1. It clearly wasn't a chance encounter. Kislyak went to the convention because he had things to discuss with the campaign.
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Exactly. And that's why I'm calling you a liar. His question was about what Sessions would do if he was aware of any communications between those in the Trump campaign and the Russian government, during the course of the campaign. Obviously, the "continuing exchange of information" between the Russian government and the Trump campaign could take many forms, from regular communications between two or more designated contacts, or irregular communications with lots of different members of the campaign, or some combination of the two. But Sessions didn't want to get into that, and he succeeded in avoiding tough questions by simply lying, by telling Franken he wasn't aware of any communications between those in the Trump campaign and the Russian government.... when, of course, he was aware of multiple such communications.
Why on Earth would ANYONE imagine that such a communication wouldn't count as a communication between the Russian government and a member of the Trump campaign? Obviously it does. Now Sessions would have been able to say "I'm not aware of any such conversations, other than non-substantive exchanges of social pleasantries at public events." But that's not what he said. He wanted to avoid follow up questions about the contents of the communications he was aware of, so he simply lied and said he wasn't aware of any. And that lie served its intended function, by getting him confirmed without having to deal with difficult questions about why agents of the Russian government are Republican party social functions, etc.
Exactly. And even if Sessions only exchanged social pleasantries (which is a big stretch of an assumption), he'd still have a motivation to lie and claim he had no such conversations, however innocuous, because it would invite follow-up questions about the nature of the event, why the Russian agent was invited, how long he'd been on friendly terms with top Republicans, who he was talking to, what he was hoping to accomplish, etc. Sessions's lie successfully avoided any of that difficult follow-up.
Then why is Trump still in office???
A "continuing exchange of information" means, well, a continuing exchange of information. You know, like negotiations - something you laughingly claim to be "expert" in. That implies something quite different from various innocent one-off exchanges, and any honest person would acknowledge that fact. That you don't shows exactly who the liar here is. And again, if there were any indication that your interpretation was supportable, and mine laughable, these individuals would be in prison right now. So the proof of which one of us is a liar is in the lack of any indictments for actual, you know, "collusion." Which is what this "investigation" is supposed to be about, isn't it?
A "witch hunt" Salem style is a no win scenario that assumes the demise of its target regardless of guilt. The investigation itself is patently lethal and only death is proof of innocence. The dunking chair was one such method.
as the Jackson witch hunt
Because he has powerful friends who put party and class before country.
If the many, many, "one-off exchanges" of which Sessions was aware had been disclosed to the Senate (if he had not lied about them), the Senate would have probed to see whether they were innocent or whether they involved negotiations.
Perhaps. But more likely because the evidence simply doesn't support your beliefs on the matter.
Look, I'm sympathetic!! I'm coming to despise Trump and would love to put him in the rear view mirror. But I won't join you witch hunters on the left because what you are attempting to do here is doing irreparable harm to the country we all supposedly love, in a craven effort to overturn a political election using a completely fabricated tale of campaign wrongdoing. If that were the case, the evidence (SOME EVIDENCE) of it would exist; that is exist outside the small minds of partisan leftists, I should add. And there simply is none. The whole effort is based on an "appearance of impropriety" argument that twists completely rational, reasonable and routine contacts between people in Trump's orbit and various "Russians" into a fake "collusive" effort to "steal" the election (with exactly zero evidence that any of these contacts were anything other than appropriate).
Nope.... He's there because for the first time in a generation we had a smug, condescending, race baiting prick who wagged his hypocritical finger of shame for 8 nonstop years. The reaction was predictable.
They didn't learn when Reid changed the senate rules and they're not going to learn now either. All of this BS will happen to the next DEM President almost certainly.... And they will scream foul and unfair just like they did with Gorsuch.
They tried to do the same thing to the last Democratic president ... they just never got anywhere because he wasn't surrounded with people who broke the law as a matter of routine.
