{"id":30573,"date":"2017-12-05T13:34:54","date_gmt":"2017-12-05T21:34:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=30573"},"modified":"2017-12-05T13:34:54","modified_gmt":"2017-12-05T21:34:54","slug":"collusion-ok","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2017\/12\/05\/collusion-ok\/","title":{"rendered":"Collusion OK?"},"content":{"rendered":"

We are witnessing a major change in the way that the Republican Reich is defending their Fuhrer, Donald Trump, Putin’s Piddle Puppet.  Prior to now, the Reich had denied both contacts and collusion with Russia, and denied obstruction of the investigation.  Now that Trump’s guilt is obvious, the Reich have changed their tune.<\/font><\/p>\n

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\"1205trump-russia\"<\/p>\n

At first, it was all so simple. The Trump White House said there were \u201cno contacts\u201d \u2014 zero, zilch \u2014 between Trump\u2019s campaign and Russia. But in time this elegant defense encountered a formidable opponent: reality<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

And so for a year now, Trump and his advisers, facing mounting evidence of their campaign\u2019s entanglement with Russia, have redrawn lines of defense and revised talking points with such daring that it has amounted to a veritable Marshall Plan for the moving of goal posts.<\/p>\n

As details of campaign contacts with Russia piled up, Trump and his officials instead said there had been \u201cno collusion.\u201d As more evidence came in showing attempts at high-level collusion, the White House retreated to another line of defense: Trump himself didn\u2019t collude<\/strong>. \u201cNothing about the actual facts published to date suggests that the president . . . colluded with anybody,\u201d was White House lawyer Ty Cobb\u2019s careful phrasing.<\/p>\n

Now, with four Trump campaign officials indicted and two of them, including Trump\u2019s former national security adviser, pleading guilty, even that distinction no longer seems safe<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

One of Trump\u2019s attorneys, Jay Sekulow, just told the New Yorker<\/a> that it doesn\u2019t matter whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, because \u201cthere is no crime of collusion<\/strong>. Another Trump attorney, John Dowd, told Axios<\/a> that technically the president \u201ccannot obstruct justice, because he is the chief law enforcement officer.\u201d<\/strong>… [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Washington Post<\/a>><\/font><\/p>\n

I urge you to click through and read the entire article.  I’ very well documented.<\/font><\/p>\n

It might be easy to miss the importance of this change in strategy, but Rachel Maddow analyzes it extensively, filling in all the blanks.<\/font><\/p>\n