February 23, 2019
ET TU, ANDY:
If Working with Moscow Is 'Collusion,' It's a Bipartisan Offense (ANDREW C. MCCARTHY, February 23, 2019, National Review)
While it's to his credit that he's admitting that Donald colluded with Vlad, his attempt to evade the natural meaning of the term is deeply dishonest. Pretending that Boris Yeltsin was an enemy of America is particularly obscene. It was not until the UR signed the Magnitsky Act into law, in December 2012, that America;'s national posture returned to treating Russia as an adversary, to some degree or another. Even then, it would hardly have been collusion for private businesses to pursue Russian opportunities so long as they adhered to the sanctions regime. After all, McDonald's can not change US policy towards Vlad.
As Mr. McCarthy conspicuously avoids noting, the charge against Donald is sui generis: that he asked the Russians to violate US laws to benefit his campaign while promising to lift sanctions in order to benefit Vlad.
This was, of course, all done publicly, so it's useless to try and refute, so one can hardly blame him for not even trying.
MORE:
Court records reveal a Mueller report right in plain view (CHAD DAY and ERIC TUCKER, 2/23/19, AP)
Donald Trump was in full deflection mode.The Democrats had blamed Russia for the hacking and release of damaging material on his presidential opponent, Hillary Clinton. Trump wasn't buying it. But on July 27, 2016, midway through a news conference in Florida, Trump decided to entertain the thought for a moment."Russia, if you're listening," said Trump, looking directly into a television camera, "I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing" -- messages Clinton was reported to have deleted from her private email server.Actually, Russia was doing more than listening: It had been trying to help Republican Trump for months. That very day, hackers working with Russia's military intelligence tried to break into email accounts associated with Clinton's personal office.It was just one small part of a sophisticated election interference operation carried out by the Kremlin -- and meticulously chronicled by special counsel Robert Mueller.We know this, though Mueller has made not a single public comment since his appointment in May 2017. We know this, though the full, final report on the investigation, believed to be in its final stages, may never be made public. It's up to Attorney General William Barr.We know this because Mueller has spoken loudly, if indirectly, in court -- indictment by indictment, guilty plea by guilty plea. In doing so, he tracked an elaborate Russian operation that injected chaos into a U.S. presidential election and tried to help Trump win the White House. He followed a GOP campaign that embraced the Kremlin's help and championed stolen material to hurt a political foe. And ultimately, he revealed layers of lies, deception, self-enrichment and hubris that followed.Woven through thousands of court papers, the special counsel has made his public report. This is what it says.
Posted by Orrin Judd at February 23, 2019 9:47 AM