Mueller et al Declared that there Was Collusion

The post entitled “Trump’s Claim Mueller Found ‘NO COLLUSION’ Is Literal Nonsense” is not up to Jon Chait’s usual standard. Trump’s claim is, of course, nonsense. Chait accurately described Trump’s typical pathetic rhetorical trick “One of President Trump’s favorite methods to defend his innocence in the Russia investigation is to claim that any piece of evidence that does not explicitly assert his guilt is in fact evidence of his innocence.” and added some high quality snark “It is exactly like saying Trump was cleared by the Warren Commission because the Warren Commission report makes no conclusion about Trump and Russia.” However, he misread the indictment.

Chait (and many many others) concedes that the indictment didn’t declare that collusion has been detected “this particular indictment probably has nothing to do with collusion. ” In fact the indictment declared that collusion has been detected. it didn’t name all of the conspirators, but the grand jury did definitely claim to know of conspirators who were not named in the indictment.

I quote (with a pdf warning and my emphasis)

From in or around 2014 to the present, Defendants knowingly and intentionally conspired with each other (and with persons known and unknown to the Grand Jury) to defraud the United States by impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful functions of the government through fraud and deceit for the purpose of interfering with the U.S. political and electoral processes, including the presidential election of 2016.

The indictment explicitly states that only some of the “known” conspirators have been indicted. It doesn’t say whether any of the unindicted conspirators worked for the Trump campaign, but it definitely also doesn’t say that no crimes Trump campaign workers have been detected in the investigation into internet trolling (let alone the broader investigation).

The indictment explicitly states that there are known unindicted co-conspirators. It does not address the question of whether one is, say, named Donald Trump, even within the narrow limits of the investigation of “INTERNET RESEARCH AGENCY LLC” and its employees.

I mean which word in “conspired with … persons known … to the grand jury” didn’t he understand ?

update: This post by Marcy Wheeler is incomparably better than my little post. Read it.

One point from Wheeler– a US citizen conspirator who was not indicted has been named. Richard Pinedo was not indcted because he pleaeded guilty on February 7th. The indictment can’t be construed as stating that the Grand Jury does not have probable cause to believe Americans were wittingly involved in the conspiracy. At least one definitely is known. He wasn’t indicted because he confessed.

Wheeler wrote

In the wake of that indictment, the court unsealed a February 7 plea agreement with Californian Richard Pinedo, for identity theft (basically, selling bank account numbers; the information doesn’t identify the users who purchased the bank account numbers as IRA personnel who used them to set up “American” identities, but that is clearly what happened).

update 2: I have a thought. Wheeler wrote

Plus, Mueller likely obtained cooperation from one IRA employee, the unnamed person who traveled to Atlanta in November 2014 for reconnaissance. Had that person not cooperated, he or she would have been named in the indictment.

This is probably true, but I think that I have thought of another possibility. It is possible that Atlanta traveller wasn’t indicted because he or she didn’t commit a crime. Two women were indicted for lying on their visa applications saying they were in the USA for tourism not reconnaissance. But reconnaissance isn’t a crime. It sometimes called journalism and sometimes called market research. If Atlanta traveller claimed to be a journalist, he or she is in the clear. The US government can’t decide who is and who isn’t a real journalist (just as it can’t decide who is a real clergyperson) because everyone has a first amendment right to claim to be a journalist (the first amendment doesn’t say anything about citizenship — foreigners have free press rights too). IRA wasn’t seeking classified information — they wanted to know what Americans were saying about the election. The reconnaissance was journalism which is legal except for people who lied claiming to be tourists.

So maybe someone did something totally legal, can’t be indicted and wasn’t named because he or she has a right to some privacy while observing us.