28 Times Trump Colluded With The Russians That Republicans Deliberately Ignored

Republicans 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.

House Republicans effectively terminated their investigation into Russian tampering in the 2016 election, claiming they have uncovered no evidence of any collusion by members of the Trump campaign or Trump himself.

NBC News reported that:

House Republicans investigating foreign interference in the 2016 election say they have found no evidence that Russians colluded with any members of the Trump campaign and dispute a key finding from the intelligence community that Russia had developed a preference for the Republican nominee during the election.

Those are the initial conclusions of a 150-page report from GOP members of the House Intelligence Committee, who are formally bringing the panel’s yearlong investigation to an end over the fierce objection of Democrats.

As expected, Trump took to his Twitter account to brag about the news, tweeting: “THE HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE HAS, AFTER A 14 MONTH LONG IN-DEPTH INVESTIGATION, FOUND NO EVIDENCE OF COLLUSION OR COORDINATION BETWEEN THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN AND RUSSIA TO INFLUENCE THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.”

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) responded to Trump, tweeting: “shhhh, don’t tell @realdonaldtrump that mueller has interviewed people that house intel hasn’t; or that mueller has documents house intel doesn’t have; or that trump’s own intel agencies disagree with gop house intel assertion that putin didn’t help trump.“

Former criminal investigator and criminal defense attorney, Seth Abramson, weighed in as well, tweeting: “Every Republican on the House Intelligence Committee will now live in infamy forever. Years and years from now, this will be the first sentence in the obituary of all of these people. Even their children will be ashamed, once the truth of what Trump did is fully disclosed.“

Abramson responded a second time to the news that Republicans were shutting down the House investigation by retweeting an earlier thread detailing all the times Trump had colluded with the Russians:

Please RETWEET this for the Trump fanatics in your life. And apparently for the benefit of Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, too, who after fourteen months of a fake investigation now say they’ve found zero evidence of collusion.“

(THREAD) TWENTY TIMES TRUMP COLLUDED WITH THE RUSSIANS

PLEASE RETWEET THIS LIST so that we can stop reading think-pieces in which Trump allies—or journos who don't follow the Trump-Russia story—sagely advise us that America has absolutely *no* evidence of Trump-Russia collusion. pic.twitter.com/i6SnPIydZV

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) February 28, 2018

Abramson’s initial list included 20 counts, but he added an additional 8 instances of collusion as post scripts to his thread, taking the list to a whopping 28 counts, which we will summarize below by a showing of some highlights from Abramson’s list. [The numbering associated with each example is Abramson’s running count of posts in the thread.]

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.

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