Yes, Collusion: The Legal Significance of the New Mueller Revelations
Yes, Collusion: The Legal Significance of the New Mueller Revelations
https://www.justsecurity.org/61652/jereome-corsi-roger-stone-wikileaks-yes-collusion-legal-significance-mueller-revelations/
The special counsel’s draft Statement of Offense for Jerome Corsi includes much extraordinary information. But what are the most legally significant details to emerge? At bottom, the draft court document supplies additional reason to believe that Bob Mueller can charge Trump Campaign associates and the campaign itself for violations of federal campaign finance law either directly under the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) or as part of a conspiracy to defraud the United States by obstructing the capacity of the Federal Election Commission to enforce the FECA. The federal offense of a conspiracy to defraud the United States serves as the backbone of the special counsel’s February 2018 indictment of Russian nationals, which then raised the question whether the special counsel would subsequently indict any Americans for knowingly participating in the general conspiracy. The activities of Roger Stone, Jerome Corsi, and Ted Malloch, as shown by what Mueller decided to include in the draft document, points to legal jeopardy for them and any others who knowingly participated with them in this scheme with Wikileaks.
The draft Statement of Offense contains direct and circumstantial evidence of the following four facts:
1.Stone was acting in collaboration with or as an agent of the Trump Campaign in the pursuit of the Wikileaks documents
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange provided information directly to Trump campaign agents or associates as part of his group’s effort, in collaboration with the Russian government, to help the Trump campaign
2.Roger Stone had advanced knowledge about the specific content and timing of Wikileaks’ document releases, including Wikileaks’ possession of and plans to release Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta’s emails and documents purportedly related to Clinton’s health
3.Trump Campaign agents or associates coordinated campaign-related public communications with what Assange secretly told them were Wikileaks’ planned activities
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It is worth emphasizing a several pieces of information in light of this legal framework.
First, Mueller appears to believe Stone was acting in direct communication on campaign related matters on behalf of the Trump Campaign, serving as a strategic adviser well past the time his formal position ended in 2015. He spoke regularly with Donald Trump and sent the candidate memos on campaign strategy. Others such as Corsi knew of Stone’s role. The draft Statement of Offense says that Corsi “understood [Stone] to be in regular contact with senior members of the Trump Campaign, including with then-candidate Donald J. Trump” when Stone “asked Corsi to get in touch with [Wikileaks] about materials it possessed relevant to the presidential campaign.” This dovetails with the special counsel’s July 2018 indictment of Russian military intelligence officers, which also conspicuously states that Stone was “in regular contact with senior members of the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump” when he communicated privately with the Russian intelligence front Guccifer 2.0 in August of 2016.
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In sum, the draft Mueller document adds materially to the existing record of Trump campaign support for and coordination with the Russian-WikiLeaks scheme to influence the outcome of 2016 presidential election through a program of political sabotage. There is no reason to doubt that more from the Mueller probe is yet to come. What is known already leaves little standing of Donald Trump’s repeated denial of “collusion.” There was collusion, and it occurred in violation of federal law.
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