12% of voters are illegal immigrants in Frederick County (Maryland)

In this case, probable cause has been established, a Federal Grand Jury has been convened and a Federal judge has issued warrants all based upon the evidence that constitutes probable cause. You, as a private citizen, may not be aware of the exact nature of that evidence but that does not mean it doesn't exist. You have elected representatives in the House and the Senate whose job it is, among other things, to check up on these sorts of things. You don't trust Mueller? You don't trust the FBI? You don't trust the House or the Senate or the DoJ? That begins to be a different sort of problem altogether.

 

All of this stuff is eventually going to become public record and it will become abundantly clear if there was or was not probable cause to issue search warrants. Someone is going to get egg on their face.

 

Yeah, here's the thing... the guy who decided there's probable cause is a Federal judge. And you're not. Further, you didn't see any of the evidence. I wouldn't bet against the judge on this, champ.

 

Eh... no. She didn't. If you try to see closer, she's not any less truthful than any other politician (including Bernie Sanders btw). People have different perception, true, and not just hard-right partisans (including fair number of Democrats) - but how much of this is the result of the character assassination, and how much is the double standard? Besides, the country was the most hostile to her when she blurted something candid, like "baking cookies" comment, or looking and acting like an independent professional she is and not someone's ideal of "First Lady". She obviously does not enjoy being demonised, so there's a fair bit of trauma in her guarded persona. Hillary Rodham was not like this in 1969. And, oh, "I'm on a higher plane" attitude, in a man, is called "leadership" and celebrated. No one is better specimen of this than Trump.
All told, among the candidates (including primary candidates, both parties), HRC was both better prepared to lead and a better person.

 

Lefty Beryl Howell okayed the grand jury.

 

Stanislav, first you claimed to know that President Donald Trump is not a Christian (you say he is lying) and now you claim to know the occupations of people who post at this forum.

 

Right now it appears that it will be Paul Manafort.

 

Nothing will be found to indicate or prove that President Donald Trump colluded with Russians to allegedly steal a presidential election that rightfully belonged [sic] to Hillary Rodham Clinton.

 

"Indications" are plenty right now, from Don Jr. meeting to RNC platform change to Putin/Trump bromance to Trump parroting Russia Today talking points that are not commonly repeated in US. My bet is we'll see many, many similar "indications" like these. Proof of secret collusion (conspiracy) is rather harder thing to get (it's secret after all), so odds-on bet is Trump will not go to jail. It's very likely one or a couple of his lackeys will get charged with some tangentially-related misconduct but avoid serious punishment (eg., it might turn out Manafort failed to pay taxes on some of the bloody money he made servicing dictators). My hope is the whole affair will taint Trump's reputation enough that he'll not run in 2020.

Yeah, and HRC was robbed. Fun to see even Trump partisan admitting as much.

 

Sorry, I didn't realise you wanted to be a Federal judge. Didn't mean to hurt your feelings.

 

Analysis: Noncitizen Voting is Vanishingly Rare | Brennan Center for Justice

It seems that Captain Obvious saved the day again by contributing to this article.

 

You may well be right but that fact alone won't keep Manafort out of jail.

 

Nonsense, not by me, not by a lot of people. I despise smugness and could not possibly care less how many chromosomes the one acting smugly has--gender is completely irrelevant. I feel the same exact way about my college's current dean, who is most decidedly male. Are you implying I'm misogynistic? Employing a double standard? There are many of us out here who know darned well that Hillary has major issues with being self serving, disingenuous and insufferably arrogant, and a large number of us do not believe this because we are right wing ideologues, misogynistic, or uneducated proletarians. There are many of us who do look closely, and consider her to be wanting and unsuitable for public office (if it helps any, I feel every bit as negatively about Mr. Trump).

 

Stanislav, he wrote "[sic]" after that, meaning that he felt it to be incorrect. It's usually written after typos or improperly spelled words, but in this case, it's perfectly obvious that he wasn't tacitly admitting she was robbed of any election. Do you really think this was literally a stolen election with fraud swinging it to Trump or are you contending that the popular vote winner should take the election and the Constitution be amended to disband the Electoral College?

 

Absolutely false. A prosecutor doesn't need to have probable cause to convene a grand jury, they don't even need a reason. The grand juries of Massachusetts are regularly convened "to hear evidence as may come before them regarding criminal matters". If nothing of consequence happens during the time of grand jury service, then the grand jurors do nothing but check in every day; it's literally a "just in case" provision.

Mueller convened 2 grand juries because he felt like it. Despite the massive leaks of classified information going on daily in Washington, it's interesting that one thing has NEVER been leaked: ANY evidence tying Trump to Russia in any sort of collusion. None whatsoever.

Also, it's VERY curious that Mueller decided to convene a SECOND grand jury in Washington, D.C. when he already had one convened in Virginia. It seems to me that Mueller didn't like the demographics of the VA grand jury, and decided to rectify that.

Oh, and no, I don't trust Robert Mueller or the FBI. Neither has given me any reason to have any sort of confidence in them.

 

I'm certainly not an attorney, but my understanding is that the function of a grand jury is to determine whether there is enough evidence, or probable cause, to indict a criminal suspect. So simply convening a grand jury doesn't imply that probable cause exists. That's for the grand jury to decide and it's why the grand jury exists.

My guess is that Mueller is just trying to cover his own ass. He realizes that he's in a no-win situation and no matter what he decides to do, half the country will criticize him for it. So unlike Comey in the Hillary e-mails case, he wants the grand jury to make the decision for him, so that he doesn't get blamed for it.

I don't trust Mueller either. I do have a lot more confidence in professional rank-and-file FBI agents. It's like the Boston or the San Francisco police departments. I have far more more confidence in the average cop on the street than I do in the police chief and the top police brass. The former are professional law enforcement officers, the latter may be former law enforcement officers but hold the positions they do because they are politicians, political appointees.

 

Nothing as dramatic. I believe there were multiple factors beyond HRC control that shifted election she should have won. These factors include covert dealings by the hostile power (Russia). And yeah, I think Electoral College is antiquated and, in this case, unfair - though I'm not sure it's feasible to change that, or if it'd be worth it. Again, not a smug Canadian perspective - first-past-the-post Westminster system is also far from ideal and can be quite unfair (and that's not even touching the unelected Senate). Liberals ran on, among other things, reforming the system - and failed to deliver.

 

First, let me nitpick and clarify that a healthy member of human species has 46 chromosomes in each cell, regardless of biological sex. Difference is in the type of one of them. Second, are you implying people perceive a trait you call "smugness" in the same way in women and men? Because this appears to be most decidedly not true. There were multiple studies on this very topic. Most people (me included) deploy double standard at times, it's very hard to avoid it. And yes, it's misogyny, but doesn't "feel" like it to most people.

Funny thing is, among the two, she is the one who held public offices - and enjoyed high approval ratings while in office, too. How do you explain that this fact keeps slipping from analysis? No, I do not agree many people "know" whether Hillary has "issues" - rather, they know her public persona has these issues. A persona shaped by decades of well-funded, relentless character assassination. And yes, in men, being "self serving" is called being "ambitious" - a trait of every serious Presidential candidate, by definition; she's also objectively no more "disingenuous" than politicians as a whole (which, shockingly, in America means being truthful about 70-80% of the time and trying hard not to get caught in a factual lie - until Trump that is), and a good deal more competent in policy than most (a source of a good chunk of famous Clinton family "arrogance").

 

Hillary Clinton Favorable Rating - Polls - HuffPost Pollster

 

Fair enough, my bad. Although I must note that there was at least one search warrant in the inquiry (Manafort) - and THAT requires probable cause. Details, of course, aren't available.

As for collusion - I'm not sure what standard of "proof" you'd expect. Evan if something leaked, it'd be either insufficient, untrustworthy, or both. We already know multiple people in Trump orbit met with various Russians - and then forgot to disclose it. We know Don Jr. was eager to receive help from Russian government sources - and also that both Manafort and Kushner were interested enough to attend the meeting. We know Trump family maintained contact (and was on first name basis) with Agalarov family, which is not only in the inner Putin circle but apparently has enough KGB pedigree for the yonger scion to be hitched to the mighty Aliev dynasty. In Soviet times, someone like KGB Major Putin was hardly worthy to serve as a driver for Politburo member Comrade Heydar Aliev - and Emin Agalarov married his granddaughter. We know Trump had business dealings with various Russians, at times with questionable background (Felix Sater). None of this is "proof", but the smoke is very, very thick.