If the US government fails to care about blatant disregard of law because...it's a Clinton and she's a Democrat...then perhaps it's legitimate to appeal to other state-level actors to help throw aside the veil of secrecy?
At what point are the people of the US entitled to recognize that their government directly serves the interests of a small coterie of oligarchs, and try to work around it?
Again, let's recall: "I don't have a private email server" "It was only private and family correspondence" "Well nothing secret went on that server" "Nothing I knew was secret was on that server" "Nothing ACTUALLY MARKED SECRET was on that server" and then, after at least a week of denials, a carefully vetted pile of emails was 'given' to the FBI/DOJ and there were STILL secret things found in the correspondence.
And yet, the response from half the electorate and most of the major news organizations is "What me worry?" and "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy*" *now including Red Scare 2016(tm)
Ok lets, here's what appears to be the first press conference she gave. But there's no evidence that a) she deliberately sent classified emails on the system, b) intended that her lawyers delete work emails along with the personal emails before turning the server over, or c) knew that either had occurred.
But even IF she was guilty of all those things, and the FBI would have prosecuted her if not for her political influence, and by rights she should be in jail.
Even if those things were true.
It's still absurd to consider voting for Trump over her.
ie the DNC generating good speeches and endorsements
They are? Everything I've heard about the DNC is that it's been an absolute disaster, with Bernie supporters constantly interrupting speakers who are spending most of their time castigating Bernie supporters for not falling into line after the DNC rigged the nomination for Hillary Clinton, to the point where something like half the delegates walked out after her coronation. Er, nomination.
Then I guess my suggestion would be to start listening to reputable news sources.
No, Laureate University she dumped $55 million of taxpayer money into and got Bill $16.5 million of it personally.
Trump, questionable ethics and conflicting story. Clinton, stole taxpayer money.
Ever wonder why the Trump U stories disappeared and never came back? He mentioned the Clinton sealing taxpayer money and they freaked out and told the press to be quiet about it.
Ahh, that "scandal", where an organization paid Bill Clinton $16.5 million and the State Department gave $55 million to a completely different organization.
The press stopped talking about Trump U because it's old news and there's so much other crazy Trump stuff to report.
The press never talked about the Laureate University scandal because it was a dumb idea for a scandal.
This was an attempt by Russia, who considers the US a rival and possible enemy, to create political upheaval in US and change the outcome of an election.
These distinctions matter, the NYTimes did what it did to inform the public and make the country stronger, that's why functioning Democracies give freedom of the press such high regard.
Russia's actions are literally intended as an attack on your country and are carried out in a way to inflict damage. That's why the NSA and CIA exist, to engage in this kind of soft warfare.
Her Highness handled classified material in a negligent manner. ( Yes it's a crime. No you don't need to have intent. Folks are in jail today for doing the exact same thing. )
You mean Hillary? Because Trump, despite all the mud being thrown this way, has done very little concrete evil in comparison.
Yeah, if you look past all the scams, lawsuits, lies about donating to charity, racist comments, racist acts, misogyny, donations for explicit political favours, mob connections, and rape allegations then he's practically a saint.
Valarie Plame was not a "undercover" agent. And Dick Cheney didn't out her, it was a well known secret.
The ONLY people offended by her "outing" were people who hate Cheney. Hate him all you want, just don't do it for this, it is a non-issue. I also find it simply amazing that this is a huge deal to certain people, while at the same time, those same people are voting Clinton, who has done much much worse.
Clinton exposed classified information by accident, and through a channel she (wrongly) felt was secure.
Libby deliberately leaked classified information to the press as part of a political smear job.
There's a vast difference.
Now I don't know that Cheney had anything to do with it, he may have explicitly ordered it, he may have created a culture where it was expected, or he may have stopped the idea dead in its tracks if he'd only been told about it.
This is just Trump using his standard campaign tactic, if your opponent is getting a good media cycle (ie the DNC generating good speeches and endorsements) then say something crazy and outrageous to take all the media attention.
Wasn't it just a month or so ago that all the Oppo research on Trump was leaked? Is your memory really that short?
No, that also helped Trump. It gave the RNC the DNCs entire playbook on Trump so the RNC would be better prepared to counter it.
Supposedly Guccifer 2.0 even offered the playbook to Trump's camp but someone there was smart enough to turn it down (major scandal if it ever got out they had it) though I don't know how authoritative that info is.
Nothing to see here. These crimes were exposed by someone we don't like so much. That makes it OK.
A very powerful organization (ie Russia) is expending significant resources to dig up and expose dirt on only one side.
If Putin instead decided to target the RNC they might uncover discussions of voter suppression efforts or other dirty tricks.
If he targeted Trump and captured emails from his organization I suspect you'd see some really ugly stuff, possibly even direct discussions of using political donations to influence politicians.
In either case it would have a very different impact on the polls. Just the knowledge that someone powerful is trying to manipulate you should cause you to reconsider how you're being affected by the information.
That was obvious all along, and perfectly fine as long as they weren't favouring a candidate in their duties.
Clearly you haven't heard of the superdelegates going to Clinton before a single vote was cast.
So what? That's not rigged, that's just superdelegates endorsing Clinton. That's not evidence of corruption and it's especially not evidence of corruption from the emails.
Because they have terrible critical thinking skills and fall for dumb conspiracy theories?
I don't know about their critical thinking, but there was a real conspiracy here, the evidence is right there on Wikileaks......
What evidence? That the DNC officials preferred Clinton? That was obvious all along, and perfectly fine as long as they weren't favouring a candidate in their duties.
So the "smoking gun" about them fixing the process is that an official once speculate about planting a question about Sanders' religious beliefs, not that he did plant the question, because he didn't, just that he once mentioned the idea in an email.
That's the most concise explanation of why Trump will win that I've seen yet. It also explains why a Sanders voter would willingly switch to become a Trump voter, even though they are different in many ways.
Because they have terrible critical thinking skills and fall for dumb conspiracy theories?
I dunno, that's pretty harsh on Sanders' supporters, though it really does seem to fit the Trump profile.
So your theory is that FB understands nothing about social networks and has never heard of the Streisand Effect.
Slow the story for a few days and it doesn't disrupt the news coverage of the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia. The goal is not necessarily to bury the info, sometime a delay is helpful.
And you think obvious censorship is how they would choose to do it?
If FB wanted to suppress the news they'd just suppress it in the news feeds, essentially what they were accused of doing with some conservative stories.
It wouldn't be blocked or obviously censored, it just wouldn't show up in news feeds as often as it should, it would be very effective and really hard to detect.
Obvious censoring with a crude block makes no sense.
Clinton is the corporate candidate this cycle. Why would corporations want to harm the candidate that's fighting for them?
So your theory is that FB understands nothing about social networks and has never heard of the Streisand Effect.
The link was blocked for a short period and then unblocked, this is perfectly consistent with an anti-spam system, that's a narrative that makes sense.
Simply blocking the link to suppress the news, that's not a narrative that makes sense. It draws attention to the censorship which looks bad on FB and throws more attention on the docs themselves.
The small meaningless lies should really worry you more than the whoppers, especially when there is a steady stream for decades. An occasional whopper shows a person who makes mistakes and does not like accountability, a somewhat normal behavior. The constant lying indicates mental illness.
Ok, you have a couple instances where Clinton may have lied.
Your choice is her or Trump, Trump who can barely open his mouth without lying. And that's seriously not an exaggeration, the dude constantly lies about absolutely everything, it's absolutely ridiculous.
I'm sorry if I can't convince you that Clinton is more or less a typical political when it comes to truth and integrity. But if you're looking at truth and integrity the choice of Clinton vs Trump should be the easiest thing possible.
Seriously, all that because she either a) made up a meaningless story about the origin of her name on a diplomatic mission, or b) was told, or misunderstood the story herself.
No one supports Clintons unless they are paid too or threatened.
No one writes something like this unless they're hyperbolic or a moron.
Whatever you think of Clinton it's should be obvious that many people don't share your opinion.
Her utter disregard for the rule of law and use of raw power to intimidate her opponents is so apparent that the only question is why is no one is asking for RICO statue to be applied against her. She doesn't just breaks laws. She is running a criminal organization and uses political intimidation and bribery to push for more power. The only difference between her and the mob is that the mob did their deeds in hiding and Clinton does it in plain view.
It's apparent as the Kenyan hut where Obama was born.
And lest anyone thinks that Trump will lose, he has a history of entering business arenas dominated by the mob and winning despite playing clean and not becoming a mobster himself. He has beaten these types of people before. If we are lucky, he'll do it again.
Seriously, WTF. Do you seriously look at Trump, the thousands of lawsuits, the countless obvious scams, the brazen lying, and think "ooh! he looks like a trustworthy person with integrity!".
In neither case does it matter if the emails are real or not.
Well, actually it does matter. If the emails are real -- and everything thus far indicates they are, including press releases from HRC's campaign and the resignation of the DNC chairwoman -- it shows systematic corruption within the DNC. Not that comes as any surprise. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz was an unabashed Clinton supporter, carrying water for her at every opportunity. Only a fool could believe she was capable of running the DNC on an impartial basis.
Unfortunately there are a lot of fools out there.
How? How does it show "systematic corruption within the DNC"? Show me the actual emails that suggest this.
Remember that Trump knows how to negotiate, and most positions that he takes are intended to be bargained away while he achieves his real intention.
Why do you think he's a great negotiator? Because someone wrote a book called "Art of the Deal" and put his name on it? You realize the US government has plenty of skilled negotiators, I don't see why we should assume that Trump has superpowers.
I'm sure he knows what he's doing when it comes to business deals, but when it comes to international negotiations he seems to be frighteningly out of his depth. Hiding your true intentions in international negotiations doesn't give you great deals, it gives you wars. And bullying people around is fine when you're a business person, but as a country other nations start coordinating against you.
Trump wants to save the US effort, or get funds for defending Europe. He has no intention of dropping out of NATO or anything like that. I mean, I doubt I am spoiling things for him by saying this. I suspect Europe's leaders will find the risk too high to avoid doing business with him.
So what happens when Putin decides to take Latvia (who certainly can't afford Trump's rates)? He's a lot more likely to try with a Trump who might let him get away with it.
What about when South Korea decides to get its own nukes rather than pay Trump's protection fee. Or when he tries to renegotiate the nuclear deal, loses sanction support from the other nations, and Iran decides to get build nukes and ally itself with Russia for protection?
Putin allowed these to be released to poke Obama in the eye. No more, no less. The fact that they feed into a long standing story of dishonesty and fraud on the part of the Clintons is incidental. He saw maximum value to let them go right before the DNC, because he knows, like I do, that these e-mails aren't going to decide the election.
It keeps "emails" in the news and anytime emails are "leaked" people instantly assume that it exposes a bunch of lies and scandals. The stuff about Sanders also pokes the "Bernie or Bust" movement, Trump's big risk is they all decide that they need to vote Democrat. If he can antagonize them enough they might simply decide to sit out the election.
It wasn't worth holding them until November, as they'd be ineffectual then with all the mud flying in the last couple of weeks.
They are, however, one of hundreds of data points that will decide this election.
He doesn't "support Trump" at all. He'd prefer a HRC in charge - less risk, but he doesn't believe he could turn a US election anyway with any of his tools available. Those who believe otherwise are conspiracy theorists.
If Putin was low risk he wouldn't have invaded Ukraine or stated screwed with NATO member Latvia.
Putin's dream is to break up NATO and eat up a bunch of former USSR members, his fear is that he loses power in some kind of Democratic revolution. Trump is already suggesting he may not defend NATO members, Putin will be very tempted to take advantage of this.
Trump has also openly admired the authoritarian tendencies of Putin and other dictators. If Trump gets in it's very unlikely that Putin's next crackdown will be hit with a bunch of international condemnation led by the US. Trump might even kill the sanctions for attacking Ukraine as part of some deal.
Story about how she received bribes for allowing Russia to buy 20% of the USA uranium production. She clearly stated how she wouldn't take foreign donations to her foundation while at state, would ask for a waiver to do it if it came up, and would disclose if it happened. She took the bribe, didn't ask for a waiver, didn't disclose it, and failed to report it on her taxes and had to amend them years later after she was caught. She showed "Intent" in hiding the donations because they were bribes.
Did you link to the right article? I see some bad things for her, but not the stuff you were talking about.
1) The foundation wasn't supposed to accept foreign government donations, she didn't. Though she may have taken donations from people who had connections to foreign companies with significant government ties.
2) The foundation was supposed to publicly disclose all the donations to the foundation, apparently this guy who donated, a Canadian, reported on his tax form that he made a bunch of donations that the foundation didn't publicly disclose. I don't know if this was a mistake, deliberate, or some kind of misunderstanding.
3) During this period Bill Clinton got a $500k fee to speak to a Russian bank.
4) There's nothing I saw there about hers or the foundation's taxes. I have no idea where you got the idea she hid something on her taxes.
All the bad looking stuff is Bill Clinton, who ran the foundation, accepting donations or work from people who had a connection to businesses who might be affected by the State Department.
I'm not sure why people bring up her email scandal.
Because it's the only scandal, where after a critical investigation, there's evidence that she really did do something wrong.
Her problem is most politicians do everything they can to avoid the appearance of impropriety. The Clintons on the other hand, Bill in particular, don't really seem to care about the appearance because they think they'll be attacked regardless.
So you get stuff like this where Bill Clinton is constantly dealing with a bunch of people he should really be avoiding. I don't think Hillary was biased when it came to doing her job, but it does lead to some fishy optics.
Slashdot Mirror
If the US government fails to care about blatant disregard of law because...it's a Clinton and she's a Democrat...then perhaps it's legitimate to appeal to other state-level actors to help throw aside the veil of secrecy?
At what point are the people of the US entitled to recognize that their government directly serves the interests of a small coterie of oligarchs, and try to work around it?
Again, let's recall:
"I don't have a private email server"
"It was only private and family correspondence"
"Well nothing secret went on that server"
"Nothing I knew was secret was on that server"
"Nothing ACTUALLY MARKED SECRET was on that server"
and then, after at least a week of denials, a carefully vetted pile of emails was 'given' to the FBI/DOJ and there were STILL secret things found in the correspondence.
And yet, the response from half the electorate and most of the major news organizations is "What me worry?" and "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy*"
*now including Red Scare 2016(tm)
Ok lets, here's what appears to be the first press conference she gave. But there's no evidence that a) she deliberately sent classified emails on the system, b) intended that her lawyers delete work emails along with the personal emails before turning the server over, or c) knew that either had occurred.
But even IF she was guilty of all those things, and the FBI would have prosecuted her if not for her political influence, and by rights she should be in jail.
Even if those things were true.
It's still absurd to consider voting for Trump over her.
ie the DNC generating good speeches and endorsements
They are? Everything I've heard about the DNC is that it's been an absolute disaster, with Bernie supporters constantly interrupting speakers who are spending most of their time castigating Bernie supporters for not falling into line after the DNC rigged the nomination for Hillary Clinton, to the point where something like half the delegates walked out after her coronation. Er, nomination.
Then I guess my suggestion would be to start listening to reputable news sources.
No, Laureate University she dumped $55 million of taxpayer money into and got Bill $16.5 million of it personally.
Trump, questionable ethics and conflicting story. Clinton, stole taxpayer money.
Ever wonder why the Trump U stories disappeared and never came back? He mentioned the Clinton sealing taxpayer money and they freaked out and told the press to be quiet about it.
Ahh, that "scandal", where an organization paid Bill Clinton $16.5 million and the State Department gave $55 million to a completely different organization.
The press stopped talking about Trump U because it's old news and there's so much other crazy Trump stuff to report.
The press never talked about the Laureate University scandal because it was a dumb idea for a scandal.
Who cares about the friggin emails.
This was an attempt by Russia, who considers the US a rival and possible enemy, to create political upheaval in US and change the outcome of an election.
These distinctions matter, the NYTimes did what it did to inform the public and make the country stronger, that's why functioning Democracies give freedom of the press such high regard.
Russia's actions are literally intended as an attack on your country and are carried out in a way to inflict damage. That's why the NSA and CIA exist, to engage in this kind of soft warfare.
Her Highness handled classified material in a negligent manner. ( Yes it's a crime. No you don't need to have intent. Folks are in jail today for doing the exact same thing. )
Who?
You mean Hillary? Because Trump, despite all the mud being thrown this way, has done very little concrete evil in comparison.
Yeah, if you look past all the scams, lawsuits, lies about donating to charity, racist comments, racist acts, misogyny, donations for explicit political favours, mob connections, and rape allegations then he's practically a saint.
Valarie Plame was not a "undercover" agent. And Dick Cheney didn't out her, it was a well known secret.
The ONLY people offended by her "outing" were people who hate Cheney. Hate him all you want, just don't do it for this, it is a non-issue. I also find it simply amazing that this is a huge deal to certain people, while at the same time, those same people are voting Clinton, who has done much much worse.
Clinton exposed classified information by accident, and through a channel she (wrongly) felt was secure.
Libby deliberately leaked classified information to the press as part of a political smear job.
There's a vast difference.
Now I don't know that Cheney had anything to do with it, he may have explicitly ordered it, he may have created a culture where it was expected, or he may have stopped the idea dead in its tracks if he'd only been told about it.
This is just Trump using his standard campaign tactic, if your opponent is getting a good media cycle (ie the DNC generating good speeches and endorsements) then say something crazy and outrageous to take all the media attention.
Wasn't it just a month or so ago that all the Oppo research on Trump was leaked? Is your memory really that short?
No, that also helped Trump. It gave the RNC the DNCs entire playbook on Trump so the RNC would be better prepared to counter it.
Supposedly Guccifer 2.0 even offered the playbook to Trump's camp but someone there was smart enough to turn it down (major scandal if it ever got out they had it) though I don't know how authoritative that info is.
Nothing to see here. These crimes were exposed by someone we don't like so much. That makes it OK.
A very powerful organization (ie Russia) is expending significant resources to dig up and expose dirt on only one side.
If Putin instead decided to target the RNC they might uncover discussions of voter suppression efforts or other dirty tricks.
If he targeted Trump and captured emails from his organization I suspect you'd see some really ugly stuff, possibly even direct discussions of using political donations to influence politicians.
In either case it would have a very different impact on the polls. Just the knowledge that someone powerful is trying to manipulate you should cause you to reconsider how you're being affected by the information.
I don't suppose I need to guess where you get your news.
Yet I still need to guess where you get your news. I've seen coverage of the leaks from many sources, yet I haven't seen anything like you mentioned.
How can you not consider superdelegates to be corruption? What exactly do you consider to be corruption?
Superdelegates accepting payments or other secret favours for their votes? Corruption.
Superdelegates following the rules as laid out by the party. Not corruption.
That was obvious all along, and perfectly fine as long as they weren't favouring a candidate in their duties.
Clearly you haven't heard of the superdelegates going to Clinton before a single vote was cast.
So what? That's not rigged, that's just superdelegates endorsing Clinton. That's not evidence of corruption and it's especially not evidence of corruption from the emails.
Because they have terrible critical thinking skills and fall for dumb conspiracy theories?
I don't know about their critical thinking, but there was a real conspiracy here, the evidence is right there on Wikileaks......
What evidence? That the DNC officials preferred Clinton? That was obvious all along, and perfectly fine as long as they weren't favouring a candidate in their duties.
So the "smoking gun" about them fixing the process is that an official once speculate about planting a question about Sanders' religious beliefs, not that he did plant the question, because he didn't, just that he once mentioned the idea in an email.
Clinton is the corporate candidate this cycle.
That's the most concise explanation of why Trump will win that I've seen yet. It also explains why a Sanders voter would willingly switch to become a Trump voter, even though they are different in many ways.
Because they have terrible critical thinking skills and fall for dumb conspiracy theories?
I dunno, that's pretty harsh on Sanders' supporters, though it really does seem to fit the Trump profile.
So your theory is that FB understands nothing about social networks and has never heard of the Streisand Effect.
Slow the story for a few days and it doesn't disrupt the news coverage of the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia. The goal is not necessarily to bury the info, sometime a delay is helpful.
And you think obvious censorship is how they would choose to do it?
If FB wanted to suppress the news they'd just suppress it in the news feeds, essentially what they were accused of doing with some conservative stories.
It wouldn't be blocked or obviously censored, it just wouldn't show up in news feeds as often as it should, it would be very effective and really hard to detect.
Obvious censoring with a crude block makes no sense.
Clinton is the corporate candidate this cycle. Why would corporations want to harm the candidate that's fighting for them?
So your theory is that FB understands nothing about social networks and has never heard of the Streisand Effect.
The link was blocked for a short period and then unblocked, this is perfectly consistent with an anti-spam system, that's a narrative that makes sense.
Simply blocking the link to suppress the news, that's not a narrative that makes sense. It draws attention to the censorship which looks bad on FB and throws more attention on the docs themselves.
The small meaningless lies should really worry you more than the whoppers, especially when there is a steady stream for decades. An occasional whopper shows a person who makes mistakes and does not like accountability, a somewhat normal behavior. The constant lying indicates mental illness.
Ok, you have a couple instances where Clinton may have lied.
Your choice is her or Trump, Trump who can barely open his mouth without lying. And that's seriously not an exaggeration, the dude constantly lies about absolutely everything, it's absolutely ridiculous.
I'm sorry if I can't convince you that Clinton is more or less a typical political when it comes to truth and integrity. But if you're looking at truth and integrity the choice of Clinton vs Trump should be the easiest thing possible.
Seriously, all that because she either a) made up a meaningless story about the origin of her name on a diplomatic mission, or b) was told, or misunderstood the story herself.
No one supports Clintons unless they are paid too or threatened.
No one writes something like this unless they're hyperbolic or a moron.
Whatever you think of Clinton it's should be obvious that many people don't share your opinion.
Her utter disregard for the rule of law and use of raw power to intimidate her opponents is so apparent that the only question is why is no one is asking for RICO statue to be applied against her. She doesn't just breaks laws. She is running a criminal organization and uses political intimidation and bribery to push for more power. The only difference between her and the mob is that the mob did their deeds in hiding and Clinton does it in plain view.
It's apparent as the Kenyan hut where Obama was born.
And lest anyone thinks that Trump will lose, he has a history of entering business arenas dominated by the mob and winning despite playing clean and not becoming a mobster himself. He has beaten these types of people before. If we are lucky, he'll do it again.
Seriously, WTF. Do you seriously look at Trump, the thousands of lawsuits, the countless obvious scams, the brazen lying, and think "ooh! he looks like a trustworthy person with integrity!".
In neither case does it matter if the emails are real or not.
Well, actually it does matter. If the emails are real -- and everything thus far indicates they are, including press releases from HRC's campaign and the resignation of the DNC chairwoman -- it shows systematic corruption within the DNC. Not that comes as any surprise. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz was an unabashed Clinton supporter, carrying water for her at every opportunity. Only a fool could believe she was capable of running the DNC on an impartial basis.
Unfortunately there are a lot of fools out there.
How? How does it show "systematic corruption within the DNC"? Show me the actual emails that suggest this.
Remember that Trump knows how to negotiate, and most positions that he takes are intended to be bargained away while he achieves his real intention.
Why do you think he's a great negotiator? Because someone wrote a book called "Art of the Deal" and put his name on it? You realize the US government has plenty of skilled negotiators, I don't see why we should assume that Trump has superpowers.
I'm sure he knows what he's doing when it comes to business deals, but when it comes to international negotiations he seems to be frighteningly out of his depth. Hiding your true intentions in international negotiations doesn't give you great deals, it gives you wars. And bullying people around is fine when you're a business person, but as a country other nations start coordinating against you.
Trump wants to save the US effort, or get funds for defending Europe. He has no intention of dropping out of NATO or anything like that. I mean, I doubt I am spoiling things for him by saying this. I suspect Europe's leaders will find the risk too high to avoid doing business with him.
So what happens when Putin decides to take Latvia (who certainly can't afford Trump's rates)? He's a lot more likely to try with a Trump who might let him get away with it.
What about when South Korea decides to get its own nukes rather than pay Trump's protection fee. Or when he tries to renegotiate the nuclear deal, loses sanction support from the other nations, and Iran decides to get build nukes and ally itself with Russia for protection?
Putin allowed these to be released to poke Obama in the eye. No more, no less. The fact that they feed into a long standing story of dishonesty and fraud on the part of the Clintons is incidental. He saw maximum value to let them go right before the DNC, because he knows, like I do, that these e-mails aren't going to decide the election.
It keeps "emails" in the news and anytime emails are "leaked" people instantly assume that it exposes a bunch of lies and scandals. The stuff about Sanders also pokes the "Bernie or Bust" movement, Trump's big risk is they all decide that they need to vote Democrat. If he can antagonize them enough they might simply decide to sit out the election.
It wasn't worth holding them until November, as they'd be ineffectual then with all the mud flying in the last couple of weeks.
They are, however, one of hundreds of data points that will decide this election.
He doesn't "support Trump" at all. He'd prefer a HRC in charge - less risk, but he doesn't believe he could turn a US election anyway with any of his tools available. Those who believe otherwise are conspiracy theorists.
If Putin was low risk he wouldn't have invaded Ukraine or stated screwed with NATO member Latvia.
Putin's dream is to break up NATO and eat up a bunch of former USSR members, his fear is that he loses power in some kind of Democratic revolution. Trump is already suggesting he may not defend NATO members, Putin will be very tempted to take advantage of this.
Trump has also openly admired the authoritarian tendencies of Putin and other dictators. If Trump gets in it's very unlikely that Putin's next crackdown will be hit with a bunch of international condemnation led by the US. Trump might even kill the sanctions for attacking Ukraine as part of some deal.
Story about how she received bribes for allowing Russia to buy 20% of the USA uranium production. She clearly stated how she wouldn't take foreign donations to her foundation while at state, would ask for a waiver to do it if it came up, and would disclose if it happened. She took the bribe, didn't ask for a waiver, didn't disclose it, and failed to report it on her taxes and had to amend them years later after she was caught. She showed "Intent" in hiding the donations because they were bribes.
Did you link to the right article? I see some bad things for her, but not the stuff you were talking about.
1) The foundation wasn't supposed to accept foreign government donations, she didn't. Though she may have taken donations from people who had connections to foreign companies with significant government ties.
2) The foundation was supposed to publicly disclose all the donations to the foundation, apparently this guy who donated, a Canadian, reported on his tax form that he made a bunch of donations that the foundation didn't publicly disclose. I don't know if this was a mistake, deliberate, or some kind of misunderstanding.
3) During this period Bill Clinton got a $500k fee to speak to a Russian bank.
4) There's nothing I saw there about hers or the foundation's taxes. I have no idea where you got the idea she hid something on her taxes.
All the bad looking stuff is Bill Clinton, who ran the foundation, accepting donations or work from people who had a connection to businesses who might be affected by the State Department.
As for "approving something the State Department wouldn't normally even consider". She was only one of multiple people who had a say on the approval. If anything her fighting it would have been the more unusual action.
I'm not sure why people bring up her email scandal.
Because it's the only scandal, where after a critical investigation, there's evidence that she really did do something wrong.
Her problem is most politicians do everything they can to avoid the appearance of impropriety. The Clintons on the other hand, Bill in particular, don't really seem to care about the appearance because they think they'll be attacked regardless.
So you get stuff like this where Bill Clinton is constantly dealing with a bunch of people he should really be avoiding. I don't think Hillary was biased when it came to doing her job, but it does lead to some fishy optics.
The Clinton astroturfing is strong with this one.
OMG someone disagrees with you!
How could another human being capable of written language possibly disagree with you?!?
Obviously they must be a paid plant from that group you remember hearing about once!!