Guest editorial by Texican
Going back to the Fall of 2016 when the Russian hacking and influence campaign started coming to light, I always had one standard for Trump and Russia, “if Trump knew the Russians were trying to help him, he willingly accepted that help, and used that help in his campaign.….HE’S GONE!”. Now it appears Barr has unwittingly confirmed that it wasn’t a “400lb guy in a bed” and that Trump knew the Russians were trying to help him and did nothing to stop it.
The reason I considered that as the standard for impeachment, not the criminal standard as Barr was attempting to use in his letter based on the Mueller Report conclusions, is because impeachment is based on a political and national security standard. The founders of our country purposely didn’t use the legal criminal standard as the only reason, therefore the term “high crimes and misdemeanors” was used to express extra-criminal actions not in the best interest of our country or its national security.
In Barr’s letter, he spends quite of bit of effort clearing Trump, or anyone in his campaign, of actively colluding and conspiring with the Russians on illegal activity. However in his very last sentence on collusion/conspiracy topic he states this: “despite multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign”.
WHAT!!! MULTIPLE OFFERS??
This is something we hadn’t heard before. This implies the Russians offered to help Trump on multiple occasions, not just the Trump Tower meeting. From FBI reporting not once did Trump or his campaign pick up the phone and call the FBI, even after having been warned by the FBI, that the Russians were actively involved in the hacking and release of the material? Trump then went so far as to discredit reports that the Russians were involved when he knew they were in involved.
Barr, was attempting to show that Trump and his campaign had plenty of opportunities to actively involve themselves in a crime and didn’t, as if they were some kind of saints. However by doing so he exposes that Trump and his campaign willingly accepted the help by their inaction or lack of any effort to stop it, and worse they put out disinformation about it happening when they knew it was.
I don’t care whether he, or his campaign, were actively involved in the criminal portion of the conspiracy/collusion, with this revelation we now know he was willing to benefit from the Russian actions by saying or doing nothing to stop it.
The Gang of Eight in Congress needs to immediately ask to see the un-redacted report to see how many offers of assistance the Russians made and what reaction, or more likely inaction, that Trump or his campaign took in relation to these offers. I’m not worried whether anyone committed a legal crime, I want to know whether there were “high crimes and misdemeanors”.