President Trump denies there is any evidence of his personal collusion with Russia, and that collusion is not a crime anyway, and the investigation should be shut down… An interesting argument. He is innocent and if he is not innocent its not a crime, and no one should investigate any possible crime anyway.
This is a quick summary of some of the suggestive evidence…
1) We know Trump publicly asked Russia to release Clinton’s emails. This indicates that he was prepared to work with Russia for his benefit (this is totally in character, its not like its an aberration). We also know that if Clinton had asked the Russians to release Trump’s tax returns or whatever, that every part of the Republican media (and that includes more or less everything in the US with the possible exception of the LA Times and Mother Jones) would be nonstop calling her a traitor. His action could be excused as stupidity, but Trump supporters keep saying how everything he does is well thought out…
2) We know that people from the Trump campaign met with Russian intelligence at Trump tower, without Lawyers, and denied it. We know Trump wrote the denial. We know they wanted dirt on Clinton and they denied it. We know that at the meeting Russians talked about their governments support for Trump, and we know that the Trump people welcomed this. The meeting was for the purpose of collusion or conspiracy. We know that Trump jr rang a blocked phone number while arranging this meeting, and that the Republicans refused to allow tracing or investigation of that number.
3) We know that despite all the evidence that the Russians were attempting to manipulate the US campaign, the Trump team denied it and they keep denying it. This is what we would expect if they were colluding or conspiring. They even denied it during the campaign after being briefed by US intelligence that this was the case. In fact by these repeated denials they are helping the Russians manipulate US voting and are colluding for their own benefit (the Russians are not helping the Democrats). Again the Republican media would be screaming for Clinton’s head if she had done this. In any case they are leaving the US wide open for further attack in their favour. This is clearly, at best, opportunistic collusion
4) We now know that various wealthy Russians associated with Putin were trying to buy influence with and support US conservatives and the NRA. So the Russians were eager to conspire and other ‘conservatives’ were eager for their money to help Trump and Republicans.
5) We know that friends and associates of Trump and his campaign hunted out Russians to meet in secret during the campaign – by coincidence of course. Nothing to do with Trump, even if some of those people received money from the Trump campaign for unspecified reasons.
For example it appears Manafort was massively in debt to a Russian oligarch who was working with the Russian government to influence Trump and that Manafort hoped working with Trump would reduce his debts to the Russian. So he, as a member of the Trump campaign, saw his work as useful to Russians.
Likewise other people tried to get information on Clinton from the Russians for Trump, and lied about it, even when they were told that such actions amounted to collusion.
Roger Stone ‘predicted’ the hacking of Clinton’s emails before they were released, apparently showing he had knowledge of the hack presumably through contact with Russians – unless he is a successful psychic.
Trump junior also attended a meeting with a governor of Russia’s central bank, apparently to set up channels of communication – who knows what else? Whether this is connected with the Trump Tower meeting needs investigation.
6) There is no evidence that Trump and friends believe they are innocent. They try to obstruct and smear the inquiry at every moment. They also draw fake equivalencies, accusing Democrats of spying on them, when there is little to no evidence of this etc. They display no eagerness to get at the Truth at all, merely to prevent it emerging. In this they are unlike Jill Stein, and nobody seriously thinks she is involved, despite this being a Republican talking point to make the inquiry look political. We know Trump tried to stop or corrupt the investigation from the beginning and remove people he considered unfriendly (we might consider these as people who tried to be ethical and not intimidated by him). We have repeated evidence of witness tampering and attempts to obstruct justice by people associated with Trump. Amazing if there is nothing in it.
7) There are stories of Trump talking to people from Saudi Arabia about getting help.
8) We know Trump was involved with supporters who used Cambridge Analytica to help manipulate disinformation and that these people had contacts with Russians and lied about it – as usual.
9) We know that Wikileaks collaborated with Russian hackers, who were possibly connected with the Russian government to favour Trump and did nothing to favour Clinton or hinder Trump. We also know that that there was a lot of talk that Trump was planning to pardon Assange… We know there were two othe hacks into Democratic party email servers during 2016: One that stole Democratic National Committee emails and one that stole correspondence from John Podesta’s personal Gmail account, these hacks were also probably by Russian hackers. Trump and co were eager for scandalous content in these emails – ie they were hoping the Russians would collaborate with them. Almost nothing resulted from this, except that Republicans kept implying there was something shady about the Democrats…. and that stuff would soon be released. It was coincidentally released at times which benefitted the Trump campaign or distracted from his problems.
Coincidentally people from Cambridge Analytica also met with Assange…
10) Trump helped turn the Republican party and its masses away from the opinion that Russia was to be treated with suspicion to being a good guy who had never done anything nasty under Putin. He supported Putin’s role in Syria and Ukraine – both of which are (to put it mildly) dubious. In this he was helped by fake news from Russian accounts. He was working with Russian propaganda, whether this was conspiracy, payback or because he was a victim of the propaganda is difficult to tell at this moment.
11) By constantly repeating the narrative there is no direct evidence of collusion, Trump resembles a housebreaker stating ‘There was no embezzlement’, and making claims evidence of housebreaking is irrelevant. This is a story that seems persuasive to those who want to believe it. Trump was never going to be tried for collusion anyway, as it is doubtful that such a crime exists…. The question is about finding out what he, or his team, has done.
12) Mueller has so far obtained 17 criminal indictments and five guilty pleas, but this is presumably not relevant to the conduct of Trump and his crew, in any way whatsoever, and the inquiry is purely an unfounded witch hunt.
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