Trending
Donald Trump has consistently denied colluding with the Russians during the 2016 campaign. From all we know right now, no one can prove that's not the truth. So as we continue to vivisect the 2016 Presidential election, let's accept what he is saying about this subject as true, and just confine our examination to what we know the Russians did during the 2016 elections and what former President Trump did in response.
To me, the argument that Donald Trump did not collude with the Russians is like the argument of a husband trying to make up with his wife after she finds out he "has been with another woman." "Look Babe, it just happened. We did not plan for it to happen. It just did. And all we did was make out a little. We did not go all the way." If one accepts the first dictionary definition of "adultery" as "sexual intercourse between a married person and a person other than one's spouse," then, strictly speaking, the husband arguably has a point: he did not commit adultery as defined in the dictionary. It's kind of like Bill Clinton infamously protesting what he did. "I did not have sex with that woman."
Similarly, if "collusion" means that the Trump's campaign had an explicit agreement with the Russians to conduct a coordinated campaign with them in the 2016 election to influence the outcome of the election, there is currently nothing in evidence that would stand up in court to make a conviction for any such "crime." In other words, if "collusion" means legal "conspiracy," Trump and his defenders are, by this definition, correct. There was no "collusion." The Mueller Report said as much: no collusion that amounts to criminal conspiracy. That's why Trump has never been indicted on charges of conspiracy.
So if the Trump campaign did not "conspire/collude" with the Russian government," what assistance did the Trump campaign actually receive from the Russians and how did Trump react to it?
This we know for sure: the Russians gave significant help to the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election. They spread disinformation on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram about candidates including Hillary Clinton and thereby sowed discord among American voters. The Russians hacked into the email accounts of Hillary Clinton and members of the Democratic National Committee (DC) and released stolen emails through Wiki Leaks in an effort to damage Clinton's campaign. Trump's campaign representatives had direct contacts with the Russians with close ties to the Russian government at strategic moments of the campaign.
One link between the Trump campaign and the Russians was between Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign manager and Konstantin Kilimnick. Kilimnick was Manafort's right-hand man when Manafort was a campaign manager for a Russian-backed candidate for president in Ukraine. Kilimnick was also a known Russian intelligence officer. Manafort shared strategic in-house Trump campaign polling data with Kilimnick, who the U. S. Treasury Department says, passed the data on to Russian Intelligence. In June, 2016, senior campaign managers, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort met with a Russian named Natalia Vesenitskaya, a lawyer with known lengthy ties to the Russian government. Emails released by Donald Trump Jr. plainly state that the purpose of the meeting was to obtain damaging information about Hillary Clinton to be used in Trump's campaign against her.
We know this too: The Mueller report recommended specific charges against 25 Russian individuals and three Russian organizations with connections to the Russian government for interfering in the 2016 US presidential election. These charges included conspiracy to interfere with the election through coordinated disinformation campaigns, hacking operations and other election violations. The Russians also targeted a wide range of of demographic groups. of American voters. These groups included, Blacks, Latinos and women groups, the conspiratorially inclined, the politically disenchanted and polarized to reduce turn-out or encourage votes for third party candidates The Russians also reached out to conservative groups to spread pro-Trump messages and anti-Hillary attacks.
And what did Trump do in the face of this foreign interference? Pretty much what he did while watching his followers on television attack the Capitol in an attempt to reverse the results of an election? Nothing. Trump never complained about, much less condemned the illegal Russian interference in our election. In fact, he publicly encouraged their intrusions: "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing," When Trump and his followers argue doing nothing and cheer-leading the actions of others involved in criminal activities are not crimes, they could very well be right. So, since a crime cannot be proven here, is that the end of the matter? For Team Trump it is. Not so for me.
As I see it, even if accepting the advances of a foreign enemy and "playing around" with them during an American election to damage the campaign of an opponent does not constitute the violation of a criminal statute, they definitely constitute a violation of a President's inaugural Oath of Office. A betrayed wife might choose to take her repentant husband back after such an act of infidelity. That's her choice. We have a choice too. I consider the relationship of the Trump campaign with the Russian government in 2016 just as much a violation of Trump's oath of office as the actions of a cheating husband whose philandering falls short of intercourse is an immoral violation of his marriage vows. As I see it, betrayed voters would be fools to re-elect an unrepentant leader who shows absolutely no remorse for his continued warm, shameless, and unscrupulous relationship with a government that typically acts against the interests of the United States and its allies and illegally intervened in our highest democratic election.
The Russians wanted their illegal intervention in our 2016 election to help Donald J. Trump win. Donald J. Trump and his campaign wanted Russia's illegal interference in the 2016 election to help him win. Did it? Did Russia's intervention have minimal or no effect? Did Russia's intervention affect the election, but not in any significant way? Or did Russia's intervention have a decisive impact on the outcome? We may all have different answers to these questions? But whatever our guesses, we will never know for sure. And that is just fine with the Russians , just fine with Donald J. Trump and just fine with his supporters.
Tim Mannello is a retired healthcare executive and management consultant residing in Williamsport.