Coordination and Obstruction

House of Representatives member from California regurgitating the lie that will not die:

"It's not just Durham who has now disproven this idea, this conspiracy about collusion, Mr. Mueller did so as well." @KevinKileyCA slams Adam Schiff for clinging to the idea that the Trump campaign colluded with the Putin regime in Russia.

MORE: https://t.co/jvZCRqZ3JE pic.twitter.com/psAaIkfPwq

— NEWSMAX (@NEWSMAX) June 22, 2023

To Kiley's credit, he spoke in this video for well over a minute and never once invoked the term "hoax." However, he did refer to a "discredited idea of collusion" and claims that Special Counsel Robert Mueller "disproved the idea" that "there was collusion," collusion being a "long discredited idea."

Legally, Kiley is wrong because Mueller never addressed the notion of "collusion," which is not addressed in the criminal code. Instead, the Republican ex-Marine considered the possibility of collusion and as MSNBC legal contributors and former federal prosecutors Barbara McQuade and Joyce White Vance noted in June of 2019 

Mueller spent almost 200 pages describing “numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump Campaign.” He found that “a Russian entity carried out a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.” He also found that “a Russian intelligence service conducted computer-intrusion operations” against the Clinton campaign and then released stolen documents.

While Mueller was unable to establish a conspiracy between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians involved in this activity, he made it clear that “[a] statement that the investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts.” In fact, Mueller also wrote that the “investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.”

According to the Mueller report, nine significant members of the Trump campaign had contact with Russians and "on multiple occasions, members and surrogates of the Trump campaign promoted — typically by linking, retweeting, or similar methods of reposting — pro-Trump or anti-Clinton content published by the IRA" (i.e., Russian Internet Research Agency; also, Irish Republican Army but not in this instance). Somehow, this was done without a conspiracy- or rather, without inspiring confidence that a guilt could be proven beyond reasonable doubt. McQuade/White explain

To find conspiracy, a prosecutor must establish beyond a reasonable doubt the elements of the crime: an agreement between at least two people, to commit a criminal offense and an overt act in furtherance of that agreement. One of the underlying criminal offenses that Mueller reviewed for conspiracy was campaign-finance violations. Mueller found that Trump campaign members Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner met with Russian nationals in Trump Tower in New York June 2016 for the purpose of receiving disparaging information about Clinton as part of “Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump,” according to an email message arranging the meeting. This meeting did not amount to a criminal offense, in part, because Mueller was unable to establish “willfulness,” that is, that the participants knew that their conduct was illegal. Mueller was also unable to conclude that the information was a “thing of value” that exceeded $25,000, the requirement for campaign finance to be a felony, as opposed to a civil violation of law. But the fact that the conduct did not technically amount to conspiracy does not mean that it was acceptable. Trump campaign members welcomed foreign influence into our election and then compromised themselves with the Russian government by covering it up.

Moreover

Mueller found other contacts with Russia, such as the sharing of polling data about Midwestern states where Trump later won upset victories, conversations with the Russian ambassador to influence Russia’s response to sanctions imposed by the U.S. government in response to election interference, and communications with Wikileaks after it had received emails stolen by Russia. While none of these acts amounted to the crime of conspiracy, all could be described as “collusion.”

 It's difficult to prove conspiracy beyond a reasonable doubt when obvious acts of obstruction take place. Mueller found ten instances in which Donald Trump may have obstructed justice and

at least four acts by Trump in which all elements of the obstruction statute were satisfied – attempting to fire Mueller, directing White House counsel Don McGahn to lie and create a false document about efforts to fire Mueller, attempting to limit the investigation to future elections and attempting to prevent Manafort from cooperating with the government. As Mueller stated, “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.” Mueller declined to make a “traditional prosecution decision” about obstruction of justice. Because he was bound by the Department of Justice policy that a sitting president cannot be charged with a crime, he did not even attempt to reach a legal conclusion about the facts. Instead, he undertook to “preserve the evidence when memories were fresh and documentary materials were available,” because a president can be charged after he leaves office. In fact, out of an abundance of fairness, Mueller thought that it would be improper to even accuse Trump of committing a crime so as not to “preempt constitutional processes for addressing presidential misconduct,” meaning impeachment.

In his testimony in May of 2019, Mueller was determined to say as little as possible, and he was very successful. Nonetheless, he did concede “If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.”  Attorney General Bill Barr was the first and Representative Kevin Kline only the latest in the Republican Party to try to convince Americans that what is clearly there is not there. It has been a master class in gaslighting. 

 

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