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Why do people continue to think that this is a worthwhile point? Comey actually explained this and has been extremely vocal about his dislike for Trump.
I think this is the third or fourth time I've had to post this quote on the Motte.
No, I agree it's not good evidence the FBI hated clinton. But if things like that still happen to someone the FBI hates, why is it good evidence the FBI tunnel-vision hates trump given what happened to him? Especially given the impact on 2016 voters of comey's statement was, I think, larger than the impact of what they did to trump in 2016. Post-2016 actions would be a different discussion.
Huh? Clinton here is someone who the FBI absolutely loves. They were actually trying to help her - they were just incompetent. You don't even need to start reading tea leaves to figure out the FBI's position here because you can just read the Strzok texts, Higher Loyalty (please don't actually read this paper-based sleeping pill) etc. They absolutely did tunnel-vision hate Trump and went out of their way to try and hamstring him in as many ways as they could. I don't see how there can be any debate on this issue when you know the full context of the Steele dossier and how it was laundered in the media to justify Crossfire Hurricane even as they spoke amongst themselves about how the accusations had no substance but it was worth doing anything they could to take down Trump.
No, that's what I mean - FBI does something that hurts clinton even though they love clinton. This means that FBI doing something that hurts Trump less is not good evidence, absent a detailed internal understanding, that they are hurting trump because they hate him. You're getting caught up in an entirely 'everything is about the last 4 years' culture war issues' account of politics and the FBI specifically when that's not even true of trump, and has much less to do with e.g. these Jack Smith charges than trump's literal election-related conspiracies that he should have not undertaken.
That's exactly what I was posting - we do have a fairly detailed internal understanding thanks to the texts and documents that have been released/leaked. You can just go read them and see the naked, undisguised hatred of Trump and his base - "smell the Trump support" etc. This isn't hidden or obscured in any real way, and FBI officials have, in the past, put their names on anti Trump letters that had significant impacts on the outcome of the previous election.
2016 was 7 years ago, not 4 - I don't understand the point that you're trying to make here, unless you were just mistaken about the year and the passage of time (I make this mistake a lot myself). But even if I assume you meant the last 8 years, I still think you're wrong. To my understanding, the transition from Candidate Obama to President Obama represents the exact same kind of conflict - except Obama simply folded and gave up on his campaign promises rather than try to fight in the way he promised his supporters he would. Trump is the most recent and prominent outburst of anger from an internal proletariat whose material conditions have gotten worse and worse even while their complaints are mocked and jeered when they aren't ignored by the current aristocracy/PMC, and these trends have been ongoing for longer than I've been alive. I think that anger and resentment is actually a far bigger story than Trump the man, and it still boggles my mind that people think that removing him would do anything to resolve the problems that he rode to the white house.
hm, interesting.
I mean, my belief is that while bias against Trump does exist, Trump's many current prosecutions, and most of the action taken against him, were responses to unforced errors. A democrat who lied to the feds about the boxes would've been prosecuted too.
I agree the 'problems that led to trump' aren't being addressed by prosecuting him, and that the strategic approach to trump from the libs is clearly suboptimal from their own interests. But if he did breach democratic or procedural norms in harmful ways, then prosecuting him is important in keeping those norms alive.
I think most FBI action related to trump came from the perspective of 'he's pretty annoying but we're doing our jobs', not 'we must prevent this fascist from destroying the nation', and strong selection effects in leaking, publishing, reporting, and sharing selectively amplify things so that yous claims seem true. Not that what you describe is impossible, that kind of thing could happen. Making a strong argument for that would be difficult and time-consuming though.
Do you have an opinion on why Paul Combetta was not prosecuted? The IG report shows that the FBI agents who interviewed him were 100% sure that he "lied his ass off", that they could prove it, and that they were confused to the point of having no idea why he wasn't charged, because that charge would normally be automatic.
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These prosecutions would have taken place regardless of Trump's conduct, because the point is not to actually score a conviction, but to sap his financial resources and time to prevent him from campaigning. We know this because we can go back to 2016 - Trump did nothing wrong and made no unforced errors with regards to Russia, but he was prosecuted regardless by people whose partisan desire to take him down was undeniably documented.
Wrong - Hillary did far worse and got little more than a stern talking to. Joe Biden also did worse and nothing happened (talking specifically about the boxes he kept in his garage here).
These norms are far, FAR less important than the norm "You do not criminally charge and prosecute your opponent in the next election" which is currently being destroyed in what I think is an incredibly bad move for the left. There's a very good chance Trump wins the next election, and every single one of these broken precedents is going to be a dagger in his hands - and I highly doubt he's going to be as restrained as he was in his first term. Have you seen the kind of content he shares on TruthSocial? There's a real edge to it that wasn't there before, and the anger and rage that his base is expressing right now make me deeply concerned that Trump being imprisoned could lead to incredibly violent and worst of all justified civil unrest.
If you think this it is because you have not done the research or read the primary sources that matter. Your position is directly contradicted by the leaked messages and open, public statements made by multiple FBI officials. I'm not going to spend a few hours finding them and doing your homework for you because it has already been done, over and over again.
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