KNOWN KNOWNS:

Trump actually asked the Russians to hack into Clinton's private server, which would be a crime, and retrieve the 33,000 emails she failed to turn over because, she says, they were not work-related. Trump Jr., Manafort, and Kushner had a meeting with the Russians where they were promised dirt on Clinton. The head of Cambridge Analytica, a contractor for the Trump campaign, actually contacted WikiLeaks and requested access to Clinton's deleted mails. Roger Stone and Randy Credico actually communicated with Guccifer 2.0 and Julian Assange to get advanced warning about what kinds of information would be forthcoming in each batch of leaks.

Let's start with the essential point that hacking into the computer systems of the DNC and the DCCC are crimes. Using a phishing attack to steal John Podesta's email password is a crime. Seeking to gain access stolen goods makes you an accessory to the crime and perhaps also a co-conspirator or conspirator after the fact. I'll leave it to lawyers and prosecutors to define the exact statutes that might be implicated, but if what the Russians did was criminal, and it was, then what Trump's team was doing was also criminal. [...]

There's a big collusion story and there's a small one, too. The small one is already proven. Team Trump asked for stolen documents while knowing they were stolen. They made good faith offerings (a change in the Republican Party platform, for example) and dangled sanctions relief in order to entice the Russians to share illegally obtained dirt on Hillary Clinton. These are crimes. That's collusion.

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