The collusion buggy has more gears than a Peterbilt lol.
Whatever Trump is ‘guilty of’ changes like the weather. Notice how none of them talk about obstruction any more. Today the Big Deal is the Flynn case but after it slowly dawns on them that Trump is unaffected by it, they will move onto the next Big Thing.
Which is never collusion. It’s like a kind of madness. Never seen anything like it
hen we released the first edition of this report in October 2017, the case that President Trump had obstructed justice was still in its relatively early stages. Even then, we concluded that there was substantial evidence that the president may have obstructed justice.
Evidence supporting the elements of that offense—an obstructive act undertaken with corrupt intent and having the requisite connection to a grand jury or congressional proceeding—was available in public reports and testimony.
In our view, the president’s then-known conduct, including his demand of loyalty from then-FBI Director Comey, his request that Comey “see [his] way clear” to letting National Security Advisor Michael Flynn go, his termination of Comey, and his other statements was similar to conduct that has previously supported federal obstruction charges and convictions.
Ten months later, as we release the updated second edition of the report, it has become apparent that the president’s pattern of potentially obstructive conduct is much more extensive than we knew.
To take only a few examples, it has since been reported that President Trump: attempted to block Attorney General Sessions’ recusing himself from the Russia investigation despite the AG’s clear legal duty to do so; asked Sessions to reverse his recusal decision; demanded and obtained the resignation of Sessions for his failure to contain the Russia investigation (before ultimately rejecting it); twice ordered the firing of Special Counsel Robert Mueller; dictated a false account for a key witness, his son Donald Trump Jr., of the June 9, 2016 Trump Tower meeting between campaign and Russian representatives; publicly attacked Special Counsel Mueller and key witnesses to the obstruction case; and has repeatedly disputed the underlying Russian attack and Vladimir Putin’s role in it despite possessing evidence to the contrary.
We also know that White House Counsel Don McGahn and his lawyer at one point were reportedly so concerned that the president was going to blame McGahn that he provided extraordinary cooperation with the special counsel, including sitting for 30 hours of interviews in an apparent effort to exonerate himself.
We also now have a better understanding of the conduct possibly implicating the president or those associated with him that he may have been trying to cover up. We know that there were more than eighty contacts between Russia-linked individuals and associates of the Trump campaign and transition team.
Since our last report, we learned that in April 2016, George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, met a Russian national who informed him that the Russians had “dirt” on Clinton. We have learned that Trump Campaign Chair Paul Manafort and his Deputy, Rick Gates, were in regular contact with a Russian oligarch with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin throughout the Summer of 2016.
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https://www.brookings.edu/research/...stice-the-case-of-donald-j-trump-2nd-edition/
