Team Mueller (and Their Report)

"The report describes actions and events that the Special Counsel's Office found to be supported by the evidence collected in our investigation.  In some instances, the report points out the absence of evidence or conflicts  in the evidence about a particular fact or event.   In other instances, when substantial, credible evidence enabled the Office to reach a conclusion with confidence,  the  report  states  that  the  investigation  established  that  certain  actions  or  events occurred.  A statement that the investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts."

"In evaluating whether evidence about collective action of multiple individuals constituted a crime, we applied the framework of conspiracy law, not the concept of"collusion." In so doing, the Office  recognized  that the word "collud[e]" 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.  In connection with that analysis, we addressed the factual question whether members of the Trump Campaign "coordinat[ed]"-   a term that appears in  the  appointment   order-with  Russian   election   interference   activities.     Like   collusion, "coordination"  does  not  have  a  settled  definition  in  federal  criminal  law.    We  understood coordination  to require an agreement-tacit or express-between the Trump Campaign and the Russian  government  on election  interference.   That  requires  more than the  two parties taking actions that were informed by or responsive to the other's actions or interests.  We applied the term coordination in that sense when stating in the report that the investigation did not establish that the Trump Campaign coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities."

Lerxst1992 said:

^ the democrats would be better served by putting obstruction and collusion on the back burner because trump will chop that argument off on the campaign trail by calling it a witch hunt..

The point of  politics the dems dont understand is it's like chess. Understand your opponents move before you make yours. If trumps counterattack is predictable, simple and effective find a different path.

IMO the dems are better served investigating the stormy daniels bribe because it's a legitimate example of election cheating and a man actually sits in jail for assisting with THAT crime.

The next step would be to investigate the emoluments misconduct and then link the 2 by portraying trump as a dirty wealthy man who bribed his way out of election misconduct and profits off of the taxpayer dime.

IRA employees posted derogatory information about a number of candidates in the 2016

U.S. presidential election.   By early to mid-2016, IRA operations included  supporting the Trump Campaign and disparaging candidate Hillary Clinton.  The IRA made various expenditures to carry out those activities, including buying political advertisements on social media in the names of U.S. persons and entities.  Some  IRA employees, posing  as U.S. persons  and without  revealing  their Russian  association,  communicated electronically with  individuals  associated with  the  Trump Campaign and with other  political  activists  to seek to coordinate political  activities, including the staging of  political  rallies.5     The  investigation did  not  identify  evidence that  any  U.S. persons knowingly or intentionally coordinated with the IRA's interference operation.

"By the end  of the 2016  U.S. election, the  IRA had  the ability  to reach  millions  of U.S. persons  through  their  social  media  accounts.     Multiple  IRA-controlled Facebook groups  and Instagram  accounts  had  hundreds  of  thousands  of  U.S.  participants.    IRA-controlled  Twitter accounts  separately had tens of thousands of followers, including multiple U.S. political figures who retweeted IRA-created content.  In November 2017, a Facebook representative testified that Facebook  had identified  470 IRA-controlled Facebook  accounts that collectively  made 80,000 posts between January 2015 and August 2017.  Facebook estimated the IRA reached as many as

126 million persons through its Facebook accounts.6   In January 2018, Twitter announced that it

had  identified  3,814  IRA-controlled  Twitter  accounts  and  notified  approximately  1.4 million people Twitter believed may have been in contact with an iRA-controlled account. 7

A. Structure of the Internet Research Agency

6 Social Media Influence in the 2016 US.  Election, Hearing Before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, 115th Cong. 13 (11/1/17)  (testimony of Colin Stretch, General Counsel of Facebook) ("We estimate that roughly 29 million people were served content in their News Feeds directly from the IRA 's 80,000 posts over the two years. Posts from these Pages were also shared, liked, and followed by people on Facebook, and, as a result, three times more people may have been exposed to a story that originated from the Russian operation. Our best estimate is that approximately  126 million people may have been served content from a Page associated with the IRA at some point during the two-year  period.").   The Facebook representative also testified that Facebook had identified 170 Instagram accounts that posted approximately 120,000 pieces of content during that time.  Facebook did not offer an estimate of the audience reached via Instagram."

e. Russia-Related Communications With The Campaign

While he was discussing with his foreign contacts a potential meeting of campaign officials with Russian government officials, Papadopoulos kept campaign officials apprised of his efforts. On April25, 2016, the day before Mifsud told Papadopoulos about the emails, Papadopoulos wrote to senior policy advisor Stephen Miller that "[t]he Russian government has an open invitation by Putin for Mr. Trump to meet him when he is ready," and that "[t]he advantage of being in London is that these governments tend to speak a bit more openly in 'neutral' cities."466   On April 27, 2016, after his meeting with Mifsud, Papadopoulos wrote a second message to Miller stating that "some interesting messages [were] coming in from Moscow about a trip when the time is right."467   The same day, Papadopoulos sent a similar email to campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, telling Lewandowski that Papadopoulos had "been receiving a lot of calls over the last month about Putin wanting to host [Trump] and the team when the time is right."468

Papadopoulos's Russia-related communications with Campaign officials continued throughout the spring and summer of 2016.  On May 4, 2016, he forwarded to Lewandowski an email  from  Timofeev  raising  the  possibility  of  a  meeting  in Moscow,  asking  Lewandowski whether that was "something  we want to move forward  with."469    The next day, Papadopoulos forwarded  the  same Timofeev  email  to Sam Clovis,  adding  to the  top of the  email "Russia update."470    He included the same email in a May 21, 2016 message to senior Campaign official Paul Manafort,  under the subject  line "Request  from  Russia to meet  Mr. Trump," stating that "Russia has been eager to meet Mr. Trump for quite sometime and have been reaching out to me

463 Papadopoulos Statement of Offense14; 4/25/16 Text Messages, Mifsud & Papadopoulos.

464  Papadopoulos Statement of Offense14.

465  This  information  is contained  in the FBI case-opening  document and related  materials.   q:fte

if!furmatieA  is  law eflfereemettt  seHsitive  (LES)  ana   ffittst ee   treate6  aeeersiflgly   ifl a"'·   exterflal

6issemittatiefl.   The foreign  government  conveyed  this information  to the U.S. government  on July 26,

2016, a few days after WikiLeaks's release of Clinton-related emails.  The FBI opened its investigation of potential coordination between Russia and the Trump Campaign a few days later based on the information.

466  4/25/16 Email, Papadopoulos to S. Miller (8:12:44 p.m.).

467 4/27/16 Email, Papadopoulos to S. Miller (6:55:58 p.m.).

468  4/27/16 Email, Papadopoulos to Lewandowski  (7:15:14 p.m.).

469  5/4/16 Email, Papadopoulos to Lewandowski (8:14:49 a.m.).

470 5/5/16 Email, Papadopoulos to Clovis (7:15:21 p.m.).