> It does not say that explicitly. You claim it does, so prove it.
"The Office
considered in particular whether contacts between Trump Campaign officials and Russia-linked
individuals could trigger liability for the crime of conspiracy—either under statutes that have their
own conspiracy language (e.g., 18 U.S.C. §§ 1349, 1951(a)), or under the general conspiracy
statute (18 U.S.C. § 371). The investigation did not establish that the contacts described in Volume
I, Section IV, supra, amounted to an agreement to commit any substantive violation of federal
criminal law—including foreign-influence and campaign-finance laws, both of which are
discussed further below. The Office therefore did not charge any individual associated with the
Trump Campaign with conspiracy to commit a federal offense arising from Russia contacts, either
under a specific statute or under Section 371’s offenses clause.
The Office also did not charge any campaign official or associate with a conspiracy under
Section 371’s defraud clause. That clause criminalizes participating in an agreement to obstruct a
lawful function of the U.S. government or its agencies through deceitful or dishonest means. See
Dennis v. United States , 384 U.S. 855, 861 (1966); Hammerschmidt v. United States , 265 U.S.
182, 188 (1924); see also United States v. Concord Mgmt. & Consulting LLC, 347 F. Supp. 3d 38,
46 (D.D.C. 2018). The investigation did not establish any agreement among Campaign officials—
or between such officials and Russia-linked individuals—to interfere with or obstruct a lawful
function of a government agency during the campaign or transition period. And, as discussed in
Volume I, Section V.A, supra, the investigation did not identify evidence that any Campaign
official or associate knowingly and intentionally participated in the conspiracy to defraud that the
Office charged, namely, the active-measures conspiracy described in Volume I, Section II, supra.
Accordingly, the Office did not charge any Campaign associate or other U.S. person with
conspiracy to defraud the United States based on the Russia-related contacts described in Section
IV above."
It _also_ contains weasel wording to the effect that not finding evidence does not mean none exists, and talking about reasonable doubt when considering charging, but that's pretty meaningless because any circumstantial evidence falls under that category. There'd probably be more circumstantial evidence that Obama colluded with Putin to "hack the election" than Trump did, so making these bold *not exonerated* statements is ridiculous.
Adam Schiff, despite years lying and disseminating false information and conspiracy theories in an effort to overturn a democratic election from his privileged position in an intelligence committee, never elaborated on any of that alleged "ample evidence" that he repeatedly lied about seeing. Wouldn't he have tried to save some face if anything remotely compelling was actually there? There never was.
> It was clear pretty much immediately that Russia was engaged in a campaign to influence the election. That alone is a big deal. A genuine threat to our democracy. Folks were very concerned about foreign interference in our elections.
That's not evidence Trump colluded with Putin to hack the election. Obama actually was not concerned about it, after secretly promising Putin he would be "more flexible", he ordered US cyber security agency to stand down and cease countering Russia's cyber attacks in the lead up to the election.
While that was happening he was also lying to the American people about the election being absolutely secure and under no threats. There's far more circumstantial evidence he colluded with Putin to hack the election than Trump did, if that's the standard of "evidence" we're going by.
> Evidence that Trump and his campaign my have been involved started with Australia notifying the US that Papadopoulos (an adviser to Trump's campaign) might have known about the hacked emails before they were released. Papadopoulos had told Alexander Downer (an Australian diplomat) that Russia had acquired and could leak material that would be damaging to Clinton. The FBI started to dig in and found there were a lot of links between the Trump campaign and Russia (For examples see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Links_between_Trump_associates...).
Claims by some person that some other person claimed that they somehow knew about Russia having damaging information isn't evidence to open an investigation of treason on a political campaign.
> So here we had Trump, with all these connections to Russia, taking advantage of and benefiting directly from the criminal acts committed by Russia to influence the election. That isn't direct evidence that Trump or his campaign did anything criminal, but it's plenty of reason for an investigation.
This is just more handwaving about "all these connections". There's no actual evidence. Probable cause is more than just "oh a friend of a friend told me", or "oh he knew all these people". Imagine thinking that justified wiretapping and investigating a political campaign -- you could spy on anybody. Look at all Biden's connections and allegations about his links with foreign countries. Or Clinton's.
> I'm glad they did their job and investigated.
They never had solid probable cause for such a wide ranging investigation and it really looks like a politically motivated muck raking exercise, and a baseless conspiracy theory peddled by the DNC and their lackeys in the media and bureaucracy.
> For what it's worth, I'm actually glad Russia hacked the DNC and exposed the fact that they were/are corrupt. They ignored the will of democratic voters by selecting their preferred candidate before the primary and worked directly with Hillary's campaign to undermine her opposition to get her elected. Many people had already been suspecting that was true, but if not for the email hack we wouldn't have had the evidence to prove it.
There isn't even good evidence that it was Russia that exfiltrated the emails.
> "The Office considered in particular whether contacts between Trump Campaign officials and Russia-linked individuals could trigger liability for the crime of conspiracy
you missed a lot of context there... starting with the sentence just before your selection where they make it clear they're not talking about "collusion" but about conspiracy. Not finding evidence for conspiracy is not the same thing as not finding evidence for collusion.
"For that reason, this Office’s focus in resolving the question of joint criminal liability was on conspiracy as defined in federal law, not the commonly discussed term “collusion.”"
Even before that though the section opens with:
"As explained in Section IV above, the Office’s investigation uncovered evidence of numerous links (i.e., contacts) between Trump Campaign officials and individuals having or claiming to have ties to the Russian government."
and further states
"Finally, although the evidence of contacts between Campaign officials and Russia-affiliated individuals may not have been sufficient to establish or sustain criminal charges, several U.S. persons connected to the Campaign made false statements about those contacts and took other steps to obstruct the Office’s investigation and those of Congress."
This is part of the problem. They've got a ton of evidence of collusion. In this same section they make that clear by calling out the meeting between "campaign officials and Russians promising derogatory information on Hillary Clinton". That alone is evidence of collusion.
When you say there's no evidence of collusion it's just wrong. The problem they had is that "collusion" itself isn't a crime you can charge someone with. They instead had to see if other crimes (like conspiracy) were committed in the course of the collusion that took place. Nothing they had was enough to meet that standard.
Now, they also make it very clear that their lack of evidence may be due deliberate efforts to impede the investigation, but again, they say they don't think Trump is innocent of obstruction, yet they don't think they can successfully charge him with it either. This is the ambiguity that has the left and right talking past each other.
> Claims by some person that some other person claimed that they somehow knew about Russia having damaging information isn't evidence to open an investigation of treason on a political campaign.
Information from a trusted ally that one or more individuals working on Trump's campaign may have information about an attempt by a foreign nation to influence US elections sure is! The information came from a diplomat (not just some random person) who heard it directly from someone working on Trumps campaign (also not a random person).
I guess we can disagree on if that should be enough information to investigate, but the FBI felt that it was. I suspect that people telling other people things is a pretty common way to gather intelligence and you'd probably find a lot of foreign intelligence the US government feels is actionable to be insufficient to warrant even an investigation.
> Imagine thinking that justified wiretapping and investigating a political campaign -- you could spy on anybody.
Um... amusing you're in the US literally every communication you have transmitted over a wire (including this one) is being spied on. It's been true for ages. Same for everyone else in the US. I'm not saying that it's right, but in the US the justification for spying is not something our government is concerned about. Maybe you are right and they should need more evidence but with things as they right now, they had all the evidence they needed.
> There isn't even good evidence that it was Russia that exfiltrated the emails.
Mandiant, CrowdStrike, FireEye, and several others all agree it was Russia. It's not always easy to pin any particular attack or malware on a specific group of hackers. I always leave room for some doubt, but I see no reason not to trust these experts to give us the best analysis they can and they all reached the same conclusion. It would take stronger evidence or at least a larger consensus of expert analysis of our current evidence to convince me Russia wasn't involved. What convinced you?
> you missed a lot of context there... starting with the sentence just before your selection where they make it clear they're not talking about "collusion" but about conspiracy. Not finding evidence for conspiracy is not the same thing as not finding evidence for collusion.
> "For that reason, this Office’s focus in resolving the question of joint criminal liability was on conspiracy as defined in federal law, not the commonly discussed term “collusion.”"
I didn't miss that, it just wasn't particularly relevant. The "that reason" was that it just isn't a rigorously defined legal term. The correct term to use is "conspiracy", as carefully explained in the context you missed.
> "As explained in Section IV above, the Office’s investigation uncovered evidence of numerous links (i.e., contacts) between Trump Campaign officials and individuals having or claiming to have ties to the Russian government."
Not evidence of collusion to break the law (aka conspiracy).
> "Finally, although the evidence of contacts between Campaign officials and Russia-affiliated individuals may not have been sufficient to establish or sustain criminal charges, several U.S. persons connected to the Campaign made false statements about those contacts and took other steps to obstruct the Office’s investigation and those of Congress."
Not of charges of conspiracy to hack the election though. Nobody ever claimed that out of hundreds of people in Trump's campaign or associated with him had never committed any crimes. I think the crimes (aside from the process crimes) they actually did find evidence for were things that had been committed before the people were associated with the campaign.
> This is part of the problem. They've got a ton of evidence of collusion. In this same section they make that clear by calling out the meeting between "campaign officials and Russians promising derogatory information on Hillary Clinton". That alone is evidence of collusion.
_What_ is evidence of collusion to illegally interfere in the election?
> When you say there's no evidence of collusion it's just wrong. The problem they had is that "collusion" itself isn't a crime you can charge someone with.
Colluding to hack the election absolutely is a criminal conspiracy that could be charged. That's what we're talking about here. There was no evidence for it.
Sure there was lots of evidence for lots of things that weren't crimes.
> They instead had to see if other crimes (like conspiracy) were committed in the course of the collusion that took place. Nothing they had was enough to meet that standard.
No, you misunderstand this entire aspect of the report. The Horowitz report was damning and said that evidence that was turned up by the investigation was continually exculpatory.
> Information from a trusted ally that one or more individuals working on Trump's campaign may have information about an attempt by a foreign nation to influence US elections sure is!
No, it isn't. It came from a foreign diplomat to a 3rd foreign country and related to alleged drunken boast that they thought Russia had dirt. That's not reasonable evidence of Trump colluding with Putin to hack the election. It just isn't. I can't fathom how you think that would be a reasonable system of justice, it sounds like some horrible communist police state.
> I guess we can disagree on if that should be enough information to investigate, but the FBI felt that it was. I suspect that people telling other people things is a pretty common way to gather intelligence and you'd probably find a lot of foreign intelligence the US government feels is actionable to be insufficient to warrant even an investigation.
No, these particular claims should almost certainly have been investigated for what they were. They were not evidence of Trump colluding with Putin to hack the election though so they absolutely should not have kicked off a full scale investigation into Trump and his entire presidential campaign. Not unless they turned up something further. Which it did not, as the Mueller report says, and the Horowitz report confirms.
> Um... amusing you're in the US literally every communication you have transmitted over a wire is being spied on. It's been true for ages. Same for everyone else in the US. I'm not saying that it's right, but in the US the justification for spying is not something our government is concerned about. Maybe you are right and they should need more evidence but with things as they right now, they had all the evidence they needed.
Wiretapping and unmasking doesn't get done as a matter of course. Well maybe it does and we don't know about it.
You actually misunderstand that article though, which is (not so) cleverly written to mislead people who are desperately looking for confirmation of their preconceived notions. They did not claim the Russians were the ones who exfiltrated those emails or leaked them. The claim was that they had compromised some of their systems.
"Since the documents have been posted anonymously, there is no clear way to prove their origin"
"It is also possible, researchers said, that someone else besides the Russians were inside the DNC’s network and had access to the same documents."
No claims were ever made about the documents. And nobody ever accused the DNC of running a competent or secure information technology outfit. You only have to look at the likes of their top people in Clinton and Podesta to find it more surprising to learn that Russia, China and others hadn't compromised their systems.
So no, I didn't make a pretty big claim at all. In fact the claim I made is completely supported by link you provided.
> It would take stronger evidence or at least a larger consensus of expert analysis to convince me otherwise. What convinced you?
Even though that link does support me in this case, I will say this though, lots of experts allegedly claimed there was strong evidence that Trump colluded with Putin to hack the election too. The claims about that evidence are just laughable too. At best it's just plausible.
Claims of "expertise" or "independence" on this subject are just worthless. Appeals to authority. What we have to look at is the actual evidence of our own eyes. If that is not provided, then it is not evidence. "Trust me bro" is not evidence. Not even from self-proclaimed independent experts, unfortunately.
"The Office considered in particular whether contacts between Trump Campaign officials and Russia-linked individuals could trigger liability for the crime of conspiracy—either under statutes that have their own conspiracy language (e.g., 18 U.S.C. §§ 1349, 1951(a)), or under the general conspiracy statute (18 U.S.C. § 371). The investigation did not establish that the contacts described in Volume I, Section IV, supra, amounted to an agreement to commit any substantive violation of federal criminal law—including foreign-influence and campaign-finance laws, both of which are discussed further below. The Office therefore did not charge any individual associated with the Trump Campaign with conspiracy to commit a federal offense arising from Russia contacts, either under a specific statute or under Section 371’s offenses clause. The Office also did not charge any campaign official or associate with a conspiracy under Section 371’s defraud clause. That clause criminalizes participating in an agreement to obstruct a lawful function of the U.S. government or its agencies through deceitful or dishonest means. See Dennis v. United States , 384 U.S. 855, 861 (1966); Hammerschmidt v. United States , 265 U.S. 182, 188 (1924); see also United States v. Concord Mgmt. & Consulting LLC, 347 F. Supp. 3d 38, 46 (D.D.C. 2018). The investigation did not establish any agreement among Campaign officials— or between such officials and Russia-linked individuals—to interfere with or obstruct a lawful function of a government agency during the campaign or transition period. And, as discussed in Volume I, Section V.A, supra, the investigation did not identify evidence that any Campaign official or associate knowingly and intentionally participated in the conspiracy to defraud that the Office charged, namely, the active-measures conspiracy described in Volume I, Section II, supra. Accordingly, the Office did not charge any Campaign associate or other U.S. person with conspiracy to defraud the United States based on the Russia-related contacts described in Section IV above."
It _also_ contains weasel wording to the effect that not finding evidence does not mean none exists, and talking about reasonable doubt when considering charging, but that's pretty meaningless because any circumstantial evidence falls under that category. There'd probably be more circumstantial evidence that Obama colluded with Putin to "hack the election" than Trump did, so making these bold *not exonerated* statements is ridiculous.
Adam Schiff, despite years lying and disseminating false information and conspiracy theories in an effort to overturn a democratic election from his privileged position in an intelligence committee, never elaborated on any of that alleged "ample evidence" that he repeatedly lied about seeing. Wouldn't he have tried to save some face if anything remotely compelling was actually there? There never was.
> It was clear pretty much immediately that Russia was engaged in a campaign to influence the election. That alone is a big deal. A genuine threat to our democracy. Folks were very concerned about foreign interference in our elections.
That's not evidence Trump colluded with Putin to hack the election. Obama actually was not concerned about it, after secretly promising Putin he would be "more flexible", he ordered US cyber security agency to stand down and cease countering Russia's cyber attacks in the lead up to the election.
https://news.yahoo.com/obama-cyber-chief-confirms-stand-orde...
While that was happening he was also lying to the American people about the election being absolutely secure and under no threats. There's far more circumstantial evidence he colluded with Putin to hack the election than Trump did, if that's the standard of "evidence" we're going by.
> Evidence that Trump and his campaign my have been involved started with Australia notifying the US that Papadopoulos (an adviser to Trump's campaign) might have known about the hacked emails before they were released. Papadopoulos had told Alexander Downer (an Australian diplomat) that Russia had acquired and could leak material that would be damaging to Clinton. The FBI started to dig in and found there were a lot of links between the Trump campaign and Russia (For examples see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Links_between_Trump_associates...).
Claims by some person that some other person claimed that they somehow knew about Russia having damaging information isn't evidence to open an investigation of treason on a political campaign.
> So here we had Trump, with all these connections to Russia, taking advantage of and benefiting directly from the criminal acts committed by Russia to influence the election. That isn't direct evidence that Trump or his campaign did anything criminal, but it's plenty of reason for an investigation.
This is just more handwaving about "all these connections". There's no actual evidence. Probable cause is more than just "oh a friend of a friend told me", or "oh he knew all these people". Imagine thinking that justified wiretapping and investigating a political campaign -- you could spy on anybody. Look at all Biden's connections and allegations about his links with foreign countries. Or Clinton's.
> I'm glad they did their job and investigated.
They never had solid probable cause for such a wide ranging investigation and it really looks like a politically motivated muck raking exercise, and a baseless conspiracy theory peddled by the DNC and their lackeys in the media and bureaucracy.
> For what it's worth, I'm actually glad Russia hacked the DNC and exposed the fact that they were/are corrupt. They ignored the will of democratic voters by selecting their preferred candidate before the primary and worked directly with Hillary's campaign to undermine her opposition to get her elected. Many people had already been suspecting that was true, but if not for the email hack we wouldn't have had the evidence to prove it.
There isn't even good evidence that it was Russia that exfiltrated the emails.