Most of these people do not live in the United States, and you can bet your bottom dollar that Russia won’t be extraditing them any time soon. But that’s not the point.
OK. So what we know from that paragraph of the charging documents,
which you can read in full here, is this:
- By “early to mid-2016,” Russians had decided to use whatever means at their disposal to help Donald Trump win.
- The Russians bought political ads on social media sites and organized political rallies to achieve those goals.
- Russians, disguising their identities, “communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump campaign” in an attempt to “coordinate political activities.”
None of that is a smoking gun of collusion.
“Unwitting” members of Trumpworld working with Russians, who didn’t identify themselves as Russians, is not the same as a willful effort on behalf of members of the Trump campaign to actively collude with the Russian government.
But what this latest set of indictments proves beyond a shadow of a doubt is that, yes, Russia staged an aggressive and elaborate effort to influence the 2016 election.
This was a multi-pronged campaign — social media, in-person meetings, political rallies — by the Russians to beat Hillary Clinton and elect Donald Trump. It employed hundreds of people.
That analysis, of course, jibes with the unanimous conclusion of the intelligence community in 2017 that Russia actively sought to influence the 2016 election in support of Trump.
What it runs directly counter to is Trump’s ongoing — and persistent — attempts to cast the entire special counsel investigation as nothing more than a politically motivated sideshow.
Here’s a sampling of Trump’s recent tweets touching on Mueller’s investigation.
“This memo totally vindicates ‘Trump’ in probe. But the Russian Witch Hunt goes on and on. Their was no Collusion and there was no Obstruction (the word now used because, after one year of looking endlessly and finding NOTHING, collusion is dead).” (
2/3/18)
- “The single greatest Witch Hunt in American history continues. There was no collusion, everybody including the Dems knows there was no collusion, & yet on and on it goes. Russia & the world is laughing at the stupidity they are witnessing. Republicans should finally take control!” (1/10/18)
- “The Russia-Trump collusion story is a total hoax, when will this taxpayer funded charade end?” (5/8/17)
There’s lots (and lots) more tweets and quotes just like that from the President. Trump has suggested the attempted election hacking could
have been perpetrated by China or even as a “guy sitting on their bed who weighs 400 pounds.”You get the idea. Despite the unanimous conclusion of the intelligence community — including Trump’s CIA Director Mike Pompeo and his FBI Director Christopher Wray — that Russia engaged in a coordinated effort to meddle in the 2017 election, Trump still wasn’t convinced.
Of course, this changes nothing when it comes to how Trump will respond. Even Friday afternoon, Trump
tweeted about the Russian indictments, once again beating the “no collusion” drum.
“Russia started their anti-US campaign in 2014, long before I announced that I would run for President,” Trump tweeted. “The results of the election were not impacted. The Trump campaign did nothing wrong – no collusion!”
But if it was very hard to hold the Trumpian position — it might have been Russia, it might have been someone else! — with a shred of intellectual honesty prior to Friday, it’s impossible now.
Consider what the Mueller investigation has already done:
Former national security adviser Michael Flynn has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russians during the 2016 campaign and is cooperating with the Mueller investigation.
- Former foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russians during the 2016 campaign and is cooperating with the Mueller investigation.
- Former deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates isreportedly on the verge of signing a plea agreement and cooperating with Mueller. Gates faces a variety of charges, including money laundering and other financial crimes.
- Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort faces a variety of charges of financial crimes
- 13 Russians have been indicted on participating in a broad-scale attempt to throw the election to Trump.
That is not the stuff of witch hunts and hoaxes. Those are real-life charges which carry at least the possibility of real jail time.
And they all make a simple point: It’s long past time for Trump to stop name-calling an investigation that has uncovered a massive effort for a foreign government to meddle in a US presidential election.
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