Trump announces its just dandy to have foreign govts. involved in US elections

Same here, it was GW's Iraq war that finally severed me from the Republican Party. The idea that the President is asking the Russians for help when they have gone back to trying to force collisions with our planes and ships at sea (just like they did in my cold war Navy days) is insane.

People shouldn't be surprised that Putin is defending his country from leftist aggression.

It has now been two days since President Trump declared that he might accept dirt on political opponents from foreign governments in the 2020 presidential election. He did so despite the fact that such a move appears likely to be illegal and that the chairwoman of the Federal Election Commission confirmed it would be.

But Republicans keep finding creative ways to defend Trump’s comment.

The initial argument wasn’t so much a defense of Trump as it was “Democrats did it, too!” Republicans tried to argue that Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016 essentially did what Trump was saying by hiring Fusion GPS, which paid for the Steele dossier — a document compiled by a former British intelligence agent who relied upon sources from within the Russian government. As we’ve noted, that argument doesn’t make much sense. And in fact, even the Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee confirmed in their 2018 report that the arrangement was legal, as long as the information was paid for at market rate. Steele shared his reports with federal law enforcement officials.

But Republicans have increasingly expanded their defenses to suggest that some version of what Trump said might be okay.

Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah), who is one of those House Intelligence Committee Republicans, appeared on CNN on Friday morning. And while he said he wished Trump would “not have said it the way he did,” he also suggested the context matters.

“It depends on who it is and the circumstances and how credible it is,” Stewart said. “There might be valuable information that comes from one of our allies. If they look at it, and it’s credible, I think it would be foolish not to take that information.”

But this ignores the context of the question. The question isn’t whether the U.S. government should ever take information from foreign governments — it does so all the time via intelligence-sharing agreements with allies — but rather whether a campaign should accept information directly intended to damage another candidate. Stewart also suggests the veracity of the information is important, but opposition research need not be false to be problematic.

Stewart’s argument echoes the specious one Trump made on Twitter on Thursday, when he likened accepting dirt from foreign governments to simply meeting with foreign dignitaries, like the queen of England. “I meet and talk to ‘foreign governments’ every day,” Trump said. “Should I immediately . . . call the FBI about these calls and meetings? How ridiculous!” It is ridiculous, because it’s a completely different situation that has nothing to do with opposition research aimed at influencing elections.

“Fox and Friends” host Steve Doocy also offered a particularly novel argument on Friday morning. While interviewing Trump, Doocy suggested that Trump might be attacked for going to the FBI with such information.

“Wouldn’t the Democrats accuse you of using the FBI to investigate political opponents?” Doocy asked Trump.

The argument was such a non sequitur that Trump didn’t really even seize upon it. The point of going to the FBI when offered dirt by a foreign government is not that the information would suddenly be investigated by the FBI; it would be because it is illegal for foreign governments to offer such information. If a country wanted to air a politician’s dirty laundry, there is nothing stopping them from doing it publicly. Sending it to a campaign means they could surreptitiously affect an election — and even compromise an American politician.

oralloy wrote:

People shouldn't be surprised that Putin is defending his country from leftist aggression.

... lead by the U.S. 2nd Fleet (C2F) momentarily.

Moreover the facts that;
=> the probably unlawful use of this hit piece to obtain a FISA warrant for spying on the Trump campaign communications, and the subsequent two year investigation of candidate and later President Trump that followed it;
=> together with the obviously hostile government officials who populated the investigation team;
=> and the lack of any indictable criminal offense that resulted from the investigation;
all point to very serious and deliberate misuse of phony foreign sources and subsequently discredited information for overtly political purposed in a presidential election.

That's a very weak response. You haven't even addressed the evident fact that the DNC and the Clinton Campaign did far more than just responded to an offer of information: they paid for its collection and production from obviously biased sources, and deliberately shopped the information (later found to be devoid of fact) to incite biased officials in the Obama Administration to start an exhaustive investigation by biased officials that continued for two years and failed to find an indictable crime (that no actual indictments were allowed is irrelevant to the finding).

One can hardly avoid contempt for the deception of you and others here in objecting to Trump's honest answer without, at the same time, acknowledging the DNC/Clinton campaigns far more serious and partisan actions.

https://www.npr.org/2019/06/13/732340501/fact-check-foreign-interference-and-opposition-research-are-not-the-same

The long answer: Trump told ABC News that essentially every political candidate is willing to accept information that could be of use against an opponent.

"You go and talk honestly to congressmen, they all do it. They always have. And that's the way it is. It's called 'oppo research,' " he said.

What's the difference?

Opposition research is what campaigns and political operatives use against each other. If one candidate running for office dug up a story about something embarrassing her opponent had done, the first candidate might bundle it together and see that it found its way into the newspaper.

Active measures

In 2016, however, the Russian government also launched a broad wave of "active measures" from outside the U.S. and used sophisticated tools found only in the arsenal of a major government. Its ultimate goal was to help elect Trump.

Trump's campaign counted on the boost it got from WikiLeaks in 2016, according to the report by Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller. Donald Trump Jr. also accepted the offer of a meeting, via intermediaries, to get "dirt" on Hillary Clinton.

Highlights From The Mueller Report, Annotated
ANALYSIS
Analysis: Key Passages Of The Mueller Report, Annotated
The source for WikiLeaks' revelations, which embarrassed Democratic and other targets inside the United States, was Russia's military intelligence agency, the GRU. The agency had stolen the material in cyberattacks that compromised the Democratic National Committee and others.

The person behind the offer accepted by Trump Jr. was described as Russia's chief federal prosecutor, who dispatched a Russian attorney to New York City to make the pitch to the Americans as part of Moscow's support for the Trump campaign.

Barr Is Investigating The Investigators: Will He Find Wrongdoing Or Political Fuel?
POLITICS

Sorry however the Clinton campaign did not use an unfriendly foreign power in their campaign.

Hiring a non-US citizen to do research is not the same as using a foreign power to attacked your opposition with the full power of a hostile state government.

BillRM wrote:

Sorry however the Clinton campaign did not use an unfriendly foreign power in their campaign.

Hiring a non-US citizen to do research is not the same as using a foreign power to attacked your opposition with the full power of a hostile state government.

The Clinton campaign used an avowedly anti Trump former intelligence officer of a Foreign government, then living in Russia, to compile a report using as yet undisclosed) Russian sources in the production of an avowedly hostile ( and now known to be false) report that was used by the Clinton campaign to smear their opponent, and subsequently, with the aid of supportive Obama Administration FBI & Intelligence officials, to launch a two year investigation that yielded no indictable offenses.

You are stretching hard to make mostly trivial distinctions. Just who were the Russian sources for the dossier? Do you really believe Russian se3curity services were unaware of it?

Sure Trump is a gift, at least to Putin, as in the tearing down NATO that kept the USSR in check for fifty years or so along with our other long standing relationships.

Well, there's the Baltics for starters...

Bosnia

Serbia

Crimea

Shall I continue with Russian aggression prior to the new Cold War?
There's lots more.