In the process of his rapid descension into panic and fear, Donald Trump is becoming ever more frenzied and detached from reality. He knows that the law is closing in on him and his family (who he just threw under the bus) and he's grasping for any lifeline to keep from sinking into the abyss of his treasonous criminality.
Among the tactics Trump has settled on is an effort to snare Hillary Clinton in a Russian collusion story of her own. This fictional construction has already been hammered to death by Trump's pals at Fox News, so his cult followers are primed to buy into it. But there are a couple of significant problems with this desperation ploy.
The gist of Trump's scheme asserts that Clinton is the one who has conspired with the Kremlin to bring down the candidacy of Trump. Never mind that Vladimir Putin admitted at a joint press conference in Helsinki that he wanted Trump to win. The President's angle is that Clinton and/or her campaign paid Russians for dirt on Trump that they would use to his detriment in the election. And that is his basis for claiming that Clinton is the real colluder. He's addressed it many times on Twitter, including this past weekend. For instance:
However, that fairy tale is just plain ludicrous. What Trump is referring to is the now famous Steele Dossier. It was researched and complied by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent who was regarded as credible by his American counterparts. He did have Russian sources from whom he extracted information. That's called investigating, but it's not colluding. And he didn't pay for the information. He was paid by a firm, Fusion GPS, that was originally contracted for opposition research on Trump by a conservative website, but he was not paid by Clinton or her campaign.
In addition to that, the data in the dossier was never used by the Clinton campaign. So the allegation that she engaged in this alleged collusion to harm Trump doesn't make any sense. Contrast that with the evidence that Trump was colluding. He personally promoted the information that was obtained by his son and his campaign manager in meetings that they lied about later. He even asked the Russians to do more hacking to steal even more data from Clinton. Which they did.
But the real problem for Trump is that he keeps hedging his claim that there was no collusion with the false assertion that collusion isn't a crime. That's like a murderer saying "I didn't shoot the guy, and was nowhere near the scene. But anyway, it was a self defense." While "collusion" is not a word in the criminal statutes, the crime does exist as a combination of related offenses such as conspiracy. And it is illegal to interfere with an election and to solicit or accept money or other things of value from foreign governments.
So every time that Trump pretends that collusion is not a crime, he is outright lying. But worse, when he demands that Clinton be investigated for collusion, he is conceding that it actually is a crime. So which is it? Trump wants everyone accept his premise that "Crooked Hillary" should be investigated and prosecuted (lock her up) for colluding with Russia. Therefore, the same standard would have to be applied to Trump. By casting blame on Clinton, Trump is actually making the best argument for bringing himself to justice. And the good news is that that is exactly what special counsel Robert Mueller is doing.