Welcome to Tuesday - New Narrative

News & Politics
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All along Drumpf has been tweeting that there was ‘no collusion!’. It might be one of the most repeated phrases on Twitter this year. But once Manafort (Campaign manager) was officially charged, the narrative has changed today.

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[SIZE=7]Donald Trump Echoes Rudy Giuliani: ‘Collusion Is Not A Crime’[/SIZE]
The president doubled down on his attorney’s collusion comments.

President Donald Trump tweeted Tuesday that “collusion is not a crime,” echoing his attorney Rudy Giuliani’s comments a day earlier.
“Collusion is not a crime, but that doesn’t matter because there was No Collusion,” Trump tweeted, referring to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Giuliani made headlines Monday when he gave a series of rambling TV interviews in which he stated that “collusion is not a crime.”

“Colluding about Russians ― I’m not sure that’s even a crime,” Giuliani told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota. “The hacking is the crime. The president didn’t hack.”

Jay Sekulow, another member of Trump’s legal team, repeated the claim during an appearance Tuesday on “Fox & Friends.”
″There’s not any evidence of collusion here involving our client and the Russians,” Sekulow said. “But collusion isn’t a crime.”

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Trump ally Chris Christie, a former governor of New Jersey, said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that “collusion is not a crime.”

The Trump team began publicly arguing this assertion since late last year. In December 2017, Trump told The New York Times that “there is no collusion, and even if there was, it’s not a crime.”

“I watched [attorney and Harvard law professor] Alan Dershowitz the other day,” Trump told the Times. “He said, No. 1, there is no collusion, No. 2, collusion is not a crime, but even if it was a crime, there was no collusion. And he said that very strongly. He said there was no collusion. And he has studied this thing very closely. I’ve seen him a number of times. There is no collusion, and even if there was, it’s not a crime. But there’s no collusion.”

That same month, Sekulow told The New Yorker a similar statement.

“For something to be a crime, there has to be a statute that you claim is being violated,” Sekulow said. “There is not a statute that refers to criminal collusion.”

Collusion itself is not a federal crime, according to experts. But any Trump cooperation with the Russian government could be tied to multiple criminal violations of election law, computer hacking, false statements and wire fraud.

Even if Trump himself wasn’t personally involved in Russian hacking efforts ― as Giuliani stated ― directing or aiding those efforts in any way could constitute a crime, according to the Washington Post.

By arguing that collusion is not a crime, Trump and his legal team are effectively broadening their attempt to discredit Mueller’s investigation. Giuliani previously claimed the president can’t legally be found guilty of obstructing justice.

This article has been update to include additional comments from Sekulow and Christie.

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The overwhelming evidence being revealed as each day passes by points to a collusion between trumps campaign and Russia.
Trumps legal team is playing smart here,the truth is collusion is not a federal crime.The judiciary therefore has nothing to press charges on him.The only arm of government that can take any further action is congress.The Republican party controls both houses.Trump is here until 2024.

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Collusion might not be a crime but conspiracy to defeat justice definitely is.

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The first thing to understand is that when you see an accused person start doing to have issues with specific words that person knows that he/she has been caught

Giuliani is right that the term “collusion” isn’t a precise one when it comes to U.S. law. But that doesn’t change the potential legal fallout stemming from the Russia investigation, which could touch on laws against computer hacking, election fraud and conspiracy against the United States.

While we’re at it, election “meddling” isn’t either. The U.S. code mostly uses the term “collusion” in antitrust laws to address crimes like price fixing.

But there are plenty of specific laws on the books that could apply if Trump’s presidential campaign is found to have collaborated with Moscow, including a conspiracy to defraud the United States. There are also laws against election fraud, computer hacking, wire fraud and falsifying records, if those apply.

So far, special counsel Robert Mueller has accused the Russians of hacking into Democrats’ computers and stealing emails, as well as trying to stoke U.S. tensions before the 2016 election using social media. Mueller has already accused Trump’s former campaign chairman and another top aide of working as foreign agents for Ukrainian interests and funneling millions of dollars from the work into offshore accounts used to fund lavish lifestyles.

Mueller might decide, for example, that a crime was committed if he finds evidence that an American was involved in the hack of Democrats, either by soliciting it or paying someone to do it.

The investigation also has exposed Moscow’s aggressive outreach to the Trump campaign, including a promise of “dirt” on Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in a meeting attended by Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr.

If Trump or his aides knew in advance that Russia had the trove of stolen emails and did nothing to alert federal authorities, they could be accused of covering up the crime of stolen emails or working as foreign agents. Although it’s rare for the Justice Department to charge people for not reporting illegal behavior, it’s also not often that a special counsel team, with a wide-ranging mandate to find wrongdoing, is on the case.

As well, a conspiracy to defraud the United States can be used to refer to any two people using “deceit, craft, or trickery” to interfere with governmental functions, such as an election.

In other words, “collusion” might be shorthand. But if it relates to Russia and U.S. elections, it can still be very much against the law.