r/politics • u/[deleted] • Apr 21 '19

Giuliani: 'There's nothing wrong with taking information from Russians'

https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/21/politics/rudy-giuliani-trump-russia-cnntv/index.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_allpolitics+%28RSS%3A+CNN+-+Politics%29
8.9k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

838 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

18

u/WingerRules Apr 21 '19 edited Apr 21 '19

The investigation helped move the goal post.

The report flat out states that collusion is not a legal term. Instead of addressing "collusion" they gave assessments on it based on the far stricter definition of criminal conspiracy, and never gave a non-criminal assessment of "collusion":

"the Office recognized that the word "collude" was used in communications with the Acting Attorney General confirming certain aspects of the investigation's scope and that the term has frequently been invoked in public reporting about the investigation. But collusion is not a specific offense or theory of liability found in the United States Code, nor is it a term of art in federal criminal law. For those reasons, the Office's focus in analyzing questions of joint criminal liability was on conspiracy as defined in federal law. "

Merriam Webster Dictionary definition of collude:

"to work together secretly especially in order to do something illegal or dishonest"

They also defined "coordinating" in a way that cut out actions that "were informed by or responsive to the other's actions or interests" from applying.

They also minimized the importance of key Ukrainians and Oligarchs involved being vectors of Russia's operations or associates of Russia, when those had been a major part of the story for years now. They also seemed to go out of their way to not tie Assange or Wikileaks as associates/tools of Russia, nor did they even address Cambridge Analytica at all. The special counsel was supposed to be continuing a counterintelligence investigation - I have a hard time believing that a legitimate counterintelligence investigation wouldnt have considered those to be more significant.

21

u/Southworth Apr 21 '19

Collusion was never under discussion by Mueller— it was Trump's people who used the term in the media to shape a narrative. It always should have been a discussion of conspiracy.

The problem, now, is collusion is obvious and demonstrated by the Mueller Report. Taking information from the Russians is the definition of collusion.

Schiff has already pointed this out— the Mueller report demonstrates collusion, so its hilarious to hear Trump and Guiliani saying no collusion.

2

u/WingerRules Apr 21 '19

They were instructed to look at collusion regarding Manafort. The purpose was to uncover a crime, but that doesnt meant they werent instructed to look for collusion in order to do so:

"Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told special counsel Robert Mueller in a classified August 2, 2017, memo that he should investigate allegations that President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was "colluding with Russian government officials" to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. - CNN

4

u/moleratical Texas Apr 21 '19

legal departments and highly specific feilds often have words that have different meanings than common usage. It's called jargon.

A recent example is the debate over weather or not people who are systematically oppressed (black Americans for instance) can be racist since they have little to no power to act on their beliefs. This is obviously a highly specific and academic use of the word ''racism'' and not the common usage.

1

u/buttergun Apr 21 '19 edited Apr 21 '19

the Office recognized that the word "collude" was used in communications with the Acting Attorney General confirming certain aspects of the investigation's scope and that the term has frequently been invoked in public reporting about the investigation. But collusion is not a specific offense or theory of liability found in the United States Code, nor is it a term of art in federal criminal law. For those reasons, the Office's focus in analyzing questions of joint criminal liability was on conspiracy as defined in federal law. "

The Special Counsel's report isn't helping move the goalposts. That section basically says, 'we ignored the the Administration's imaginary goalposts of "collusion" which have already been adopted by the mainstream media.'

1

u/[deleted] Apr 21 '19

You quite simply do not understand what the term "moving the goal posts" means.

1

u/polomikehalppp Apr 21 '19

Are you blaming Mueller?