Here’s The 28 Times Trump Colluded With The Russians

Trump and his supporters keep claiming that there is no evidence that Trump colluded with the Russians, but this detailed list by a noted former criminal prosecutor tells a different tale. 

Seth Abramson details the times Trump colluded with the Russians

Former criminal investigator and criminal defense attorney, Seth Abramson, weighed in on all the times Trump colluded with Russia, posting a list of 20 plus an additional 8 bonus instances of collusion, taking the list to a whopping 28 counts.

A few highlights of Abramson’s list included the following:

  • 2. Trump aided his son in covering up a clandestine meeting with Kremlin agents—designed to transmit stolen Clinton material from Russia to Trump—by drafting a false statement and forcing Don to sign it under his own name. Trump knew Don would be called to testify on the meeting.
  • 4. Trump held a secret meeting with Putin at an international conference, during which he discussed sanctions with the Russian strongman. His administration had no intention of acknowledging or admitting the meeting until a journalist happened to find out about it accidentally.
  • 6. An eyewitness to the judging process of the 2002 Miss Universe pageant in Puerto Rico has told Special Counsel Bob Mueller that Trump directly and unambiguously attempted to rig the pageant so that Miss Russia would win. Miss Russia was Putin’s mistress at the time. She won.
  • 7. Through clandestine negotiations conducted by Sessions—lied about before Congress, under oath, by Sessions—Trump agreed to unilaterally drop Russia sanctions while he knew from briefings Russia was attacking America. His secret plan was discovered by the DoS post-inauguration.
  • 11. After George Papadopoulos told Trump—to his face, on March 31, 2016—the Kremlin had authorized him to negotiate a clandestine mid-campaign Trump-Putin meeting, instead of firing him Trump moved him to his Russia policy team and let him edit his first foreign policy speech.
  • 12. During the same meeting Papadopoulos told Trump that he was a Kremlin agent, Trump ordered J.D. Gordon, a top member of his national security team, to change the GOP platform in July to benefit Putin on the Crimea issue. He issued his order after learning about Putin’s offer.
  • 19. Don Jr. told his dad about his contacts with Kremlin client WikiLeaks, and indeed as soon as WikiLeaks contacted Don saying it supported Trump’s campaign, Trump began inserting praise of WikiLeaks into every stump speech in a transparent attempt to reward and encourage leaks.
  • 19 (addendum). Trump’s first effusive, out-of-nowhere praise of WikiLeaks as a noble organization that should be widely supported, and which would be releasing great campaign information, came just 15 minutes—that’s not a typo—after WikiLeaks contacted his son for the first time.
  • BONUS. After Russia committed what intelligence experts refer to—in the context of U.S. history—as a “cyber Pearl Harbor,” Trump publicly proposed, as a serious policy proposal, that the U.S. intelligence community cooperate with the Kremlin on an important topic: cyber-security.
  • BONUS. After learning Flynn was secretly and illegally negotiating U.S.-Russia policy in 2016, Trump first did nothing, then fired him for another reason, then tried to rehire him, then fired the man prosecuting him, then told him to “stay strong,” then said he did nothing wrong.

Abramson ended his thread with the following conclusion, followed by three notes:

  • CONCLUSION. I’m at 28—and could go on—but I’ll stop here to try to keep this thread a reasonable length. Note: everything I’ve written is taken from the public record—and is only a *fraction* of what Bob Mueller knows. So let’s stop reading or sharing “no collusion” think-pieces.
  • NOTE. There are attendant facts augmenting *all* these points (e.g., Trump’s effort to gut election security/sanctions administration units in his government; his refusal to authorize NSA to counter Russian cyber-attacks; his ongoing war on those investigating Russia; and so on.)
  • NOTE2. Because Trump and the think-pieces are about “collusion,” I’m meeting them head-on—as *all* the acts I’ve cited here are “collusion” (a non-legal term). *Many* of them then *also* map to “coordination,” which denotes “Conspiracy,” a legal term and federal criminal offense.
  • NOTE3. Readers of this feed know I’ve listed before—ad nauseam, even—the criminal statutes many of these acts of collusion connect to, including direct (or conspiracy) campaign-finance, bribery, fraud, computer-crime, money laundering, obstruction, and witness tampering statutes.

Trump continues to deny any collusion with Russia

Trump continues to insist that there is no evidence he, or his campaign, colluded with the Russians.

PBS News Hour reported earlier this month that: “Trump’s Twitter cannon roared” as the pressure of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller’s investigation continued closing in on his administration.

Trump’s rash of tweets followed an indictment released Friday [February 16, 2018] charging 13 Russians with running a massive social media trolling campaign and field operations in the U.S. aimed in part at helping him defeat his 2016 Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. The case brought by special counsel Robert Mueller provided the most concrete evidence yet of Russian attempts to subvert the election.

Trump claimed he was fully exonerated in his very first tweet after receiving the news of the Friday indictments.

“Russia started their anti-US campaign in 2014, long before I announced that I would run for President. The results of the election were not impacted. The Trump campaign did nothing wrong – no collusion!” he tweeted – seeming to forget his 2000 campaign for the nomination of the Reform Party. (Trump announced the creation of a presidential exploratory committee during an appearance on “Larry King Live” on October 7, 1999.)

Tuesday morning [February 27, 2018] , Trump took to Twitter again – posting a series of tweets quoting two Fox News personalities and Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr who led his own witch hunt against Bill Clinton.

  • “He’s got a very good point. Somebody in the Justice Department has a treasure trove of evidence of Mrs. Clinton’s criminality at her own hands, or through others, that ought to be investigated. I fully agree with the President on that.” @judgenapolitano on @marthamaccallum Show
  • “I’ve been skeptical about the collusion and obstruction claims for the last year. I just don’t see the evidence….in terms of the collusion, it’s all a bit implausible based on the evidence we have.” Jonathan Turley on @FoxNews
  • “We’ve seen NO EVIDENCE OF COLLUSION….I have seen nothing, the firing of James Comey and all of the aftermath, that suggests that the President has obstructed justice because he’s exercising his power as the President of the U.S. I just don’t see it.” Judge Ken Starr

His final post of that particular Twitter-tantrum simply stated: “WITCH HUNT” in all capital letters.

 

 

Samuel Warde
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