Mueller’s Bizarre Message: Yes, Russia and Trump Worked Together to Elect Trump, But It Wasn’t Collusion

By Joe Rothstein

“We did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government in its activities.” — Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Washington Post 7/12/20 op-ed.

In all the years of the ruinous Trump presidency, this statement by Mueller is one of the most bizarre.

Mueller could not establish that they conspired even though….

During the campaign, Roger Stone 1) Had contacts with Russian military intelligence officers who were neck deep in trying to undermine Hillary Clinton by stealing and publishing harmful emails and using social media to drive down her vote 2) Used intermediaries to communicate with Wikileaks on timing of email releases 3) Checked in frequently with Trump who obviously knew the Russians were hacking Clinton’s emails (“Russia, if you’re listening…” 4) Stone publicly bragged about knowing when Wikileaks releases would happen, and 5) Lied to cover all of this up.

And that didn’t establish conspiracy?!!

Okay, how about this?

Trump’s campaign manager, (and Roger Stone’s former business partner) Paul Manafort, gave valuable internal polling information to a contact associated with Russian intelligence. As anyone who ever has been associated with campaign strategy will tell you, the greatest value of internal polling is to hone effective messages, and to direct those messages to the most vulnerable undecided voters. The evidence that the Russians had that information is in how it was used. Russian-directed advertising was remarkably efficient in its targeting and messaging.

And that didn’t establish conspiracy?!!

The entire high command of the Trump campaign, Manafort, Donald Trump, Jr., and Jared Kushner, met with a Kremlin-connected contact at Trump Tower in June, 2016. Why? Because the Russian promised to give them “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. As if the meeting wasn’t incriminating itself, when it was publicly disclosed, Trump wrote a phony account of the meeting, suggesting it was really about Russian orphans. Would he do that if he had not feared the consequences of the truth? (Russian orphans? Can you conceive of this crowd being concerned about Russian orphans?)

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, after hearing the evidence at the Stone trial, had no problem deciding what actually happened. Roger Stone “was not prosecuted for standing up for the president; he was prosecuted for covering up for the president,” said Jackson.

There were plenty of lawyers on Mueller’s special counsel team. What they lacked were political…