This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
This is 100% not probable cause or legitimate grounds on which to premise an investigation into the Trump campaign. That is why none of the reports from the "investigations into the investigation" found that any of the investigations were predicated on this... it would be literally illegal to do such a thing. Instead, they relied on other grounds.
Probable cause is not needed to begin an investigation. Probable cause is the amount of evidence needed for an arrest, so obviously investigations are begun on less than probable cause.
"or" is the word you're looking for.
What I am looking for is someone who doesn't try to legitimate his personal opinion ("legitimate grounds") by making an incorrect reference to a legal principle.
Bullshit. What you are actually doing is just failing to read and then trying to act tough when it's pointed out that you failed reading comprehension.
Try to do something other than legitimate your own personal opinion. Perhaps reference one of the public reports from one of the special counsels or OIG. Or perhaps reference the DOIG. Or even case law. Show me a single example where, "Whelp, we just randomly praxxxed out who we think would benefit from this crime (bonus points if it's something as diffuse as benefiting electorally), and that's clearly sufficient grounds on which to predicate a wide-ranging investigation into everything about them."
But seriously, dude. You know that it's OBVIOUSLY not PC. Like, not even in the same universe. I'm pointing out that not only is it not that, it's not even grounds for starting an investigation. No serious person thinks it is, and you can't find such a thing in any gov't document. They had something else that they believed was predication for an investigation, and at various points, believed they had PC for various things.
I haven't expressed an opinion. I merely noted that your reference to the alleged lack of probable cause is irrelevant. "The Constitution does not require evidence of wrongdoing or reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing by a suspect before the government can begin investigating that suspect." Rehberg v. Paulk, 611 F. 3d 828, 850 fn 24 (11th Cir 2010).
Why don't you, instead of resorting to infantile ad hominem attacks, provide actual evidence regarding what is or is not considered "legitimate grounds" for a law enforcement agency initiating an investigation. A court case, perhaps. Or ethical standards for law enforcement agencies. Or Justice Department regulations and policies. Anything at all that supports an inference that you are just rendering your uninformed opinion.
Again, that is irrelevant, because law enforcement does not need probable cause to start an investigation.
Like I said above, check out the DOIG.
Your own personal opinion is that "or" is not a word with meaning.
And what specific part of the DOIG do you think was violated? Because the bar seems to be very, very low.
For the actual facts at hand, John Durham seems to think that the DOIG only allows a preliminary investigation, not a full investigation. Others disagree. You'll find the respective standards in Sections 6.5 and 7.5.
...but for this discussion, those facts aren't at hand. For this discussion, the only facts at hand are wild-ass speculations about someone benefiting. Do you think it would be acceptable to open investigations (preliminary or full) into Biden, Hilary, and some other set of prominent democrats (selected by bureaucrats who, let's say, were selected by your ideological opponents) when Trump's tax records were released? After all, there might have been a crime that occurred there... and after all, I bet said ideologically-opposed bureaucrats would assess that such release benefited some prominent democrats.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Not of the Trump campaign.
This is not probable cause or grounds for an investigation. (Notice I said "or", which responds to your second paragraph.) It's wayyyy too subjective. One could legitimately believe there was probable cause to investigate, say, the release of Trump's tax records. Very possibly a crime was committed. Very possibly not (that's the nature of PC/investigations). If they had something specifically pointing to a particular individual for an actual crime, they could go about investigating them, with the level of what they're able to do being dependent on the nature of the evidence in question. It would be insane to say, "Whelp, law enforcement can just willy-nilly decide 'who benefits' from the release of Trump's tax returns and use that as a predicate for a far-reaching investigation into them."
Bullshit. Page five is just facts and narrative. Page 11 is where they describe why they were doing what they were doing. Nowhere in this document do they ever say that any investigation was predicated on anything as ridiculous as, "We picked who benefited and started investigating them."
Check out the DOIG.
This is where the real battleground is, and probably where reasonable minds could disagree. Of course, some unreasonable minds are going to be super partisan about the whole thing, tipping every subjective factor one way when it comes to politicians they like, but the other way when it comes to politicians they don't like. Regardless, this is a far cry from, "We looked to see who benefited and opened an investigation into them."
Section 5 covers assessments, Section 6 covers preliminary investigations, and Section 7 covers full investigations. These are the areas where this current battle is being waged.
Sure. A lot of people think that. The key question is what kind of investigation, what kind of investigative steps. There's a huge transition to:
They had basically nothing here. You could easily take such minimal indication seriously by, for example, going and interviewing the source of that indication, seeing what's there. If there was something worthwhile, that could justify some additional steps. Instead, we pretty much just had fever dreams of a Manchurian candidate. Those dreams were crossbred with wet dreams of getting The Donald and preventing him from becoming president. It was irresistible to them politically, and the response to the same set of facts would have been completely different if the ox being gored was tinted blue instead.
You don't need to publicly tell the world when you're on the same team as all the journalists. You just need to not object too strongly, even though you already know that most of it is all bullshit. Carter Page was forced to resign, even though he did literally nothing wrong (he is a profoundly weird person; I don't agree with much of his perspective of the world). Rumors are swirling about this and that, AlfaBank and more. The political environment is already ripe enough for Hilary to call Trump Putin's puppet in a debate. Fortnights of airtime and furlongs of column space are already dedicated to pushing the exact message you want; you don't have to tell the world. On that score, you just have to do the minimal amount to keep the narrative going, and make sure not to squash it too hard. Note that we may never have a window into any back-channel discussions between FBI officials and members of the media, where they probe about some story or another, and perhaps instead of tipping your hand a little and telling them that it's bullshit, you just no comment your way into letting the public think it's legit. (Do these back-channel interactions go differently if it's a blue in the crosshairs? Andy McCabe leaking on the Clinton Foundation investigation?) In the meantime, keep working on vapor, just in case the unthinkable happens and the bad guy gets elected; you'll have insurance to take down his presidency, maybe even before it actually starts.
But also remember that it was unthinkable! No one thought Trump had a chance of winning. If you come on too strong in telling the world, you risk backlash. Better to just enable the whole frenzy and continue chasing ghosts, just in case.
In hindsight, given the outcome of the election, would they have behaved differently? We don't really know. That clip is great in showing the difficulty of multi-agent reasoning, especially in partial information environments. Motivations can be varied and complex. (Plus bonus reference to a source with the NYT!) It's wicked hard to work backwards and really get a glimpse of their internal calculations at the time.
...so instead of trying to proceed via proof by hypothesized motivation, we can actually just look at the problem, itself. The DOJ/FBI regulations, themselves. We're already in a weird counterfactual world, one where they didn't have any actual tip from a foreign ambassador... in our world, they literally just have, "Well, we think so-and-so benefits from this crime." In that counterfactual world, the actions they took or didn't take in the real world do zero work to explain whether a hypothetical action would be justifiable in the counterfactual world. They were in an entirely different context! We're stuck just looking at the counterfactual world you've set up, looking at the regs, and seeing that it would be wholly inappropriate for them to jump into a full, wide-ranging investigation of anyone close to Trump based on nothing other than, "...well, we think he benefits."
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
If I've kept my Trump-drama details straight, what happened was that:
The Australian High Commissioner to the UK Alexander Downer had drinks with George Papadopoulos, a member of Trumps foreign policy advisory panel. Papadopoulos reportedly told Downer that Russia had dirt on Clinton. Downer then passed on his account of this conversation to Elizabeth Dibble, the US Charge d'Affaires in London.
I think it's pretty arguable that this is the sort of event that can either be used as the pretext for launching an investigation (as it was) or ignored as baseless shit-talk (as it turned out to be). Which way it goes is not unlikely to be politically influenced.
To be clear, my position is that both sides regularly conduct politically motivated investigations of the other, whether over Russia collusion, Benghazi, Ukraine bribery, Whitewater, or whatever. Both sides engage in some level of illegal/unethical behaviour, so sometimes these politically motivated investigations actually find something even if it wasn't the thing they were exactly looking for.
I think this is a good and proper state of affairs.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link