“A shocking crime was committed on the unscrupulous initiative of few individuals, with the blessing of more, and amid the passive acquiescence of all.” — Tacitus
“Now Russia has disappeared...”
All kinds of tacit agreements have yet to be revealed, perhaps after the next Trump-Putin conversation at the G20 meetings. And then there’s the money trails to be followed. There’s also the obstruction of justice and all those ancillary efforts to delay investigations and inquiry. Even intelligence agencies are beginning to hesitate about giving out information that Trump might re-gift to the wrong parties. Greg Sargent’s article makes the latest Trump confession clearer.
- 2) Trump engaged in active deception of the American people and an extensive effort to corrupt large swaths of our government -- some of which would certainly be prosecutable, if not for DOJ regulations -- to prevent that whole story from coming to light.
- 3) Mueller detailed this story in painstaking, sordid detail. When Trump's propagandists trot out the “no collusion, no obstruction” lie, they are not merely making the legal point that charges were not brought on conspiracy or obstruction of justice.
- 4) Rather, they are trying to make that broader narrative of wretched wrongdoing -- both on Trump’s part and that of Russia, because Trump himself believes talk of its interference effort taints his electoral victory -- disappear entirely.
- 5) Trump's open invitation to another attack is devastating precisely because it throws that big story into new and sharper relief. Trump's camp is frantically spinning away his remarks today. But they can't make this larger story disappear.
The large outlines of the Russiagate scandal have long been hiding in plain sight: President Trump and his campaign encouraged, eagerly sought to benefit from and worked to conspire with a foreign power’s sweeping effort to corrupt and degrade our political system and install him in the White House.
After that effort helped get him elected, Trump engaged in active deception of the American people and an extensive effort to corrupt large swaths of our government — some of which would almost certainly be prosecutable as criminality, if not for regulations protecting sitting presidents — to prevent that whole story from coming to light.
Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation detailed this story in both its broad contours and in painstaking, sordid detail. Thus, when Trump and his propagandists trot out the “no collusion, no obstruction” lie, they are not merely making the narrow legal point that charges were not brought on conspiracy or obstruction of justice.
Trump just offered his own version of this spin on “Fox & Friends,” saying: “I think I said I’d do both.”
Trump said nothing like this, and the content of the obscuring lie is itself revealing. In reality, Trump said he “maybe” would call the FBI — but only if he concluded that there was “something wrong” with the foreign power’s overture. He said this while also signaling that he would not ever conclude there was, in fact, anything wrong with it.
Trump was very clear in telegraphing that latter point. He said that “there’s nothing wrong with listening,” i.e., there’s nothing wrong with accepting information from a foreign power.
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