March 2, 2019
THE COLLUSION IS A GIVEN...:
Explainer: In Trump-Russia probe, when does collusion become a crime? (Jan Wolfe, 3/02/19, Reuters)
Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani in July 2018 said, "I have been sitting here looking in the federal code trying to find collusion as a crime. Collusion is not a crime." Trump wrote on Twitter the next day, "Collusion is not a crime, but that doesn't matter because there was No Collusion."There indeed is no federal crime called "collusion." But collusion is a non-legal way of saying conspiracy, which is one of the most commonly asserted crimes in U.S. federal courts. Conspiracy is an agreement between two or more people to commit an unlawful act. A conspiracy does not need to have been successful, but the individuals must have taken some action to further it.Because computer hacking is clearly a federal crime, any Trump campaign official who assented to and encouraged the hacking of Democratic National Committee computers in 2016 could be liable for the crime of conspiracy. U.S. officials have said Russia hacked the Democratic computers to steal emails that were later released by the WikiLeaks website to hurt Clinton."Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing," Trump said during a June 2016 news conference, referring to Clinton emails. "I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press."
...the only question is whether it warrants indictment or just impeachment.
Posted by Orrin Judd at March 2, 2019 9:01 AM