Yes, Collusion
Even with redactions, the Mueller report contains ample evidence Trump and his campaign sought foreign help in 2016.
By ALEX SHEPHARD
April 18, 2019
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Over the course of Donald Trump’s presidency, “no collusion” has become
a mantra, rivaling only “Make America Great Again” as a motto and, at times, an organizing principle. The president and his defenders have uttered the phrase
hundreds of times. For Trump, “no collusion” is a shield—proof the Russia inquiry that has dogged his presidency is a sham concocted by his perceived enemies: the Democrats, the media, and the deep state. The president’s public statements in the wake of Attorney General William Barr’s summary of the Mueller report and the release of the
redacted version of the report itself have all centered on the inability to prove criminal conspiracy, equating that with an absence of any criminality or misbehavior.
Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
As I have been saying all along, NO COLLUSION - NO OBSTRUCT
12:59 PM - Apr 18, 2019
The president and, particularly, his attorneys have gone to great lengths to narrow the definition of “collusion,” which is itself not a legal term. In their hands, only a proven conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russian officials—a stated and agreed upon quid pro quo in advance of any illegal conduct—could qualify as collusion. Mueller’s team’s inability to find proof of that conspiracy, in Team Trump’s opinion, is all they need to show that the president has been completely exonerated. For the
“Russia thing,” as Trump has called it, to be real, the special counsel would have had to prove this level of criminal coordination.
The text of the Mueller report, however, offers a very different picture. While an improbable smoking gun showing an agreed upon deal between the Trump campaign and Russian officials has not been produced, the report—even with all its redactions—is full of instances in which Trump and a number of his aides, advisers, and family members are talking with figures linked in various ways to Russia. These conversations broadly fall into two disquieting categories: what the hacked information being disseminated by WikiLeaks might contain; and what Russia, its officials, operatives, or cutouts could do for the campaign. Even without clear evidence of criminal conspiracy, there’s plenty of evidence of collusion in what amounts to a consistently damning portrait of a campaign welcoming—and egging on—election interference.
The Mueller report represents a clear narrative on interference in the 2016 election. Russia chose to intervene in the election in an effort to promote Trump and damage Hillary Clinton. The Trump campaign welcomed their help and encouraged it, both publicly and privately. Trump’s
“Russia, if you’re listening” comment from July 2016 is presented as evidence in the report, as are
more than one hundred interactions between campaign officials and figures with ties to Russia.
The Trump team “expected it would benefit” from the release of hacked emails. As soon as they became aware that WikiLeaks had in its possession stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee, Trump and his associates began “planning a press strategy, a communications campaign, and messaging based on the possible release of Clinton emails by WikiLeaks” to press their advantage. In so doing, the Trump Campaign turned an influence effort from a foreign power into a key strategy for a United States presidential election. Over the course of 2016, moreover, Trumpworld figures repeatedly reached out to people with ties to Russia to inquire about future hacks.
The now infamous
Trump Tower meeting of June 9, 2016 between Donald Trump Jr., then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, and Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya is case in point. That meeting was arranged after Trump Jr. had been told that the Russian government had “‘offered to provide the Trump Campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia’ as ‘part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.’” There’s no evidence that any information was passed between Veselnitskaya and the Trump officials at that meeting, but its existence points to the Trump campaign’s efforts to gain what it perceived as valuable information from figures with ties to Russia.