Former DNI Clapper said Trump campaign aided and abetted the Russians "in a colloquial sense"

[highplainsdem]

This OP is essentially a reply to another thread here, one which already has a lot of replies and recs.

I posted more than one reply there after noticing the problem with what was cited in the OP, but couldn't seem to get anyone's attention about this.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212066168

That thread is about what Clapper said on CNN today.

However, it's based on a Twitter thread from Seth Abramson, who apparently didn't hear Clapper correctly, and probably had no video available to check when he posted his thread.

This is what Abramson wrote:

Link to tweet

BREAKING (CNN): Former DNI Clapper Says Trump Campaign "Aided and Abetted" Russians This is what I've been arguing since 2017—and laid out in my 2018 book Proof of Collusion. Aiding and Abetting is a collusive crime, impeachable, and not an offense the Mueller Report considered.


1/ The CNN anchor responded to Clapper by trying to get him to say that he wasn't using "aiding in abetting" in the legal sense, though I have no idea why she had the confidence to insist on that correction. Clapper didn't withdraw the comment, and declined to get into the law.

Link to the video now available at CNN.com:

https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2019/05/02/james-clapper-intv-nothing-bothered-me-as-much-as-2016-russian-interference-crn-vpx.cnn


Clapper makes the "aiding and abetting" remark about 1:59 in the video. Then, when challenged by the anchor who doesn't think this was aiding and abetting in the legal sense, Clapper says he meant it in a colloquial sense.

So it was still a dramatic remark, but not as serious a charge as Abramson though it was.

[Kurt V.]

1. my guess is seth heard him just fine. just chose to omit it.

[highplainsdem]

2. Hope not. I'd rather think Seth misunderstood it than misrepresented it. "In a colloquial

sense" is very definitely a retreat from saying the Trump campaign aided and abetted the Russians in a legal sense.