Trolls beware, the US just indicted a bunch of Russians for trolling Americans on social media.

This nothingburger of an investigation has thus far yielded several indictments and a few guilty pleas including one from Michael Flynn the former national security advisor to the President of the United States.

The investigation is still ongoing and given the developments thus far I would hardly call it a nothingburger or a waste of time and the attacks on Mueller are clearly unjustified.

We don't know what lies on the horizon with respect to the possibility of collusion between Trump campaign and Russian criminals. And yes Rojo stealing identity of American citizens to launder payments for social media buy is a crime.

Let Mueller finish the job he was hired to do.[/quote]

Not one indictment on anything that could possibly be construed as a collusion between the Russians and Trump after 15 mos of this investigation.

Russians posting on Facebook is the "bombshell".

Admit it. There is nothing there. How long will you buy into this charade?

Reptilian Guard wrote:

It's a weak attempt by the tools of the Bolsheviks to save face lol. Muller is a bagman who's now more than a bit shaken. How can he extricate himself from this mess and keep Trump et al from deciding to hammer him for helping to facilitate Hillary's uranium deal with the Russians? lol

LOL!

Now here is a bot...or a poster posing as a bot.

what an idiot Wojo. Public school is not free. Ever hear of taxes. Did you sleep through that one after playing to hard on the street?

fulcrum wrote:

Dril wrote:

Lmfgtfy

The Russians stole the identities of American citizens, posed as political activists and used the flash points of immigration, religion and race to manipulate a campaig

Yes, it appears that's exactly what happened.

What's so amazing about this is that despite CIA's $52 billion annual budget, 13 Russians trolls were able to swing a national election to the overwhelming underdog.

You can't make this stuff up.

Why would you think it was only 13!?........because there were only warrants to arrest 13??

Just finding this. I'm pretty sure we've had Russian Trolls on here posting about doping topics.

I think Robert's headline is provocative but opens the question of what is permissible for foreign nationals to do in terms of elections. Clearly the Russian crossed the line but I'm not surprised the Russians are trying to create chaos in the US.

I care if countries are trying to influence our elections but it's also taken for granted that countries try and influence others elections.

I think we really care about how countries try and influence our elections.

I was reading some comments on a British website and they said, "how come Obama wasn't indicted for trying to influence the Brexit vote?". The point was Obama made it clear he was against Brexit. That is a foreigner trying to influence an election.

But it was openly done and didn't involve false identities. What if the US had hired a PR firm to influence things in Britain? I'm not trying to defend the Russians in anyway but take the discussion beyond "another country influences our elections"

I think what most of us against are fraud and deceit in trying to influence elections and maybe concerted covert operations to do it? Clearly the Russians want to upset the established political order in the US. From what I can tell from the info yesterday their trolls were mainly against the mainstream candidates and supporting Trump, Stein, and Bernie. When it was Trump vs Hillary they were supporting Trump but I think most importantly doing it in a very divisive way. Then once Trump was elected they organized a rally against him in NY. Continue to create chaos in America. I wonder if they really through Trump could win.

Interesting point I saw on a conservative blog powerlineblog.com. "The indictment is odd, to say the least. Its very first paragraph recites that it is against the law for foreign nationals to spend money to influence US elections, or for agents of foreign countries to engage in political activities without registering. But no one is charged with these crimes. Instead, the indictment is devoted mostly to charging a “conspiracy to defraud the United States.”

The 13 Rusisans people were pretending to be people they weren't and are charged with identity theft, and visa fraud in addition to a more general "“conspiracy to defraud the United States" but not the registration crimes you talk about. I'm not sure why. I think legally it is an interesting question on where it becomes a crime to influence an election. The indictment shows it might be easier to charge people for identity theft and other tangential crimes.

Now back to the more general concept of foreigners trying to influence elections. Take the Steele Dossier- it's an attempt by a foreign national (Steele is British) to influence the election. Now in this case he was paid for his information and doing his job. So it's clearly not a crime to try and influence a US election. We care about how they do it.

Now what if it turns out that Russian agents sent Steele false information about Trump (and some true information as well- I read an ex CIA guy saying it looked like a classic Russian disinformation campaign) is that a foreign agent (Russians) trying to influence an election? Yes. Is it a crime? I don't know.

Is it a crime for a Russian to troll on LetsRun.com about doping? I doubt it. Is it a crime to impersonate someone on here? Maybe but I doubt it.

Conundrum wrote:

fulcrum wrote:

Yes, it appears that's exactly what happened.

What's so amazing about this is that despite CIA's $52 billion annual budget, 13 Russians trolls were able to swing a national election to the overwhelming underdog.

You can't make this stuff up.

Why would you think it was only 13!?........because there were only warrants to arrest 13??

Well, yes, typically that's how that works.

Trutherism wrote:

This nothingburger of an investigation has thus far yielded several indictments and a few guilty pleas including one from Michael Flynn the former national security advisor to the President of the United States.

...

Let Mueller finish the job he was hired to do.

If you were facing over a million dollars in legal fees (and son facing a similar "indictment") to beat off a infinitely-resources vindictive witch-hunter, you'd probably capitulate and "confess" too.

Ruining people lives is a great job, ain't it?

people who are innocent enter guilty pleas every day. They simply can no longer withstand the unimaginable stress of a criminal investigation. They and their families suffer sheer exhaustion in every form — financial, physical, mental, and emotional. Add in a little prosecutorial duress — like the threat of indicting your son — and, presto, there’s a guilty plea.

Thanks WEJO.

To your point of of crimes verses prosecution, look at Al Capone. He killed, extorted, bribed, intimidated, etc. He went to jail for tax fraud because that is where the best proof of crimes was found.

We don't know if Russian meddling in the election actually changed the results. What is becoming clear is that the Russian government was attempting to sway the election and create division. This matters to us all as Americans. It should make us more vigilant about how we read our news. It should make us question sources that seem biased and try to look for other sources to back up or debunk stories. However, it appears to be having exactly the Russian desired effect of moving both camps toward news sources that agree with their point of view and ignoring/discrediting those with competing viewpoints.

Wejo- good points all around. Points that I’ve been making constantly since the election.

This whole “interfering with an election” is a ridiculously stupid concept. I’m disappointed in anyone I know that falls for this naive concept. Election year or not, secret information, leaks, spying, etc are going between countries, specifically to gain advantages over one another. We do it all the time too. We’re probably the worst offenders in history. Obama going on television supporting anti-Brexit and then a particular globalist candidate in the French election was very inappropriate. But of course, it was just fine by the MSM.

So if information was exposed about Hillary in 2013/14- bad enough to pretty much destroy her chances at even running- is that interfering in an election? Are countries supposed to halt all operations because another country is having an election. Ok- What if it’s during the election season, and a blockbuster crime is exposed by the Spaniards. Do we ignore it? Do we not want to know how big of a piece of sh1t our candidates are? Of course we do.

To this day, not a single Wikileak claim regarding Hillary and the DNC have been even disputed, let alone proven false. They were pieces of sh1t. Everyone knows now. THAT’S A GOOD THING.

HRC spent what, $1.2B? That’s f’n disgusting. Far exceeding Trump. And nearly every news outlet, celebrity, academia, etc all were trying to take one particular candidate down. But it wasn’t enough.

Memes don’t win elections. The suburbs do. The upper middle class does. White women do. College educated whites do.

And Trump won them all.

They call me........hepcat wrote:

Dril wrote:

Lmfgtfy

The Russians stole the identities of American citizens, posed as political activists and used the flash points of immigration, religion and race to manipulate a campaig

Illegal aliens steal the SSN's of Americans but are not prosecuted for identity theft? Why not?

Who says they aren’t? Did you read that on info Wars?

So you've bought into the witch hunt meme. If you don't want to be indicted for perjury then simply don't commit the crime. If Flynn had responded truthfully to the questions he was asked by FBI investigators he would not have been indicted for the perjury offense to which he pled guilty. He is also BTW now a cooperating witness to the Mueller investigation.

And if my identity was stolen and used by some Russian troll to further a nefarious agenda I'd be pretty pissed about.

BTW: If it is a good thing to know politicians improprieties, don't we also want to know about Trump's (exposed by Mueller or Wikileaks or any other verifiable source)?

You hit nearly every Trump talking point. When something looks bad and might point back to Trump, start talking about Hillary. Discredit the media and the source of information. Then throw in a racist comment.

Trutherism wrote:

So you've bought into the witch hunt meme. If you don't want to be indicted for perjury then simply don't commit the crime. If Flynn had responded truthfully to the questions he was asked by FBI investigators he would not have been indicted for the perjury offense to which he pled guilty. He is also BTW now a cooperating witness to the Mueller investigation.

Obviously you don't understand how prosecutorial/investigative malfeasance works (cf. Enron for a reminder). Most likely, Flynn did respond truthfully. Undeterred, Strzok took out his insurance policy of saying that Flynn lied anyway. Enter Mueller, who slams into over-drive. Bingo, Flynn is facing (at least) a million in legal fees, all just to defend himself from a prosecutorial lie.

BTW, he's not "cooperating", he just wanted his life back.

Shame on those of you in this thread who are minimizing what Russia did here.

This is not people messing around on Facebook.

Advertising works, and if it didn't, people wouldn't do it. Facebook and other social media ads and memes of course had an effect...we can never quantify it because that would be impossible, but to think that all the fake news perpetrated by Russia in favor of Trump and against Hillary didn't either keep some at home or galvanize others to vote, is ridiculous.

Now, the fact is that it doesn't matter if their efforts had an effect or not. It is the attempt that is criminal. It would be like if you poisoned someone's drink and they drank it, but lucky for them, they were immune to that poison for some reason. The attempt is what matters.

The 2 indictments against 13 people and 3 companies are:

1) Conspiracy to defraud the United States

2) Conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud related to indictment #1

This is not something to sweep under the rug, and the US has NEVER had anything like this before. This was a huge coordinated attack on our democracy that is iron clad with the intent of getting Trump elected. HR McMaster says it is "incontrovertible".

Be embarrassed that you supported a candidate who is the most criminal President we have ever had. Wish that he wasn't that way, but to look the other way when our country was attacked is unpatriotic. Shame on those of you with that opinion. You are wrong.

This is not something to sweep under the rug, and the US has NEVER had anything like this before.

I guess "had" means "had done to it"...

a) the USA has done such things to other countries.

b) arguably the usage of slush money funded by foreign entities with advert campaigns goes back to Clinton and China in 1996

Johnny Chung wrote:

b) arguably the usage of slush money funded by foreign entities with advert campaigns goes back to Clinton and China in 1996

Yeah, good job there of Clinton investigating himself. Unsurprisingly, the Lynch of that day got the message of what the result should be. Kind of like Starr, finding a "suicide" by VIncent Foster (though the appendix he was forced to include contradicts this), making the obstruction/perjury charges regarding Paula Jones a "political issue" instead of a judicial one, etc. Nice to have friends in such places.

HR McMaster says it is "incontrovertible".

Don't tempt me to give some other such definitive statements from the US intelligence community.

You know, they often lie to you too wrote:

HR McMaster says it is "incontrovertible".

Don't tempt me to give some other such definitive statements from the US intelligence community.

Hey, he was appointed by Trump himself. Trump is a serial liar...you should not believe anything he says.

Johnny Chung wrote:

This is not something to sweep under the rug, and the US has NEVER had anything like this before.

I guess "had" means "had done to it"...

a) the USA has done such things to other countries.

b) arguably the usage of slush money funded by foreign entities with advert campaigns goes back to Clinton and China in 1996

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_United_States_campaign_finance_controversy

The US also dropped nuclear weapons on Japan. Does that mean it would be ok for another country to do that? If you believe the US is guilty of crimes, then go about having the US found guilty. Mueller has indicted these people and these companies for these crimes, and they are crimes that are detrimental to our way of life. If you want Russia to pick our winners, continue to minimize what they did.

I would feel the same way if Hillary won and these same allegations were against here. Country over Party always.

Trump is a bad bad incompetent person. If it weren't for the Russia thing, we would be talking about his affairs, his sexual assaults, his fraudulent business practices, his walking backstage at his stupid pageants to see women naked against their will, his constant lying a lot more. And yes Clinton had affairs...and he lost me as a supporter because of it, but Trump is the President today, and we should be concerned about what he does or has done. He has already paid two women off for f*cking him...that means he didn't want that info out and means he was susceptible to blackmail. He's just flawed in every possible way.

Not sure if you people are defending him as a person or defending the legitimacy of his election. As things stand right now, his legitimacy is intact. IF collusion (conspiracy) with Russia is proven, then his legitimacy will not be.

Deciding that Trump is horrible doesn't mean you have to like Hillary. You could have picked a much better Presidential candidate like John Kasich...I might have even voted for him.

Again, shame on those of you who are trying to minimize the Russian interference here. You are wrong to do so.