Trump call to DOJ in Dec 2020: 'Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me'

[NxNW]

It's getting old now. Just like everything else. Just cause he was accused doesn't make him guilty. This is the constitution. If you can't prove guilt enough to pursuade enough people, maybe you shouldn't bring the charge. It's not supposed to be easy. Too much from the left was politically motivated out if hatred. That's not enough.

It's a bit old now.

What's old now? Trump trying to dispute the election he lost?

 

[EndTimeTCC]

Which is what makes it easy for the violent ones to keep them in line.

You might be rather unpleasantly surprised.

 

[EndTimeTCC]

I don't know what this means.

(Also, I'm not going to click blind links to bit.ly.)

The dems did not permit the reps to have their provisionary minority day of hearings prior to the articles of impeachment being processed. Dems saying they had to get the impeachment underway. From the looks of it, they did not want to be too late in case COVID broke out and impeded their own efforts toward impeachment. So instead that got ahead of the curve and pushed it through fast and waiting several weeks until walking the articles over on the first American case of COVID day. Phew, glad that got it pushed through in time.

(3) Nadler denies minority hearing because it would 'delay' impeachment - YouTube

(3) Impeachment hearing gets heated: Republicans demand a minority hearing day - YouTube

 

[EndTimeTCC]

Thanks. I'm all for people with different opinions, having conversations, exploring differences, trying to see the other side's view.

Well, I see this a little differently to you.
When the accusations of a leak from Wuhan lab came out, they came from official channels (i.e. the president) and were delivered in a strong way (as if it were fact) but were not based on any evidence. It was just pure speculation.
So the pushback at the time was against the promoted idea that the virus "WAS due to a leak from the Wuhan lab". Saying that the outbreak WAS due to a lab leak is premature as there is no evidence in support of it. It is just one possibility of many.



I don't see this at all.

The non "right" leaning media get a lot of flack from Trump and his supporters. They have lumped them all together as being MSM and have conflated them all as being "left" biased with an anti-Trump and anti "right" agenda.

This means people on the "right" are only watching, only believing what they see and hear on media that is right wing biased. They won't even seek out media that is supposedly unbiased. "You are either for us or against us".

I don't watch a lot of USA tv. I don't live in USA, I'm not immersed in it all.
But from what I've seen.
The likes of MSNBC and CNN they focus on specific people and specific actions, e.g. Trump, Barr etc.
Whereas, from what I've seen of FoxNews they characterise a left vs right thing. They blame everything on the left, they characterise the left as being the "radical", "socialist" left.
Everything becomes a conspiracy and becomes a political divide.
e.g. masks is a conspiracy, a grab for control by the radical left.
Vaccinations is a conspiract, a grab for control, an attack against freedom of speech.

The media are sensationalist by nature. They aren't going to present articles as ho hum, take it or leave it. They are designed to be attention grabbing, must reads and want you to keep coming back for more. They also need to balance that with "truth" otherwise if you feel you are being deceived you might move on to another provider.

FoxNews have learnt that "truth" for their audience means pro-Trump. IF they suggest he lost a state in the election or even admit that he lost the election then their audience move onto OAN. So they are forced financially to stick to the pro-trump narrative.

People that are drinking the CNN and MSNBC coolaid will be concerned about specifics. Concerned about Trump doing pressure deals with foreign countries to fabricate investigations into his political rivals, concerned about Trump promoting The Big lie and inciting angst and violence in his supporters, concerned about Barr interfering in Justice charges and investigations into Trump's allies. Concerned about GOP members and states supporting Voter suppression laws. These are clear and specific to people and events.

People that are drinking the FoxNews, OAN, Brietbart coolaid will be concerned about "DeepState" and elitist radical far leftties "socialists" controlling media, controlling social media, cancelling and suppressing the voice of the "right", taking away guns, stealing elections and making it so Republicans can never win an election again. This is a much broader brush stroke, individuals are not named, specific events are not mentioned. This is a war between right vs left, and this is what "right" political media is doing.
People not watching Far right political media do not have this sense of right vs left. They are not in this state of panic, they are not in this state of feeling suppressed or feeling angered or hard done by. They don't see supporters of right wing politics as being the enemy.

I hear what you are saying and I agree that there is an us vs. them theme on the right. But I used to watch MSNBC and CNN prior to 2017. Once Trump got in, i saw a much different side to them. I would see MSNBC and CNN as us vs. them too though. Like when the riots were going on it was the conservatives that were over reacting. Then when that story tanked their ratings they capitulated and admitted the riots were happening...lol...as if it were news.

I agree getting too caught up in us vs. them is not healthy. But with the far left agendas as stated and the WEF (World Economic Forum) agendas stated, they are pretty much the same thing. So to me its not difficult to see that there is a globalist vs nationalist difference in media. Fox was the first to announce Arizona for Biden. So it would be pretty ironic to see if there is something that comes of the voter fraud thing right out of that state. Fox had to have special counseling as to why they could call it so early for Biden. It was unusual.

 

[TLK Valentine]

You might be rather unpleasantly surprised.

It is psychologically impossible for Donald's supporters to unpleasantly surprise me...

... and getting more and more unlikely they'll ever do it pleasantly.

 

[Whyayeman]

I did not bring this up. There is an effort from some quarters to whitewash Trump, to revise the narrative of the November election and to airbrush certain awkward facts. They are relentless.

We should not be persuaded to forget what happened, to put it it aside like outmoded fashions.

 

[SimplyMe]

In testimony that would appear to support Trump wanting the DoJ to say there has been election fraud:
"Byung J. Pak, a former U.S. attorney in Atlanta, told congressional investigators on Wednesday that his abrupt resignation in January had been prompted by Justice Department officials’ warning that President Donald J. Trump intended to fire him for refusing to say that widespread voter fraud had been found in Georgia, according to a person familiar with his testimony."

It will be interesting to see what his co-workers, particularly those that allegedly "warned" him, have to say.

 

[essentialsaltes]

In testimony that would appear to support Trump wanting the DoJ to say there has been election fraud:
"Byung J. Pak, a former U.S. attorney in Atlanta, told congressional investigators on Wednesday that his abrupt resignation in January had been prompted by Justice Department officials’ warning that President Donald J. Trump intended to fire him for refusing to say that widespread voter fraud had been found in Georgia, according to a person familiar with his testimony."

I was pretty sure we'd be hearing more about him sometime soon.

 

[stevil]

It's getting old now. Just like everything else. Just cause he was accused doesn't make him guilty. This is the constitution. If you can't prove guilt enough to pursuade enough people, maybe you shouldn't bring the charge. It's not supposed to be easy. Too much from the left was politically motivated out if hatred. That's not enough.

It's a bit old now.

The Russian collusion investigation had nothing to do with the "left"
The investigation was started by the FBI and continued by a Special Council employed by the Republican acting attorney general.
The investigate the investigators determined that the FBI was correct in starting this investigation and that it was not politically motivated.

I personally found the case presented against Donald Trump in the first impeachment compelling. It was very telling that the Republican Senators voted to not allow witnesses or document evidence to be used in their Senate "trial".
It seems to be that there is NOTHING that Trump could ever do to convince most Republican Senators to remove him from office, as long as Trump remains popular with his base and that his base is so loyal they will vote for whomever Trump endorses, this give Trump ultimate power over his Republican Senators hoping to be voted in for another term.
According to Trump's supporters, Trump can pardon and commute his elitist friends from crimes proven in court. Trump can pressure foreign countries to fabricate charges against is political opponents, Trump can incite violence against his VP, against his own Senators at Capitol Hill in order to subvert the confirmation of a democratic election, Trump can ask his AG to interfere into investigations and cases against himself and his elitist friends. It's pretty much anything goes. Trump supporters just want Trump to be in office at all costs.

 

[whatbogsends]

Thanks. I'm all for people with different opinions, having conversations, exploring differences, trying to see the other side's view.

Well, I see this a little differently to you.
When the accusations of a leak from Wuhan lab came out, they came from official channels (i.e. the president) and were delivered in a strong way (as if it were fact) but were not based on any evidence. It was just pure speculation.
So the pushback at the time was against the promoted idea that the virus "WAS due to a leak from the Wuhan lab". Saying that the outbreak WAS due to a lab leak is premature as there is no evidence in support of it. It is just one possibility of many.

On February 19, 2020, The Lancet, among the most respected and influential medical journals in the world, published a statement that roundly rejected the lab-leak hypothesis, effectively casting it as a xenophobic cousin to climate change denialism and anti-vaxxism. Signed by 27 scientists, the statement expressed “solidarity with all scientists and health professionals in China” and asserted: “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.”

The Lancet statement effectively ended the debate over COVID-19’s origins before it began. To Gilles Demaneuf, following along from the sidelines, it was as if it had been “nailed to the church doors,” establishing the natural origin theory as orthodoxy. “Everyone had to follow it. Everyone was intimidated. That set the tone.”

The statement struck Demaneuf as “totally nonscientific.” To him, it seemed to contain no evidence or information. And so he decided to begin his own inquiry in a “proper” way, with no idea of what he would find.
...
And yet, in the wake of the Lancet statement and under the cloud of Donald Trump’s toxic racism, which contributed to an alarming wave of anti-Asian violence in the U.S., one possible answer to this all-important question remained largely off-limits until the spring of 2021.

Behind closed doors, however, national security and public health experts and officials across a range of departments in the executive branch were locked in high-stakes battles over what could and couldn’t be investigated and made public.

A months long Vanity Fair investigation, interviews with more than 40 people, and a review of hundreds of pages of U.S. government documents, including internal memos, meeting minutes, and email correspondence, found that conflicts of interest, stemming in part from large government grants supporting controversial virology research, hampered the U.S. investigation into COVID-19’s origin at every step. In one State Department meeting, officials seeking to demand transparency from the Chinese government say they were explicitly told by colleagues not to explore the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s gain-of-function research, because it would bring unwelcome attention to U.S. government funding of it.

In an internal memo obtained by Vanity Fair, Thomas DiNanno, former acting assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance, wrote that staff from two bureaus, his own and the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, “warned” leaders within his bureau “not to pursue an investigation into the origin of COVID-19” because it would “‘open a can of worms’ if it continued.”
...
But for most of the past year, the lab-leak scenario was treated not simply as unlikely or even inaccurate but as morally out-of-bounds. In late March, former Centers for Disease Control director Robert Redfield received death threats from fellow scientists after telling CNN that he believed COVID-19 had originated in a lab. “I was threatened and ostracized because I proposed another hypothesis,” Redfield told Vanity Fair. “I expected it from politicians. I didn’t expect it from science.”

With President Trump out of office, it should be possible to reject his xenophobic agenda and still ask why, in all places in the world, did the outbreak begin in the city with a laboratory housing one of the world’s most extensive collection of bat viruses, doing some of the most aggressive research?
...
Then came the revelation that the Lancet statement was not only signed but organized by a zoologist named Peter Daszak, who has repackaged U.S. government grants and allocated them to facilities conducting gain-of-function research—among them the WIV itself. David Asher, now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, ran the State Department’s day-to-day COVID-19 origins inquiry. He said it soon became clear that “there is a huge gain-of-function bureaucracy” inside the federal government.
...
As officials at the meeting discussed what they could share with the public, they were advised by Christopher Park, the director of the State Department’s Biological Policy Staff in the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, not to say anything that would point to the U.S. government’s own role in gain-of-function research, according to documentation of the meeting obtained by Vanity Fair.

Some of the attendees were “absolutely floored,” said an official familiar with the proceedings. That someone in the U.S. government could “make an argument that is so nakedly against transparency, in light of the unfolding catastrophe, was…shocking and disturbing.”

Park, who in 2017 had been involved in lifting a U.S. government moratorium on funding for gain-of-function research, was not the only official to warn the State Department investigators against digging in sensitive places. As the group probed the lab-leak scenario, among other possibilities, its members were repeatedly advised not to open a “Pandora’s box,” said four former State Department officials interviewed by Vanity Fair. The admonitions “smelled like a cover-up,” said Thomas DiNanno, “and I wasn’t going to be part of it.”

Reached for comment, Chris Park told Vanity Fair, “I am skeptical that people genuinely felt they were being discouraged from presenting facts.” He added that he was simply arguing that it “is making an enormous and unjustifiable leap…to suggest that research of that kind [meant] that something untoward is going on.”

The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins | Vanity Fair

 

[stevil]

But for most of the past year, the lab-leak scenario was treated not simply as unlikely or even inaccurate but as morally out-of-bounds. In late March, former Centers for Disease Control director Robert Redfield received death threats from fellow scientists after telling CNN that he believed COVID-19 had originated in a lab. “I was threatened and ostracized because I proposed another hypothesis,” Redfield told Vanity Fair. “I expected it from politicians. I didn’t expect it from science.”

The problem is this
"after telling CNN that he believed COVID-19 had originated in a lab."

is very different from
"I proposed another hypothesis"

He was not saying that it could have come from a lab lead, he was saying that it did come from a lab leak.
He was not proposing a hypothesis, he was promoting his belief.

 

[whatbogsends]

The problem is this
"after telling CNN that he believed COVID-19 had originated in a lab."

is very different from
"I proposed another hypothesis"

He was not saying that it could have come from a lab lead, he was saying that it did come from a lab leak.
He was not proposing a hypothesis, he was promoting his belief.

When one says "i believed X", they are not saying "It was definitely X".

He didn't attempt to state a fact, he espoused his opinion. He was threatened and ostracized for giving his opinion.

"It arose naturally" was also an opinion. There are no solid facts to prove that (and certainly were none then), yet no one was threatened and ostracized for making that claim very strongly, as did the scientists in the Lancet letter (or others in repeating that claim for nearly a year thereafter).

 

[stevil]

When one says "i believed X", they are not saying "It was definitely X".

He didn't attempt to state a fact, he espoused his opinion. He was threatened and ostracized for giving his opinion.

"It arose naturally" was also an opinion. There are no solid facts to prove that (and certainly were none then), yet no one was threatened and ostracized for making that claim very strongly, as did the scientists in the Lancet letter (or others in repeating that claim for nearly a year thereafter).

I don't condone sending of threats of violence to people.

I'm just highlighting that there is a clear distinction between saying that something is X vs there is a possiblility of X.
From my own perspective, I have never thought that a leak from the lab was "off the table" just unsupported by evidence.
At the time, Trump and some lackeys and this dude were selling this up as if it were the case.
They were over selling it and rightly criticised for that.

 

[Jimmy D]

"It arose naturally" was also an opinion.

Based on data, not idle speculation…


“Scientists from multiple countries have published and analysed genomes of the causative agent, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2),
1 and they overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10 “

 

[Whyayeman]

Meanwhile, back on topic ...

 

[EndTimeTCC]

The Russian collusion investigation had nothing to do with the "left"
The investigation was started by the FBI and continued by a Special Council employed by the Republican acting attorney general.
The investigate the investigators determined that the FBI was correct in starting this investigation and that it was not politically motivated.

I personally found the case presented against Donald Trump in the first impeachment compelling. It was very telling that the Republican Senators voted to not allow witnesses or document evidence to be used in their Senate "trial".
It seems to be that there is NOTHING that Trump could ever do to convince most Republican Senators to remove him from office, as long as Trump remains popular with his base and that his base is so loyal they will vote for whomever Trump endorses, this give Trump ultimate power over his Republican Senators hoping to be voted in for another term.
According to Trump's supporters, Trump can pardon and commute his elitist friends from crimes proven in court. Trump can pressure foreign countries to fabricate charges against is political opponents, Trump can incite violence against his VP, against his own Senators at Capitol Hill in order to subvert the confirmation of a democratic election, Trump can ask his AG to interfere into investigations and cases against himself and his elitist friends. It's pretty much anything goes. Trump supporters just want Trump to be in office at all costs.

It would appear to many or most conservatives that the FBI had a leftist leaning. FISA abuse inferred this to be the case as special council John Duran indicated publicly in his "rare" response to such matter. The fact that the investigation kept going under Special Republican Council speaks to transparency. Robert Mueller got everything he wanted and could not produce a criminal referral of Trump to the DOJ. In the case of Gen Flynn and the case of Carter Page, the FBI (as well as certain judges) looked to the conservative world as hugely political.

The way I remember this is that the actual vote was not to allow NEW witnesses and NEW documentation into the hearing. The reason was a scolding because the way the dems handled the House of Rep impeachment was too one sided (Republican Congressmen at various points publicly protested over their not allowing fair republican representation--you may not remember but it was well voiced by the reps...to the extent they formed a group to confront that publicly), and had unreasonable delay in transference of the articles of impeachment (taking it out of the hands of chidden). So a provision for the dems to have some unhealthy measure of jurisdiction over that kind of process in the senate was overruled. Had the Senate seen a professional handling of the impeachment while in the jurisdiction of the House, there would have been more negotiating wiggle room. The dems shot themselves in the foot. It was already well understood before the senate trial started that Trump would be acquitted based on the way the congress handled it.

 

[EndTimeTCC]

It is psychologically impossible for Donald's supporters to unpleasantly surprise me...

... and getting more and more unlikely they'll ever do it pleasantly.

Actually, that is pretty funny.

 

[EndTimeTCC]

I did not bring this up. There is an effort from some quarters to whitewash Trump, to revise the narrative of the November election and to airbrush certain awkward facts. They are relentless.

We should not be persuaded to forget what happened, to put it it aside like outmoded fashions.

Granted there were Trump supporters doing things they should not have done. I won't forget this either. Light security, invites into the capital, 1400 hours of video the press prefers not to look at, and of course the biggy...a failed impeachment (again) over it. I won't forget either.

 

[EndTimeTCC]

On February 19, 2020, The Lancet, among the most respected and influential medical journals in the world, published a statement that roundly rejected the lab-leak hypothesis, effectively casting it as a xenophobic cousin to climate change denialism and anti-vaxxism. Signed by 27 scientists, the statement expressed “solidarity with all scientists and health professionals in China” and asserted: “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.”

The Lancet statement effectively ended the debate over COVID-19’s origins before it began. To Gilles Demaneuf, following along from the sidelines, it was as if it had been “nailed to the church doors,” establishing the natural origin theory as orthodoxy. “Everyone had to follow it. Everyone was intimidated. That set the tone.”

The statement struck Demaneuf as “totally nonscientific.” To him, it seemed to contain no evidence or information. And so he decided to begin his own inquiry in a “proper” way, with no idea of what he would find.
...
And yet, in the wake of the Lancet statement and under the cloud of Donald Trump’s toxic racism, which contributed to an alarming wave of anti-Asian violence in the U.S., one possible answer to this all-important question remained largely off-limits until the spring of 2021.

Behind closed doors, however, national security and public health experts and officials across a range of departments in the executive branch were locked in high-stakes battles over what could and couldn’t be investigated and made public.

A months long Vanity Fair investigation, interviews with more than 40 people, and a review of hundreds of pages of U.S. government documents, including internal memos, meeting minutes, and email correspondence, found that conflicts of interest, stemming in part from large government grants supporting controversial virology research, hampered the U.S. investigation into COVID-19’s origin at every step. In one State Department meeting, officials seeking to demand transparency from the Chinese government say they were explicitly told by colleagues not to explore the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s gain-of-function research, because it would bring unwelcome attention to U.S. government funding of it.

In an internal memo obtained by Vanity Fair, Thomas DiNanno, former acting assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance, wrote that staff from two bureaus, his own and the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, “warned” leaders within his bureau “not to pursue an investigation into the origin of COVID-19” because it would “‘open a can of worms’ if it continued.”
...
But for most of the past year, the lab-leak scenario was treated not simply as unlikely or even inaccurate but as morally out-of-bounds. In late March, former Centers for Disease Control director Robert Redfield received death threats from fellow scientists after telling CNN that he believed COVID-19 had originated in a lab. “I was threatened and ostracized because I proposed another hypothesis,” Redfield told Vanity Fair. “I expected it from politicians. I didn’t expect it from science.”

With President Trump out of office, it should be possible to reject his xenophobic agenda and still ask why, in all places in the world, did the outbreak begin in the city with a laboratory housing one of the world’s most extensive collection of bat viruses, doing some of the most aggressive research?
...
Then came the revelation that the Lancet statement was not only signed but organized by a zoologist named Peter Daszak, who has repackaged U.S. government grants and allocated them to facilities conducting gain-of-function research—among them the WIV itself. David Asher, now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, ran the State Department’s day-to-day COVID-19 origins inquiry. He said it soon became clear that “there is a huge gain-of-function bureaucracy” inside the federal government.
...
As officials at the meeting discussed what they could share with the public, they were advised by Christopher Park, the director of the State Department’s Biological Policy Staff in the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, not to say anything that would point to the U.S. government’s own role in gain-of-function research, according to documentation of the meeting obtained by Vanity Fair.

Some of the attendees were “absolutely floored,” said an official familiar with the proceedings. That someone in the U.S. government could “make an argument that is so nakedly against transparency, in light of the unfolding catastrophe, was…shocking and disturbing.”

Park, who in 2017 had been involved in lifting a U.S. government moratorium on funding for gain-of-function research, was not the only official to warn the State Department investigators against digging in sensitive places. As the group probed the lab-leak scenario, among other possibilities, its members were repeatedly advised not to open a “Pandora’s box,” said four former State Department officials interviewed by Vanity Fair. The admonitions “smelled like a cover-up,” said Thomas DiNanno, “and I wasn’t going to be part of it.”

Reached for comment, Chris Park told Vanity Fair, “I am skeptical that people genuinely felt they were being discouraged from presenting facts.” He added that he was simply arguing that it “is making an enormous and unjustifiable leap…to suggest that research of that kind [meant] that something untoward is going on.”

The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins | Vanity Fair

The Lancet pressured by public scrutiny has no bias, and certainly stayed well clear of political partisandhip.

The Lancet retracts large study on hydroxychloroquine (nbcnews.com)

Isn't Facebook letting us talk about Wuhan Lab Theories now? The gold standard of right speak.

 

[EndTimeTCC]

The problem is this
"after telling CNN that he believed COVID-19 had originated in a lab."

is very different from
"I proposed another hypothesis"

He was not saying that it could have come from a lab lead, he was saying that it did come from a lab leak.
He was not proposing a hypothesis, he was promoting his belief.

And as president with the highest level of intel (as Mike Pompeo still and has always affirmed) indicates high probability it came from Wuhan lab, with no mitigating alternative theory appraise worthy out there. Plus, Trump like to troll...knowing if he said it that way...the media would HAVE to prove him wrong. LG -- life is good.