by The post entitled “Trump’s Claim Mueller Found ‘NO COLLUSION’ Is Literal Nonsense” is not up to Jon Chait’s usual standard. Trump’s claim is, of course, nonsense. Chait accurately described Trump’s typical pathetic rhetorical trick “One of President Trump’s favorite methods to defend his innocence in the Russia investigation is to claim that any piece of evidence that does not explicitly assert his guilt is in fact evidence of his innocence. ” and added some high quality snark “It is exactly like saying Trump was cleared by the Warren Commission because the Warren Commission report makes no conclusion about Trump and Russia.” However, he missread the indictment. Chait (and many many others) concedes that the indictment didn’t declare that collusion
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The post entitled “Trump’s Claim Mueller Found ‘NO COLLUSION’ Is Literal Nonsense” is not up to Jon Chait’s usual standard. Trump’s claim is, of course, nonsense. Chait accurately described Trump’s typical pathetic rhetorical trick “One of President Trump’s favorite methods to defend his innocence in the Russia investigation is to claim that any piece of evidence that does not explicitly assert his guilt is in fact evidence of his innocence. ” and added some high quality snark “It is exactly like saying Trump was cleared by the Warren Commission because the Warren Commission report makes no conclusion about Trump and Russia.” However, he missread the indictment.
Chait (and many many others) concedes that the indictment didn’t declare that collusion has been detected “this particular indictment probably has nothing to do with collusion. ” In fact the indictment declared that collusion has been detected. it didn’t name all of the conspirators, but the grand jury did definitely claim to know of conspirators who were not named in the indictment.
I quote (with a pdf warning and my emphasis)
From in or around 2014 to the present, Defendants knowingly and intentionally conspired with each other (and with persons known and unknown to the Grand Jury) to defraud the United States by impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful functions of the government through fraud and deceit for the purpose of interfering with the U.S. political and electoral processes, including the presidential election of 2016.
The indictment explicitly states that only some of the “known” conspirators have been indicted. It doesn’t say whether any of the unindicted conspirators worked for the Trump campaign, but it definitely also doesn’t say that no crimes Trump campaign workers have been detected in the investigation into internet trolling (let alone the broader investigation).
The indictment explicitly states that there are known unindicted co-conspirators. It does not address the question of whether one is, say, named Donald Trump, even within the narrow limits of the investigation of “INTERNET RESEARCH AGENCY LLC” and its employees.
I mean which word in “conspired with … persons known … to the grand jury” didn’t he understand ?