had posted.
To wit, nothing you wrote indicated that Clapper had verified any sort of collusion between Trump and the Russians... keeping in mind that the dossier had been financed by Hillary's campaign to attack Trump during the campaign... with the help of Russians (collusion).
Even if there
was evidence that Trump or someone in his campaign had colluded with some Russians to undermine Hillary... as Hillary's campaign had done, that would
not be illegal unless they had conspired together to commit illegal acts under federal law. It might be considered dirty politics, but would not be conspiracy and would not be illegal.
You then bring in a rendition of portions of CNN's story as if it was on a par with Clapper saying that, which is problematic in a couple of respects. CNN's bias was exposed when they gave debate questions to Hillary before the debate to give her an unfair advantage over Trump during the debates, though their bias was already painfully obvious to any objective observer. Add to that the fact that even what was related in that story not only did not allege any illegal activities on Trump's part, or on the part of his campaign, but in fact it was "more exculpatory than incriminatory of Trump"
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/453264/donald-trump-george-papadopoulos-indictment-exculpatory-trump
Upon close examination, the story unfolded in the offense statement is actually exculpatory of Trump and his campaign. To understand why, we need to revisit the term “collusion.”
...
Second, and more significant: If the proof, at best, implies that the Russians acquired thousands of Clinton emails and then had to inform a tangential Trump campaign figure of this fact so he could pass it along to the campaign, that would mean Trump and his campaign had nothing to do with the acquisition of the emails.
...
As observed above, this brings us back to the meaning of “collusion.” I’ve long argued that this term has been used by Trump’s accusers because they don’t have proof of criminal collusion. The term “collusion” can have a dark connotation, but it really only means some kind of concerted activity — not necessarily illegal. Prosecutors don’t care about collusion; they care about conspiracy — an agreement by two or more people to commit a violation of a criminal statute. That is, even if there is some concerted activity, collusion is not a crime unless the Trump campaign conspired with the Putin regime to do something federal law makes a crime — for example, to hack communications systems.
If Trump officials and associates did not do this, then their activities may be unsavory, but they are not criminal. It is a disgraceful thing for an American political candidate to seek damaging information about his or her opponent from a despicable, anti-American regime. But it is not illegal. A criminal investigation is about proving crimes, not revealing dirty politics.
To put it another way: Notice that Mueller did not make Papadopoulos plead guilty to collusion with Russia. For a prosecutor, there is nothing better than getting a cooperating accomplice to admit guilt to the scheme the prosecutor is investigating. It goes a long way toward proving that the scheme existed. Once you’ve got that, it’s much easier to prove that the cooperator’s confederates are guilty, too. But even though there’s a great deal of evidence that Papadopoulos colluded with Russia, there’s no charge along those lines. There’s just a single false-statement charge on which, according to the plea agreement, he’s probably looking at no jail time, and certainly no more than six months. Why no collusion charge? Because collusion is not a crime.
Thus, I think the Papadopoulos guilty plea helps Trump in two ways.
First, it underscores that, whatever “collusion” might have happened, at this point there is no criminal-conspiracy case. Even though Mueller has patently gotten cooperation from Papadopoulos, there is no indication that the defendant has provided any evidence that comes close to implicating the president in a crime.
Second, the offense statement supporting the plea also helps Trump politically. There is an interesting footnote on page 8. Here’s the context: On May 21, 2016, Papadopoulos emailed an unidentified top Trump-campaign official, explaining with urgency that Russian officials (presumably including Putin, at least in Papadopoulos’s mind) wanted to meet Trump and “have been reaching out to me to discuss.” Mueller then drops this footnote:
The government notes that the official forwarded defendant PAPADOPOULOS’s email to another Campaign
official (without including defendant PAPADOPOULOS) and stated: “Let[’]s discuss. We need someone to
communicate that DT is not doing these trips. It should be someone low level in the campaign so as not to
send any signal.
Now, there could be multiple interpretations of this. But the most natural one, it seems to me, is that Trump has no intention of meeting with Russians, and if there are going to be meetings at all, it must be at a low level so the Russians do not construe Trump to be making any commitments or accommodations.
Edited by JeffB at 10:06:51 on 01/03/18