Perjury indictments would do the trick, though, wouldn’t they? Or maybe bump it up to obstruction of justice? Seeing a vast number of key Trump admin officials rung up on perjury or obstruction would hobble the administration. I doubt it would be enough to get the Republican congress to impeach Trump, though. Unless Trump was lying about a blowjob. Then he’s toast.
It’s not the crime, it’s the cover up.
In that case, how do the grand jury and investigative processes work?
I had thought the main basis for these investigations is that the prosecutor empanels a grand jury which has the power to compel people to testify. But if they’re investigating something which is of extreme interest to the country but is not technically a crime, does that still hold? Can a prosecutor force someone to testify about something which even if it occurred is not a crime?
Similar for the FBI and investigative process. I thought in order to get warrants they need to go before a judge and convince him/her that there’s probable cause that a crime was committed. But it’s non-criminal “collusion”, then how do they accomplish this?
Or do they just find some sort of possible technical crime which they think would have overlapping evidence?
Bayard and jsc1953: I think that’s right. In terms of actual federal crimes, the most we’re likely to see are False Statements Act violations and obstruction of justice. That’s enough, of course. But it’s different from the conduct people are thinking of when they talk about some non-existent crime of collusion.
There are other far-fetched scenarios. I suppose you might be able to come up with some charge related to the use of the emails after the fact. But it would strike me as a stretch and might have First Amendment problems. And there might be some kind of campaign funding crimes I’m not familiar with. But on the whole I think it’s unlikely there will be any collusion-y crimes indicted, regardless of what Mueller can prove (or what the reality was).
They could at least be charged under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, couldn’t they?
I doubt they conspired to help the Russians do the hack ahead of time. I don’t think the Russians needed any help to get the emails, and if they did, they wouldn’t find competent assistants among the Trump campaign. So I think we’re probably left with the campaign being made aware of hack, not reporting it, being happy to benefit from it, and possibly agreeing to make policy changes in exchange for the public release of the emails. What crime(s) that may be, I dunno.
A combination of things:
(1) Crimes related to the same conduct (perjury, obstruction, money laundering, FARA, etc.); and
(2) Crimes committed by people other than the Trump campaign (i.e., the Russians who hacked the emails, committed campaign violations, etc.).
Of course, Mueller is also tasked with investigating connections between the Trump campaign and Russia regardless of whether it amounts to criminal conduct. He just wouldn’t be able to use a grand jury or criminal warrants to help him unless there were these other bases.
Yes, I think the charges would be built on the CFAA. Conspiracy and aiding and abetting related to that underlying charge, I imagine. But both of those would require more than just advice or knowledge after the crime is complete, I believe (though there might be an argument that they helped conceal it from the FBI, I think that usually requires more than just doing nothing to reveal it).
Also, let’s not forget money laundering, tax crimes, etc. And, maybe in the case of Kushner and Trump, violations of some fair housing laws. If Mueller unearths those unrelated crimes in the course of the investigation, it’s still not what might be called collusion, but it’s very damaging.
ETA: regarding the hacking – there was a separate FBI investigation into the hack launched when it first became known, wasn’t there? If the FBI went around to the campaigns asking for information to further their investigation, and the Trump campaign played dumb, that would be bad, I assume. Maybe criminal?
Another collusion example between party A and party B…
A: We have illegally obtained dirt on your opponent in the form of thousands of emails.
B: It sure would be super sweet if you made those emails public.
Party A makes emails public.
OK, that’s kind of what I was suggesting in my last paragraph.
But how does it work within the GJ process work in this regard? Once you have someone in front of a GJ panel, does every question that you ask have to have some connection to the possible crime? If you venture afield into something that has no conceivable connection to the actual technical crime, does the witness have to answer? And if not, who informs the witness of this and objects to the question?
Once you eliminate those processes, what power does he have beyond that of an ordinary civilian? I assume he has access to various confidential law enforcement data and reports, but is it anything beyond that?
Wikileaks, not Wikipedia. Different things.
IANAL, so if we’re splitting hairs about the strict legal definition of “collusion” as a legal term, I may be in error. I’m using it in the sense “if you know about a felony and don’t report it, you can be charged as accessory after the fact” sort of way.
Right. I knew that; but my fingers went off on their own.
That excuse didn’t work for Trump, why should it … oh, wait, it did work for Trump.
I don’t know about being charged as an accessory after the fact or not, but you’re definitely grossly negligent as a United States citizen and deeply unqualified for any significant U.S. government position.
Grand juries actually have quite a lot of leeway to dig into whatever details they want. A witness can have their lawyer present, and can refuse to answer a question under the Fifth Amendment. But they can’t refuse to answer if they just think the question is off-topic. They also can’t refuse if there’s no actual chance of self-incrimination, e.g. if they have been granted immunity. There’s no judge present. The examination is done by the prosecutor but the grand jurors can also usually ask questions. They can pry into your private records and subpoena your tax returns and bank statements if they want. That’s also why grand jury investigations are secret: they are potentially looking at confidential information from people who will not actually be charged with anything.
Remember that the GJ’s job is to investigate and determine what, if any, crimes may have occurred. They don’t start out with a list of crimes that someone is suspected of - they create that list. The prosecutor will say “we have evidence that Dude XYZ may have done crime ABC” but the Grand Jury can take that and run with it if they choose. As a practical matter, a prosecutor will work to keep them focused on the big picture if they go too far astray.
Taking part in it is treason.
Covering it up during or after the fact is treason.
Keeping silent about it is treason.
Lying about it is treason.
They ALL need to go to prison.
Trump Accuses Clinton of Deliberately Losing Election So He Could Be Impeached
Andy Borowitz, if you didn’t already guess.
Hopefully, at least in the money trail / laundering side of things, they both will be sharing info with the New York state Attorney general… At that level trump can’t pardon anything.
Particularly if we consider “doing nothing about them” to include not taking any action to prevent future tampering.
I believe that I had a “but what does that have to do with the price of tea in China?” portion in my post. If you think that it’s not a good descriptor and the rest of us don’t really care beyond debating semantics, but there is a whole different discussion which is meaningful and that people do actually care about, then why spend time trying to debate the thing that no one really cares about?