We begin today’s roundup with Max Boot’s analysis of the Trump Team’s defense in the Mueller investigation:
What has been lacking so far is the “smoking gun.” Cohen may just supply it, if his purported testimony is credible and corroborated (admittedly big ifs). Indeed, Rudolph W. Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer, has gone from arguing that Trump didn’t know about the Trump Tower meeting to arguing that the then-candidate wasn’t present (which no one has alleged he was) — and from arguing that no collusion occurred to arguing that collusion, even if it occurred, is no big deal. This is his actual defense: “My client didn't do it, and even if he did it, it’s not a crime.” [...]
We are very, very close to the Putin Republicans arguing that they’re glad he worked with the Kremlin to beat “Crooked Hillary.” In fact, some MAGA-heads have already made this very case. It is, after all, the natural culmination of the hysteria of so many Trumpists. If you believe, as former White House aide Michael Anton argued, that the Democrats are the moral equivalent of the al-Qaeda terrorists who hijacked Flight 93, then anything is permissible to save the country. Even collusion with its enemies.
Reality check: It is not okay for the president and his minions to work with a foreign power to influence a U.S. election. It is shocking that this argument even has to be made.
Abigail Tracey at Vanity Fair:
“[C]ollusion is not a crime” is hardly a bulletproof defense. As former White House general counsel Robert Bauer told me last week, “collusion” is really shorthand for variety of activities, some legal and some illegal. “It definitely covers technical offenses,” he explained. “It includes U.S. citizen aid and support to a foreign national trying to influence a federal election, which is illegal.” To wit, Trump wouldn’t have had to personally hack into the Democratic National Committee server or conduct the phishing attack on John Podesta to be guilty of a crime. Why Trump continues to allow Giuliani to do on-camera interviews, or to keep him as an attorney at all, is something of a mystery. Nevertheless, his sudden reappearance on the media circuit—in nervy, pugnacious form—suggests the president, too, is on edge