Stop Assuming Trump Is Innocent of Russian Collusion - By Jonathan Chait
June 29, 2017
7:37 pm
One of the oddities of the investigation into Donald Trumps relations with Russia is the degree to which he has largely enjoyed a presumption of innocence in the court of public opinion. David Brooks, who has hardly taken a sympathetic line on the administration, wrote recently, it is striking how little evidence there is that any underlying crime occurred that there was any actual collusion between the Donald Trump campaign and the Russians. Mike Allen observed, if Trump had kept Comey and stopped obsessing about his investigation, his legal troubles might have blown over: No evidence of collusion has emerged.
That line of defense is likely to disappear now that The Wall Street Journal has reported that Peter Smith, a Republican opposition researcher who said he was working for Michael Flynn, colluded with Russian hackers to try to obtain stolen emails from Hillary Clinton. The Journal reports that Smith referred to conversations with Flynn in emails with associates, and that U.S. intelligence has evidence of Russian hackers discussing how to obtain emails from Mrs. Clintons server and then transmit them to Mr. Flynn via an intermediary. The Trump defense does not inspire a lot of confidence. A Trump campaign official said that Mr. Smith didnt work for the campaign, reports the Journal, and that if Mr. Flynn coordinated with him in any way, it would have been in his capacity as a private individual. Obtaining hacked information from Russia for the campaign as a campaign staffer versus doing it as a private individual is a distinction without much difference.
Of course, the notion that there was no evidence of collusion before the Journal report has always been based on a tight definition of what constitutes evidence. It requires assuming that Trumps on-camera request for Russia to hack Clintons emails during the campaign was a joke and that his confidante Roger Stone obtained advance knowledge of the timing of the WikiLeaks publication without any contact from Russia.
This is also not the first evidence of collusion between Russia and other Republican officials in the 2016 campaign. A relatively little-noticed Journal report from May found that Aaron Nevins, a Florida Republican operative, sought and received stolen Democratic voter-turnout files from Guccifer 2.0, a hacker believed by U.S. intelligence to be working for Russia. Whats new is that explicit evidence of collusion may now extend to the Trump campaign itself.
To be sure, the collusion story could still peter out. But Trump collected an inner circle of people whose most striking characteristic was anomalously close relations with Moscow. Before taking a job as Trumps campaign director, Paul Manafort was paid $17 million by a Ukrainian party controlled by Moscow to run a pro-Russian political influence campaign. Foreign-policy adviser Carter Page has worked with a Russian oil firm, fervently defended Russian policy interests in a way very few Americans have, and was targeted for recruitment by Russian spies. Plus, of course, Flynn for whom Smith allegedly sought the hacked emails was paid $68,000 by Russian entities that he illegally failed to disclose.
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http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/06/stop-assuming-trump-is-innocent-of-russian-collusion.html
NRaleighLiberal
(59,940 posts)Most people, it seems can't "go there" - so they ignore it and hopes it all goes away.
get the red out
(13,459 posts)Just about every story about Russian hacking implies that Trump is way too stupid to collude with the Russians and is similarly too stupid to shut up and let the nothing-burger pass. I think, after what we have all learned about Trump's past, he is too criminal minded not to have colluded as much as possible, and he was up to his eyeballs in sketchy Russian "business deals" for years before he ran for President. I don't think it was very hard for his lazy ass to find Russians to collude with, I'm sure the contact list on his phone is full of them! And he had a good supply of Friends of Russia working in his campaign.
BootinUp
(46,924 posts)marylandblue
(12,344 posts)There was a concerted effort to make it seem the President was out of the loop.
tazkcmo
(7,286 posts)1. Guilty
2. An American Citizen
We must stay true to our rights by defending his right to be assumed innocent until all the dirt they will have on him convicts him in a court of law.
Iknow. Ick.
czarjak
(11,191 posts)Hugh Hewitt.