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ffr

(22,669 posts)
Tue Jul 31, 2018, 06:30 PM Jul 2018

Collusion is not a crime -- but colluding can be - WaPo


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Collusion is not a crime, but colluding can be. In the colloquial sense, collusion simply means an act of secret cooperation, generally for nefarious ends. There’s no law you can violate that constitutes collusion in the third degree — but working with someone in a conspiracy to break the law is illegal.

It’s called conspiracy.
<snip>

But we can move closer to home for Trump, speaking literally. It is illegal for a federal campaign to accept something of value from a foreign agent — and, according to Lawrence Noble, former general counsel for the Federal Election Commission, so is soliciting such a contribution. That raises questions about the meeting between a Kremlin-linked lawyer and Donald Trump Jr. and other campaign insiders in Trump Tower in June 2016 — a meeting set up to provide “very high level and sensitive information [as] part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump,” according to the first email Trump Jr. received.
<snip>

This is why the president’s awareness of the Trump Tower meeting could be important. If Trump knew about the meeting, as seems likely, or if Donald Trump Jr. got clearance from Trump by phone before signing off on the meeting, which seems possible, the prospect of a criminal conspiracy looms. The crime would be that solicitation of valuable information; the overt acts, myriad.

We’re further down the road now than we need to be. - WaPo

Go nuclear, Mr. Mueller. Go nuclear.
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