Democrats' Case For Trump-Russia Grand Conspiracy Crumbles With Lack Of Evidence

[Buzzsaw Checkerling]

by Rowan Scarborough
December 27, 2017
The Washington Times

Two months ago, Rep. Adam B. Schiff, who is leading the House
Democrats’ inquisition of President Trump, said it “still remains to be
seen” whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia in its
interference in the 2016 election.

Then on Dec. 10, the congressman from California went in a different
direction.

“We do know this,” the ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence said on CNN, a frequent Schiff host. “The
Russians offered help, the campaign accepted help. The Russians gave
help and the president made full use of that help, and that is pretty
damning, whether it is proof beyond a reasonable doubt of conspiracy or
not.”

Whether the Russian hacking and release of thousands of Democratic
Party emails amount to acceptance of help for the Trump campaign is up
for debate. The emails, and those that WikiLeaks released later from
Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s hacked account, were
publicly available and reported by many news websites.

But Mr. Schiff’s acknowledgment that collusion “still remains to be
seen” shows that nearly a year after the House intelligence panel began
its investigation, Democrats are left with a relatively small list of
Trump campaign-Russia contacts on which to base a grand conspiracy.

The roster of contacts, some of them apparently innocuous, is a far cry
from charges in the infamous Russia-Trump dossier. Paid with funds from
the Democratic Party, writer Christopher Steele, a former British spy,
told of a supposed “extensive conspiracy between Trump’s campaign team
and the Kremlin.”

Mr. Schiff embraced the dossier from the moment the committee kicked
off a public hearing in March with then-FBI Director James B. Comey and
National Security Agency chief Adm. Mike Rogers.

Mr. Schiff eagerly read Mr. Steele’s felony accusations into the
record. Those charges remain unproven, the FBI has told congressional
investigators, 17 months after it opened a counterintelligence probe
that relied on the dossier. Republicans in Congress also say the
dossier’s core collusion charges remain unproven.

For example, there has been no public evidence, as claimed by Mr.
Steele, that Trump associates and Russian intelligence worked together
to hack the Democrats and spread stolen emails.

Mr. Schiff said on ABC News on Oct. 29: “Now, the question we continue
to investigate is, was the campaign coordinating in the Russian help?
And that still remains to be seen.”

Liberal news media have referred to “numerous” meetings between
Russians and the Trump campaign.

Today, the publicly known pre-Election Day Trump-Russia contacts would
seem to be small. Some examples:

**George Papadopoulos, a Trump volunteer national security adviser,
told the FBI he met with a Kremlin-linked professor in London who
promised dirt on Mrs. Clinton. The professor said Moscow owned
“thousands” of her emails.

There is no public evidence he produced those emails. Mr. Papadopoulos
failed to fulfill his desire for a Trump visit to Moscow.

Mr. Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about the date he
began as a campaign volunteer. News media have speculated that his
cooperation with special counsel Robert Mueller will produce evidence
against Trump people.

Former campaign workers have told The Washington Times that if Mr.
Papadopoulos was in the middle of a Russian conspiracy, it was news to
them.

**Carter Page, another national security volunteer adviser, traveled to
Moscow to give a public speech at a university in July 2016. He has
acknowledged the trip was ill-timed. He denies the dossier’s charge
that he met with two Kremlin figures and discussed bribes and sanctions.

He has sued Yahoo News for libel for reporting Mr. Steele’s assertion.
His is one of five libel lawsuits involving three plaintiffs accused by
Mr. Steele and his dossier.

Mr. Page, an energy investor and consultant, lived in Moscow in the
2000s, so maintaining Russian contacts would not be unusual.

**Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, met in June 2016 with
Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer tied to the Kremlin. At Trump
Tower, campaign manager Paul Manafort and Trump son-in-law Jared
Kushner also attended the meeting.

Mr. Trump Jr. said Ms. Veselnitskaya promised opposition research on
Mrs. Clinton. But her real purpose was to lobby against a U.S.
sanctions law hated by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Democrats view
her as a Putin agent trying to win an agreement from Trump associates
to curtail sanctions.

Mr. Trump Jr. agreed to the meeting at the suggestion of Rob Goldstone,
a public relations operative linked to a Russian oligarch who did
business with the elder Mr. Trump. Mr. Goldstone told the news media
that Ms. Veselnitskaya promised evidence of illegal campaign donations
to Mrs. Clinton but produced nothing.

The meeting occurred June 9, five days before the Democratic National
Committee and its tech security contractor, CrowdStrike, announced that
the Democrats had been hacked by Russian operatives.

From that point on, Russia became increasingly radioactive for Mr.
Trump. On July 22, WikiLeaks started posting a huge number of
Democratic Party emails that the U.S. intelligence community says were
stolen by the Russians.

Several Trump campaign aides had contacts with Sergey Kislyak, the
Russian ambassador in Washington during the election.

J.D. Gordon, a national security adviser, spoke with Mr. Kislyak at the
Republican National Convention in Cleveland. The State Department
sponsored the trip by the ambassador along with scores of other
diplomats.

Mr. Kislyak also met with then-Sen. Jeff Sessions on Capitol Hill and
encountered him at the convention and at a Trump event at the Mayflower
Hotel in Washington.

There is no public evidence that these brief encounters were part of a
Russian-Trump conspiracy.

Another Trump campaign adviser caught up in the Russia investigation is
Michael Caputo. He volunteered to testify before the House intelligence
committee after hearing a Democrat disparage his name because he lived
for a time in Moscow, worked for a U.S. nonprofit there and briefly
represented a Moscow energy firm.

Asked by The Times about his view of Mr. Schiff’s collusion hunt, Mr.
Caputo said Wednesday: “Rep. Schiff was a gentleman to me in my
[intelligence committee] hearing. He asked probing questions about a
wide range of topics. It was clear to me five months ago he was
fishing. At some point, a good fisherman knows when to reel in his lure
and move on. I don’t think Rep. Schiff is a good fisherman.”

Mr. Caputo said he had no election contacts with Russian
representatives.

It is clear that Moscow was reaching out to the Trump campaign. The
candidate promised better relations with Mr. Putin, particularly in the
fight against the Islamic State group. Mr. Trump also suggested (he
said he was joking) that Moscow could find the 33,000 personal emails
that Mrs. Clinton ordered destroyed from her tenure as secretary of
state.

Republicans say Mr. Schiff and his committee allies are relying on the
dossier’s gossip-style information from unknown Kremlin figures paid by
Mrs. Clinton’s campaign and the DNC. That is clear evidence of
Russia-Democratic Party collusion, they say.

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"If liberals weren't stupid, there would be no activity neck-up."