Here’s an example where Meghan McCain challenged Rep. Adam Schiff for a conclusive answer on the great “collusion” question, and he gave a definitive answer but IMO didn’t drive the point home as strongly as it can be made.
“Hi Congressman, I think at this point in time it’s really difficult for me and many Americans to differentiate between what’s overhype and what isn’t,” McCain began. “You have said on more than one occasion that you’ve seen ample evidence of the Trump campaign’s Russia collusion. Last month, you said you had more than circumstantial evidence of treasonous collusion with Russia.” “What specifically were you referring to and please be specific, because if it’s true I do believe Americans have a right to know, a year later, what that is,” McCain pressed.
“Well I certainly said there was ample evidence of collusion, I’ve never used the word ‘treason,’ only Steve Bannon has used that word,” Schiff shot back. “But, if you look at the facts that are in the public domain, they’re pretty damning.”
Schiff listed onetime Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, who was “told back in April of last year that the Russians had stolen Clinton and DNC emails.”
“It was only weeks later that the Russians made a second approach,” Schiff continued, turning to the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between top members of the Trump campaign and a Russia lawyer who “wanted to offer incriminating information on Hillary Clinton.”
“Is it enough for [special counsel Robert] Mueller to bring charges?” McCain demanded.
“What’s Mueller’s job and what’s our job?” Schiff replied. “Bob Mueller will make the decision whether there is proof beyond a reasonable doubt to indict and convict people. It is not his responsibility to tell the country what happened. There’s no guarantee the country will ever learn what Bob Mueller finds apart from an indictment.”
“It’s the job for the Congress to tell the American people what happened,” he added.
Collusion in point of fact is not a crime. It’s just a group of people working together, even if they don’t have a specific verbal or written agreement.
col·lu·sion
kəˈlo͞oZHən/
noun
-
secret or illegal cooperation or conspiracy, especially in order to cheat or deceive others.
"the armed forces were working in collusion with drug traffickers"
| synonyms: |
conspiracy, connivance, complicity, intrigue, plotting, secret understanding, collaboration, scheming
"there had been collusion between the security forces and paramilitary groups"
|
-
LAW
illegal cooperation or conspiracy, especially between ostensible opponents in a lawsuit.
Trump’s entire campaign could be called a form of internal “collusion” simply because they were clearly all working together and keeping secrets. All you need to prove collusion with RUSSIA is to show that various parties on both sides attempted to conspire together and they attempted to keep that conspiracy a secret and/or to violate the law. They don’t have to succeed at what they’re trying to do, they only have to both TRY to do it — even if their efforts are performed separately, like a relay race — and have a secret shared goal. Whether it’s criminal or not, is another additional step.
At this point there is ample evidence that various member of the Trump campaign, including Donald, conspired together, sometimes to violate the law, in coordination with Russians and they definitely tried to keep it a secret.
Dems need to get better at getting to the point than this, then they need to have a laser-like focus on that point and make it as simple, clear, obvious and as bulletproof as possible.
The basic summary is this:
- Trump and Papadopoulos colluded and conspired to negotiate with Russians in violation of Sanctions and the Logan Act.
- Papadopoulos and Sessions violated federal law by failing to report felonies committed by the Russians to obtain “dirt” on Hillary.
- Don Jr. violated FEC rules, colluded, conspired and negotiated with Russians in order to obtain their “Dirt” on Hillary Clinton.
- Carter Page acted as a surrogate for Trump in his illegal collusion, and conspiratorial negotiations with Russia.
- The Trump campaign began adjusting policy to reward and entice the Russians to release their “Dirt.”
- Trump and Don Junior falsely defended and denied Russia’s crimes to cover up their conspiracy.
- Trump and his campaign falsely denied their illegal contacts with Russians.
- Various Trump associates secretly and illegally met or contacted Russians over both business deals and foreign policy during the campaign and transition.
- The Trump Administration has attempted multiple times to end Russia’s Sanctions for no legitimate reason.
If Democrats just remember the above, they’ll do just fine — make the claim that there IS COLLUSION then make the others disprove the assertion. Deniers can’t claim Papadopoulos, Flynn, Kushner, Manafort, Gates, Page and Don Junior didn’t illegally negotiate with Russians, because all of they did and they can’t claim they didn’t fail to reveal these conversations and (in most cases) they didn’t false statements about them. That happened too, and If that’s not a deliberate criminal plan, it’s grossly incompetent — neither is tolerable. Four of those people are looking at probable prison time already. We have the facts to go on the offensive and make them defend the actions of Trump and his campaign which have all been well documented and reported.
Here are the details.
1. Trump and Papadopoulos colluded and conspired to negotiate with Russians in violation of Sanctions and the Logan Act.
Trump’s first direct involvement in these crimes began when Papadopoulos was originally hired and sat down one-on-one with Trump and specifically discussed reaching out to the Russians as was reported by a Greek news outlet before Papadopoulos troubles began with the FBI.
Marianna Kakaounaki, an investigative reporter for the Greek newspaper Kathimerini, said Papadopoulos told her that Trump called him personally after he was hired to the campaign in March 2016. Trump later met with Papadopoulos one-on-one, when the aide told Trump about his ongoing efforts to set up a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Kakaounaki said. [...]
This constituted a conspiracy between the two men and was illegal as later pointed out by some of their own advisors due to emails published by the Washington Post.
...George Papadopoulos, offered to set up "a meeting between us and the Russian leadership to discuss US-Russia ties under President Trump," telling them his Russian contacts welcomed the opportunity, according to internal campaign emails read to The Washington Post.
The proposal sent a ripple of concern through campaign headquarters in Trump Tower. Campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis wrote that he thoughtNATO allies should be consulted before any plans were made. Another Trump adviser, retired Navy Rear Adm. Charles Kubic, cited legal concerns, including a possible violation of U.S. sanctions against Russia and of the Logan Act, which prohibits U.S. citizens from unauthorized negotiation with foreign governments.
Ahoy maties.. thar blows Collision-sign!
2. Papadopoulos and Sessions violated federal law by failing to report felonies committed by the Russians to obtain “dirt” on Hillary.
This here is the point mentioned by Rep. Schiff that he had been specifically told that Russians had gained access to “thousands of Hillary Clinton’s emails.” There is no possible way that that was done without the commission of multiple felonies, and failure to report such information to the FBI is itself a crime known as Misprision of Felony.
You can look at this as being similar to someone admitted to you that they’ve robbed a bank. If you don’t report that this has occurred, and more importantly they realize you haven’t reported it, you can be considered an accessory after the fact because they now have several ways which they can use to manipulate you because of your choice to remain silent.
Additionally as Schiff also mentioned to McCain as he’d outlined in his memo about the Carter Page FISA warrant that Papadopoulos was shown a “preview of how releases of the emails might look” which makes his decision to remain silent, and then later lie to the FBI about these contacts claiming they took place before the campaign ever more damning.
As Rep. Adam Schiff recently told Chris Hayes, “our memo discloses for the first time that the Russians previewed to Papadopoulos that they could help with disseminating these stolen emails.” Rep. Schiff added, “When Donald Trump openly called on the Russians to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails, they’d be richly rewarded if they released these to the press, his campaign had already been put on notice that the Russians were prepared to do just that and disseminate these stolen emails.”
So again, long before anyone knew this was the case — including the DNC and the FBI — members of the Trump campaign knew Russia had negative information on Clinton and knew they planned to release that information. They’ve been claiming this was “Obama’s fault” for not stopping this — even though he got directly in Putin’s face about it and later even threatened “armed conflict” if they didn’t stop, but he wasn’t even informed until September, THEY KNEW IN APRIL. They knew and didn’t tell the FBI — which would have been a month before several of the other hacks took place — and rather than try to discourage the Russians they continued trying to reach out to them and either get the Hillary “dirt" themselves or else encourage the Russians to release it.
This right here, this alone — IS COLLUSION.
And again, it’s made even worse by the fact that Papadopoulos apparent bragged about what he heard from the Russians to young women, she then contacted Australian diplomats she knew, who then sat Papadopoulos down in a London wine bar and the repeated it again as reported by the New York Times.
WASHINGTON — During a night of heavy drinking at an upscale London bar in May 2016, George Papadopoulos, a young foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, made a startling revelation to Australia’s top diplomat in Britain: Russia had political dirt on Hillary Clinton.
About three weeks earlier, Mr. Papadopoulos had been told that Moscow had thousands of emails that would embarrass Mrs. Clinton, apparently stolen in an effort to try to damage her campaign.
And when the first emails were eventually released by Wikileaks guess who went to FBI? That would be NOT Papadopoulos.
But two months later, when leaked Democratic emails began appearing online, Australian officials passed the information about Mr. Papadopoulos to their American counterparts, according to four current and former American and foreign officials with direct knowledge of the Australians’ role.
So again, Papadopoulos doesn’t talk to the authorities, because he’s part of a conspiracy launched by TRUMP HIMSELF. His complicity in the actions of the Russians by helping keep their involvement secret — which is clearly something that benefits them and help keep the information being released by Wikileaks appear “clean” of external or political influences. Any other persons in the campaign, including Trump, who was aware of Papadopoulos attempt to negotiate with Russia and/or that they had admitted to violating computer wire fraud laws — would also be part of this conspiracy to violate sanctions, the Logan Act and Misprision of Felony. We don’t yet have confirmation of how many people would fit this situation, but I don’t think it’s just one since according to his guilty pleas Papadopoulos regularly emailed at least seven members of the campaign about his activities.
One of those members was apparently Jeff Sessions because more recently Papadopoulos has revealed that Sessions kept asking him to “get ahold of the dirt” on Hillary from the Russians.
Papadopoulos, according to this new acquaintance, said that Sessions was well aware of the contact between Papadopoulos and Joseph Mifsud, an academic from Malta with high-level connections in Russia. Papadopoulos’ indictment revealed that Mifsud had told Papadopoulos that the Russians had “‘dirt’ on then-candidate Hillary Clinton in the form of ‘thousands of emails.'”
Jason Wilson, a computer engineer who lives in Chicago, told ThinkProgress that Papadopoulos said during their conversation that “Sessions encouraged me” to find out anything he could about the hacked Hillary Clinton emails that Mifsud had mentioned.
That means that Jeff Sessions who has repeatedly said he “didn’t know of any Trump surrogates who were on contact with Russia” was specifically directing Papadopoulos to get information about Hillary’s hacked emails from the Russians. And still, neither of them reported any of this to the FBI the way that Australian Diplomat Alexander Downer did as soon as he found out.
We could stop right here, we are functionally done — this is collusion, it’s conspiracy and it’s criminal.
But wait, it gets worse.
3. Don Jr. violated FEC rules, colluded, conspired and negotiated with Russians in order to obtain their “Dirt” on Hillary Clinton.
Remember that thing I said about being told someone robbed a bank and having to decide to report it or not? What do you do when they offer you a share of the stolen cash? Go for it or tell somebody?
Guess what the Trumpsters did when this kind of offer came to them?
When Don jr’s associate from the Moscow Miss Universe Contest Rob Goldstone emailed him about the Russian government wanting to share information that would “incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father” as “part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump” Junior wasn’t shocked, he wasn’t taken aback, he wasn’t surprised. He said…
...if it's what you say I love it especially later in the summer.
Later in the summer of course was directly in the middle of the final campaign after the conventions and Trump would be facing Hillary head-to-head. He later met with the Russians recommended by Goldstone, a move which was a violation of FEC rules against trying to accept anything of value from a foreign nation. Don Jr claims this was a “nothing” meeting because the Russians didn’t actually bring the promised information with them, but they argue that they did make a tentative deal with Junior.
Veselnitskaya said she went to the New York meeting to show Trump campaign officials that major Democratic donors had evaded U.S. taxes and to lobby against the so-called Magnitsky law that punishes Russian officials for the murder of a Russian tax accountant who accused the Kremlin of corruption.
“Looking ahead, if we come to power, we can return to this issue and think what to do about it,’’ Trump Jr. said of the 2012 law, she recalled. “I understand our side may have messed up, but it’ll take a long time to get to the bottom of it,” he added, according to her.
So Trump’s people showed that he was open to renegotiating U.S. policy [which again a Logan Act violation] …on a condition. This offer was dropped as soon as the information wasn’t provided, so clearly the implication was “give us the dirt, and we will play ball on sanctions.”
On June 15, 2016, less than a week later Guccifer 2.0 released the DNC’s opposition research file on Donald Trump — which is the first data dump from the hacks. The next day June 16, 2016, Guccifer 2.0 used DCLeaks to reveal the first set of hacked DNC emails which had Cyrillic characters and Russian urls in their metadata.
Dirt delivered.
4. Carter Page was used as a surrogate for Trump in his illegal collusion, and conspiratorial negotiations with Russia.
Sessions, JD Gordon, Papadoulos and others meet with Trump
At a meeting of Trump foreign policy advisers during the campaign Papadopoulos, who was normally based in London, personally attended and reported his success at reaching the Russians to Trump’s face then pitched the idea of a direct meeting between himself and Putin.
But Jeff Sessions shut this idea down, likely because it would have been Illegal as previously pointed out by Rear Admiral Kubic. After this meeting, Paul Manafort emailed his partner Rick Gates and stated that someone else besides Trump needed to be sent, which shows that they were part of the conspiracy and were continuing it despite Sessions objections.
Some of Papadopoulos emails were forwarded by Manafort to Gates “Let[‘]s discuss, We need someone to communicate that DT is not doing these trips. It should be someone low level in the campaign so as not to send any signal.”
And who would be receiving that signal, could it be the FBI?
Papadopoulos then communicated this to his Russian contacts and on the very same day that they agreed to a surrogate, Corey Lewandowski approved a trip to Moscow by Carter Page, who while he was there supposedly on “non-campaign business” managed to meet Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich and, just as Papadopoulos had been previously told, he was informed by Kremlin Official Igor Divyekin that “Russia had compromising materials on Hillary Clinton” as noted within Schiff’s memo on Page’s FISA Warrant.
Page’s makes contact in Russia
Also according to his own testimony Andrey Baranov, Rosneft's head of investor relations told him of an impending sale of a large portion of their stock. Why he would tell him this when Rosneft was sanctioned is a good question, but the Steele memo alleges that Rosneft’s CEO offered Page a percentage of this sale in exchange for influencing Trump to drop sanctions.
This again is QUO PRO QUO Collusion, plain and simple.
Page has vehemently denied this offer, but he does admit discussing the stock sale with Baranov even though they were sanctioned and although Page claims that this trip had nothing to do with the campaign his discussion with Divyekin disproves this meaning that he may have potentially violated, again, both the sanctions and the Logan Act.
The fact that the trip was ping-ponged from Papadopoulos to Trump, to Page indicates that the initial conspiracy between Trump and Papadopoulos to negotiate with Russia had eventually widened to include Manafort, Gates and potentially Lewandoski.
The important part here is that even though Papadopoulos’ claim about Russia being the source of stolen DNC emails, which wasn’t confirmed when Don Junior met with them — it was ultimately confirmed here when Page met with Divyekin.
And still, everyone in the Trump campaign said nothing about it.
5. The Trump campaign began adjusting policy to reward and entice the Russians to release their “Dirt.”
Trump foreign policy advisor J.D. Gordon, who was sitting next to Papadopoulos during the meeting where he made his big pitch for Trump to meet Putin [shown above], was the key person in blocking an RNC platform plank about Ukraine that would have angered the Russians. And then he and Manafort lied about it.
Trump campaign Chairman Paul Manafort expressly denied his campaign had any role in changing the language of the Republican Party’s platform on Ukraine.
“It absolutely did not come from the Trump campaign,” Manafort told NBC’s “Meet the Press”.
But eventually, they admitted the truth.
The Trump campaign's national-security policy representative for the Republican National Convention, J.D. Gordon, told CNNon Thursday that he pushed to alter an amendment to the GOP's draft policy on Ukraine at the Republican National Convention last year to further align it with President Donald Trump's views.
…
In January, Gordon told Business Insider that he "never left" his "assigned side table" nor spoke publicly at the GOP national security subcommittee meeting, where the amendment — which originally called for "providing lethal defense weapons" to the Ukrainian army to fend off Russian-backed separatists — was read aloud, debated, and ultimately watered down to "providing appropriate assistance" to Ukraine.
According to CNN's Jim Acosta, however, Gordon said that at the RNC he and others "advocated for the GOP platform to include language against arming Ukrainians against pro-Russian rebels" because "this was in line with Trump's views, expressed at a March national security meeting at the unfinished Trump hotel" in Washington, DC.
They did it because that’s what Trump wanted, after trying to pretend they had nothing to do with it.
Why?
Why would they make such a pretense unless they already had damn good reasons to distance themselves from the appearance of doing favors for Russia?
It was just one day after the end of the Republican National Convention on July 22, 2016, where this change was made that Wikileaks released the DNC’s remaining emails.
On July 27th Trump publicly asked Russia to “release Hillary’s missing emails” which again indicates he knew very well who had stolen them. Or he was “joking”, or something.
But by that point the “Missing” emails were long deleted [between December of 2014 and January of 2015], even before the Russians had begun their hacks later in 2015 and everything that had been sent between her and the State Dept had been turned over to the FOIA Dept — so the only way to access her other emails was to get them from the people she sent them to. People like John Podesta’s who emails were first released by Wikileaks on October 7th, the same night the Intel Community officially stated that the hacks were directed by the Kremlin and just one hour after the Access Hollywood story broke.
So that was some really lucky timing, wasn’t it?
6. Trump and Don Junior falsely defended and denied Russia’s crimes to maintain their coverup.
The thing about being part of an conspiracy to negotiate with Russians is you have to keep the fact that the conspiracy has to exist in secret, you also have to make sure no one catches your co-conspirators in Russia or the jig is up.
On July 22th, five days before Trump called for the Russians to “find and release the Missing Emails”, Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook pointed the finger for the DNC hacks toward the Russians — and for some reason, Donald Junior reacted as if he’d just yank down the pants on Santa Clause.
Later, in July 2016, Trump Jr. denied knowing anything about leaked emails when asked by CNN to comment on an allegation made by Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager that Russians were behind the effort.
“This is, time and time again, lie after lie. You notice he won’t say, ‘Well, I say this.’ He’ll say, ‘Here are experts, here's house cat at home who once said this is what’s happening with the Russians,'" Trump Jr. said.
“It’s disgusting,” he concluded. “It’s so phony.”
Why exactly is Junior “so disgusted” that the Mook said the DNC was hacked by Russia? What’s it to him? Why does he care who did it, because it’s obvious that it happened right? Unless of course, he already knows because of Papadopoulos, Page and his own conversations with the Russians which informed him that’s it was very likely true, on top of the fact that the FSB (Cozy Bear) had previously hacked the White House and State Department emails systems in 2015. Denying it so vehemently only makes sense if he himself is on the line because this happens to be exactly the same type of thing that Russians had illegally offered to give him.
During the campaign, and particularly after Mook’s announcement about the DNC being hacked by Russia as was later on July 28th confirmed by the NYTimes and then an October 21st report by the Intelligence community. Trump repeatedly denied that he had anything to do with Russia — although he never claimed that they didn’t have something to do with him. Or Money-Laundering.
7. Trump and his campaign falsely denied their illegal contacts with Russians
On November 10th, two days after the election Hope Hicks claimed there were no communication between foreign entities and the Trump campaign because the Russians had outed them.
Two days after Donald Trump won the election, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said the Russian government had been in contact with the Trump campaign. “There were contacts,” he remarked. “We are doing this and have been doing this during the election campaign.” He noted that the Kremlin knew many of Trump’s closest allies and was in touch with them. “Obviously, we know most of the people from his [Trump’s] entourage.” he said. “Those people have always been in the limelight in the United States and have occupied high-ranking positions.” Ryabkov added that these contacts would continue.
...
So with a senior Russian official now stating that the Trump campaign had interacted with Russians, what was the Trump campaign to do? For Hicks, it was easy. Go with a blanket denial. “It never happened,” she said. “There was no communication between the campaign and any foreign entity during the campaign.”
Whether Hicks knew at that time this was lie — which frankly she should have known because she had been forwarded an email by Jared Kushner about Don Jr’s contact with Wikileaks — or not is irrelevant. What matters is that It was in fact, a lie.
Consistently members of the Trump campaign, from Papadopoulos to Michael Flynn, Don Junior, Jeff Sessions, Carter Page, Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort — all of them at one point or another lied about being in contact with Russians, some of whom did so to the FBI and on their SF86 Security forms.
That’s not an accident — that’s a plan.
8. Various Trump associates secretly and illegally met or contacted Russians over both business deals and foreign policy during the campaign and transition.
Don Jr. met with Russian bankster and reported gangster Alexander Torshin during the election at an NRA event, even though Jared Kushner has previously turned down an invitation for the meeting intended from Trump himself.
Jeff Sessions despite testifying under oath that “he didn’t know any Trump surrogates who met with Russians, and that he himself hadn’t met any Russians” obviously knew about Papadopoulos meetings and trips to Russia — although he claims he “forgot” — and had himself met Ambassador Kislyak three separate times, first before a Trump campaign speech at the Mayflower Hotel, during a Heritage Foundation event during the RNC, and privately in his own offices where they discussed the Russian sanctions over Crimea. Then he forgot all that too. He’s since claimed that he wasn't “acting as a surrogate” during these times, but that only makes sense for the third meeting at the U.S. Senate.
Michael Flynn had not only taken almost $60,000 from Russia and another $530,000 from Turkey [which really originated in Russia] without prior approval from the Pentagon and then lied about it on his Security forms, had also met the Russians during the campaign as part of a $100 Billion joint-construction plan with Russian Nuclear company Rosatom — the same company that bought Uranium One — to build reactors for Saudi Arabia using a sanctioned Russian company for security.
Democrats sought information from three American companies in June after Newsweek reported that Flynn traveled to the Middle East in the summer of 2015 to broker a $100 billion deal between the companies, Saudi Arabia and Russia's nuclear power agency. In response, officials from the US companies provided statements to the Democrats, confirming Flynn's trip in 2015.
When Flynn returned to the US several months later and reapplied for his security clearance, he never disclosed the trip or the contacts he had with foreign nationals as part of the trip, the Democrats say.
It is illegal under federal law to knowingly falsify or conceal relevant information from a security clearance form. The Democrats reviewed Flynn's paperwork and subsequent interview with the FBI -- routine practice to get a security clearance -- and said that Flynn never disclosed the summer 2015 trip.
The money he took from Turkey was apparently part of a plot to kidnap a Muslim cleric living in the U.S. and rendition him into the custody of his political enemy Turkish President Erdogan, and also release a Turkish-Iranian gold-trader being held by the U.S. for violating sanctions against Iran. That trader Reza Zarrab may have become a cooperating witness in the Mueller investigation.
Flynn also lied about his conversations with Russian Ambassador Kislyak about whether the Trump administration would maintain sanctions implemented by President Obama in retaliation for their hacking efforts even though he had been warned that such communications would be intercepted.
Flynn and Kushner met with Kislyak to establish a secret “back-channel” that would have been secure from U.S. intel services from being able to listen in. They also both, along with Steve Bannon secretly met with the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, on a suggestion from Kislyak in order to continue negotiations which resulted in setting up yet another meeting between the Crown Prince and Erik Prince former CEO of Black Water in the Seychelles Islands. And also Kushner met with Sergei Gorkov a Russian banker with links to Russian Intelligence (FSB) supposedly to discuss business issues even though their meeting had been Kislyak’s idea and yet again, his bank (VEB) is sanctioned — so any business agreements or arrangements between them would be illegal. All of this potentially violated the Logan Act.
Paul Manafort and his partner Rick Gates were both former advisors to Putin friendly ex-Ukrainian President Yanukovych and have a close Russian associate Konstantin Kilminik who worked for them the in Ukraine and who has links to Russian Military Intelligence (GRU). They had previously been paid Tens of $Millions by Russian aluminum Oligarch Oleg Deripaska to allegedly secretly promote Putin’s agenda here and overseas and may still owe him $18 Million or more. During the campaign, they repeatedly used Kilminik as a go-between ultimately offering Deripaska a personal status briefing on the Trump campaign in July just before the RNC supposedly in order “get whole” on their outstanding $18-50 Million debt — so they were essentially offering the Russians “Dirt” on Trump, for a price.
Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen and his company aide Felix Sater had reached out to the Kremlin during the campaign seeking to get Putin’s aid in building Trump Tower Moscow — using a sanctioned Russian bank. Sater claimed in an email to Cohen:
I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected... I know how to play it and how to get this done. Buddy, our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it... I will get all of Putin’s team to buy in on this, I will manage this process.”
Cohen actually contacted the Kremlin directly in order to get their support on this project, but they failed to respond.
9. The Trump Administration has attempted multiple times to end Russia’s Sanctions for no legitimate reason.
Almost as soon as they entered the White House members of Flynn’s staff at the NSC tried to get the State Department to end Sanctions against Russia, only to have that backfire.
In the early weeks of the Trump administration, former Obama administration officials and State Department staffers fought an intense, behind-the-scenes battle to head off efforts by incoming officials to normalize relations with Russia, according to multiple sources familiar with the events.
Unknown to the public at the time, top Trump administration officials, almost as soon as they took office, tasked State Department staffers with developing proposals for the lifting of economic sanctions, the return of diplomatic compounds and other steps to relieve tensions with Moscow.
This is specifically what prompted the House and Senate to craft a new sanctions bill against Russian meddling, as well as Iran and North Korea that would require Congressional approval before they could be lifted, however, Trump has missed the deadline for implementing these new sanctions.
Trump attorney Michael Cohen and Felix Sater negotiated a deal to end sanctions against Russia by stopping the violence in Crimea with a Ukranian named Andrii V. Artemenko. They supposedly deliver a copy of this plan to Michael Flynn’s desk, but there is no evidence he ever reviewed it or passed it on to anyone.
A week before Michael T. Flynn resigned as national security adviser, a sealed proposal was hand-delivered to his office, outlining a way for President Trump to lift sanctions against Russia.
Mr. Flynn is gone, having been caught lying about his own discussion of sanctions with the Russian ambassador. But the proposal, a peace plan for Ukraine and Russia, remains, along with those pushing it: Michael D. Cohen, the president’s personal lawyer, who delivered the document; Felix H. Sater, a business associate who helped Mr. Trump scout deals in Russia; and a Ukrainian lawmaker trying to rise in a political opposition movement shaped in part by Mr. Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort.
Even with Flynn fired for lying about discussing sanctions members of the NSC emailed the State dept asking if sanctions on Russian Oil could be lifted which would have allowed the Exxon/Rosneft deal to go forward or Trump Tower Moscow to be build, State informed them this would be bad for U.S. oil companies and also had to drop the sanctions without getting anything in return.
The White House explored unilaterally easing sanctions on Russia’s oil industry as recently as late March, arguing that decreased Russian oil production could harm the American economy, according to former U.S. officials.
State Department officials argued successfully that easing those sanctions would actually hurt the U.S. energy sector, according to those former officials and email exchanges reviewed by The Daily Beast.
In one email exchange, a State Department official feels the need to explain that lowering punitive sanctions on the Russian oil industry would be rewarding Moscow—without getting anything from the Kremlin in return
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s former company Exxon/Mobil sought a waiver to Russia Oil sanctions so they could continue their $500 Billion deal with Rosneft, only to have that waiver rejected two days later.
While he’s been Secretary of State Tiller has effectively dismantled the State Department Sanctions Office.
The State Department shuttered an office that oversees sanctions policy, even as the Donald Trump administration faced criticism from lawmakers over its handling of new economic penalties against Russia.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson eliminated the Coordinator for Sanctions Policy office, which had been led by a veteran ambassador-rank diplomat with at least five staff, as part of an overhaul of the department, former diplomats and congressional sources told Foreign Policy.
This list doesn't cover everything as frankly additional revelations are coming out almost every day — but this should be enough to shutdown Republican complaints that “There Is No Collusion”.
There’s plenty of collusion, we’re even past the point of arguing whether there was “any Crime.”
None of this makes any sense since Russia has not only retained control of the illegally seized nation of Crimea, they continue to implement further counterintelligence and social media influence attacks against the U.S. even today while the current National Security Advisor Admiral Mike Rodgers says he “hasn’t been given the authority to strike back” against Russia on their home turf.
There’s no real good reason for this unless, for some reason, Russia has Trump under their thumb.
There’s plenty of crime here and I’m not even getting into Trump long history of links to money-laundering for the Russian Mob, or his attempts at Obstruction with Comey and others.
After 19 indictments and at least 5 guilty pleas and counting It’s really just a matter of how much more crime will be ultimately uncovered and will the cases be strong enough to meet the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard for plenty of people in the campaign up to and including Trump himself.
