Wednesday, July 24, 2019

Mueller Reminds the Public: Trump Betrayed the United States

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/07/mueller-reminds-the-public-trump-betrayed-the-united-states/?fbclid=IwAR3Obvz2fy2VMwQktz0TcQz60-ksbUm5R-UkrfgqGVtDipb6s801xpRRqdE
"In his opening statement, Mueller emphasized the key finding from his report: “The Russian government interfered in our election in sweeping and systematic fashion.” And during the questioning, Mueller repeated the conclusion previously reached by the US intelligence community that Russia conducted this covert operation to help Trump get elected. “Did your investigation find that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from one of the candidates winning?” Mueller was asked by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.). He replied with one word: “Yes.” Lofgren followed up: “And which candidate would that be?” Mueller responded, “Well, it would be Trump.” So Russia attacked an American election to help Trump. And what did Trump do? “The Trump campaign wasn’t exactly reluctant to take Russian help,” Lofgren remarked to Mueller. “You wrote it expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, isn’t that correct.” Mueller answered with another brief sentence: “That’s correct.” That is, Trump sought to exploit a foreign adversary’s clandestine assault. And as Mueller noted in his report, during the campaign Trump dismissed the notion that Russia was intervening in the election, and after he was elected he continued to deny “that Russia aided his election.” For a moment, put aside the question of collusion. (Despite Trump’s insistence that Mueller found no collusion, Mueller testified that “we did not address collusion,” but rather the issue of criminal conspiracy.) And consider the story so far: Russia attacked, and Trump denied the attack happened—which provided cover for Moscow—yet attempted to benefit from it. This is a profound act of betrayal. It is the essence of the scandal: A presidential candidate aiding and abetting an assault on the United States. And Trump’s denials of the Russian operation during the campaign and his public statement asking Russian hackers to target Hillary Clinton could certainly have been read by Moscow as encouragement."