Finally, after eight hours and 357 points, 169 comments with healthy discussion - we have the inevitable flagging.
I slightly know how this all works, and I still love HN. In any case, I hope everyone who flagged this [0] feels better now after squelching the discussion. It was already pushed far off the frontpage and it was only on /active. I guess that wasn't enough. The crazy thing is that I bet we would all get along over beers, vodka, or tea.
This is why I read https://hckrnews.com/ top 20 - things like this stick there. Also feeds me less noise and requires less F5 than the ever-changing HN homepage :)
I think it's mostly people: sometimes theirs, sometimes it's definitely people on our side of the border. They just woke up in Moscow. The timing of this particular post creation and the eventual flagging time makes me want to share this with my Russian brothers and sisters:
Please note that this anti-Putin/anit-imperialist Russian language music video has >185M views just on YouTube.
This Russian language 2-piece band has Mr. Beast level views while being banned in Putin's Russia. Don't believe their dictator's weak af propaganda. Russians also yearn to be free.
Russia's dictator is so weak that he just had to ask the USA for help, openly. The entire Russian imperialist mirage is crumbling.
If we can get our shit together in the EU, Russia will finally join us as a modern country. The biggest beneficiary of this will be the Russian people, well aside from all the Ukrainians their old system is currently murdering.
Only a couple generations ago, all of us in the EU were killing each other by the millions. We did better, and so can they.
Turn CC=on for all of these videos. The translation is perfect.
My entire point with this wall of text comment is that we need to stop buying imperialist Russia's extremely effective, yet paper-thin propaganda. If we stop buying this bullshit, it will free Russia and thereby stop their slaughter of Ukraine.
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You have to think the current administration is completely and totally owned by foreign interests at this point.
The question is, what do you do as the new administration coming in? Presumably you assume every system and every person is compromised all the way down, like a compromised server - clean wipe and re-install.
One would assume that, like any good hacker, the current set would be heavily focused on ensuring they can survive a reboot / wipe. The question is, what would they be doing to achieve that?
Prosecute and show no mercy, the current Iran war probably will still be going on when the new administration comes in. The only hope for Mr. Kushner and some of the other people is a rapid peace treaty before the end of this mixed-up administration even that probably will not help.
If dems take back congress this election and the Iran war is still going by the 2028 election half the country will believe democrats started the war and want to continue it.
That's right. Punishment is the only way to deter the crowd of grifters. They act like raiding the government is risk free, because it is. No one of note in US politics or the Forbes 100 has been put in jail for a very long time. Why would they behave? There is no incentive to follow the law, and unlimited profits and power is too much to resist.
They may be able to be prosecuted in foreign countries even with a pardon in the US. The US would need an extradition treaty with the country where they committed the crimes in some way and an administration willing to extradite them.
Trump is just going to pardon everyone around him like Biden did. Not saying anyone Biden pardoned did wrong, just that it's a thing that can be done without having to name any "crimes" the pardons may be for.
This is a good chance to remind people that laws can be changed. Including how pardons work by allowing Congress to override a pardon. This is all very clearly outside the bounds of the intent of the pardon power.
Most of the "loopholes" and gaps that the current administration takes advantage of are due to the thinking along the lines of "no one would stoop so low as to operate any other way." There's no way to close all the gaps, but you can certainly make an effort to narrow the number of gaps.
Allowing Congress to override a pardon is a change in the law that would be effective only if done by amending the Constitution. A statute purporting to do so would be an unconstitutional infringement of an expressly granted presidential power.
“The President … shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.”
- Article II, Section 2, Clause 1
No ex post facto is in the constitution though. And any attempt to change the laws that can be changed by Congress would have enough lead time where POTUS could pardon just before the laws changed
>This is a good chance to remind people that laws can be changed. Including how pardons work by allowing Congress to override a pardon.
That would require a Constitutional amendment, and that won't happen. It would require too many states to be willing to give up what amounts to absolute power to nullify their own crimes should their party win the White House, or defend themselves from political retribution by the other party. Remember that was the whole justification for SCOTUS granting the President immunity from all criminal acts while in office - the threat that Biden prosecuting Trump would just lead to an endless cycle of recriminations and prosecutions of the Executive by the other party.
A Constitutional amendment also opens up the possibility of litigating any part of the Constitution, including the Second Amendment. For that reason alone every red state would oppose it on principle.
>This is all very clearly outside the bounds of the intent of the pardon power.
All that matters is the text of the Constitution and intent means whatever the Supreme Court says it means, and they don't seem to have a problem with it.
He was elected by the "will of the people", and there isn't any "no felons" clause anywhere in the Constitution. He also hasn't been impeached, convicted, and removed for high crimes and misdemeanors. Any pardons he issues will likely be entirely legal.
(We really should require pardons to pass a bipartisan Senate committee where there is no odd-numbered tiebreaker vote and require one defection across the aisle to approve--or something like that)
Biden did not pardon "everyone around him". He made specific, targeted pardons for people the GOP had already stated they were going to persecute, like his son and Fauci.
But yes, preemptive pardons shouldn't be possible, but we'll need an amendment to reform the power at all.
Unless this administration is held responsible for their actions, I think it's safe to say that the incoming administration is compromised too. We had a bunch of hullabaloo from the Democrats about Russian influence and zero about Israeli influence (which is much more overt, severe and out in the open), so it sure looks like our entire government is a rooted server at this point.
> You have to think the current administration is completely and totally owned by foreign interests at this point.
The internal dismantling of the US Government, and 'the identity of the US' in general, that this administration has performed must be beyond the wildest dreams of those who were on the other side of the Cold War.
Despite 'losing' the Cold War, Putin appears to have managed to arrange for the US to also lose, somehow, after the war was over.
Or in some cases, not necessarily "owned" but purposely acting on behalf of foreign agents. Kushner + Witkoff running point on all Middle East-related talks on behalf of Israel with their only credibility to do so is just being Jewish, apparently.
Much of what this article discusses went on during Trump's first term. A new administration came in and largely did nothing. They had the chance to put Trump in jail or prevent him from running for high office again. They didn't. There were excuses. e.g. Americans didn't want to see a former president treated like a criminal. "That's what third-world banana republics do."
Third world banana republics commonly prosecute ex-leaders for two reasons:
1. The new leader is a criminal thug, and needs to eliminate any threat posed by the previous leader or his supporters.
2. The old leader was a criminal thug who did illegal things.
You don't need both of these to be true to put a former leader behind bars. Either one is sufficient.
I'm a Canadian. Even though the U.S. is busy meddling in our provincial elections, referendums, etc. while waging a trade war on us and threatening to make us the 51st state, we're being set up as scapegoats for the midterms. Yes, your ambassador is currently alleging that Canadian cabinet ministers are interfering in the midterms[1]. This is just one of many indicators suggesting that, should the Republicans lose control of both houses in the midterms, they're going to cry foul and likely refuse to obey the law.
Anyone talking about prosecuting Kushner or the rest of the Trump administration has put the cart before the horse. You have to make sure the midterms are not interfered with by the Trump administration, win the mid-terms, and then win the struggle to enforce that election result on an administration that does not obey the law. You have a mountain of obstacles to climb before you can even think about doing what the Biden administration chose not to do. At the very start of that climb may be the question of whether or not the opposition to Trump is actually comitted to that hard, grueling climb, or would they welcome defeat because it's so much easier?
100 years ago Pareto (yes that Pareto) told us what happens in "Circulation of the Elites" when he noticed a very small part of the population owns most of the assets.
This will be an unpopular opinion here and will get downvoted. But this is a total hit piece on Kushner. Vanity Fair is super political and you cannot trust anything they write.
Yeah, it's almost unimaginable scale a difficulty trying to clear house from a fallen compromised idiot regime, that half unintentionally and far worse half intentionally has handed our nation over to foreign powers.
That has purged the military of any women, any diversity, likely anyone now cowtowing the war crimes happy "department of war" (and clearly given all our blown up bases and very very expensive radars etc has not even basic competence at defense). Has purged diplomatic core of none-regime forces. https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/6166456-state-de...
These facsist anti-state actors are not going to leave the most unimaginable shitfests. They're going to backdoor everything they can. They're going to leave their foreign hostile friends with full access as much as they can.
The project of doing a full from scratch clean reboot of just the systems is going to be unimaginably slow and terrible. Years of reformatting and careful monitoring. These people hate America, hate democracy, they hate any accountability, they hate democracy, they hate reality. Because reality is against low life lying sacks of no good shit like them. That can't do anything but low despicable low effort actions, and cheat. These people are all Jared. They are all vicious bitter foes to society, dealing readily all the time with the most vile monsters, begging for the destruction of our nation. The great reboot, trying to unwind their corruption, is going to be like trying to fight Vinge's Blight. A never quite dead monsters that is everywhere. Because these are the worst people.
Because even as every day passes and it seems like nihilism makes the most sense, it cannot be our future?!!!
I am trying to remind myself of this, first and foremost.
Having grown up under Soviet occupation - where epistemic nihilism was weaponized - I was taught to try to do better since kindergarten, but this learning happened only at home. I recall my mom trying to deprogram me even back then.
For the moment, we have all of history at our finger tips. Can we just skip the generations of depression and suffering this time?
A lot of people still don't believe it despite increasing levels of proof. The proof is fighting against the world's most powerful media empires, which also prevent access to the proof.
Corruption is polling near the top as an issue in the US midterm [1] when previously in the last election it was immigration followed by economics/inflation. Politicians are experts at ignoring the obvious issues until they get so out of hand it become impossible to ignore. Then they usually just campaign on it to get elected instead of prioritizing long term reforms.
People aren't convinced by evidence, but by consensus. Consensus is the thing built on evidence. Think of it like a phase change, you can keep cooling the water but won't freeze until 0°C
Network is absolutely incredible in how it stands the test of time and predicts our current news cycle (we're all still human!). It should be required viewing, especially for today's youngsters.
It's worth pointing out this quote: "One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused"
I'm not sure about the last part of people being happy, but what he's really talking about in hindsight is the index fund. Vanguard started the first SP500 index fund on December 31, 1975. Network came out in 1976.
Also worth noting that GK Chesterton also talked about something similar to an index fund, but it was an idea called distributism and was a direct challenge to socialism
Azerbaijan isn't a random country in corruption contexts. It is a petro-state and run by a single family for their own enrichment. It's pretty expected to come up occasionally in these kind of stories.
I also feel people are missing the forest for the trees in that discussion in that Jared Kushner is a private citizen and the son in law of the president who somehow is negotiating with foreign heads of states despite having no mandate from the American people to do so. Forget a hacked phone, why is a nepo baby running around negotiating on behalf of a country without holding any office
He’s a United States special envoy (a position whose history goes back to the presidency of George Washington), which are government officials, like for example ambassadors and other diplomats are as well. They don’t require a direct mandate from the people; many government representatives don’t.
That’s not to dispute nepotism, but he isn’t acting as a private citizen. As the article notes, being a government representative actually makes him formally subject to additional accountability rules.
>which are government officials, like for example ambassadors and other diplomats are as well.
No. Kushner in this second term, unlike in the first, isn't a government official of any sort. He is now purely a private citizen which the government itself has argued this month when a watchdog group sued Kushner exactly because he's exercising authority of diplomats and ambassadors, which requires approval by the U.S Senate which he hasn't got and which would indeed subject him to ethics rules.
What you are basically saying is that there is no possible way the election can go any way other than how you expect. It doing so must mean it’s rigged.
It's always funny ever election cycle since 2016, Democrats and Republicans both start screaming "rigged" if they lose. Neither seeming to see the hypocrisy in their accusation. Probably not a good thing. It's not rigged, but it makes for great theatre to say it is. Unfortunately enough people have started to believe it to a since that it is eroding trust in democracy, which is arguably just as bad.
Is there an alternate reality where the dem aligned mass media didn't completely bury the ridiculously salacious laptop story (drugs, money for access aaaand onlyfans level nudity!!) to steer the election?
Because i distinctly recall the head of what to that point I though was a credible journalistic organization saying she didnt want to "waste people's time" with that.
The alternate reality is the one where "dem aligned mass media _did_ completely bury" -- because it's all I heard about for months, and months, and months, and months, and months, and months, and months, and months, and months, and months, and months, and months, and months, and months.
Money for access is a stretch, at least if you mean for Joe. Some speakerphone conversations that included no business, and zero evidence of Joe ever doing anything untoward that benefited any of Hunter's associates.
Archer was quite explicit in his testimony that if anything, Hunter was basically scamming them with the illusion of access.
Which, well, is bad, but if anything, the situation reflects that Joe never let his son influence him to do anything corrupt, which turns it entirely into a bunch of TMZ level drama about Hunter's drug and prostitution habits.
And I still heard about the laptop plenty before the election. If that is a buried story, then plenty of widely published and discussed stories would be buried by your definition.
The amount of attention it has received has always been silly.
Biden's laptop was in the possession of a computer shop in the US, and the owner leaked its contents to the media.
Kushner's phone data was in the possession of Dutch intelligence who didn't want the public to know they had it -- and as far as I know, this was not public knowledge until today.
Biden’s laptop was in the possession of “someone” who brought it to a blind computer repair person (seriously!), who then got in touch with Rudy Giuliani, who then leaked the contents to the media… and so we can’t really know who actually gained possession of it. The repair man was blind lol.
I think it's becoming clear that although the media just happily accepts the left-wing bias accusations, they are by no means left-wing. They shouted every random Biden mistake from the rooftops while this administration mostly gets a free pass.
Not to make this political, but if the democrats gain control they better at least actually try to prosecute these criminals and not just make it yet another circle jerk asking for donations and never actually accomplishing anything. At some point the ruling class is going to mess around and everyone’s head ends up on a pile regardless. This is the time to demonstrate your head doesn’t deserve on the pile too. Time is running out. Just saying. Things happen fast when they finally cross that threshold that always comes as a surprise.
Not that they shouldn't, but you can be 100% sure Trump will hand out pardons left and right when his time comes up. He'll do a self pardon, too. Maybe he'll step down last minute, and have Vance hand out pardons, just in case.
The only things his cronies can be prosecuted for after that, would be state crimes.
Yes, the MO of the Trump administration is to blame the other side of what they're actually doing.
Loudly making unfounded or exaggerated claims of corruption is a pretty effective tool for muddying the waters and making it less clear where the smoke is coming from.
On one hand, we have an email server where most of the classified information on it was classified for her own protection - like her location.
Meanwhile Trump and plenty of others have also practiced extremely poor email hygiene using non-official emails for all sorts of stuff. You don't hear about that from the Left because, well, there's all sorts of far more concerning shit happening.
Then, on the other hand, there's staggeringly large and previously unprecedented levels of corruption with this administration. We've never seen anything remotely like it, unless your argument is just that the Democrats are just vastly more competent at hiding it, despite constantly having all sorts of shit leak and just generally being totally incompetent at managing the party itself.
But if you don't understand the difference between the Hillary email situation and the staggering amount of blatantly illegal and massively corrupt things coming out of the Trump administration basically every single day, I don't know that there's any level of proof or any argument that could be made to change your mind.
Huh, we know all countries try to access every other countries' secrets, even their allies'... but the way they described the Dutch hacking into a phone belonging to a high-level US diplomat / government employee seemed a bit too casual, no?
Maybe they're just locking in to the "We are currently clean on OPSEC" vibe ¯\(ツ)/¯
Just as a clarification since many people don't seem to be reading the article. This article only discussed things that happened pre-2020.
It also seems like it has less to do with Kushner himself being enriched and more about Arab Gilfstates trying to clandestinely normalize relations with Israel without letting their populace know. I'm not saying this isn't bad or he didn't break laws or anything just everything associated with this seems to be more in line with international realpolitik, spy and espionage rather than Kurshner taking stacks of cash to make himself rich.
"Corruption" isn't quite the right scale to use for this. Far deeper, more systemic. This is the disassembly of a state.
Much more equivalent to phenomenon surrounding the collapse of the Soviet Union: liquidation of an entire state's infrastructure via foreign exchange controlled exclusively by the security state . . with plenty of братва duocracy of course.
We've already seen equivalents, even before the 2008 Econopalypse, but activities like those of the Trump-affiliated circle is the terminal end: where USD-denominated assets are exchanged for pure state power. It's just that this is a particularly pure form of it.
There will be no unravelling of this, not until the system of USD seigniorage itself unravels.
This is the right answer to this. This is the beginning of dismantling of USD based system, US might suffer because of that but other countries now have no choice at all but to decouple the system relying in USD.
Seen through this lens the AI bubble make more sense - even if not very much. I suspect it is at least partially a ploy to exchange USD-denominated securities for control of land, of electrical power, of clean water - as fast as the markets can handle.
Or, in this specific case under discussion, exchanging dollars for raw slices of the state's monopoly of force.
Unfortunately, like the RU oligarchs before them, they will find all these trinkets hold value rather poorly when the state apparatus entirely disintegrates.
And those that flee with their capital to other more stable powers will find themselves . . probably less than pleased with the, ah, the level of service that Jiang has in his pleasure bucket. But we're ALL in for it, in a Han-dominant globe. You thought Southerners were racist? Oh, oh goodness . .
Thank the American Rural Voter. This is what they wanted, I am going to watch them eat the whole damn cake.
why would you need to destroy anything if there's pardons involved. Even if they have the proof you committed wrongdoing, the pardon means you suffer no consequences.
> why would you need to destroy anything if there's pardons involved.
To prosecute people guilty of state-level violations (which are not covered by Presidential federal-level pardons). To find 'collaborators' (and perhaps prosecute them, as it may difficult to pardon 'everyone'). To know what happened to perhaps help prevent it happening again in the future.
My understanding is that they don't need to destroy records related to Kushner because he's not a government employee, his records aren't required to be retained. And that is, no doubt, by design.
This kind of stuff gives an insight into how horrible centralized governance is. All these manipulations happening behind the scenes constantly which people are affected by but can't make sense of. It's not really surprising though, it's just part of the system. The system is designed in a way to attract certain people and make them behave a certain way. Power should be much more decentralized so that this doesn't happen.
Then there should be a centralized power whose only power is to enforce the decentralization of power. Basically people should get paid if they can legally prove that someone has too much power in a trial. There should be a felony 'Overaccumulation of power' which may carry a temporary/conditional jail sentence and a special court made up of a large random jury who vote on each case.
With enough signatures, anyone can be brought to trial. The jury is asked to vote to determine if a person or entity is too powerful or too well known. Also, there should be a wealth limit so if wealth is above a certain high limit (like $100 million; set by a special panel), they are offered to either donate everything above the limit to a UBI fund or they go to a special jail until the amount falls below the limit (evaluated by a special, large, randomly-selected parole board).
I think such system would out-compete centralized systems which do not have such limits as it would be more efficient economically.
My pessimistic view is that it is unlikely to end up any other way in the society where the only value of a person is their net worth, giving back to the community is a fringe belief for losers ("make money not friends" said someone's t-shirt I saw the other day) and foreign meddling is all but encouraged ("Russia, if you're listening"). Foreign dictators have deep pockets and they will always find receptive politicians. The Iron Curtain saved the West more than it saved the USSR.
I am very jaded about the current administration and also the previous...few...or several? That being said, similar to the Hunter Biden laptop situation, I think you do have to be careful. Sure they -could- have the device or it -could- have been hacked, but what is the proof that the hacked or on-device information wasn't planted among real items to make it appear legitimate? That was always the big if for me with the Hunter stuff, so I will extend the same skepticism here, knowing full well it could definitely be true in either case.
Well, the article itself is just an excerpt from a book released by Simon & Schuster and written by this guy:
>Matthew Cole is an investigative journalist and the author of Code Over Country: The Tragedy and Corruption of SEAL Team Six. He has covered national security for more than two decades, much of it focused on America’s clandestine wars and covert programs. He was previously an investigative producer for ABC and NBC News, and a longtime national security reporter for The Intercept. His other work has appeared in The New York Times, GQ, New York magazine, Salon, and ESPN. He has reported from more than twenty countries, across five continents.
bad politics has a habit of showing up in weird places, if anything that makes things more credible for me.
the sexual abuse of the catholic church was first exposed in a local paper for Lafayette Louisianna.
the My Lai massacre was first uncovered by a small alternative group called Dispatch News Service.
the CIA cocaine stuff of the 90s was first discussed in a local San Jose paper.
Larry Nassar was outted as a predator by a local Indianapolis paper , a local DC paper uncovered the Tuskegee Experiments, the Seattle Times uncovered the 737 MAX safety certification skips..
I dunno, I don't think i'd be that surprised to first read about the upcoming impending meteor in the latest issue of Teen Vogue.
Everything going on in US politics right now is new to Americans, but coming from an "advanced" democracy (India) let me tell you – this feeling of knowing that your leaders are openly corrupt and there's nothing you can do about it is just going to become a part of life. Learn to live with it. Better yet, learn to exploit it yourself. This is how your country works now, and the floodgates aren't going to close.
Finally, after eight hours and 357 points, 169 comments with healthy discussion - we have the inevitable flagging.
I slightly know how this all works, and I still love HN. In any case, I hope everyone who flagged this [0] feels better now after squelching the discussion. It was already pushed far off the frontpage and it was only on /active. I guess that wasn't enough. The crazy thing is that I bet we would all get along over beers, vodka, or tea.
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This is why I read https://hckrnews.com/ top 20 - things like this stick there. Also feeds me less noise and requires less F5 than the ever-changing HN homepage :)
Is it bots that bury stuff like this, or legit people who are OK with the behaviour, do you think? Or some other persona, I don't know
I think it's mostly people: sometimes theirs, sometimes it's definitely people on our side of the border. They just woke up in Moscow. The timing of this particular post creation and the eventual flagging time makes me want to share this with my Russian brothers and sisters:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBG3Gdt5OGs
Please note that this anti-Putin/anit-imperialist Russian language music video has >185M views just on YouTube.
This Russian language 2-piece band has Mr. Beast level views while being banned in Putin's Russia. Don't believe their dictator's weak af propaganda. Russians also yearn to be free.
Russia's dictator is so weak that he just had to ask the USA for help, openly. The entire Russian imperialist mirage is crumbling.
If we can get our shit together in the EU, Russia will finally join us as a modern country. The biggest beneficiary of this will be the Russian people, well aside from all the Ukrainians their old system is currently murdering.
Only a couple generations ago, all of us in the EU were killing each other by the millions. We did better, and so can they.
More recently:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqohApD6Ng8 - 69M views, the prediction of the full scale invasion of Ukraine in hardcore music video form
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCljI3cIObU - 24M views, today in Ukraine :'(
Turn CC=on for all of these videos. The translation is perfect.
My entire point with this wall of text comment is that we need to stop buying imperialist Russia's extremely effective, yet paper-thin propaganda. If we stop buying this bullshit, it will free Russia and thereby stop their slaughter of Ukraine.
http://archive.today/FHGAt
This page has been blocked in accordance with current legislation. Access to this information resource is restricted based on Federal Law No. 149-FZ of July 27, 2006, "On Information, Information Technologies, and Information Protection." If you believe that the inclusion of this page of the internet resource you need in the "Unified Register..." or "Domain Name Registry..." was in error or violates your legal rights, please contact the authorized agency directly using the contact information on the registry website.
Good, it’s an attack site
Russian network ingress/egress?
Archive.today is directing a DDoS attack against my blog https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46843805 (8 months ago, 366 points, 178 comments)
Ask HN: Weird archive.today behavior? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46624740 (9 months ago, 140 points, 71 comments)
If you live in Russia you should already have a circumvention method available
Works on my machine
You have to think the current administration is completely and totally owned by foreign interests at this point.
The question is, what do you do as the new administration coming in? Presumably you assume every system and every person is compromised all the way down, like a compromised server - clean wipe and re-install.
One would assume that, like any good hacker, the current set would be heavily focused on ensuring they can survive a reboot / wipe. The question is, what would they be doing to achieve that?
Prosecute and show no mercy, the current Iran war probably will still be going on when the new administration comes in. The only hope for Mr. Kushner and some of the other people is a rapid peace treaty before the end of this mixed-up administration even that probably will not help.
If dems take back congress this election and the Iran war is still going by the 2028 election half the country will believe democrats started the war and want to continue it.
Facts don't matter when that is how I feel
That's right. Punishment is the only way to deter the crowd of grifters. They act like raiding the government is risk free, because it is. No one of note in US politics or the Forbes 100 has been put in jail for a very long time. Why would they behave? There is no incentive to follow the law, and unlimited profits and power is too much to resist.
Literally everyone from ICE to Kushner will be pardoned.
They may be able to be prosecuted in foreign countries even with a pardon in the US. The US would need an extradition treaty with the country where they committed the crimes in some way and an administration willing to extradite them.
State-level crimes cannot be pardoned at the federal level.
What if they get prosecuted after Tramp is out of office?
yeah thanks biden for setting that precedence.
mind you. Trump would have set that precedence on his own anyway.
Why are you blaming Biden for setting a "precedent" you admit wouldn't even matter?
And Biden didn't even set a precedent. Presidents have been pardoning people since George Washington.
Some people comment whatever random crap comes to mind as if every thought is interesting to others.
Trump is just going to pardon everyone around him like Biden did. Not saying anyone Biden pardoned did wrong, just that it's a thing that can be done without having to name any "crimes" the pardons may be for.
This is a good chance to remind people that laws can be changed. Including how pardons work by allowing Congress to override a pardon. This is all very clearly outside the bounds of the intent of the pardon power.
Most of the "loopholes" and gaps that the current administration takes advantage of are due to the thinking along the lines of "no one would stoop so low as to operate any other way." There's no way to close all the gaps, but you can certainly make an effort to narrow the number of gaps.
Allowing Congress to override a pardon is a change in the law that would be effective only if done by amending the Constitution. A statute purporting to do so would be an unconstitutional infringement of an expressly granted presidential power.
There is a 0% chance the Constitution is getting Amended for that. If you call a convention then a lot of things come up.
No ex post facto is in the constitution though. And any attempt to change the laws that can be changed by Congress would have enough lead time where POTUS could pardon just before the laws changed
>This is a good chance to remind people that laws can be changed. Including how pardons work by allowing Congress to override a pardon.
That would require a Constitutional amendment, and that won't happen. It would require too many states to be willing to give up what amounts to absolute power to nullify their own crimes should their party win the White House, or defend themselves from political retribution by the other party. Remember that was the whole justification for SCOTUS granting the President immunity from all criminal acts while in office - the threat that Biden prosecuting Trump would just lead to an endless cycle of recriminations and prosecutions of the Executive by the other party.
A Constitutional amendment also opens up the possibility of litigating any part of the Constitution, including the Second Amendment. For that reason alone every red state would oppose it on principle.
>This is all very clearly outside the bounds of the intent of the pardon power.
All that matters is the text of the Constitution and intent means whatever the Supreme Court says it means, and they don't seem to have a problem with it.
It is an open legal question if pardons from felonious presidents are valid.
He was elected by the "will of the people", and there isn't any "no felons" clause anywhere in the Constitution. He also hasn't been impeached, convicted, and removed for high crimes and misdemeanors. Any pardons he issues will likely be entirely legal.
(We really should require pardons to pass a bipartisan Senate committee where there is no odd-numbered tiebreaker vote and require one defection across the aisle to approve--or something like that)
Um, Trump has been impeached and convicted...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_trial_of_Donald_Trump... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_impeachment_of_Donald_Tr...
He was not convicted by the senate. Conviction in New York State would seem to have no relevance here.
The pardon is from the office not the person is it not? Or that would open the door to question all decisions made during presidency, no?
Good luck arguing that with this Supreme Court. A future decision to the contrary wouldn't be applied retroactively anyway.
No one has seriously raised the possibility that Trump cannot issue pardons. There is no legal basis for the idea that he cannot.
Toward the end of his first term the question was raised whether he could pardon himself.
Biden did not pardon "everyone around him". He made specific, targeted pardons for people the GOP had already stated they were going to persecute, like his son and Fauci.
But yes, preemptive pardons shouldn't be possible, but we'll need an amendment to reform the power at all.
Unless this administration is held responsible for their actions, I think it's safe to say that the incoming administration is compromised too. We had a bunch of hullabaloo from the Democrats about Russian influence and zero about Israeli influence (which is much more overt, severe and out in the open), so it sure looks like our entire government is a rooted server at this point.
>The question is, what do you do as the new administration coming in?
I'm not assuming that there will be another administration, everything points to the US continuing down the road it's on.
> You have to think the current administration is completely and totally owned by foreign interests at this point.
The internal dismantling of the US Government, and 'the identity of the US' in general, that this administration has performed must be beyond the wildest dreams of those who were on the other side of the Cold War.
Despite 'losing' the Cold War, Putin appears to have managed to arrange for the US to also lose, somehow, after the war was over.
It's fascinating.
Didn't even require an army.
Or in some cases, not necessarily "owned" but purposely acting on behalf of foreign agents. Kushner + Witkoff running point on all Middle East-related talks on behalf of Israel with their only credibility to do so is just being Jewish, apparently.
No doubt about it. As well as the previous administration, the one before that, the one before that, the next one...
You mean something like.. a purge.. of the deep state? I think I heard that idea before
So you're saying this administration is just like the last?
Much of what this article discusses went on during Trump's first term. A new administration came in and largely did nothing. They had the chance to put Trump in jail or prevent him from running for high office again. They didn't. There were excuses. e.g. Americans didn't want to see a former president treated like a criminal. "That's what third-world banana republics do."
Third world banana republics commonly prosecute ex-leaders for two reasons:
1. The new leader is a criminal thug, and needs to eliminate any threat posed by the previous leader or his supporters.
2. The old leader was a criminal thug who did illegal things.
You don't need both of these to be true to put a former leader behind bars. Either one is sufficient.
I'm a Canadian. Even though the U.S. is busy meddling in our provincial elections, referendums, etc. while waging a trade war on us and threatening to make us the 51st state, we're being set up as scapegoats for the midterms. Yes, your ambassador is currently alleging that Canadian cabinet ministers are interfering in the midterms[1]. This is just one of many indicators suggesting that, should the Republicans lose control of both houses in the midterms, they're going to cry foul and likely refuse to obey the law.
Anyone talking about prosecuting Kushner or the rest of the Trump administration has put the cart before the horse. You have to make sure the midterms are not interfered with by the Trump administration, win the mid-terms, and then win the struggle to enforce that election result on an administration that does not obey the law. You have a mountain of obstacles to climb before you can even think about doing what the Biden administration chose not to do. At the very start of that climb may be the question of whether or not the opposition to Trump is actually comitted to that hard, grueling climb, or would they welcome defeat because it's so much easier?
____________
[1]https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/hoekstra-watching-canada-el...
Cash out, destroy evidence, and feign innocence and ignorance.
> You have to think the current administration is completely and totally owned by foreign interests at this point.
... completely and totally owned by private interests, some of which are foreign.
I don’t think they’re “owned” but they are for sale for given tasks … or straight shaking down folks.
Not quite the same thing.
100 years ago Pareto (yes that Pareto) told us what happens in "Circulation of the Elites" when he noticed a very small part of the population owns most of the assets.
They've shifted the culture and normalized their actions. It was already heading in their direction before they came to power.
I didn't know Elif Shafak was active on HN.
She ain't, but I do get emails for her occasionally.
This will be an unpopular opinion here and will get downvoted. But this is a total hit piece on Kushner. Vanity Fair is super political and you cannot trust anything they write.
Look up Sazan Island
The new administration will also be paid by the same foreign interests.
Yeah, it's almost unimaginable scale a difficulty trying to clear house from a fallen compromised idiot regime, that half unintentionally and far worse half intentionally has handed our nation over to foreign powers.
That has purged the military of any women, any diversity, likely anyone now cowtowing the war crimes happy "department of war" (and clearly given all our blown up bases and very very expensive radars etc has not even basic competence at defense). Has purged diplomatic core of none-regime forces. https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/6166456-state-de...
These facsist anti-state actors are not going to leave the most unimaginable shitfests. They're going to backdoor everything they can. They're going to leave their foreign hostile friends with full access as much as they can.
The project of doing a full from scratch clean reboot of just the systems is going to be unimaginably slow and terrible. Years of reformatting and careful monitoring. These people hate America, hate democracy, they hate any accountability, they hate democracy, they hate reality. Because reality is against low life lying sacks of no good shit like them. That can't do anything but low despicable low effort actions, and cheat. These people are all Jared. They are all vicious bitter foes to society, dealing readily all the time with the most vile monsters, begging for the destruction of our nation. The great reboot, trying to unwind their corruption, is going to be like trying to fight Vinge's Blight. A never quite dead monsters that is everywhere. Because these are the worst people.
Why bother with hacks when it's an open secret that the US gov is compromised?
Because even as every day passes and it seems like nihilism makes the most sense, it cannot be our future?!!!
I am trying to remind myself of this, first and foremost.
Having grown up under Soviet occupation - where epistemic nihilism was weaponized - I was taught to try to do better since kindergarten, but this learning happened only at home. I recall my mom trying to deprogram me even back then.
For the moment, we have all of history at our finger tips. Can we just skip the generations of depression and suffering this time?
A lot of people still don't believe it despite increasing levels of proof. The proof is fighting against the world's most powerful media empires, which also prevent access to the proof.
Corruption is polling near the top as an issue in the US midterm [1] when previously in the last election it was immigration followed by economics/inflation. Politicians are experts at ignoring the obvious issues until they get so out of hand it become impossible to ignore. Then they usually just campaign on it to get elected instead of prioritizing long term reforms.
[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/713933/record-high-say-governme...
The people who don't believe it will continue to not believe it. If 10 years of overwhelming evidence hasn't convinced you what will this one change?
People aren't convinced by evidence, but by consensus. Consensus is the thing built on evidence. Think of it like a phase change, you can keep cooling the water but won't freeze until 0°C
Honestly, this story reeks of being a limited hangout:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_hangout
You can wait for the book and find out how limited it is. I’m not passing judgement before then.
Actually, I’m passing judgement right now, but not on this being some kind of partial expose.
Everything lately makes me want to re-watch Peter Finch's monologue from Network.
'Network' and "Margin Call' are two movies I go back to once every few years to kick myself into remembering how things actually are.
cinema that can do that is powerful.
For the lazy asses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwMVMbmQBug
Network is absolutely incredible in how it stands the test of time and predicts our current news cycle (we're all still human!). It should be required viewing, especially for today's youngsters.
Of course another famous monologue would be Warren Beatty's to Finch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuBe93FMiJc
It's worth pointing out this quote: "One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused"
I'm not sure about the last part of people being happy, but what he's really talking about in hindsight is the index fund. Vanguard started the first SP500 index fund on December 31, 1975. Network came out in 1976.
Also worth noting that GK Chesterton also talked about something similar to an index fund, but it was an idea called distributism and was a direct challenge to socialism
I am pretty darn jaded these days, but I find myself staggered.
edit after reply:
> What was odd, the source said, was that the money in the account—hundreds of millions of dollars—had come from a bank in Azerbaijan.
Ahh, now the arrest of the former chief of Germany's BND, related to what seemed like a random country "Azerbaijan" is making a bit more sense?
Azerbaijan isn't a random country in corruption contexts. It is a petro-state and run by a single family for their own enrichment. It's pretty expected to come up occasionally in these kind of stories.
the corruption or that other countries are able to surface the corruption faster than we can?
> or that other countries are able to surface the corruption faster than we can?
A lot of the corruption just happens right out in the open here these days, doesn't even need to be surfaced.
I wouldn't read a connection between the two other than a lot of corruption flows through Azerbaijan.
I think that you’ll find that it’s pronounced “Aber-baijan”.
Great read from Vanity Fair
Business as usual.
https://wallhop.io/https://www.vanityfair.com/story/jared-ku...
I also feel people are missing the forest for the trees in that discussion in that Jared Kushner is a private citizen and the son in law of the president who somehow is negotiating with foreign heads of states despite having no mandate from the American people to do so. Forget a hacked phone, why is a nepo baby running around negotiating on behalf of a country without holding any office
He’s a United States special envoy (a position whose history goes back to the presidency of George Washington), which are government officials, like for example ambassadors and other diplomats are as well. They don’t require a direct mandate from the people; many government representatives don’t.
That’s not to dispute nepotism, but he isn’t acting as a private citizen. As the article notes, being a government representative actually makes him formally subject to additional accountability rules.
>which are government officials, like for example ambassadors and other diplomats are as well.
No. Kushner in this second term, unlike in the first, isn't a government official of any sort. He is now purely a private citizen which the government itself has argued this month when a watchdog group sued Kushner exactly because he's exercising authority of diplomats and ambassadors, which requires approval by the U.S Senate which he hasn't got and which would indeed subject him to ethics rules.
https://apnews.com/article/jared-kushner-crew-lawsuit-trump-...
Maybe you can correct the corresponding Wikipedia entries that state that Kushner has been officially appointed.
The article is about screenshots from pre-2020, if I’m not mistaken.
Because the most powerful nation on Earth turned out to be powerless against a carefully planned and executed Dismantling of Democracy attack.
The forefathers gave the citizens the right to arms for a reason.
"The prophecies foretold!"
(Aside, I just finished reading the mistborn trilogy)
Do people actually think the next elections won't be rigged? It's going to be a rude awakening.
What you are basically saying is that there is no possible way the election can go any way other than how you expect. It doing so must mean it’s rigged.
It's always funny ever election cycle since 2016, Democrats and Republicans both start screaming "rigged" if they lose. Neither seeming to see the hypocrisy in their accusation. Probably not a good thing. It's not rigged, but it makes for great theatre to say it is. Unfortunately enough people have started to believe it to a since that it is eroding trust in democracy, which is arguably just as bad.
So Kushner's phone was hacked around the same time as Hunter Biden's laptop? Why has the latter captured the media so much more then the former?
Because the latter included clips of the presidents son smoking crack and hanging out with prostitutes? lol
The President’s son being a private citizen versus the President’s son in law being some pseudo-secretary of state?
Did you know Hunter served on the board of directors of a Ukrainian energy company?
Yes? You're describing someone having a private sector job... like how private citizens do...
Did you know Hunter at the time he joined Burisma had an 18-year career as a Yale-educated corporate lawyer, PE and VC investor, and lobbyist?
Obviously he's a nepobaby but nothing on his resume is atypical of the types of people who serve on boards for companies like Burisma.
Top law school, cushy investor and advisory gigs, serving on boards, etc.
Did you know he's actually qualified for the role he had? Do you even know what a board of directors does?
But... So what?
Exactly, Hunter is a good negotiator and has a lot of expertise. I’m tired of people casting aspersions on his success
This question and the potential answers are honestly the most interesting thing in this thread, so far.
Media had access to the laptop, and we only have second hand claims about the phone.
Boy, that sounds like a job for an investigative reporter with the public interest in mind.
Is there an alternate reality where the dem aligned mass media didn't completely bury the ridiculously salacious laptop story (drugs, money for access aaaand onlyfans level nudity!!) to steer the election?
Because i distinctly recall the head of what to that point I though was a credible journalistic organization saying she didnt want to "waste people's time" with that.
The alternate reality is the one where "dem aligned mass media _did_ completely bury" -- because it's all I heard about for months, and months, and months, and months, and months, and months, and months, and months, and months, and months, and months, and months, and months, and months.
You mean *after* the election, right? At which point it mattered f_all, other than the sheer entertainment value.
I heard about it before, during and after the election. It was everywhere, it just never mattered as much as you wanted it to.
Money for access is a stretch, at least if you mean for Joe. Some speakerphone conversations that included no business, and zero evidence of Joe ever doing anything untoward that benefited any of Hunter's associates.
Archer was quite explicit in his testimony that if anything, Hunter was basically scamming them with the illusion of access.
Which, well, is bad, but if anything, the situation reflects that Joe never let his son influence him to do anything corrupt, which turns it entirely into a bunch of TMZ level drama about Hunter's drug and prostitution habits.
And I still heard about the laptop plenty before the election. If that is a buried story, then plenty of widely published and discussed stories would be buried by your definition.
The amount of attention it has received has always been silly.
Biden's laptop was in the possession of a computer shop in the US, and the owner leaked its contents to the media.
Kushner's phone data was in the possession of Dutch intelligence who didn't want the public to know they had it -- and as far as I know, this was not public knowledge until today.
Biden’s laptop was in the possession of “someone” who brought it to a blind computer repair person (seriously!), who then got in touch with Rudy Giuliani, who then leaked the contents to the media… and so we can’t really know who actually gained possession of it. The repair man was blind lol.
crowd control on 4chan?
I think it's becoming clear that although the media just happily accepts the left-wing bias accusations, they are by no means left-wing. They shouted every random Biden mistake from the rooftops while this administration mostly gets a free pass.
Accusation in a mirror
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusation_in_a_mirror
> Why has the latter captured the media so much more then the former?
Kushner is a boring nerd and Biden is a Chad with a huge dong.
Not to make this political, but if the democrats gain control they better at least actually try to prosecute these criminals and not just make it yet another circle jerk asking for donations and never actually accomplishing anything. At some point the ruling class is going to mess around and everyone’s head ends up on a pile regardless. This is the time to demonstrate your head doesn’t deserve on the pile too. Time is running out. Just saying. Things happen fast when they finally cross that threshold that always comes as a surprise.
I fear that the Democrats will once again fixate on reconciliation and "reaching across the aisle" and "moving forward."
Not that they shouldn't, but you can be 100% sure Trump will hand out pardons left and right when his time comes up. He'll do a self pardon, too. Maybe he'll step down last minute, and have Vance hand out pardons, just in case.
The only things his cronies can be prosecuted for after that, would be state crimes.
You could also get civil judgements against them, which can't be pardoned. These are commonly used in clawing back ill begotten financial gains
What is prosecution even going to accomplish given the right wing owns every court in this country?
Spoiler: They won't.
They'll put another limp dick like Merrick Garland in charge
Jack Smith for AG
Jack Smith, Barack Obama, and four teenagers from tiktok for supreme court additions.
Echoes of "Lock her up! Lock her up!"
Yes, the MO of the Trump administration is to blame the other side of what they're actually doing.
Loudly making unfounded or exaggerated claims of corruption is a pretty effective tool for muddying the waters and making it less clear where the smoke is coming from.
On one hand, we have an email server where most of the classified information on it was classified for her own protection - like her location.
Meanwhile Trump and plenty of others have also practiced extremely poor email hygiene using non-official emails for all sorts of stuff. You don't hear about that from the Left because, well, there's all sorts of far more concerning shit happening.
Then, on the other hand, there's staggeringly large and previously unprecedented levels of corruption with this administration. We've never seen anything remotely like it, unless your argument is just that the Democrats are just vastly more competent at hiding it, despite constantly having all sorts of shit leak and just generally being totally incompetent at managing the party itself.
But if you don't understand the difference between the Hillary email situation and the staggering amount of blatantly illegal and massively corrupt things coming out of the Trump administration basically every single day, I don't know that there's any level of proof or any argument that could be made to change your mind.
Lock up criminals, don't lock up innocents.
Are you:
A) a troll
B) truly unable to tell the difference
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
BTW, I found this take very interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHE7oBvOk9U
Huh, we know all countries try to access every other countries' secrets, even their allies'... but the way they described the Dutch hacking into a phone belonging to a high-level US diplomat / government employee seemed a bit too casual, no?
Maybe they're just locking in to the "We are currently clean on OPSEC" vibe ¯\(ツ)/¯
It’s the Russians that hacked his iPhone:
“The GRU hacked into Jared Kushner's iPhone. Dutch military intelligence (MIVD) then recruited a GRU spy who gave them access to the hacked phone”
https://www.vanityfair.com/story/jared-kushner-hacked-phone-...
We had taps on Merkel, this is nothing!
Just as a clarification since many people don't seem to be reading the article. This article only discussed things that happened pre-2020.
It also seems like it has less to do with Kushner himself being enriched and more about Arab Gilfstates trying to clandestinely normalize relations with Israel without letting their populace know. I'm not saying this isn't bad or he didn't break laws or anything just everything associated with this seems to be more in line with international realpolitik, spy and espionage rather than Kurshner taking stacks of cash to make himself rich.
it's going to take decades to unravel all the corruption by this administration
it is staggering
and they are destroying records in violation of law
because "pardons for everyone" on the way out
> and they are destroying records in violation of law
Nothing new and there will be no justice. Look up the guy in charge of MKUltra. He destroyed evidence and got a nice retirement.
"Corruption" isn't quite the right scale to use for this. Far deeper, more systemic. This is the disassembly of a state.
Much more equivalent to phenomenon surrounding the collapse of the Soviet Union: liquidation of an entire state's infrastructure via foreign exchange controlled exclusively by the security state . . with plenty of братва duocracy of course.
We've already seen equivalents, even before the 2008 Econopalypse, but activities like those of the Trump-affiliated circle is the terminal end: where USD-denominated assets are exchanged for pure state power. It's just that this is a particularly pure form of it.
There will be no unravelling of this, not until the system of USD seigniorage itself unravels.
This is the right answer to this. This is the beginning of dismantling of USD based system, US might suffer because of that but other countries now have no choice at all but to decouple the system relying in USD.
Seen through this lens the AI bubble make more sense - even if not very much. I suspect it is at least partially a ploy to exchange USD-denominated securities for control of land, of electrical power, of clean water - as fast as the markets can handle.
Or, in this specific case under discussion, exchanging dollars for raw slices of the state's monopoly of force.
Unfortunately, like the RU oligarchs before them, they will find all these trinkets hold value rather poorly when the state apparatus entirely disintegrates.
And those that flee with their capital to other more stable powers will find themselves . . probably less than pleased with the, ah, the level of service that Jiang has in his pleasure bucket. But we're ALL in for it, in a Han-dominant globe. You thought Southerners were racist? Oh, oh goodness . .
Thank the American Rural Voter. This is what they wanted, I am going to watch them eat the whole damn cake.
Kleptocracy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakistocracy
The American Deep State is the enemy of the American people and it needs to be dismantled.
In your own words, what is the "American Deep State"?
why would you need to destroy anything if there's pardons involved. Even if they have the proof you committed wrongdoing, the pardon means you suffer no consequences.
> why would you need to destroy anything if there's pardons involved.
To prosecute people guilty of state-level violations (which are not covered by Presidential federal-level pardons). To find 'collaborators' (and perhaps prosecute them, as it may difficult to pardon 'everyone'). To know what happened to perhaps help prevent it happening again in the future.
Well, that's why you commit your crimes in DC!
They still probably are violating plenty of state and local laws that the pardon won't do anything about.
That and there is an idea that the strength of pardons will be tested by the House Oversight Committee(assuming take back by Democrats).
IMO the pardon power was an absolute mistake and I’m totally fine with us just burning this bridge for good.
what happens if you are convicted in federal court before receiving the pardon. does double jeopardy come into play?
Seems like the best case scenario is prosecution under state laws, which the presidential pardon cannot stop.
The best case scenario is probably drone strikes as "official acts" under Presidential immunity.
My understanding is that they don't need to destroy records related to Kushner because he's not a government employee, his records aren't required to be retained. And that is, no doubt, by design.
This article is about a phone hacking in 2017 when he was still a federal employee. Russia hacked his iPhone X around then.
10% for the big guy
This kind of stuff gives an insight into how horrible centralized governance is. All these manipulations happening behind the scenes constantly which people are affected by but can't make sense of. It's not really surprising though, it's just part of the system. The system is designed in a way to attract certain people and make them behave a certain way. Power should be much more decentralized so that this doesn't happen.
The reason that power centralizes is that decentralized powers tend to get outcompeted (in the short run) by centralized powers.
Then there should be a centralized power whose only power is to enforce the decentralization of power. Basically people should get paid if they can legally prove that someone has too much power in a trial. There should be a felony 'Overaccumulation of power' which may carry a temporary/conditional jail sentence and a special court made up of a large random jury who vote on each case.
With enough signatures, anyone can be brought to trial. The jury is asked to vote to determine if a person or entity is too powerful or too well known. Also, there should be a wealth limit so if wealth is above a certain high limit (like $100 million; set by a special panel), they are offered to either donate everything above the limit to a UBI fund or they go to a special jail until the amount falls below the limit (evaluated by a special, large, randomly-selected parole board).
I think such system would out-compete centralized systems which do not have such limits as it would be more efficient economically.
The default assumption must be that Putin and MBS are the US Heads Of State.
My pessimistic view is that it is unlikely to end up any other way in the society where the only value of a person is their net worth, giving back to the community is a fringe belief for losers ("make money not friends" said someone's t-shirt I saw the other day) and foreign meddling is all but encouraged ("Russia, if you're listening"). Foreign dictators have deep pockets and they will always find receptive politicians. The Iron Curtain saved the West more than it saved the USSR.
As usual, bullshit runs around the world unfettered, while democracy gets locked behind a paywall.
I am very jaded about the current administration and also the previous...few...or several? That being said, similar to the Hunter Biden laptop situation, I think you do have to be careful. Sure they -could- have the device or it -could- have been hacked, but what is the proof that the hacked or on-device information wasn't planted among real items to make it appear legitimate? That was always the big if for me with the Hunter stuff, so I will extend the same skepticism here, knowing full well it could definitely be true in either case.
At this point I'm so jaded that I can't trust anything in this as its from vanity fair of all places. Not a place known for quality journalism.
Well, the article itself is just an excerpt from a book released by Simon & Schuster and written by this guy:
>Matthew Cole is an investigative journalist and the author of Code Over Country: The Tragedy and Corruption of SEAL Team Six. He has covered national security for more than two decades, much of it focused on America’s clandestine wars and covert programs. He was previously an investigative producer for ABC and NBC News, and a longtime national security reporter for The Intercept. His other work has appeared in The New York Times, GQ, New York magazine, Salon, and ESPN. He has reported from more than twenty countries, across five continents.
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Princes-and-Thieves/M...
bad politics has a habit of showing up in weird places, if anything that makes things more credible for me.
the sexual abuse of the catholic church was first exposed in a local paper for Lafayette Louisianna.
the My Lai massacre was first uncovered by a small alternative group called Dispatch News Service.
the CIA cocaine stuff of the 90s was first discussed in a local San Jose paper.
Larry Nassar was outted as a predator by a local Indianapolis paper , a local DC paper uncovered the Tuskegee Experiments, the Seattle Times uncovered the 737 MAX safety certification skips..
I dunno, I don't think i'd be that surprised to first read about the upcoming impending meteor in the latest issue of Teen Vogue.
Its just good business.
Do they present any evidence to support these claims?
Everything going on in US politics right now is new to Americans, but coming from an "advanced" democracy (India) let me tell you – this feeling of knowing that your leaders are openly corrupt and there's nothing you can do about it is just going to become a part of life. Learn to live with it. Better yet, learn to exploit it yourself. This is how your country works now, and the floodgates aren't going to close.