The Trump crowd has long claimed that there was “no collusion, ” repeatedly in many venues. Somehow the MSM picked up on this screed, and so it is out there that indeed that the Mueller Report declared that there was “no collusion,” a phrase that somehow Trump himself long put out there for his followers long before the Mueller Report came out.
But, in fact up front in the Mueller Report they made it clear that they were not investigating “collusion.” They only briefly discussed the term, but the bottom line was that there exists no legal definition of this term. The final point in the report was that “collusion” is not even a “term of art” in the legal system Therefore, they simply ignored thereafter in the inquiry.
Bottom line is that there is massive evidence for collusion, that legally undefined form of half-baked cooperation that never got the level of coordination and conspiracy. They were massively colluding, but never ccould get it together to engage in an organized mutually benefiicial operation to influence the election. They were too incompetent to put it together, although they made great efforts to do so, The obvious example was the meeting in Trump Tower in June 2016. The Russsians wanted certain Putin-related cronies exempted from the Magnitsy law, while the Trump people wanted more dirt on HRC than the Russians were willing to give then, although soon after they delivered the goods.
Barkley Rosser
I note that on p. 180 of the MR they note that their original commission included investigating “collusion.” However, given the legal vacuity of the term as noted in the post, they did not do so but rather did so “through the lens of conspiracy,” more well defined. They note scattered use of the term “collusion” in some antitrust decisions and that three legal dictioinaries (2 from the 1800s) define it as an “agreement” to either break the law or to defraud.
As it is, they provide a bottom line conclusion that the terms “collusion” and “conspiracy” are “largely synonymous.” Some out there are making a big whoop of this to say that indeed the MR has shown “no collusion<' but that "largely" there says this cannot be done. It is clear that conspiracy is collusion, but the MR keeps the door open for collusion not always to be conspiracy, and the vast majority of commentators out there agree with my interpretation as in the post and as just now stated again.
So, no, the MR has not shown that there was "no collusion." Claiming that is indeed the "collusion delusion."