14 March 2018
One-way Collusion Not Possible
One-way Collusion Not Possible
The Trump Administration has been masterful in
characterizing the Mueller investigation as a search for collusion between it
and Russia to influence its 2016 Election campaign against its opponent,
Hillary Clinton. It has known that it
could show that the Mueller investigation has been a failure at that, for Trump’s
campaign managers realize that if they benefited from Russian interference,
they were unwitting beneficiaries. They
had nothing to do with it. They did not
collude with the Russians; therefore, there was no collusion. Of course, it takes two to collude.
Mueller’s real objective will turn out to be to demonstrate
that Russia did illegally interfere in the U.S. election process, and to show how
it did so. There may be individual facilitators
who can be prosecuted for criminal conspiracy, and there surely will be lessons
to be learned in order to prevent such distortion of our democratic system in
the future. The main harm the Mueller
investigation will do to the Trump Administration will be to weaken the
legitimacy of its claim on the U.S. presidency.
That is something that a swell-head like Donald Trump will never be able
to swallow.
