I don't know what it would be besides real.
So the FBI has Hunter Biden's laptop and emails? And what? What is the crime exactly? I also have a laptop with emails on it. What is the proposed crime of Hunter Biden and if the FBI has evidence of a crime, why wasn't he charged?
Based on what has leaked to the public so far, I believe some combination of drug possession, prostitution, money laundering, corruption, and abuse of an elected office for personal profit.
> if the FBI has evidence of a crime, why wasn't he charged?
It takes time. It’s similar to people wondering why Matt Gaetz hasn’t been charged with sex trafficking yet, or Lauren Boebart with numerous violations of election rules.
And let’s not forget Trump and various others for Jan 6th, let alone what we’re seeing unfold now with these documents he took. Federal criminal investigations like this take a bit of time.
And no, this isn’t whataboutism. Anyone who breaks the law, particularly those who are “in charge” need to be held accountable. This includes Hunter Biden if he broke a law, but it also includes Trump and others.
Sure prosecute her too. She can sit next to Trump in a jail cell.
But the more likely answer is that after relentless grilling at the behest of Republican lawmakers under Trump and actual testimony there probably wasn’t anything there worth pursuing from a legal perspective so no charges were filed.
There's no reason to prosecute her, though. She complied with all relevant requests and was following the steps of Colin Powell, her predecessor, with respect to how she set her email server up. The main difference between her and Powell is she attempted to preserve relevant emails for the government, while Powell recommended deleting them all.
one man's "whataboutism" is another man's "rule of law". If the issue is that these laws are expansive, vague, and difficult to enforce then they should be eliminated, not selectively enforced.
The element of intent makes many laws difficult to enforce, and I think that’s a good thing. Taking away the element of intent just to make laws easier to enforce would encourage prosecutions of people for accidents or honest mistakes, which I don’t see as an improvement.
Sure. Lock them up along with everyone else. I don’t really care.
Here’s the growing list:
Hillary Clinton
Hunter Biden
Donald Trump
Matt Gaetz
Lindsey Graham
Kevin McCarthy
Lauren Boebart
Rudy Giuliani
Whatever number of Jan 6th co-conspirators (growing list)
Let’s enforce the law right? Or are you going to play games and try to argue only Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden should have the law applied?
> Sure, if you can articulate charges and bring evidence then prosecute away.
Agreed. I'm hopeful we can get Trump here (Jan 6th + these documents seems like enough to reasonable assume guilt though that as always needs to be determined via due process), start with the worst offenders. Enough is enough. Then we can build from there.
>Clinton’s staff received a subpoena for Benghazi-related emails March 4. An employee managing her server deleted 33,000 of Clinton’s emails three weeks later.
The Politifact article then goes on to say the FBI didn't believe they were deleted for the purposes of avoiding the subpoena, which may be true, but that doesn't make it less of a crime.
I'm going to give my personal opinion now. The crime Clinton committed is a paperwork technicality crime and I don't think it would have been a good idea for the country to charge her.
With the information we know so far about Trump keeping some docs that might have been government property, that also seems to be a paperwork technicality crime and if we don't find out something really insidious about it, I don't think it would be a good idea for the country to charge him.
> the FBI didn't believe they were deleted for the purposes of avoiding the subpoena, which may be true, but that doesn't make it less of a crime.
Sorry, what now? The subpoena was for related emails. They claim they deleted unrelated emails and the FBI agrees. It’s not a crime to delete emails unrelated to a subpoena, especially when the subpoena (according to your link) did not request those emails. And doubly so when the FBI agrees those deleted emails were unrelated. So where do you see a crime in this?
You've been storing a bunch of documents for years. A court subpoenas information from you. You go on a massive file shredding campaign to destroy the documents you'd been happily storing for years. You pinky promise the court that the documents you destroyed were not subject to the subpoena. Do you believe this defense would work for you?
First, why do you believe the FBI was going only on a pinky promise? They are not famous for being friends of Hillary Clinton, and in fact disclosed (against precedent and protocol) an investigation into her while keeping secret a parallel investigation into Trump. They wouldn't take her word for anything.
Second, the documents were happily stored because they were not under the purview of her political opponents. If Republicans on the Benghazi Committee wanted those documents they could have subpoenaed those documents. But they didn't. So why are we supposed to be upset that she deleted documents that weren't under the scope of the subpoena?
Third, I notice you failed to articulate any crime, so again I ask: what was the crime? If Republicans didn't ask for unrelated into, and FBI couldn't find she deleted related info, then what unique insight do you have that she was attempting to evade a subpoena, aside from a vague hypothetical?
I agree with this take. The more important issue is that there is no independent oversight on government secrecy, which is the underlying enabler of all of these "paperwork" claims.
Can you describe what mechanism would exist for “independent” oversight of government secrecy? It’s hard to imagine, say, the US military being audited by an independent authority that is able to look at classified documents like battle plans, or new weapons technologies.
> these "paperwork" claims.
In other words “I won’t accept anything that contradicts my pre-established belief”. It’s very similar to discussions I have with fervent religious believers. Better to take an engineers approach and change your mind when the facts change.
> It’s hard to imagine, say, the US military being audited by an independent authority that is able to look at classified documents like battle plans, or new weapons technologies.
It's easy to imagine if you restore the Constitutional authority of civilian management of the military (and all other aspects of government). A reasonably responsible US voter should have nothing hidden from them, even military secrets.
>In other words “I won’t accept anything that contradicts my pre-established belief”.
I'm sorry, how many secret military documents have you personally seen?
> I'm sorry, how many secret military documents have you personally seen?
Quite a few. I was on active duty in the US Army and deployed to Iraq where we planned and conducted air assault and VIP transport missions. I also had TS-SCI clearance.
> It's easy to imagine if you restore the Constitutional authority of civilian management of the military (and all other aspects of government). A reasonably responsible US voter should have nothing hidden from them, even military secrets.
Yea sure. Totally. Nuclear secrets, CIA operative locations, all plans and contingencies and movement of assets across the globe. Hell maybe I can take a UH-60 for a spin. My tax dollars paid for it!
It's not interesting. You know exactly why it would be absurd for everyday Americans to be able to have access to things like nuclear weapon launch codes or schematics, or be able to post the location of CIA operatives on Tik Tok, or know the exact locations and deployment schedule for military forces, or where the president would be at any given hour, or... any number of things. If you take your line of reasoning/questioning here to its conclusion you'd also wonder why can't an American walk on to an airfield and fly a Blackhawk away? What's so absurd about people using the things their tax dollars pay for? To deny that scenario is to admit that the government has the ability to keep things away from citizens, and you can clearly see how this extends to military or national security secrets as well.
Framing this as "what's so wrong with the lil ole' people knowing a few things the government is hiding" is disingenuous at best. And if you wanted to make a concrete argument about "no secrets" you would make an attempt to do so abstracted away from the current geopolitical reality of the world because it's extremely obvious why this not only wouldn't ever occur but also shouldn't occur in the reality that we experience today. Idealism is only useful to the extent that it is also pragmatic. A better principle here would be something like maximizing the amount of information that American citizens have access to (why limit it to Americans and America though? Why can't I have access to all Chinese documents?) excluding national defense capabilities or some realistic parameter/line.
The first words of the Constitution are “we the people” which identifies that sovereign power from which the government derives its power and legitimacy.
I do not wish to abolish secrets - merely to make it clear that US citizens are the rulers of the country and therefore nothing should be kept from them. I can imagine many ways that could be done without the kinds of dire consequences you extrapolate.
It sounds to me like you’re just speaking in generalities. I can just say “we the people” decided that this information should not be given to citizens except on a need-to-know basis as described by the institutions that we created.
Do you think that “we the people” created and are overseeing those institutions effectively? I do not. One aspect of that lack centers around excess secrecy, the borders of which seem unpatroled.
Maybe, maybe not? It's just a matter of opinion. For example, I'd say our institutions aren't being overseen effectively when they let criminals who try to overturn lawful election results go unpunished. I would say our institutions are effectively overseen with regards to classified information, partially due to personal experience, partially due to the FBI, DOJ, and National Archives who are investigating a breach of how those classified materials are handled. I'd say our election related institutions are not being overseen effectively. Governors and state legislatures in certain states are ignoring constitutionally mandated maps (like in Ohio) or are finding ways to make voting difficult.
When you go down this path, you're just stating your opinion about how things should be and trying to anchor that to an interpretation you have of what "we the people" means. That's ok, but the problem you run into is that it's wildly open to interpretation. For every "we the people' argument you make, someone can put forth any number of contradictory but equally correct arguments.
Why wasn't he charged? The FBI has a history of not prosecuting crimes if they think they are going to lose. 40 years ago it was a brag: "We've got a 100% success rate on convictions." James Comey would later call them chickenshit for not prosecuting actual criminals if they thought they would lose. In their mind, it is better to let criminals go free than to break their 100% conviction record.
Or how some people found a backup of his phone and got videos of Hunter?
You probably never saw those because most of those are suppressed, too, but it's out there. Hunter misreads the scale with the 20g or so of white powder on it.
>People familiar with the investigation said prosecutors had examined emails between Mr. Biden, Mr. Archer and others about Burisma and other foreign business activity. Those emails were obtained by The New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop. The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation.
Did you see the word 'appears' there? What does authenticated means in this context? It may well mean 'the emails the times got are those emails' rather than 'the emails were truly between those parties,etc'
