In a stunning display of the stark difference between Democrats interested in actually carrying out an investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election, and the Republicans who clearly want any such investigation to be heralded loudly, then quietly completed without harming the President, the Democratic Chair of the House Intelligence Committee is calling the Republican Chair of the Senate counterpart panel dead wrong on the issue as to whether there was “collusion” between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign.
Evidence of that, says Rep. Adam Schiff, is “in plain sight.”
At issue is the announcement by the Senate panel earlier this month — repeated loudly and on numerous occasions — that the Senate Intelligence Committee had “found no direct evidence” of collusion between the two parties.
Unfortunately, that’s not really what proves that nothing went down, says Schiff (and logic). We have previously reported on the legal equivalence of direct versus circumstantial evidence, and the fact that even jurors are instructed to give the two equal weight. On February 12, former US Attorney Chuck Rosenberg told MSNBC’s Katy Tur that out of all the cases he’d tried before a jury, “only once ever did [he] have direct evidence of a conspiracy. You almost never see that.”
That’s exactly the point Schiff made during an interview with CNN’s State of the Union on Monday. He told host Dana Bash:
Chairman Burr must have a different word for it … You can see evidence in plain sight on the issue of collusion, pretty compelling evidence. There is a difference between seeing evidence of collusion and being able to prove a criminal conspiracy beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Indeed, Schiff is correct — to the point that it almost seems like Senator Richard Burr, the Senate Intel Chair who actually worked on Trump’s campaign, is either trying to hide something himself or is simply gaslighting America, because there is plenty of evidence of collusion between the campaign and Russia already out in the open.
From the communications between George Papadopoulos and Russia, to Paul Manafort’s seemingly endless web of ties with the foreign power, there is definitely no shortage of evidence — both circumstantial and direct — that there were times when Russia and the Trump campaign were working toward the same goals, using the same methods, in a coordinated way. That’s collusion.
Whether the “beyond a reasonable doubt” part happens will depend on what Robert Mueller’s report says.
Featured image via screen capture
