“Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.”
Collusion? What is that?
Criminal Conspiracy by a Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization? That’s against the Law.
“This is what collusion looks like”: GOP-led Senate report “far more devastating” than Mueller probe
by Igor Derysh, Salon
August 18, 2020
“The Senate report — even more extensive than the Mueller investigation — paints a far more devastating picture of Russian intelligence operatives’ access to the Trump campaign, describing far more insidious connections than even Mueller did in his report,” Politico’s Kyle Cheney wrote.
The report, like Mueller’s, did not conclude that Trump’s campaign coordinated with Russia, but it found that Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort worked with a “Russian intelligence officer” and handed him internal campaign data. The report also suggested that Manafort might also be linked to Russia’s hack of the Clinton campaign.
“The committee obtained some information suggesting that the Russian intelligence officer, with whom Manafort had a longstanding relationship, may have been connected to the G.R.U.’s hack-and-leak operation targeting the 2016 U.S. election,” the committee’s Democrats wrote. “This is what collusion looks like.”
The report found that Konstantin Kilimnik, a longtime associate of Manafort, was a “Russian intelligence officer” who might be connected to Russia’s “hack and leak operation.” (Manafort provided internal Trump campaign polling data to Kilimnik.)
Loads of other incriminating stuff, Republican Marco Rubio of Florida’s lame defense-
“We can say, without any hesitation, that the committee found absolutely no evidence that then-candidate Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with the Russian government to meddle in the 2016 election,” he said in a statement.
“What the committee did find however is very troubling,” he added. “We found irrefutable evidence of Russian meddling.”
But Rubio’s statement brushed over actions by Trump’s advisers, as well as the president’s own statements to investigators.
One part of the report notes that Trump told Mueller in written responses that he did “not recall” discussing WikiLeaks with longtime adviser Roger Stone, who was later convicted in the former special counsel’s probe before being granted clemency by the president.
“Despite Trump’s recollection, the committee assesses that Trump did, in fact, speak with Stone about WikiLeaks and with members of his campaign about Stone’s access to WikiLeaks on multiple occasions,” the report said.
The report also noted that WikiLeaks “likely knew it was assisting a Russian intelligence influence effort” by publishing stolen Democratic emails.
Stone “obtained information indicating” that Clinton campaign chief John Podesta would “be a target of an upcoming release, prior to WikiLeaks releasing Podesta’s emails . . . Stone then communicated his information to Trump,” the report said.
Stone directed an associate to tell WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to “drop the Podesta emails immediately” the day the Trump campaign learned about the looming Access Hollywood tape.
So, guilty as charged your Honor. No wonder he dropped the appeal.
The report also noted that the Senate investigation was met with “unprecedented potential executive privilege claims” from the White House.
“The committee was surprised by these assertions, because they were made inconsistently and because they have no basis in law,” the report said.
“The Trump campaign publicly undermined the attribution of the hack-and-leak campaign to Russia and was indifferent to whether it and WikiLeaks were furthering a Russian election interference effort,” the report added.
The report further concluded that Donald Trump Jr. might have obstructed the investigation, but the panel declined to pursue the issue due to “time and resource considerations.”
Hmm…
A new bipartisan report raises the question: If this isn’t ‘collusion,’ what is?
by Paul Waldman, Washington Post
August 18, 2020
On Tuesday, the Senate Intelligence Committee — which, we must stress, is controlled by Republicans — released its fifth and final report on Russian interference, which they describe as “the most comprehensive description to date of Russia’s activities and the threat they posed.” Combined with what we already knew, what the report describes is, indeed, collusion between Trump, his campaign and the Kremlin.
Let’s begin with what the committee found:
- Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort was a primary point of contact between the campaign and Russia. During his time working for a pro-Russian politician in Ukraine, he “formed a close and lasting relationship that would endure to the 2016 U.S. elections and beyond” with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian national who is usually described as someone with “connections to Russian intelligence.” But the committee’s report goes further: “Kilimnik is a Russian intelligence officer.”
- While in charge of the campaign, Manafort shared confidential polling and strategy information with Kilimnik. The committee found that Manafort’s “proximity to Trump created opportunities for Russian intelligence services to exert influence over, and acquire confidential information on, the Trump Campaign,” and that this helped contribute to “a grave counterintelligence threat.”
- While in charge of the campaign, Manafort shared confidential polling and strategy information with Kilimnik. The committee found that Manafort’s “proximity to Trump created opportunities for Russian intelligence services to exert influence over, and acquire confidential information on, the Trump Campaign,” and that this helped contribute to “a grave counterintelligence threat.”
- The committee obtained “information suggesting Kilimnik may have been connected to the GRU’s hack and leak operation.” The GRU is Russian military intelligence; the “hack and leak operation” refers to the Russian hacking into Democratic systems and passing of documents to WikiLeaks so they could be released to damage Hillary Clinton.
- The committee found: “While the GRU and WikiLeaks were releasing hacked documents, the Trump Campaign sought to maximize the impact of those leaks to aid Trump’s electoral prospects.” This included seeking “advance notice about WikiLeaks releases,” building “messaging strategies” around them, promoting and sharing materials from them, and encouraging “further leaks.”
- Trump and senior campaign officials “sought to obtain advance information about WikiLeaks’s planned releases through Roger Stone. At their direction, Stone took action to gain inside knowledge for the Campaign and shared his purported knowledge directly with Trump and senior Campaign officials on multiple occasions.”
- The Trump campaign “publicly undermined the attribution of the hack-and-leak campaign to Russia and was indifferent to whether it and WikiLeaks were furthering a Russian election interference effort.”
- Trump has denied he ever spoke to Stone about WikiLeaks. But the committee — which, again, is controlled by Republicans — essentially calls Trump a liar: “Despite Trump’s recollection, the Committee assesses that Trump did, in fact, speak with Stone about WikiLeaks and with members of his Campaign about Stone’s access to WikiLeaks on multiple occasions.”
- The infamous Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner was “part of a broader influence operation targeting the United States that was coordinated, at least in part with elements of the Russian government.”
Well, there you go.
Republicans will reject this verdict. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the acting chair of the committee, insisted that “the Committee found absolutely no evidence” that Trump or his campaign “colluded with the Russian government.”
But he was using a torturously narrow definition of “collusion” to exonerate Trump.
That definition says that only a carefully planned, coordinated and executed criminal conspiracy counts as “collusion,” and anything short of that does not. But as we now know — through copious evidence collected by the special counsel’s team, the Senate Intelligence Committee, and journalists — the Trump campaign eagerly accepted the help provided by Moscow.
Look! “Collusion”, whatever it is, is not a Crime! Try Criminal Conspiracy (to commit Treason by the way) by a Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization, the Republican Party- Root and Branch!
I hope my outrage is clear.
The incompetance defense-
The campaign’s efforts were slapdash and chaotic. But to whatever degree this didn’t rise to an even more serious level, it doesn’t appear to have been for lack of trying.
Yet to this day, the position of Trump, his attorney general, the conservative media and most of the GOP is that the entire Russia investigation was a hoax, a scam, a ruse. When the FBI learned that the Kremlin was trying to sabotage our election, they want us to believe, the bureau should not have bothered to investigate.
And they continue to do everything they can to discredit that investigation, not just in its particulars — where there may have been corner-cutting or worse — but in its basic premise, that when a hostile foreign power tries to manipulate our election to help its favored candidate, that’s something we might want to look into.
This latest report proves something important about this president: The further you dig, the worse it gets. There’s a lot else going on right now, but this was one of the worst attacks on American democracy one could imagine, and the president appears to have helped it happen. We can’t ever forget it.
Nor forgive it.
Truth and Reconciliation is not enough. It just encourages them. Heads on Pikes!
In a figurative sense and I actually know what figurative means.
There is no ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ really. As a matter of fact it’s all dark.