donald trump collusion

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Trump is now claiming ‘collusion is not a crime’

He has pivoted from his 'no collusion' argument.

 

David Covucci

Tech

Posted on Jul 31, 2018   Updated on May 21, 2021, 9:50 am CDT

Yesterday morning, President Donald Trump‘s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, went on television and declared that “collusion is not a crime,” attempting to absolve the president and his campaign of any criminal liability for conspiring with Russia during the 2016 election.

If they did do it, that is.

Today, the president tweeted that same sentiment out.

Giuliani has frequently field-tested new arguments for the president on FOX, only to see them end up as a bold declaration in Trump’s Twitter feed the next day. Back in June, he argued that the president had the ability to pardon himself. What happened 24 hours later?

A month before that, Giuliani revealed that President Trump had “reimbursed” his fixer, Michael Cohen, for the deal to buy Stormy Daniels’ silence.

What happened later?

Trump’s bold proclamation that collusion is not a crime—which is correct in an entirely semantic sense, but doesn’t mean actions undertaken by the campaign weren’t illegal—shifts the president’s argument tremendously.

For two straight years, it was that there was “no collusion.” But if it wasn’t a crime, and you also didn’t do it, why such a vociferous effort to deny it? If someone accused you of driving the speed limit on the highway, you wouldn’t spend years arguing you didn’t, only to then finally say, exhaustedly, well, it’s legal.

You’d probably begin with that argument.

Unless Giuliani opened up a textbook this week and just found this out.

That, too, is very possible.

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*First Published: Jul 31, 2018, 8:26 am CDT