Friendships can be wonderful things. It is great to have people in your life who always doing things for you. A good friend might email me about a movie she thinks that I would like, or she might bake me a cake on my birthday. It is also great to be able to repay people for their kindness. I love seeing a smile on someone’s face when I have done something nice for them. Relationships like this can be truly wonderful.
In business, sometimes one can have business relationships that seem similar to regular friendships. Say, for example, that I build skyscrapers in big cities and there is a construction company that I like to use. Perhaps over the past 20 years, I have had that company work on dozens of projects for me, and over the decades, my business and the construction company have together made hundreds of millions of dollars. The owner of that company might be the first person to whom I send a Christmas card every year. I might know all of his kid’s names, how old they are, and what they like. We might have spent countless hours together trying to work out construction supply issues over Chinese takeout food. He might feel like a brother to me.
And yet, if at any time a friend or a business associate starts doing something for me that is illegal or immoral, the whole situation changes. I might ask myself, “Did I ever do anything that encouraged them to do this for me? Don’t they know that I would not be OK with this? Do I need to report this to someone?” To the moral person, the whole relationship is now tainted, and one hopes that somehow the situation can be resolved, that somehow the relationship can be saved, even if one fears that there might not be any way to save it. I learned a long time ago that there are certain lines one should never cross—not even a little. That is because once one starts crossing those lines, it becomes easier and easier to cross them and the lines get blurrier and blurrier.
Sooner or later, most of us in life come across something that tests our integrity. We get a chance at gaining something, but in order to gain it, we end up having to do something that is immoral or illegal—or we have to look the other way while someone else does something immoral or illegal. How we react to it defines who we are, both to ourselves and to other people.
Starting from at least the end of 2015, Russian operatives were trying to form a relationship with Donald Trump, and from at least Trump’s Miss Universe beauty pageant in Russia in 2013, Donald Trump was trying to form a relationship with the Russians. There was absolutely nothing wrong with that, as long as neither party was engaging in something that was illegal or immoral, and as long as the Trump campaign reported Russian contacts after the Trump campaign officially started. However, the Trump campaign not only did not report their Russian contacts as they were legally obligated to do, they went to a huge amount of effort to cover these contacts up, and the Russians did illegal things to help the Trump associates, such as hack into DNC accounts and then spread the illegally obtained data on Wikileaks. Lines were crossed over and over again, and no one on the Trump campaign ever said a word about it at any time during the campaign—not to the FBI or anyone else, just as none of the Russians said a word about it either.
Not only did the Russians break the law by having Russian hackers break into DNC accounts, but they also illegally assisted the Trump campaign through their use of computer network botnets and their Facebook campaign designed to change voter opinions. In addition, the Trump campaign both repeatedly hid and lied about Trump's desire to build a hotel in Russia and bribe Vladimir Putin with a fifty million dollar condo in that hotel. The "friendship" or "business relationship" slowly migrated from an association, friendship, or a business relationship into a conspiracy because the relationship became tainted with actions that were both illegal and immoral.
Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn lied under oath about his contacts with the Russians, and Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner “neglected” to put his contacts with the Russians on his official forms. People keep asking why they lied about their contacts with the Russians. The answer is simple—in the relationship between the Russians and the Trump campaign, the moment that one of the parties, either the Russians or the Trump campaign, started to do something immoral or illegal, the whole relationship was tainted. The Russians tainted the relationship by the DNC account hacks and the illegal campaign help, the Trump campaign did illegal things by initially not reporting the Russian contacts and then later lying about it on both official forms and under oath it to cover it up. Once the members of the Trump campaign knew that the lines were crossed, they knew that the whole relationship would look bad, so they did whatever they could to cover the relationship up.
Donald Trump loves to say “no collusion”. Well, every time a Trump associate was contacted by a Russian and did not report it, that was collusion. Every time a Trump associate contacted a Russian and did not report it, that was collusion. When the Russians offered dirt on Hillary Clinton and the Trump campaign did not report it, that was collusion. Collusion is just another name for conspiracy, and the moment certain things started to happen and were not reported, the illegality started, which means the conspiracy started, which means the collusion started. As the contacts continued, and as the coverups continued, that conspiracy grew.
No collusion? It turns out there was a heck of a lot of collusion. From what I have read, since 2015, around 16 Trump associates had contact with the Russians around 97 times. If, during the original contacts before the Trump campaign started, nothing illegal was going on, then there was no collusion. However, once the Trump campaign started, the Trump associates had a legal and moral obligation to report any contacts with the Russians. The members of the Trump campaign did not report these contacts, so what might have been lots of perfectly legal (though somewhat questionable) contacts with the Russians morphed into lots of collusion with the Russians. In addition, once the Trump campaign started planning to bribe Vladimir Putin with a 50 million dollar condo to help sweeten the Trump Tower Moscow deal, that was collusion too. The Trump campaign knew what they were doing was wrong, which is why they lied about it so much during the campaign and which is why they lied about it under oath after the campaign had ended.
The sheer amount of illegal and immoral acts of Donald Trump’s associates, from during his campaign until now, is stunning. Donald Trump’s longtime personal and business lawyer, his former Campaign Manager, and his former National Security advisor are all now convicted felons. Donald Trump’s Administration is certainly giving Richard Nixon’s Administration a run for its money. Sure, the Nixon Administration had a lot of criminals, but at least they did not sell us out to the Russians.