Well, we joked about it upthread, but we have officially reached the “collusion is not a crime” phase of the goalpost movement:
“Four months, they’re not going to be colluding with Russia, which I don’t even know if that’s a crime, colluding about Russians,” Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor, continued. “You start analyzing the crime – the hacking is the crime. … The President didn’t hack.”
Doesn’t that make it conspiracy to hack?
Only if the point of Giuliani’s statement is to be factually correct. But, the point of his statement is to rally the troops to give them their new goalpost coordinates knowing that the previous coordinates have been passed.
Well from a legal perspective, Giuliani isn’t very good. But from a public relations perspective, Giuliani can vomit horseshit with the best of 'em.
Is there not a class of crimes called “receiving stolen property”? Would that apply to hacked information? I don’t know.
More importantly, there has never been one particular crime, US code xxx.yyy, called collusion, and the whole point of the Mueller investigation all along has been to determine whether or not the Trump campaign violated that particular law. Rather, it’s generally agreed that collusion would, if it happened, be an impeachable offense, the Mueller campaign is investigating whether it happened, and it would then be up to congress (and the US public) to determine how important it is. And of course team Trump has been loudly and repeatedly denying that any such thing ever occurred.
(Now that I think about it, it’s almost clever that Trump has been saying “there was no collusion” over and over again, because, in a very narrow legal sense, that almost had to be true, since “collusion” doesn’t have a real legal definition, as far as I know. So whatever Mueller ends up digging up, however rotten and unethical, it certainly won’t include the crime of collusion, as there is no such crime.)
Sadly, I could definitely see this happening, as well.
The investigation is pretty broad-based by now, including the FBI and the State of New York. Evidence is under control, too. It’s too late to stop it with just an assassination or two, and probably always was. It’s even too late to keep a mysterious death from appearing to be evidence of Putin’s meddling.
I can see a nerve agent attack against the investigation by the Russians. I’ve read some speculation that the reason that Manafort hasn’t flipped is because he’s afraid of Putin and I’d give a 5% chance that it is true.
RudyG has to be the worst lawyer in America. Today he cops to the June 7th meeting as having happened with Manafort, Kushner, Donnie 1/2-scoop, and, oh yeah, Mueller cooperating witness Rick Gates.
Collusion isn’t a crime, but it’s probably hard to collude with a foreign power (in the general sense) without committing crimes, like conspiracy to commit crimes against the United States.
I get the sense he’s not really trying to be a lawyer in the actual sense; he’s trying to use his legal credentials to sow confusion among the general public about what the law actually says – ditto for Dershowitz, although Dersh is a lot more suave about it.
Agreed. Sowing confusion pretty much Trump’s entire (con)game. Constantly accusing his opponents/critics of the very things he is most guilty of, and misdirection are the name of the game.
I was about to write a post about this, this morning.
If you’re a media source, receiving hacked / leaked / top secret / etc. materials is legal, on the basis that the greater good is served by allowing whistleblowers to deliver this information to the general public, via the media.
However, that right goes away if you advised someone to commit a crime to retrieve this information. You have to be a passive recipient. See Peavy v. WFAA-TV Inc.
Now, while Trump did say, “Hey Russia, if you have Hillary’s emails…” If you listen to his full statement, it’s clear that he’s talking about some hack that had already transpired. WIthin the public sphere, there’s currently no indication that Trump made any request for Russia to commit the act. Even Trump Jr’s statement that it would be good if the information be released in the late summer doesn’t count - despite it being to provide guidance - because, again, the hack had already happened and we have reason to believe that Jr. was aware of that fact. Overall, we can’t convict them of hacking.
Now that’s all assuming that the same standard that applies to the mass media would apply here as well. That’s probably not the correct standard to use for a political campaign.
Now, I would personally classify information as property. You can buy it and sell it. There’s value in owning it. It’s property.
It certainly seems to be that Jr. had something in mind when he was talking to the Russians, and we can guess that it was the hacked emails. But that’s just a guess. Mueller would likely need to provide a better history in order to prove that that’s what Jr was referring to. If he can do so, then knowingly attempting to receive stolen property may be in the running.
With the information that is already in the public sphere, however, the case that seems to be already settled are statutes on foreign donations to a campaign. Junior was both asking for “some” materials (legally attained or not) and also asking for the materials to be released on a date that would be favorable to the campaign. EIther way you cut it, they were asking that Russia make material contributions to the campaign.
I would also suspect, from the fact that Manafort’s money man, Gates, stayed on as the campaign financier and arranged for Russians to attend the inauguration, and that some campaign members attended Mariia Butina’s inauguration party, that it’s going to prove to be the case that Manafort/Gates were aware of the $30m that was laundered through the NRA to the campaign. It’s purely a question of who all beyond them were aware of it.
I’d just like to note, however, that Mueller is investigating the ties between Russia and Trump and Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. Collusion may well be part of that, but the possibility of blackmail is also out there, and that is also (presumably) being investigated. Of the two, Russia having compromising material on Trump is the larger concern than collusion.
I think my hatred would help overcome the nausea.
and … Steve “Nazi Bastard” Bannon is telling the Kochs to “shut up and get with the program”.
Fuck Bannon, fuck the Kochs who helped create all the general disfunctionality, fuck 'em all.
<biting lip> I did try to warn.
Maybe Rudy’s trying to pull a Donnie Brasco; get into the gang, learn all the details of their operations, and leak them to the outside world while maintaining a plausible cover that he’s on their side.
In the circumstances, this approach calls for the gang to be uncommonly stupid; fortunately for my hypothesis, this is the case.
Giuliani’s bizarre performances today were an attempt tokill a New York Times story
I am tired, so pardon me if I’m missing something here, but can we just stop with the idea that Mueller is investigating collusion? The word appears nowhere in his letter from Rosenstein, and any arguments which imply that Mueller is investigating “collusion” are just factually wrong.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3726408-Rosenstein-letter-appointing-Mueller-special.html