The current question has been whether everything in #TrumpRussia collusion claims rests on the June 2016 conspiracy to obtain HRC dirt that culminated in the Trump Tower meeting.
If that’s the only “direct evidence” and the rest is circumstantial, that should be enough, but the reality is that we know from the numerous indictments and convictions that there’s much more.
We only got a taste of what is IC information because of the Steele dossier which corroborates a much larger volume of IC activity with little error. Some of that evidence may be classified and never see the public light of day. However, as members of Congress have revealed often by absent inference, there’s plenty on which Congress should act.
Even if the Mueller SCO or the various DoJ branches cannot act, there will be state-level charges to come. As some have opined, the fall of Trump may not be at the level of obstruction or even “process crime”, but because of RICO charges.
“There is, for example, evidence of Manafort sharing internal polling data with someone linked to the Russian intelligence services.”
The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said Sunday there is "direct evidence" of collusion between the Trump campaign and agents of the Russian government.
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., made the comment to CBS's Margaret Brennan on "Face The Nation" as he vowed to use his panel's renewed inquiry into Trump to track down all signs of misconduct.
"I think there is direct evidence in the e-mails from the Russians through their intermediary offering dirt on Hillary Clinton as part of what is described in writing as the Russian government effort to help elect Donald Trump. They offer that dirt. There is an acceptance of that offer in writing from the president's son Don Jr. and there is overt acts in furtherance of that," Schiff said. "That is the meeting at Trump Tower and all the lies to cover up that meeting at the Trump Tower and apparently lies that the president participated in. That to me is direct evidence but there's also abundant circumstantial evidence."
Schiff wasn’t alone in talking about evidence that incriminates Trump in terms of Russia contacts. Sen. Mark Warner, who is the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said there is “enormous evidence” of possible collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia during the election. “I’m going to reserve judgment until I’m finished, but there’s no one who can factually say there isn’t plenty of evidence of collaboration or communication between the Trump Organization and Russians,” Warner told NBC’s Meet the Press. “I have never in my lifetime seen a presidential campaign, from a person of either party, have this much outreach to a foreign country and a foreign country that the intelligence community [says], and our committee has validated, intervened massively in our election and intervened with an attempt to help one candidate, Donald Trump, and hurt another, Hillary Clinton.”
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Despite the evidence, does the GOP really have a tipping point, or are they hoping that the 2020 Democrats will fail again, especially on some technicality like Florida votes or swing-state shortfalls in the Electoral College.
American politics can be broken down into two categories: politics as coalition-building and politics as principle. Since the Ronald Reagan presidency, those two have been fused in the Republican Party more closely than they generally are, for so long that we take this to be normal.
But that kind of tight marriage between coalition-building and principle is never normal, because most voters simply aren’t that ideological. Their votes are determined by a mix of broad sentiment and narrow self-interest.
Ideological politics is necessary; without it, policy degenerates into apathetic clientelism. But ideological politics is never sufficient without a charismatic figure such as Reagan to divert the party’s focus from the inherent tensions of an ideology-driven coalition.
Without such a figure, if you are committed to politics as principle, then you are also committed to losing a lot of elections. But then, as many of my #NeverTrump correspondents argued three years ago, there are worse things to lose than an election.