So Steele was INVESTIGATING the Russians, Trump's team was COLLUDING with the Russians.

[mackdaddy]

A little different I think....

[Motley13]

1. moron says Hillary was colluding with the Russians

makes a lot of sense, she was colluding with them to get the POS elected

[Turbineguy]

3. Breitbart wants you to believe

that the Russian intel op was to get Hillary Clinton in the White House, but the effort failed.

That will play well with the moron division of Trumps base, but if I were a Russian, and involved with getting Trump in, I'd be pissed and consider this slander.

[yallerdawg]

2. During the campaign...

Russians are IN Trump Tower meeting with Team Dotard, promising support against Hillary!

Was this in the 'dossier?'

[BSdetect]

4. The msm must make these clear distinctions repeatedly.

[Igel]

5. So Steele was hired to investigate the Russians.

That's what opposition research is?

Again, it misses the very point of disinformation.

"Blow-back" was a trendy word a couple of years ago. It's been around for decades. It's when your sources feed you the same wrong information you had your sources feed the enemy. Now, the enemy doesn't know you're feeding it wrong information or skewed information. In fact, sometimes the most readily believed misinformation is what spies working for their side collect, thinking it's true information.

In the end, though, what do we have? A side that used Russian sources to collect info on their opposition. Each side protects its own, but each side is also vulnerable to being questioned based on the use of information collected from a hostile, inimical source. The difference is we're sure that the information we were fed is true because it's for our side. If Jeb Bush did hire a foreign agent to collect Russian-based information and won, we'd be all over that and we'd be calling *that* "collusion."

[mackdaddy]

6. So the clinton people should never have investigated at all?

They knew that Trump had been doing shady things with the Russian oligarchs and their money. Clinton and some in the DNC wanted to know what. So they had their legal team hire it done.

They hired a private intelligence firm who hired a experienced intelligence agent expert in Russia, which was Steele. Any time you are dealing with this level of spy vs spy you could be fed dis-info along with valid data. That is why you use someone like Steele to help winnow out as good of data and sources as possible. Of course he talked to Russians, This whole thing is about what Trumps dealing is Russia were.

The blow back is that what they found was extremely serious. Possibly seriously illegal, or treasonous behavior, and Trump was seriously compromised and a major blackmail risk. And the Russians were making a massive effort to meddle in our election process.

Clinton could not and did not use most of this because it was so serious that it needed major corroboration and needed to be turned over to the government and law enforcement investigators to see if it was as bad as their raw initial intelligence was showing. So far I don't think that the basics, that Russian had a major operation to meddle in our elections, and that Trump and his people were working with and had major money and other dealings with powerful Russians are in the least in question.

The only blow back is that it looks hinkey that Clinton and the DNC did not just come out and say that they paid for the Steele investigation. That has given Nunes and some of the Fox nuze some leverage to try to throw shade on the Muller investigation. But every investigation starts out with some kind of allegations or indications of wrongdoing, and then the official investigation tries to prove or disprove something was wrong. In this case there is a giant orange shit-pile of wrong they are uncovering.