Reporting establishes that Trump's campaign manager sold a known Kremlin spy proprietary internal campaign polling data and an offer of private briefings on Trump's foreign policy deliberations for $2.4 million. We'll see what Mueller foundâbut it certainly wasn't "no collusion."
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) March 24, 2019
1/ For instance, he could say he was unable to or uninterested in charging Manafort with conspiracy after Manafort wouldn't cooperate with tge SCO but got more than 7 years in prison anyway. That's very different from saying that Manafort didn't actively collude with the Kremlin.
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) March 24, 2019
2/ When I wrote my first book on this subject, I deliberately stuck with the term "collusion." To say collusion simply means "conspiracy" is not only wrongâit does enormous damage to our understanding of what actually happened here and why it's the biggest scandal in our history.
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) March 24, 2019
3/ I've seen non-attorney journalists foolishly boast that they're smarter than most for having figured out that "collusion" is the wrong term to use hereâthat we should opt for "conspiracy." But when you use the narrowest and hardest-to-prove term for misconduct, you excuse it.
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) March 24, 2019
4/ The result of so many people not understanding the difference between conspiracy and collusion and the *greater* utility of the *latter* term is we have all these Trumper morons on Twitter saying Mueller found no collusion when what they *mean* is he'll *charge* no conspiracy.
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) March 24, 2019
5/ Collusion can occur without criminal conduct. Collusion can occur within criminal conduct not charged as conspiracy. Collusion can be assigned to a campaign, not justâas crimes areâone person. Journalists must say Mueller is likely to find collusion, but not charge conspiracy.
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) March 24, 2019
6/ I'll admit that I'm angryâand have been for some timeâat those journalists who've thought so little about the norms we're trying to protect here that they've accepted the Trumper line that everything is *okay* so long as Mueller didn't find 90%+ proof of a criminal conspiracy.
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) March 24, 2019
7/ When Trump had a secret face-to-face conversation with Putin, then hours later crafted a false statement for America to read about a meeting with Kremlin agents in his homeâto keep hiding what he's always hidden, the scope of his relationship with the Kremlinâthat's collusion.
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) March 24, 2019
8/ When Trump held a national security meeting in his hotel in March 2016 and a member of his tiny NatSec team said he was a Kremlin intermediary trying to set upâbackchannelâa secret Trump-Russia summit on foreign policy with the Kremlin and Trump promoted him, that's collusion.
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) March 24, 2019
9/ When Trumpâknowing perfectly well that his campaign was engaged in a backchannel conversation with the Kremlin over its support for himâpublicly asked for the Kremlin's help in hacking his opponents, and in under 24 hours the hackers acceded to his wishes, that was collusion.
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) March 24, 2019
10/ When Trump directly ordered his NatSec team to make a change to the RNC platform to benefit the Kremlin at a time his campaign was reaching out to Kremlin agents to get them to give him stolen Clinton emailsâthereby performing on his half of a quid pro quoâthat was collusion.
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) March 24, 2019
11/ When Trump "found out"âassuming he hadn't known all alongâhis NSA had been secretly negotiating American foreign policy with the Kremlin for months, including during the campaign, and not only didn't fire him but tried to deep-six feds' prosecution of him, that was collusion.
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) March 24, 2019
12/ When Trump was secretly negotiating a multibillion dollar tower deal with Kremlin agents during the 2016 campaign while telling America that he had no business relationship whatsoever with any Russians, that was collusion of the most outrageously obvious and treacherous sort.
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) March 24, 2019
13/ When Trump disclosed classified Israeli intel in the Oval Office at a meeting with top Kremlin agents that he'd forbidden any Americans from attending or even photographingâand bragged to them about ending investigation into secret US-Russian coordinationâthat was collusion.
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) March 24, 2019
14/ When Trump secretly crafted a plan to drop all sanctions on the Kremlin even as his presidential campaign aides were having countless secret meetings with Russian nationals about sanctions policyâa plan that, when revealed, *terrified* the State Departmentâthat was collusion.
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) March 24, 2019
15/ Proof that I could go on and on in this vein ad nauseum is that I've written two booksâabout 1000 pagesâon Trump's collusion. Never let journalists tell you that there shouldn't be a *word* for all this until it's "conspiracy" beyond a reasonable doubt. It's *collusion*. /end
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) March 24, 2019