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Bungled collusion is still collusion

Donald Trump Jr. (Richard Drew/Associated Press)
By Charles Krauthammer Opinion writer July 13 at 7:51 PM

The Russia scandal has entered a new phase, and there’s no going back.

For six months, the White House claimed that this scandal was nothing more than innuendo about Trump campaign collusion with Russia in meddling in the 2016 election. Innuendo for which no concrete evidence had been produced.

Yes, there were several meetings with Russian officials, some only belatedly disclosed. But that is circumstantial evidence at best. Meetings tell you nothing unless you know what happened in them. We didn’t. Some of these were casual encounters in large groups, like the famous July 2016 Kislyak-Sessions exchange of pleasantries at the Republican National Convention. Big deal.

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I was puzzled. Lots of coverup, but where was the crime? Not even a third-rate burglary. For six months, smoke without fire. Yes, President Trump himself was acting very defensively, as if he were hiding something. But no one ever produced the something.

My view was: Collusion? I just don’t see it. But I’m open to empirical evidence. Show me.
Play Video 2:37
Trump and Trump Jr. defend the Russia meeting
Donald Trump Jr. appeared on Fox News's “Hannity” on July 11 to defend his meeting with a Russian lawyer during the 2016 presidential campaign, and his father jumped to his defense on Twitter. (Amber Ferguson, Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

The evidence is now shown. This is not hearsay, not fake news, not unsourced leaks. This is an email chain released by Donald Trump Jr. himself. A British go-between writes that there’s a Russian government effort to help Trump Sr. win the election, and as part of that effort he proposes a meeting with a “Russian government attorney” possessing damaging information on Hillary Clinton. Moreover, the Kremlin is willing to share troves of incriminating documents from the Crown Prosecutor. (Error: Britain has a Crown Prosecutor. Russia has a Prosecutor General.)

Donald Jr. emails back. “I love it.” Fatal words.

Once you’ve said “I’m in,” it makes no difference that the meeting was a bust, that the intermediary brought no such goods. What matters is what Donald Jr. thought going into the meeting, as well as Jared Kushner and then-campaign manager Paul Manafort, who were forwarded the correspondence, invited to the meeting, and attended.

“It was literally just a wasted 20?minutes, which was a shame,” Donald Jr. told Sean Hannity. A shame? On the contrary, a stroke of luck. Had the lawyer real stuff to deliver, Donald Jr. and the others would be in far deeper legal trouble. It turned out to be incompetent collusion, amateur collusion, comically failed collusion. That does not erase the fact that three top Trump campaign officials were ready to play.

It may turn out that they did later collaborate more fruitfully. We don’t know. But even if nothing else is found, the evidence is damning.

It’s rather pathetic to hear Trump apologists protesting that it’s no big deal because we Americans are always intervening in other people’s elections, and they in ours. You don’t have to go back to the ’40s and ’50s when the CIA intervened in France and Italy to keep the communists from coming to power. What about the Obama administration’s blatant interference to try to defeat Benjamin Netanyahu in the latest Israeli election? One might even add the work of groups supported by the U.S. during Russian parliamentary elections — the very origin of Vladimir Putin’s deep animus toward Clinton, then secretary of state, whom he accuses of having orchestrated the opposition.

This defense is pathetic for two reasons. First, have the Trumpites not been telling us for six months that no collusion ever happened? And now they say: Sure it happened. So what? Everyone does it.

What’s left of your credibility when you make such a casual about-face?

Second, no, not everyone does it. It’s one thing to be open to opposition research dug up in Indiana. But not dirt from Russia, a hostile foreign power that has repeatedly invaded its neighbors (Georgia, Crimea, eastern Ukraine), that buzzes our planes and ships in international waters, that opposes our every move and objective around the globe. Just last week the Kremlin killed additional U.N. sanctions we were looking to impose on North Korea for its ICBM test.

There is no statute against helping a foreign hostile power meddle in an American election. What Donald Jr. — and Kushner and Manafort — did may not be criminal. But it is not merely stupid. It is also deeply wrong, a fundamental violation of any code of civic honor.

I leave it to the lawyers to adjudicate the legalities of unconsummated collusion. But you don’t need a lawyer to see that the Trump defense — collusion as a desperate Democratic fiction designed to explain away a lost election — is now officially dead.

Read more from Charles Krauthammer’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.

Read more here:

Andrew C. McCarthy: The Donald Trump Jr. emails definitely show collusion. But collusion in what?

The Post’s View: The Russia meddling story is no longer just smoke. It’s fire.

Randall Eliason: Donald Trump Jr.’s emails are far more damning than anyone could have imagined

The Post’s View: This is why Russia wanted to help Trump

Charles Krauthammer: The coverup in search of a crime
1.3K
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Charles Krauthammer writes a weekly political column that runs on Fridays.
Follow @krauthammer
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phosgene
8:27 AM EST
they just went to this meeting where the Russian govt was going to set them up with a treasure trove of dirt on Hillary, plus untold other support to win the election and they didn't tell daddy a thing.

yeah right.....
LikeReplyShare
4
WonderfulWorld
8:27 AM EST [Edited]
Welcome to the fight, Dr. K. Now that you have awakened to the massive mess that is 'the Trump Administration', what will you do now? You have a responsibility to awaken others.
LikeReplyShare
2
Betsy7
8:26 AM EST
Those emails take away any defense of "fake news" and dispel the idea that the whole investigation of Russian meddling is a "hoax" or a "witch hunt."
Don Jr. thought it was real and he thought it was good. He may just be kid, late 30s can be pretty immature, but he was acting as a surrogate for his father on the campaign trail. That Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner also took the bait is even more damning.
Given that speech where Trump himself promised to reveal the dirt on Clinton, it seems even he might have thought it was good.
Was there more? What was Michael Flynn doing as this was happening? What other connivers were talking through "back channels" with Russians? Did the Russian pursue the hacking independently?
LikeReplyShare
1
magwitch
8:28 AM EST
A kid? Same age as Macron and not much younger than Trudeau. And of course a lot older than most of the real men and women in the military who put their lives on the line in Afghanistan and other places.
LikeReply
2
James A. Fuller
8:26 AM EST
"It’s rather pathetic"? How about it's completely outrageous? Rather pathetic sounds kind of milk toasty to me. So, Dr. K. You see the problem here. Why don't the GOP powers that be? Why the reluctance to take action, even as small as revoking Kushner's clearance? Yes, this episode is deeply troubling, but the GOP being complicit in the continuation of this abominable administration bothers me just as much. Maybe more.
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2
magwitch
8:26 AM EST
You mean if I ask someone to kill my husband and they don't do it I'd still be guilty of something?
LikeReplyShare
4
rrhs
8:27 AM EST [Edited]
In Trumpland, no.
LikeReply
1
WonderfulWorld
8:27 AM EST
Surprise! I don't suggest you Tweet the email chain with the hit man as a defense.
LikeReply
2
Betsy7
8:27 AM EST
Yes.
LikeReply
1
againstthewind
8:25 AM EST
Lies, Lies and more Lies from the Trump circle. Who would have thought that?
LikeReplyShare
5
LifeInBananaRepublic
8:25 AM EST
Wondering why Krauthammer continues to appear on FoxNews, the pusher of #FakeNews and conspiracy theories. You'll never be able to wash the Fox stench off Chuck.
LikeReplyShare
4
magwitch
8:26 AM EST
Dunno. A lot of the conservatives with triple digit IQs are jumping from the drump ship though.
LikeReply
1
mcafla
8:28 AM EST
$$$$. No mystery there. Plus he gets to promote his good buddy Netanyahu at every opportunity.
LikeReply
DandyDon1
8:23 AM EST
Good for you, Charlie. Even you can see the facts clearly here. Unfortunately, you have now been blackballed by the Trump White House. But nothing feels as good as revealing the truth.
LikeReplyShare
1
mcafla
8:23 AM EST
Manafort at the meeting reveals that this was not a group of naïve innocents meeting with the Russian lawyer. Manafort has been working as a lobbyist and campaigner for political interests friendly to Putin. He is no novice about the ways of the Kremlin.
LikeReplyShare
2
irvrube
8:23 AM EST
Welcome Dr. K, to the wonderfully hilarious world of sycophantic storytelling that has constituted the two years of Trump's ascension to the pinnacle of world fame and power. Now you and other conservatives should be asking yourselves how you allowed this guy to get this far.
LikeReplyShare
4
bodoston
8:23 AM EST
Just the fact they took the meeting under that pretext set Trump up for Russian blackmail. Forget what was said.
LikeReplyShare
2
Igrok9000
8:23 AM EST
Folks don't always get to first base on a first date. I'd say the collusion proceeded nicely in the weeks and months following this initial assignation.
LikeReplyShare
3
Lucky36
8:21 AM EST
Charlie, you forgot to tell your readers, that trump thinks it's Obama's fault!
LikeReplyShare
5
mcafla
8:24 AM EST
Charlie will work on making it Obama's fault in subsequent columns.
LikeReply
3
Bob Priddy
8:21 AM EST
Remember, Watergate was a failed burglary.































































The Washington Post
Democracy Dies in Darkness

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1leekramer

1leekramer
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Opinions
Bungled collusion is still collusion

Donald Trump Jr. (Richard Drew/Associated Press)
By Charles Krauthammer Opinion writer July 13 at 7:51 PM

The Russia scandal has entered a new phase, and there’s no going back.

For six months, the White House claimed that this scandal was nothing more than innuendo about Trump campaign collusion with Russia in meddling in the 2016 election. Innuendo for which no concrete evidence had been produced.

Yes, there were several meetings with Russian officials, some only belatedly disclosed. But that is circumstantial evidence at best. Meetings tell you nothing unless you know what happened in them. We didn’t. Some of these were casual encounters in large groups, like the famous July 2016 Kislyak-Sessions exchange of pleasantries at the Republican National Convention. Big deal.

Opinions newsletter

Thought-provoking opinions and commentary, in your inbox daily.

I was puzzled. Lots of coverup, but where was the crime? Not even a third-rate burglary. For six months, smoke without fire. Yes, President Trump himself was acting very defensively, as if he were hiding something. But no one ever produced the something.

My view was: Collusion? I just don’t see it. But I’m open to empirical evidence. Show me.
Play Video 2:37
Trump and Trump Jr. defend the Russia meeting
Donald Trump Jr. appeared on Fox News's “Hannity” on July 11 to defend his meeting with a Russian lawyer during the 2016 presidential campaign, and his father jumped to his defense on Twitter. (Amber Ferguson, Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

The evidence is now shown. This is not hearsay, not fake news, not unsourced leaks. This is an email chain released by Donald Trump Jr. himself. A British go-between writes that there’s a Russian government effort to help Trump Sr. win the election, and as part of that effort he proposes a meeting with a “Russian government attorney” possessing damaging information on Hillary Clinton. Moreover, the Kremlin is willing to share troves of incriminating documents from the Crown Prosecutor. (Error: Britain has a Crown Prosecutor. Russia has a Prosecutor General.)

Donald Jr. emails back. “I love it.” Fatal words.

Once you’ve said “I’m in,” it makes no difference that the meeting was a bust, that the intermediary brought no such goods. What matters is what Donald Jr. thought going into the meeting, as well as Jared Kushner and then-campaign manager Paul Manafort, who were forwarded the correspondence, invited to the meeting, and attended.

“It was literally just a wasted 20?minutes, which was a shame,” Donald Jr. told Sean Hannity. A shame? On the contrary, a stroke of luck. Had the lawyer real stuff to deliver, Donald Jr. and the others would be in far deeper legal trouble. It turned out to be incompetent collusion, amateur collusion, comically failed collusion. That does not erase the fact that three top Trump campaign officials were ready to play.

It may turn out that they did later collaborate more fruitfully. We don’t know. But even if nothing else is found, the evidence is damning.

It’s rather pathetic to hear Trump apologists protesting that it’s no big deal because we Americans are always intervening in other people’s elections, and they in ours. You don’t have to go back to the ’40s and ’50s when the CIA intervened in France and Italy to keep the communists from coming to power. What about the Obama administration’s blatant interference to try to defeat Benjamin Netanyahu in the latest Israeli election? One might even add the work of groups supported by the U.S. during Russian parliamentary elections — the very origin of Vladimir Putin’s deep animus toward Clinton, then secretary of state, whom he accuses of having orchestrated the opposition.

This defense is pathetic for two reasons. First, have the Trumpites not been telling us for six months that no collusion ever happened? And now they say: Sure it happened. So what? Everyone does it.

What’s left of your credibility when you make such a casual about-face?

Second, no, not everyone does it. It’s one thing to be open to opposition research dug up in Indiana. But not dirt from Russia, a hostile foreign power that has repeatedly invaded its neighbors (Georgia, Crimea, eastern Ukraine), that buzzes our planes and ships in international waters, that opposes our every move and objective around the globe. Just last week the Kremlin killed additional U.N. sanctions we were looking to impose on North Korea for its ICBM test.

There is no statute against helping a foreign hostile power meddle in an American election. What Donald Jr. — and Kushner and Manafort — did may not be criminal. But it is not merely stupid. It is also deeply wrong, a fundamental violation of any code of civic honor.

I leave it to the lawyers to adjudicate the legalities of unconsummated collusion. But you don’t need a lawyer to see that the Trump defense — collusion as a desperate Democratic fiction designed to explain away a lost election — is now officially dead.

Read more from Charles Krauthammer’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.

Read more here:

Andrew C. McCarthy: The Donald Trump Jr. emails definitely show collusion. But collusion in what?

The Post’s View: The Russia meddling story is no longer just smoke. It’s fire.

Randall Eliason: Donald Trump Jr.’s emails are far more damning than anyone could have imagined

The Post’s View: This is why Russia wanted to help Trump

Charles Krauthammer: The coverup in search of a crime
1.3K
Comments

Share on FacebookShare
Share on TwitterTweet
Share via Email

Charles Krauthammer writes a weekly political column that runs on Fridays.
Follow @krauthammer
The Post Recommends
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The bargaining table has changed after an early expectation that Democrats up for reelection next year — especially from states Trump won — would feel pressure to work across the aisle.
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1345 Comments
Mentioned in this story and want to comment? Learn more
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All Comments

Newest First
Pause live updates

phosgene
8:27 AM EST
they just went to this meeting where the Russian govt was going to set them up with a treasure trove of dirt on Hillary, plus untold other support to win the election and they didn't tell daddy a thing.

yeah right.....
LikeReplyShare
4
WonderfulWorld
8:27 AM EST [Edited]
Welcome to the fight, Dr. K. Now that you have awakened to the massive mess that is 'the Trump Administration', what will you do now? You have a responsibility to awaken others.
LikeReplyShare
2
Betsy7
8:26 AM EST
Those emails take away any defense of "fake news" and dispel the idea that the whole investigation of Russian meddling is a "hoax" or a "witch hunt."
Don Jr. thought it was real and he thought it was good. He may just be kid, late 30s can be pretty immature, but he was acting as a surrogate for his father on the campaign trail. That Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner also took the bait is even more damning.
Given that speech where Trump himself promised to reveal the dirt on Clinton, it seems even he might have thought it was good.
Was there more? What was Michael Flynn doing as this was happening? What other connivers were talking through "back channels" with Russians? Did the Russian pursue the hacking independently?
LikeReplyShare
1
magwitch
8:28 AM EST
A kid? Same age as Macron and not much younger than Trudeau. And of course a lot older than most of the real men and women in the military who put their lives on the line in Afghanistan and other places.
LikeReply
2
James A. Fuller
8:26 AM EST
"It’s rather pathetic"? How about it's completely outrageous? Rather pathetic sounds kind of milk toasty to me. So, Dr. K. You see the problem here. Why don't the GOP powers that be? Why the reluctance to take action, even as small as revoking Kushner's clearance? Yes, this episode is deeply troubling, but the GOP being complicit in the continuation of this abominable administration bothers me just as much. Maybe more.
LikeReplyShare
2
magwitch
8:26 AM EST
You mean if I ask someone to kill my husband and they don't do it I'd still be guilty of something?
LikeReplyShare
4
rrhs
8:27 AM EST [Edited]
In Trumpland, no.
LikeReply
1
WonderfulWorld
8:27 AM EST
Surprise! I don't suggest you Tweet the email chain with the hit man as a defense.
LikeReply
2
Betsy7
8:27 AM EST
Yes.
LikeReply
1
againstthewind
8:25 AM EST
Lies, Lies and more Lies from the Trump circle. Who would have thought that?
LikeReplyShare
5
LifeInBananaRepublic
8:25 AM EST
Wondering why Krauthammer continues to appear on FoxNews, the pusher of #FakeNews and conspiracy theories. You'll never be able to wash the Fox stench off Chuck.
LikeReplyShare
4
magwitch
8:26 AM EST
Dunno. A lot of the conservatives with triple digit IQs are jumping from the drump ship though.
LikeReply
1
mcafla
8:28 AM EST
$$$$. No mystery there. Plus he gets to promote his good buddy Netanyahu at every opportunity.
LikeReply
DandyDon1
8:23 AM EST
Good for you, Charlie. Even you can see the facts clearly here. Unfortunately, you have now been blackballed by the Trump White House. But nothing feels as good as revealing the truth.
LikeReplyShare
1
mcafla
8:23 AM EST
Manafort at the meeting reveals that this was not a group of naïve innocents meeting with the Russian lawyer. Manafort has been working as a lobbyist and campaigner for political interests friendly to Putin. He is no novice about the ways of the Kremlin.
LikeReplyShare
2
irvrube
8:23 AM EST
Welcome Dr. K, to the wonderfully hilarious world of sycophantic storytelling that has constituted the two years of Trump's ascension to the pinnacle of world fame and power. Now you and other conservatives should be asking yourselves how you allowed this guy to get this far.
LikeReplyShare
4
bodoston
8:23 AM EST
Just the fact they took the meeting under that pretext set Trump up for Russian blackmail. Forget what was said.
LikeReplyShare
2
Igrok9000
8:23 AM EST
Folks don't always get to first base on a first date. I'd say the collusion proceeded nicely in the weeks and months following this initial assignation.
LikeReplyShare
3
Lucky36
8:21 AM EST
Charlie, you forgot to tell your readers, that trump thinks it's Obama's fault!
LikeReplyShare
5
mcafla
8:24 AM EST
Charlie will work on making it Obama's fault in subsequent columns.
LikeReply
3
Bob Priddy
8:21 AM EST
Remember, Watergate was a failed burglary.
LikeReplyShare
3
Facts_Do_Matter
8:19 AM EST [Edited]
Once the indictments drop for the four apparent felons (Flynn, Kushner, Trump Jr, & Manafort), we will see where the investigation heads. Trump probably has somebody working the language for the pardons, but that won't save him. Once pardoned, the felons can't plead the 5th.
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1
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3
Facts_Do_Matter
8:19 AM EST [Edited]
Once the indictments drop for the four apparent felons (Flynn, Kushner, Trump Jr, & Manafort), we will see where the investigation heads. Trump probably has somebody working the language for the pardons, but that won't save him. Once pardoned, the felons can't plead the 5th.
LikeReplyShare
1
More