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Reality Winner Sentenced To More Than 5 Years For Leaking Info About Russia Hacking Attempts (nbcnews.com)
A former government contractor who pleaded guilty to leaking U.S. secrets about Russia's attempts to hack the 2016 presidential election was sentenced Thursday to five years and three months in prison. From a report: It was the sentence that prosecutors had recommended in the plea deal -- the longest sentence ever given for a federal crime involving leaks to the news media -- for Reality Winner, the Georgia woman at the center of the case. Winner was also sentenced to three years of supervised release and no fine, except for a $100 special assessment fee. The crime carried a maximum penalty of 10 years. U.S. District Court Judge J. Randal Hall in Augusta, Georgia, was not bound to follow the plea deal, but elected to give Winner the amount of time prosecutors requested. Winner, 26, who contracted for the National Security Agency, pleaded guilty in June to copying a classified report that detailed the Russian government's efforts to penetrate a Florida-based voting software supplier. Further reading: How a Few Yellow Dots Burned the Intercept's NSA Leaker.
Is that her name?
(Beside which, the NSA has really bad security.)
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
1....
I kind of suspect I accidentally died and went to purgatory or hell as the names of people are kind of silly here -- "Reality Winner", "Clinton HaHa Dix", etc -- also having Trump as president is a good touch I guess - I must say, you all suck!
I wonder when reality finally hit Reality. To me it was implied that she would Win.
Hopefully, she'll be out in 3 years... A true national heroine, alerting the media of foreign meddling in US elections.
Here's also hoping for a pardon for her from the "Orange Orangutan's" successor.
Also, let me say that the US "justice" system, which railroads people into a plea bargain to avoid an excessive prison sentence, fucking stinks. Hope the next recession will be harsh, painful, and lead to various jurisdictions in the US becoming bankrupt enough to make sentencing reform a necessity, not an option.
Here's hoping -- she's a national treasure and deserves a good, cushy job after being railroaded for doing her civic duty and reporting election fraud to the media.
I'm going to try to be the first in line for a conjugal visit -- just once though as I don't want to get back in line!
No, she deserves prison for violating her oath to the NSA.
owned
They go on and on about how Russia did it. This brave, heroic young woman gave us the goods about real potential election tampering. But the zombie-like #resist movement doesn't care. They never speak of her. They never support her. Why? Because they worship Donald Trump's intelligence agencies.
Wow, that's a horrible name.
Reality Winner
Really?
Looks like she just won some FPMITAP time.
It's a damn shame every time a hot girl gets sent to prison.
She needed the Maximum possible sentence.
That's like someone saying that someone deserves death for violating their oath to the Mafia. There are more important things than an oath to a criminal organisation.
Brilliant sarcasm!
It will mark the end of our enlightenment when knowledge is once again coveted-- a new dark age will fall upon man.
I hear they have the same problem.
FIFY
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
Here's hoping -- she's a national treasure and deserves a good, cushy job after being railroaded for doing her civic duty and reporting election fraud to the media.
No, you don't get to misuse classified information just to score political points.
(Well, unless you are already a major Democrat politician.)
Jail her. Jail her now.
So you can't just send classified stuff to the media without consequence. Amazing.
That information should have already been public.
There are legal contracts and illegal contracts. The contract she agreed to was a legal one, enforceable by legal means. A contract with the Mafia isn't not a legal contract, nor is it enforceable by legal means. But you knew this.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
WHAT election fraud? None has been shown, and President Obama stated such, emphatically, well after the election. Seriously, the ONLY fraud going on here is the belief there is a Trump/Russia connection. NOTHING has been shown. There's been a few convictions and plea bargains related to tax issues from years ago - and nothing from the Trump campaign. Nothing.
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She ought to change her name to something less gimmicky than "Reality Winner". Maybe something like "Womp Womp" to reflect her new life status now.
...yet
She didn't report election fraud, or expose any wrongdoing. She's not a whistle-blower, heroic, or someone to be praised.
She exposed intelligence secrets on our tracking of Russian election interference, giving them warning and information they didn't have.
She's a traitor, and so is anyone who supports her.
And don't forget Kim Kardashian
I'm still pissed at The Intercept. Their incompetence in handling the original documents is what blew their source. No one is going to leak to them now if they just turn around and give all the incriminating evidence to the government. They really should have known better.
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Agreed, there has been a lot of talk, but fuck all actual evidence. Fake news apparently only applies when it does not suit main stream media.
There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.
#57180660 was an ethical opinion.
Legality and morality are loosely correlated at best.
Isnâ(TM)t not? Did you mean to say not not, you dumb fuck?
during Trump's second term.
Prison term?
No, while the NSA can be frustrating there are legitimate reason why a lot of information like that is classified and should not be leaked. Most notable is that once it was leaked that the NSA knew of the spear phishing attacks then Russia will change their tactics. But if the NSA knows about the attacks then they can counter them, monitor it to make sure nobody falls for it, and/or even use it as a channel to "leak" misinformation to the "enemy".
Espionage at the international level is far more complex and thought out then many of us assume. What I don't get is why they keep using contractors. You'd think after Snowden they would bring in and train servicemen/women instead of contractors.
....and tip off the hackers that you are on to them? You don't know much about espionage do you.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Here's hoping -- she's a national treasure and deserves a good, cushy job after being railroaded for doing her civic duty and reporting election fraud to the media.
No, you don't get to misuse classified information just to score political points.
(Well, unless you are already a major Democrat politician.)
I'm ambivalent about this.
On the one hand, leaking classified info should be punished. I agree, and that part is fine.
Also, her intent wasn't "civic duty", it was apparently hatred of the president.
On the other hand, James Comey did *exactly* the same thing as Reality Winner, for *exactly* the same reasons, and hasn't been charged and got a book deal out of it. (Comey admitted to doing the leaking under oath. No need to cite here, it was in all the news and google is your friend.)
It's one of those "don't agree, but defend your right to do it" things. The law is nothing if it's based on social class. Either Comey should be charged, or Reality Winner should go free.
I don't think it's likely, but President Trump *should* pardon Reality Winner. Whistleblowers serve an important check on the workings of government, and should be encouraged within reason.
Prosecutors don’t work by telegraphing their case on Twitter to tweak the news cycle and indulge in their narcissism.
They work strategically. They grind people down into positions where crying “uncle”, confessing and trading info on bigger fish is the easy way out. I’m not saying it’s pretty, I’m just pointing out how things work.
Remember that they are professionals. Your guy is a spoiled trust fund brat surrounded by hacks and grifters.
But you go keep crying “the sky isn’t falling!”
Or unless you're the CIA or the NSA. The Reality Winner case smacks of a setup. Let's hire a suitable disposable person to 'find' a secret document we'd like to leak.
That doesn't change the fact that she requires whistleblower protection.
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I haven't been following this story. What exactly did she leak and why was it classified? Did the leak reveal NSA methods and capabilities? Aside from this, what harm would revealing Russian espionage efforts to the public? It makes them look like the shit that they are and gives people and organizations a heads-up about possible threats.
Have gnu, will travel.
a major Democrat politician (citation needed).
The qualifier definitley seems unescessary and only heightens partisanship which is a big problem in American politics.
I definitely remember Dick Cheyney kicking the Valerie Plame affair off which was definitely misuse of classified information by a major republican politician.
Lets not leak things which compromise agents or troops in the field.
But misconduct? Responsible, sensibly redacted, leaked information has told us a lot about our government and continues to do so. Without it I feel certain our government would have continued down a dark path of war crimes and torture.
Read what I wrote, and not what you wish I wrote. There is nothing pointing to any Russia/Trump collusion now, is there? Nothing. Are you going to always jump to guilty unless proven innocent, or accept the facts as they are today - nothing there at all.
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No, while the NSA can be frustrating there are legitimate reason why a lot of information like that is classified and should not be leaked. Most notable is that once it was leaked that the NSA knew of the spear phishing attacks then Russia will change their tactics. But if the NSA knows about the attacks then they can counter them, monitor it to make sure nobody falls for it, and/or even use it as a channel to "leak" misinformation to the "enemy".
^^ This. Also, she obviously hated Trump, how did this hurt him? I just don't get her motivation.
Espionage at the international level is far more complex and thought out then many of us assume. What I don't get is why they keep using contractors. You'd think after Snowden they would bring in and train servicemen/women instead of contractors.
Agreed, but perhaps holding onto these trained people cost more money than they can give due to rank pay constraints.
Sorry for the AC, I'm at work
She clearly took her name far too seriously, Nominative Determinism is not a get out of jail card.
What Is Nominative Determinism you ask?
Have I Got News For You : https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
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You'd think after Snowden they would bring in and train servicemen/women instead of contractors.
The military expects you will not stay long at any particular post. You get your assignment, complete it, and move on to another assignment. The military does this because their main goal is fighting wars, not intelligence gathering. The various billets just round-out your knowledge but you're primarily there to shoot people.
For something like the NSA, this is pretty bad. Because it takes quite a while to build up the expertise they need, and the servicemen/women rotate out too quickly. So they use contractors because they can stay in the same position for many years.
You could argue that they should use civilian government employees, since they too can stay in the same position for many years. But that runs into a big problem: pay. There's a formal pay scale for government employees, and it caps out very far below what an NSA contractor can make in the private sector (even if they were not working as a government contractor).
Raising the pay scale means raising it across the entire government, so that's not a good option. There is a way to have exceptions to the standard pay scale, but they're not easy to push through and having something the size of the NSA operating almost entirely on exceptions is not workable. So now we're down to requiring Congress and/or OMB creating a separate pay scale for computer professions that is significantly higher than the normal one for computer professionals. Which, aside from the massive bureaucratic hurdles in doing that, would result in a lot of non-computer-professional government employees trying to switch their classification to this pay scale so they can get paid more.
Or they just use contractors.
As for whether or not that would prevent leaks, service men and women also leak. You mentioned Snowden, but there's also Manning.
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This is what Trump supporters actually believe.
You do know why Manafort was working for, right? It's not really a stretch to suggest that the man running Trump's campaign, who has been quite extensively been proven to be working for agents of Russia in a court of law, might have been acting as an agent of Russian influence.
Funneling millions of dollars for Russian security services to peddle influence in Ukraine is technically not illegal.. But failing to report it on your taxes is!
That said, Manafort is a very bad person, was a very bad person before getting involved with Trump, and watching him go to jail forever would be justice served.
I thought it was about a reality tv show at first. It took me a while to figure out her name was "Reality Winner"
So, because Manafort was a tax cheat for actions he took years ago, we must impeach President Trump?
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Or Trump, oh and do you remember that VP who dropped the name of Valerie P? Ah must be a trumpanzee with selective memory.
Good, make them switch tactics so often they are always tied up in logistics.
You think monitoring harmful activity is more important than stopping it? Ok, look down the barrell of a gun when you pull the trigger, it's more important to see than stop according to you.
Read what I wrote, and not what you wish I wrote. There is nothing pointing to any Russia/Trump collusion now, is there? Nothing. Are you going to always jump to guilty unless proven innocent, or accept the facts as they are today - nothing there at all.
Well, we are about to find out just how much nothing there is. Cohen is singing like an opera star. There is nothing like a multi-year prison sentence to wake people to the reality of their situation.
And if nothing comes out? Willing to agree there's really nothing there?
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I don't know this. There are plenty of legal contracts one might have to the mafia, and they are quite happy to prosecute inside the law as well as outside of it. Some of them have grown a lot from the street gangster days, some are even government officials. The question is when your moral obligations exceed your legal obligations, and it's really not clear in this case. Oaths as extreme as the poster implies are inherently flawed and no one at all should be expected to adhere, and anyone who says they will should never be trusted.
Although this information should be fed to the public, there are some questions I wonder if she considered. First, is the information accurate or deliberate misinformation designed to destabilize (particularly after a bizarre, unexpectedly close, surprise result with significant political fallout). Second, was the information obtained in such a way that it might harm or compromise an operative who is in a precarious situation should anyone find out he is leaking sensitive information. Finally, will releasing this information hinder efforts as part of a larger investigation that she may not be aware of.
She is too low level to have definitive answers to any of these questions, so the question is why did she not trust her chain of command to do the right thing? I think she might have done better work for America if she could demonstrate that her chain of command was compromised, or untrustworthy. If she doesn't actually think any of these things are true, she should actually go to prison, because what she did was in that case, unacceptable.
It's sad since this was all pointless. Anyone with half a brain already knew this, it had even been semi official at that point.
And since then it's become official.
There was ZERO need for her particular leak. She thought it would be earth shattering, next snowden, and all it was was a meh.
She destroyed her career over nothing.
The 3rd and 4th option.
Strawman and false dichotomy.
Richard Armitage was a Republican.
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And? The collusion you so wish to exist? Anything there? We have extensive Russian collusion with others - including all those in the FBI and the DOJ... What about that?
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Well it should be pretty easy to verify - we'll just look at the logs from the election down in Georgia and..huh
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She was never hired by the NSA. She got her security clearance via the Air Force (as a translator.) She leaked NSA documents because everything is contracted out. In this case, her employer when she got the documents was Pluribus International Corporation.
Also, if she was named that by her parents, you shouldn't blame her. Like 20% of people hate their names, but consider it too hard to change.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
you get civic jobs for selling out. And she didn't score any political points. Nobody who was ever going to vote Trump cared or ever will care about Russian meddling. Donald Trump's performance at Helsinki didn't budge his poll numbers. His tax cut, 83% of which went to 1% of Americans didn't budge his polls. Keeping us in Afghanistan when he promised to leave didn't budge his polls. Supporting DACA (of all things) didn't budge his polls). He praised Chinese President Xi for making himself El Presidente for life and still no drop in the polls. Heck, he said we should take people guns away at one point and nothing, no drop in polls. Can you imagine if Obama had done _any_ of that?
His supporters just plain don't care. There's been several interviews with them were they're presented with two quotes from him that contradict and they'll tell you both quotes are true. He has a cult of personality. If he was a bit more on the ball and a bit more violent we'd be on the way to fascism.
Sorry, I know it's not popular to call out one political party in such exacting terms. We're supposed to say "both sides are bad". But at a certain point it's time to acknowledge that one side is worse. At least the Dems have a wing of their party ("Justice Democrats") who refuse corporate & PAC money... Jeez.
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Ah yes, servicemen/women, like Bradley/Chelsea Manning. How'd that work out for data security?
If Trump were smart, he'd pardon her, possibly at the same time as he does Manafort. Would help his PR a lot. She's harmless and not particularly bright. The PR would help cover the shitstorm of Trump pardoning Manafort.
Confirmed by topped secret sauce at the pentagon.
And boys don't even think about it... She'll crush you.
Democrat legal strategy is an extended Chewbacca Defence.
Challenging a compromised election is more important than arresting the hackers. Sometimes, the public should know -- best to fix the damage instead of exacting revenge. Revenge can be withheld until later.
U.S. imprisons Reality for revealing unwanted facts.
Maybe her "chain of command" were simply good order-followers and unwilling to rock the boat, even if it was in the public interest. Money and tenure corrupt.
Except by trumps own words, he broke campaign finance law. But hey we can just ignore that law. And then their is that guiliani. What a nut job. I think he is there only to make trump look saner. And we still have not seen Trumps tax returns. Bets on any fraud there? Or is tax fraud OK for Trump supporters?
you are apparently not acquainted with NSA operations or military intelligence. Not surprising, really. People love to sound off on all sorts of things they know nothing about.
The service men/women who work for the NSA are not there primarily to shoot people. True, that is the basic purpose of the military, but apparently you would be surprised to find out what it is really like in a military intelligence unit.
While there is a desire on the part of the *army* to move people from post to post there are definitely ways around it and those are definitely leveraged by military intelligence units where you can spend twenty years at the same post. This is kind of like how there are rules about how long a service member can be TDY, but all that really matters is the paperwork that is filed. Some service members are (by preference) on what amounts to permanent TDY. Compared to that, staying at the some post is child's play.
The problem is that service members are paid a lot less, and treated worse, than contractors. There is a lot of incentive to ETS and return to what amounts to the same job but with better pay and hours.
As in the case of Reality Winner, contractors are frequently ex-service members. Same people, but different pay/benefits.
Wasn't this the argument of the "anyone but Hillary" vote?
So, because Manafort was a tax cheat for actions he took years ago, we must impeach President Trump?
The mental gymnastics of the Trumpee are truly astounding. I feel sorry for your former friends and immediate family.
But for the curious, Manafort has been very busy doing very bad things for very bad people. (Just google for his misadventures in Ukraine as a 'consultant' for Russian security services)
It's not that Manafort is a Tax cheat - It's about the source of the money and who he was involved with. This case proves he got money from Russia, and that he lied about it to cover it up.. And this man happened to run Trump's campaign.
Why that's bad for Trump should be obvious. You need a lot of good reasons to impeach a sitting president.. And this is just one of a rather quickly growing list.
A/C here. Absolutely. If the special counsel completes its investigation and reports there was nothing worth looking at in regards to Trump/Russia collusion, despite my strong distaste for the man and his politics, I will readily accept and acknowledge his absolution in this matter.
I would prefer to find out he had not colluded with Russia, every day of the week I would. I would love to believe that our nation's elections are secure, their integrity intact, and that this was simply politics as usual. I would eat that on my avocado toast every morning, gladly.
And if nothing comes out? Willing to agree there's really nothing there?
I'm not a big partisan political fanatic, but it seems to me that the evidence that has already come to light, accompanied by the lies that have already been told, would be more than sufficient to send any Democrat to the gallows.
So I'd have to answer your question with "No." If Congress did their job, what's out there now would already be enough to impeach Trump and the horse he rode in on.
Because he is a White president that stands up to minorities.
That is all they care about. Their hate for the other blinds them and the reality TV conman feeds it at every chance.
People used to boast in the US that Hitler would never have been allowed to come to power here and all the atrocities he committed would have been stopped.
Not saying Trump is Hitler, but he uses the same kind of rhetoric, propaganda and techniques to control his followers.
Comey released "sensitive and perhaps privileged" information, but in fact IT WAS NOT CLASSIFIED. You're a lying faggot Okie, sorry! Your bullshit doesn't matter and frankly you should hang next to the Drumpf traitors also.
I hope your mother raised her other sons as males, you're obviously an ass-slinging hoebag with no concept or regard for the truth, lol. Who knew Oklahomo had so many feckless traitor cunts in it? Pray to God for a 'nado.
WHAT election fraud? None has been shown, and President Obama stated such, emphatically, well after the election.
He said no voter fraud. That isn't the same as election tampering.
Seriously, the ONLY fraud going on here is the belief there is a Trump/Russia connection. NOTHING has been shown. There's been a few convictions and plea bargains related to tax issues from years ago - and nothing from the Trump campaign. Nothing.
You're right. There's absolutely no evidence out there that Trump colluded with the Russians except the Manafort thing, and the Flynn thing, and the Papadopoulos pleading guilty thing, and the Roger Stone thing, and the Cohen thing, and the Kushner thing, and the Carter Page thing, and the Jeff Sessions things, and the Wilbur Ross thing, and the JD Gordon thing, and the Erik Prince thing, and the James Comey firing thing, and the Russian hacking/Wikileaks thing, and the bro-love between TrumPutin thing, and the Russian propaganda machine favoring Trump thing, and the DJT "I have zero ties to Russia!" thing, and the Eric Trump "we get most of our financing from Russian banks thing", and the Donald Trump Jr. "Our portfolio is made up of a disproportionate amount of Russian money" thing, and the DJT "I sold a $60 million mansion to a Russian oligarch known for money laundering for $120 million that he never once lived in " thing, and the Trump business ties with Putin's favorite sports athlete Fedor Emilianenko thing, and the Trump International Corporation's mysterious private server connection to Alfa Bank, Russia's largest commercial bank thing, and Russians guaranteeing sales of Trump properties so he can get backing thing, and sales of Trump properties to LLCs (who can hide their identity) going from 4% to 70% in the two years leading up to the election thing, and the Special prosecutor being named thing, and the I won't release my tax returns thing, and the Ivanka Trump's vacationing with Putin's girlfriend thing, and the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow thing, and the Trump companies business ties to Felix Sater, a criminal felon indicted for stock fraud scheme with the Russian mafia thing, and the FL Group Icelandic hedge fund with massive ties to Putin being heavily invested in Trump Soho thing, and the Rex Tillerson/Exxon ties to Russia thing, and the Russian ambassador at Trump Tower sneaking in and out thing, and part of the dossier being corroborated thing, the Trump tried to roll back Russian sanctions the minute he got elected thing. And the Cambridge Analytica thing. And the Trump advocating for Russia to be allowed into the G7 again thing, And Trump mentioning Russia hacking the DNCs emails the same day they did thing. And the Russians funneling money through the NRA thing, and Trump’s private meeting and subsequent fealty display thing, and the Trump being afraid to be interviewed by Mueller under oath thing, and the stripping people who might testify against Trump and people in his administration of their security clearance thing... Other than that, there's absolutely no reason to suspect anything. [Shamelessly stolen from teh intarwebz.]
Nope, no sig
There are plenty of legal contracts one might have to the mafia, and they are quite happy to prosecute inside the law as well as outside of it.
Do you have a point?
If you hold a legal contract with a member of the mafia, then you are beholden to that contract regardless of whether they are member of the mafia or your sweet grandmother. If they prosecute it outside the law, that's illegal. We all agree. What's that got to do with this case, which is a legal contract prosecuted inside the law?
Are you suggesting that it's okay to break a contract with someone you may think has committed an illegal act? Well, it's not. If you have doubts, go back and read TFA.
What I don't get is why they keep using contractors.
Because people don't like paying taxes and it's cheaper to hire outside, private, specialized firms than staff up within the NSA.
Assuming of course that there's some magical line between contractors and NSA employees that makes it impossible for the latter to leak information ***cough***Snowden***cough**.
All right, but apart from all that, what have the Russians ever done for us?
It's not only OK, it's commendable to break a contract if keeping it involves covering up an illegal (or immoral) act.
So, because Manafort was a tax cheat for actions he took years ago, we must impeach President Trump?
We must use the leverage of punishment for his crimes to compel him to reveal any additional crimes he committed with and for the campaign.
The nice thing about tax crimes is that someone who cheats on their federal taxes probably cheats on their state taxes too. Conviction in State crimes are out of the reach of presidential pardon. It’s check mate for these crooks and their loyalty is now useless. What would you do, facing the rest of your natural life in prison?
There's nothing left.
They're afraid of Pence, but everyone else wants to impeach Trump. We need to keep working on the Democrats. Pence will be awful, but not as stupid. It'll be a whole different type of national embarrassment. We need that.
Contracting has so many failures inherent to it. You don't get to fully interview and vet contractors, you're often told to just accept them as-is (at least in the business world). They don't receive the same level of training as actual employees, in regards to safety, security, procedures, etc (and as far as contracting for the military they also aren't subject to the uniform military code of justice, ala the Blackwater embarrassment). Contractors also cost more in almost every case I have seen (other than contracting from overseas), and they are hired despite the cost because they are easier to hire and easier to let go with less paperwork, and they show up in a different part of the accounting books.
Maybe in the NSA case they have to pay more for than for contractors, but so what? Are we really in the situation with our national security that we need to hire the cheapest people out there? It should be obvious you should not hire a cookie cutter IT goon whose only qualifications are a Microsoft Certificate for a serious job at a serious agency.
Impeach Trump for what, exactly?
Questionable accusations of minor campaign finance violations?
Being foul-mouthed?
Or winning over the Democrat's chosen candidate, when everyone was assured that it would never happen. FFS, Obama went on TV and laughingly promised that Trump would never be President.
So what CRIME has Trump committed?
LynnwoodRooster is so far to the right I've come to the conclusion that such a caricature could not exist in reality (that name!) and he must be one of Putin's sockpuppets
I am really sick of the attitudes that angels sit on this side of the aisle and demons sit on that side of the aisle. We're all citizens here, not just some of us, and it is not traitorous or immoral to hold diverse political viewpoints. This country is in the most intolerant state I have ever seen it, and I am not young. I lived through the Nixon years, and I remember people from both parties in the same church getting along and being friends with each other, no matter where they stood on the issue. I lived through the Reagan years, and remember Reagan and Tip O'Neil being friends with each other.
Now these days we have the politicis of division - demonize the other side at all costs, refuse to compromise, don't even go to the same D.C. bars. We're headed back to the days when fist fights and duels will occur on the senate floor.
With that stupid name.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
No. Manafort worked for dictators in the past is all. He's not a trustworthy guy, certainly not "great". But it has nothing to do with impeaching anyone, Manafort is just a thing that came up during an investigation. The investigation is not even about Trump, and it wouldn't be about Trump if Trump stopped twitting about it.
Apt name. She just won a shit-ton of reality.
We're all going to be laughing our arses off when Trump junior is charged with treason.
Where's the evidence?
Never mind, there's tons.
But her emails?
Emoluments clause violations, for one thing. No room to debate that at all. The Repubs would have screamed bloody murder if Obama had rented golf carts to his own Secret Service detail.... but then, to be fair, Obama was black.
As for the Russia stuff, we'll just have to wait and see what develops. We've been fed a lot of confusing lies about meetings, people, and events that we're told were totally legit. There's plenty of smoke but no fire. It's hard to breathe, and the thermometer on the wall is pegged out at 130 degrees, but I'm sure it's just an A/C malfunction.
Then there's the interesting matter of $50,000 paid out of Cohen's bimbo management fund for "tech services" that no one including the bimbos in question seems to know much about. I guess there was enough cash left in the slush fund to upgrade all his office computers to Windows 10, huh. That must be it.
Also note, Miss Winner was not legitimately convicted of anything by a jury of her peers. Instead she was coerced into making a false confession ("plea bargain") by a contemptible kangaroo court.
All convictions where the accused is railroaded into "confessing" are inherently illegitimate. That's some straight up Stalin bullshit that ought have no place in America.
That's not what you wrote, though. You wrote about "election fraud", now you're trying to pretend it was about "Russia/Trump collusion".
As to the Russia/Trump collusion, that's been personally confirmed by Trump himself. His story on the Trump Tower meeting has gone from "it wasn't about politics" to "it was about politics but I didn't know about it" to "even if I did know about it there was nothing wrong and it wasn't collusion", and his mouthpiece Giuliani has already moved on to "even if there was collusion that isn't illegal".
Why is it that none of Trump's apologists can keep a goalpost still for a solid 24 hours?
The reason for the first couple of things is because they are employees of the contracting company. The government is hiring that company to provide those services and the people are expected to already have the skills, or the government person is supposed to report that and the company will be fined for not providing service as required.
The problem is too many military officers don't want to cause a problem and know they will be gone in a short time and civilian managers also will rarely bring up the problem When I have tried to remove contractors I have been told wait until the current contract is over and they will remove the person then and other times I have been told since the contractor is a former military they will just train him.
There is no office that you can file a complaint with and even if there was there is was top officials have a reason to keep all the people because they are needed for a mission that will be happening sometime in the future (maybe).
willaien: "They really burned their source on this one. Admittedly, she should have copied it manually, but still. Any journalist should know better than to directly photograph and post such a document. Never, ever give anything sensitive to the Intercept after this Fiasco."
Consider what was 'leaked', russia hacked voting machines, I suspect the whole thing as a put-up job. Maybe that was the whole point of the excercise, to disuade any legitimage whistleblowers from coming forward. We decoded the yellow-dots being a load of cyber-bullshit.
I feel she will be fine, and I am fairly certain she will have to do the whole stretch.
But on the other hand, she did not lie once she was caught
She did expose the attacks against our country.
I am curios about these haters and what attacks against
the United States by the Russians they do not want the public to know about.
Why they are fine with the gross over-classification of subjects that was begun
in the Gulf War years and continues unabated.
How are the American people to decided what to do and who to support
if they are given false BS and have the truth about really important things
like attacks on the voting system by foreign governments and spying and data breaches
hidden behind flimsy face-saving security classifications? They can't.
We shouldn't have to rely on people willing to risk their careers, reputations, freedoms
just to know what is really going in our our own lives. But we do.
She took the risk, she pays the price, she did what what was right in her mind,
and she is owning it.
met with this Russian woman at Trump Tower
Who did that Russian woman meet with before and after the Don Jr. meeting? Oh, that's right, it was Glenn Simpson, one of the co-founders from Fusion GPS, the law firm hired by the DNC and Clinton campaign. The law firm they used to hire an ex foreign agent to talk to Russian spies and come up with a smear dossier on the main opposition candidate. Huh, it's almost as if they were setting up the Trump campaign with bait. How's that for Russian collusion?
There is a scandal here. It's Watergate and McCarthyism mixed into one -- and it's the Democrats with black hands.
I don't think "...a substantial fraction of the uranium in the US..." means what you think it means.
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All they have is to make fun of her name and to live in denial. They were sure all in for Snowden when they thought the shoe was on the other foot.
It is imperative that we figure out if our election system has been compromised. It does not matter if Donald Trump is guilty or not. But as it appears all of he evidence seems to be pointing to him as at least being complicit in this. Innocent people do not have to hire a team of lawyers to convince others they are innocent.
So....investigate the DNC and Clinton campaign!
I agree. Should be another independent counsel. Really, Mueller should have been all over this, but he's been on a witch hunt for Trump..
We have a Republican WH and Congress. Seems this should be easy.
You'd think so, but Sessions recused himself, and there's an establishment that wants to take down Trump. We've already seen the naked bias against Trump, resulting in demotions or firings: Strzok, McCabe, and Ohr spring to mind. It's been nearly two years of deep state thrashing, with a complicit media in constant "Trump/Russia" mode.
It's not only OK, it's commendable to break a contract if keeping it involves covering up an illegal (or immoral) act.
This was exactly my point.
The law is the lowest bar of morality, in the places where it is even remotely aligned with it. Yes, there are consequences of breaking legal contracts, just as there are to breaking illegal contracts. That's entirely irrelevant, doing what's morally correct anyway is an obligation we all share, and we all shirk ("but it's illegal", "but I have a family", "but I have a life ahead of me", etc.)
I am not sure she made the bar, I think she should have thought about what she had and why she wanted to do what she did before acting, so that she made the right sacrifice for the right reason. If indeed she was just young and idealistic, she should be commended for her spirit, but punished for her sloppy execution. But, going back to the beginning, nothing about law and what is right are related, they are frenemies at best.
You don't get to fully interview and vet contractors, you're often told to just accept them as-is (at least in the business world)
In the government contracting world, the government employee overseeing the contract will let the contracting company know they are not happy with a particular contractor. Which will result in the removal of that contractor.
There's way too much follow-on money at stake for the contracting company to make their government sponsor angry.
They don't receive the same level of training as actual employees, in regards to safety, security, procedures, etc
Contracts typically require the contractors to take more-or-less the same training courses the civilian government employees are required to take.
It should be obvious you should not hire a cookie cutter IT goon whose only qualifications are a Microsoft Certificate for a serious job at a serious agency.
A contracting company that supplied such people to the NSA would be thrown out very, very quickly.
When proposing the contract to the government, it's pretty common to include the resumes of "key" people who will be working on the contract. So if the contract is for something more advanced than basic IT support, the fact that those people are "cookie cutter IT goons" should cause the company to lose the bid for the contract. And even if they win the bid, they won't get any follow-on work when they fail to deliver.
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While there is a desire on the part of the *army* to move people from post to post there are definitely ways around it and those are definitely leveraged by military intelligence units where you can spend twenty years at the same post.
As long as you never want to be promoted again. Which also means you have an up-or-out problem unless you have a sponsor with stars on their shoulders.
A general will get whatever they want when it comes to staffing. But not very many people are that close to someone that high in command.
Mueller is not on a "witch hunt" for Trump.
Yes he is. He stacked his team with Democrats. He's gone further and further afield from what he was initially supposed to investigate. He's gone hard after Trump associates, while soft on Clinton associates like Tony Podesta. He referred Trump's personal lawyer for a criminal investigation, which resulted in his office being raided. He's on a witch hunt.
There's lots of people who wanted Obama out of office for various reasons and he didn't always have a same-party Congress like Trump has.....and yet it was never a debacle to this level.
Indeed, because there was no independent counsel. You have to go back to the Bill Clinton era for a similar level of ridiculousness. Monica Lewinsky = Stormy Daniels.
The simple fact of the matter is Trump is causing this.
Yes, Trump Derangement Syndrome. The establishment hates Trump. A lot of people collectively flipped their shit when Trump got elected.
He's shady, hung around shady people
Just like all other politicians? Do you realize who he ran against? Even Saint Obama has skeletons in his closet (sidenote: that's akin to Trump taking a smiling photo with David Duke).
You can't blame the media
Sure I can. Why the incessant focus on Trump, when the facts show it was the DNC and Clinton campaign engaged in a Watergate scandal combined with McCarthyism? You just can't make this stuff up. We live in bizarro world.
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As strange as the hillary dead pool nobody wants to look at .
But much less smelly.
Sure. Mueller, a Republican, military veteran, who served under a Republican administration, deliberately filled his staff with Democrats because he wanted to go after Republicans (Trump).
What part of "establishment" do you not get? Trump's nomination was a hostile takeover of the Republican party. To this day, there are still "never Trump" Republicans.
If this administration felt the need to investigate Podesta or Clinton, they have the power and votes to do so. But they haven't.
You keep forgetting that establishment. Rosenstein was the one who appointed Mueller, and set him after Trump. Do you think he's going to investigate himself?
Everything I stated above is fact
Actually, it's a lot of opinion and disregard for the anti-Trump establishment.
unless you want to start with insane conspiracy theories
*snort* Trump/Russia collusion is an insane conspiracy theory. The DNC and Clinton campaign involvement in initiating and peddling this conspiracy theory is a proven fact. That the FBI agent in charge of both the Clinton email scandal and Trump/Russian collusion was pro-Clinton and anti-Trump is fact. That said agent talked about an "insurance policy" in case Trump got elected is also fact. That the DNC/Clinton lawyer met with the Russian lawyer before and after meeting with Don Jr. is fact. That high-level DOJ employee Bruce Ohr fed info from the Steele dossier into the FBI is fact. That Bruce Ohr's wife was paid by Fusion GPS is also fact. Need I go on? Because I can.
t's impossible to discuss something with a person who doesn't believe basic facts.
Start with yourself.
She deserved life with hard labour for her stupid name.
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If you think the Trump/Russia collusion is an insane conspiracy theory, tell me what this means, straight from Don Jr's own Twitter feed: "This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump" The Russian lawyer they met with was described as a "Russian government lawyer".
Funny how you completely ignore the entire thread, from my initial post on, about how it was the DNC/Clinton lawyers who met with the Russian lawyer both before and after the Don Jr. meeting. The meeting was set up as bait. Any campaign would have accepted dirt on their opposition candidate if it was offered. The collusion was by the DNC and Clinton campaign! It was also the Obama administration that gave her a special exemption to remain in the country.
Yeah, insane conspiracy theory
Yes, the conspiracy theory that was initiated and peddled by the DNC and Clinton campaign. The theory they generated and promulgated by paying an ex foreign agent to talk to Russian spies to produce a "salacious and unverified" dossier on their main opposition candidate, which they then fed to the media and back into the FBI via the DOJ by a high up official whose wife was being paid by the very same DNC/Clinton campaign lawyers that produced the document.
That's the real conspiracy, which you are doing your best to ignore. Fail.
LynnwoodRooster is a particularly sore loser of a right winger. You've soundly trounced him logically; he's just flailing rabidly at this point. You may disengage him, all of /. knows you won this argument, and he'll continue rambling to himself about how there's no collusion but EVERYONE BUT TRUMP COLLUDED WITH RUSSIA.
Hahaha, this is the first time I've seen my fake news site linked on Slashdot! This is really exciting. Thanks for the ad revenue! Keep clicking fake news, you're giving the left a LOT of money.
Hahaha, this is the first time I've seen my fake news site linked on Slashdot!
? I didn't like to Media Matters.
NONE of which have ANYTHING to do with Russiagate, you incompetent boob. Manafort is being tried for issues that happened ten years ago and have no connection to Trump. Flynn talked to Russian officials first to ask them for their UN support on a vote for Apartheid Israel, and then to not retaliate in response to American sanctions. And so on.
All you guys have is a Gish Gallop - a rapid series of talking points that fall apart faster than toilet paper in a tornado when subjected to any scrutiny. Just like the Birthers, the Chem Trailers and anti-vaxxers, who quickly spout off billeted list of talking points - but it's all bullshit.