JUST BECAUSE THERE WAS SECRET COLLUSION DOESN'T MEAN IT WAS IMPORTANT:

Ever since the first revelations of L'Affaire Russe, President Trump and his defenders have insisted that there's no evidence of "collusion" between Russian operatives and either the Trump campaign or the candidate himself.

This defense was always a highly qualified one that conceded a great deal, despite being often presented in bombastic terms--as when Trump himself repeatedly insisted he had "nothing to do" with Russia. It conceded, though inconsistently and sometimes quite grudgingly, that yes, the Russians had conducted an active measures campaign within the election designed to aid Trump. It also conceded a point on which the public record simply brooks no argument: that Trump took obsequiously out-of-the-mainstream positions during the campaign towards Russia and its strongman, Vladimir Putin, covered for their involvement in the hacking with a web of denials, and even at times openly encouraged the hacking. The "no collusion" defense, in other words, was always a modest one that did not really deny that the Trump campaign gleefully accepted Russian aid during the campaign and promised a different relationship with Russia in a hundred public statements; it denied only that the campaign did these things in secret collaboration with Russian state actors. The defense conceded that Trump benefited from Russia's actions, denying only that he or his people were parties to them in a covert fashion that went beyond the very visible encouragement Trump gave.

The problem with dwelling too much on the covert forms of collaboration, which we have come to call "collusion," is that doing so risks letting Trump at least a little bit off the hook for what is not meaningfully disputed: that the president publicly, knowingly, and repeatedly (if only tacitly) collaborated with a foreign power's intelligence effort to interfere in the presidential election of the country he now leads. Focusing on covert collusion risks putting the lines of propriety, acceptable candidate behavior, and even (let's be frank) patriotism in such a place where openly encouraging foreign dictators to hack your domestic opponent's emails falls on the tolerable side. It risks accepting that all is okay with the Trump-Russia relationship unless some secret or illegal additional element actually involves illicit contacts between the campaign and Russian operatives. Yet it's hard to imagine how any scandal of illegality could eclipse the scandal of legality which requires no investigation and has lain bare before our eyes for months.

But it is this very distinction, in which Trump's own defenders are so heavily invested, that now appears poised to crumble.

The criminal investigations of the Trump administration seem largely to have followed two separate paths: on the one hand, whether there was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian interference with the election, and on the other hand whether President Trump obstructed justice. Commentary has alternated between these inquiries, but has not always connected the two. In part that is because of the piecemeal way the evidence has emerged. In part it is because the two inquiries have distinct legal elements and can, in fact, exist separately. However, at a moment when our attention is focused on the question of possible collusion, it is worth remembering this obvious point: the two investigations are, in fact, very much connected. As evidence mounts of one set of crimes (collusion), it also supports the other (obstruction). [...]

Regarding Trump, if it seemed that Trump was acting only to block the investigation and prosecution of Michael Flynn's individual acts of alleged wrongdoing, some of which themselves might raise questions about whether they warrant criminal charges, a prosecutor might hesitate (not to mention Congress, when considering the question of impeachment). Could the prosecutor persuade the jury that when Trump asked Comey to let the Flynn investigation go, Trump wasn't just trying, in his bumbling Trump sort of a way, to put in a good word for Flynn? Could the prosecutor persuade the jury that in firing Comey, Trump had not simply concluded that Comey was badly mishandling the Russia investigation and had to be replaced by a more effective Director?

Many might think that the evidence is already sufficient to overcome such defenses, but the point is that absent some indication of a larger, self-interested, cover-up, the ultimate factfinders - whether they be on a jury or in Congress - might be more likely to give Trump the benefit of the doubt, grabbing onto these explanations as a way to excuse Trump's conduct. And that is why the emerging collusion evidence could end up mattering so much to the obstruction inquiry. It has the potential to change everything. Suddenly, Trump's actions to stop the FBI's investigations, not to mention his incessant tweets and public statements about the Russia inquiries, feel much more sinister.

Now it appears that Trump may have in fact had something much larger to hide.

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