Thought-Provoking Topical Headline: "Collusion is Worse Than a Crime"

Trump vs. Mueller

(Battle to the finish line but when)

S/C Mueller probably at 85 MPH

(Thanks to Doc Brown's input)

Excellent update from David Frum at The Atlantic via MSN … the whole article is worth keeping as we continue following this tragic saga which seems to have a new twist almost daily. Below are the main points I wanted to emphasize for maximum impact by the blog reading family – they are the most-important keeper points I believe.

Regarding this post, I believe this short introduction/summary from Raw Story here in part: 

It shouldn’t be necessary to explain why it’s wrong, not to say potentially criminal, for a presidential candidate to work with a foreign power to undermine his opponent’s campaign. Unfortunately, we live in the era of hyper-partisanship, and as a result many Republicans and their media supporters — the same people who have insisted for months that there was “no collusion” between Trump and Russia — are now presenting a different spin: If there was collusion, it would be no big deal.

Note: This article was originally published at Salon.

The most-critical part: Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s second indictment of 12 more Russians (July 13, 2018) claims that voter analytic data was stolen by Russian hackers from the DNC servers.

If those stolen analytics were then shared by the Russians to the Trump campaign, then that would be a straightforward serious crime, just as much as the Watergate burglary of the DNC in 1972.

The crucial context for assessing the claim that “collusion is not a crime” is the way the Trump-Russia story has emerged into the light, denial after denial collapsing into dust:

1.      Trump, his campaign, and the White House have denied the campaign had Russia contacts. The campaign met with Russian agents.

2.    They denied that the meeting discussed stolen email. The meeting discussed stolen email.

3.    They denied Trump had knowledge of the meeting, either in advance or before it was exposed in the media. That denial is now disputed by Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen.

4.    Trump’ current personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, gave a bewildering series of interviews recently in which he first referred to a planning meeting two days before the scheduled Russia meeting in Trump Tower (only a floor or so below where Trump lives) attended by Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort (which is breaking news since shortly after that, Trump said he would have a major campaign speech to reveal “dirt” on Hillary Clinton – then he backed out when the “dirt” never was produced as promised by the Russian lawyer to Trump, Jr.), then Trump insisted he had actually meant to deny that such a meeting had ever taken place (that from the man with the best education and best words than anyone, right? Or so he has said).

5.     They denied that the Russian intervention was intended to help elect Trump. (Note: At the Helsinki summit when he was directly asked by a reporter, Vladimir Putin said plainly that he had wished to see Trump elected).

Only this year, and only thanks to the Mueller investigation, have Americans begun to learn the full industrial scale of the Russian intrusion into the 2016 election. Only last month, and again only thanks to the Mueller investigation, was it confirmed that the hackers of the Democratic Party were indeed agents of the Russian state — a truth that Trump still will not unequivocally accept.

How much still remains to learn? Yet there is one way in which the “collusion is not a crime” talking point actually directs attention in the right direction. The Trump presidency’s connections to Russia are a national-security issue first, a criminal-justice issue only second.

Donald J. Trump owes his presidency at least in considerable part to the illegal assistance of the Russian state: (1) hacking, (2) data theft, and (3) prohibited election advertising and the impact is:

·        This compromised president has in office launched himself against U.S. alliances and trade arrangements built by administrations of both parties over the past three-quarters of a century.

·        This president describes the European Union (EU) as a “foe.”

·        This president quarrels with Canada and Germany, and enters into agreements with Putin that he seems not to have shared even with his own secretary of state and national-security adviser.

·        This president blabs vital secrets to the Russian foreign minister and Ambassador in the Oval Office.

·        This president resists holding Russia to account for nerve-agent attacks on British soil, and he refuses to implement sanctions voted almost unanimously by Congress.

  

Meanwhile, the single data point that supposedly proves how tough he is on Russia — the provision of lethal aid to Ukraine — may actually prove something very different. Ukraine halted its cooperation with the Mueller probe ahead of the sale, to “avoid irritating the top American officials.”

“Collusion is not a crime” in the same way that a counter-intelligence investigation is not a criminal prosecution. Aspects of collusion may be criminal, but collusion itself is above all a threat to national security: the installation of a president beholden to some greater or lesser degree to a hostile foreign power.

The United States is a highly legalistic society. Public ethics debates are often reduced to technical legal arguments about the meanings of statutes. But in Trump-Russia, the most urgent concerns before the country are not prosecutable offenses but loyalty risks.

During the Northern Ireland troubles of the 1980s, British police used to distinguish between those they ironically called “decent ordinary criminals” and IRA terrorists. It was — or should have been — obvious to anyone paying attention on voting day 2016 that Donald Trump was not an honest businessman. What has come further and further into the light since Election Day is something much more dangerous even than dishonesty.

Related:

Overall hacking: list of some of the people Trump has blamed for Russia’s 2016 election hacking.

and

Trump’s relationship with and Ukraine’s successful courtship of him.

and

From Rudy Gee – apparently Trump’s grave digger – his latest faux pas from the LA TIMES here.

My 2 cents: This Atlantic article is probably one of top thus far written about this whole disastrous American history chapter. One we may never recover from.

Even if Trump is impeached, removed from office, and even jailed say in NYS on legal charges, his loyalists now locked in place with Alex Jones or Sean Hannity type anti-American and anti-government anything conspiracies, may stir up trouble that we haven't seen in decades. 

That is my fear and it would be pretty damn ugly, perhaps the start of the end of America today. BTW: That is has been a long time goal of many of our adversaries: undermine and weaken American democracy.

Am I overly dramatic? I hardly think so — if we stay focused on events around us and reflect on everything since Donald J. Trump took office and work to get back to normal we can and will recover.

No simple conclusion can be reached except maybe an ice-cold shower and national slap in the face to wake us up from this horrible national nightmare.

I always have hope but under the present conditions, even that seems pretty thin. We shall see.

Thanks for stopping by.