Here's a hugely important point about the NY case.

[Bleacher Creature]

Link to tweet

If Comey stupidly re-opening the investigation of HRC over a bunch of duplicate emails materially impacted the 2016 election, news of this story surely would have mattered.

[Biophilic]

1. Coney wasn't stupid. He knew what he was doing.

[Raven123]

2. Well, maybe half stupid

Like so many others, he assumed his job under DDT (Donald Dobbs Trump) was secure

[wnylib]

8. Comey was a fool who misread Trump and thought that

throwing the election to Trump would make Trump loyal to him, or would prove Comey's loyalty to the party and its candidate. Instead, he discovered that Trump demands loyalty without giving it.

[Grins]

14. It would have been secure under Hillary.

Really hard to dismiss Dir. of the FBI.

[Raven123]

15. And yet, TFG did so. No sympathy for Comey

He rarely is interviewed nowadays and if he appears, I tune out.

[CrispyQ]

4. I wanted to barf when I read his "he eats your soul" commentary.

Like that even came close to making up for his putting his thumb on the scale in favor of a truly vile, reprehensible, failure of a man over a decent, competent woman.

Fuck you James Comey, you piece of shit. Some of us will never forget your part in this nightmare.

[Escurumbele]

5. I agree, he was a tool and I have never thought he is sincere about anything he says.

Comey knew what he was doing, like the now gone Colin Powell who played "good soldier" to GW Bush and stained his legacy. The same with Comey, although I don't know how good he was at his job and if he was leaving a good legacy before that.

[unblock]

29. Indeed. Hey comey, here's a photocopy of old evidence in a closed case. Wanna take a look?

Maybe later, but first I gotta tell the whole world I'm reopening the case even though it's against all kinds of policies and common sense!

Oh, and ghooliani teased weeks and weeks prior that they had an October surprise cooking in SDNY.

Comey knew exactly what he was doing.

He just didn't know it would work.

[TwilightZone]

3. To voters not swayed by the Access Hollywood tape, this may not have mattered.

Possible, certainly, but people who ultimately voted for him had already disregarded voluminous evidence that Trump was unfit for office by then. Racism, sexism, misogyny, fraud, sexual assault allegations, etc.

[Escurumbele]

6. You are correct, which is close to 100% his demented base.

[progressoid]

7. Yeah, I agree.

In a warped way it may have even helped him. The same way these trials seem to boost his support within the deplorable voting bloc.

That doesn't dismiss the fact that the Trump people still saw it as a liability and tried to hide it.

[crud]

9. It can't be proven either way with certainty.

It also didn't seem likely at that time that Hillary would lose. I'm kind of 50/50 on the question of whether it would have made a difference.

[calimary]

12. I suspect their devotion to him stems from a weird kind of "Robin Hood thing".

Last edited Tue Apr 16, 2024, 12:25 PM - Edit history (1)

Many Americans LOVE a renegade. Seems to me many consider renegades as foundational to being an American. We were renegades when we overthrew the Brits to take control of what we declared was OUR country, INDEPENDENT of Britain or anybody else. Maybe that’s the string he pulls with folks like that.

I get that. It’s a theory founded on bullshit, but it works for trump fans. And with him as their “Golden Calf”, they may feel like he is them. So they stand with him as a surrogate for their own selves.

Hey, I’m just guessing here, trying to understand and second-guess the mentality of the trump supporter. They may see their own beleaguered selves in him, and if he prevails, it means they have, too. Once-removed, of course.

[yardwork]

32. Good analysis.

I think it explains the devotion (literal) of Trump by the white right wing evangelicals, too. The more he's shown to have sinned the more they love him.

In America, the more flawed the antihero, the more he's loved and admired.

[calimary]

33. Yep. Pretty much!

[IbogaProject]

10. Hypothetical, this is a Fraud case

He committed campaign finance fraud by concealing the payments which were "campaign expenses". Also regular accounting and tax fraud by claiming it as as legal expenses.

[ancianita]

11. Wait. That's a hugely important speculation based on your "IF." What prosecutors have to prove is different --

that Trump believed her outing him would hurt his election results and so he he took action and broke the law to suppress her leaking the truth.

[Ocelot II]

27. Right. They don't have to prove that Stormy's story *would have* changed the outcome,

only that Trump thought it could have. It's impossible to prove that any of these "October surprises," including the Access Hollywood tape (or, for that matter, even Comey's re-opening the Hillary emails case), definitely would have made a difference. We'll never know for sure. But it's very clear that Trump didn't want that information out there.

[angrychair]

13. I disagree with Ron here

If the Access Hollywood tape didn't change their mind I'd be hard pressed to believe that the pay-offs of a porn star and Playboy Bunny was going to tip the scales for them.

[moonscape]

16. Makes me sad to agree.

[et tu]

17. under righteous news coverage

it would have been over but rw pundits and
faux news made light of it and the brain washing
continues, sad to say~

[MorbidButterflyTat]

18. NO.

The point is, that gelatinous blob is solely responsible for this shitshow.

The point is, this is victim blaming.

Stormy Daniels was being threatened by his goons, while getting into her car with her child inside. I REMEMBER. Should she have risked her life and her child's life?

What about Karen McDougal? She had a 9 month (or two years, depending on source) affair with him. She got paid off, as well.

How about David Pecker? He facilitated the whole fucking thing, including the disgustingly sexist and defaming crap about Hillary gaining weight, being on death's door, etc. in that filthy gutter press tabloid rag.

What is it, that compels men to blame women for SHIT MEN DO??

[dmr]

28. Excellent post. Thank you.

There are many twists and turns to this case, and I'm glad you brought up the ones that no one talks about these days.

[Attilatheblond]

31. "What is it, that compels men to blame women for SHIT MEN DO??"

My first guess is a lot of them want revenge for the fact that their mothers had to impose basic rules of behavior when they were young. And, yes, it is sexist that the mothers are the parent generally charged with rules to socialize kids and teach them to be human instead of feral beasts.

Also seems, not enough moms impose rules and civility on their offspring, and often fail miserably at explaining WHY there have to be some rules. I have generally found that when one explains the need for certain constraints, most kids respond favorably. Kids are smart.

The word parent is both a noun and a verb. Too many parents don't engage in the verb part of the meaning.

[wiggs]

19. The HRC email news was a deliberate political response to the Hollywood tape. nt

[Skittles]

20. she is a disgusting grifter, just like him

[SupportSanity]

21. If Stormy had told two weeks before election, it might've offset Hillary email last minute

investigation that was then canceled.

[Martin68]

22. I didn't realize anyone didn't know that. But I do realize there are lot of low-information voters out there.

[moniss]

23. The NY/NJ FBI

was hardly "in the dark" about the Orange Ruski, The Enquirer etc. and all of this corruption and crooked behavior. It was an open secret around NYC about his ties to the Russian Mob etc. The family itself bragged about their Russian "friends" giving them tons of money for projects. But for certain people he is "their guy" along with Ghooliani and so it became "sit on what you know". On the other hand Hillary was detested by these same people and so "things just seem to come up".

[Kid Berwyn]

24. Charles McGonigal worked for Oleg Deripaska same time he worked as CI chief for NY FBI

Did the FBI’s Charles McGonigal Help Throw the 2016 Election to Trump?

The shocking indictments against the former head of counterintelligence for the FBI in New York raise many dark questions.

By Craig Unger
The National Review, February 1, 2023

In the course of writing two books on Donald Trump’s ties to Russia, the same question occurred to me again and again: How is it possible that I knew all sorts of stuff about Donald Trump, and the FBI didn’t seem to have a clue? Or if they did, why weren’t they doing anything with it?

Specifically, I knew that:

* Starting in 1980, an alleged “spotter agent” for the KGB began cultivating Trump as a new asset for Soviet intelligence.

* The Russian mafia laundered millions of dollars through Donald Trump’s real estate by purchasing condos in all-cash transactions through anonymous corporations that did not disclose real ownership.

* Trump Tower was a home away from home for Vyacheslav Ivankov, one of the most brutal leaders of the Russian mafia, and at least 13 people with known or alleged links to the mafia held the deeds to, lived in, or ran alleged criminal operations out of Trump Tower in New York or other Trump properties.

* Trump was some $4 billion in debt when the Russians came to bail him out via the Bayrock Group, a real estate firm that was largely staffed, owned, and financed by Soviet émigrés who had ties to Russian intelligence and/or organized crime.

Much of my material came from FBI documents. A lot came from open-source databases. It made no sense. There was an astounding amount of data on the public record. The FBI had launched enormous investigations of the Russian mafia in the 1980s. They had staked out a New York electronics store that was a haven for KGB officers. They knew that’s where the Trump Organization bought hundreds of TV sets. They had their eyes on Ivankov and other Russian mobsters who were denizens of Trump’s casinos and bought and sold his condos through shell companies. They had to know that Trump laundered money for and provided a base of operations for the Russian mafia, which was, after all, a de facto state actor tied to Russian intelligence. They had to know that the Russians repeatedly bailed Trump out when he was bankrupt. They had to know that Russia owned him.

Snip…

As FBI director, Freeh had warned that Russian organized crime posed a grave threat to the United States that far transcended mere criminality. It is not clear how much he was paid by Prevezon after he switched sides, but Freeh later bought a $9.38 million mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, just a 10-minute drive from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago.

Then there was the late James Kallstrom, who ran the FBI’s New York office in the mid-’90s and oversaw successful investigations into both the Italian Mafia and later the Russian mob. Kallstrom had developed close friendships with two key players in the Trump-Russia saga. He worked closely with then–U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Rudy Giuliani in the investigation of the Cosa Nostra network that led to the famed Mafia Commission Trial of 1985–1986. Going even further back, Kallstrom had also been friends with Donald Trump since around 1973, when Kallstrom was putting together a Trump-funded parade in New York to honor Vietnam veterans.

Continues…

https://newrepublic.com/article/170328/charles-mcgonigal-throw-2016-election

Unger has been on to the BFEE gangsters since they were in business with the bin Laden clan.

Almost seems odd how this story is nearly completely missing from Corporate McPravda.

[MorbidButterflyTat]

25. Apparently for some

it's easier to blame the woman.

[CincyDem]

26. If Stormy [known only as a porn star at the time] came out and said "I banged Trump"...

...who on God's green earth would have believed her. He and his cult would have bloviated bullchit, denigrated, disparaged and whatever else they do to discredit her story. And it would have been easy because...you know...look what she was wearing...she was probably asking for it...blah blah blah sexist bullchit.

Nope...if she came out and claimed it in 2016, it wouldn't have changed 1026 but without that 130k payment, we wouldn't be here today with a criminal trial in progress.

[thesquanderer]

30. But this is not an election interference trial. (Though the one in GA is.)

Last edited Thu Apr 18, 2024, 11:23 AM - Edit history (1)

There was nothing illegal in paying Stormy Daniels to stay quiet. My understanding is that the charge is that, in making these payments, he falsified business records. To the extent that falsifying the records resulted in campaign finance violation which in turn could be construed as a kind of election interference, one could make a connection, but election interference per se is not what he is being charged with or tried for in this case.