Newsweek, “Evidence of Trump-Russia Collusion Already Exists, Watergate Prosecutors Say”, 14 Nov 2017:

There is definitive proof of whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 election — and it exists in the email inboxes of Jared Kushner, Stephen Miller, Hope Hicks and others.

That’s what several former Watergate prosecutors believe, telling Newsweek that evidence of collaboration between the Kremlin and the president’s top campaign aides could literally be at Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s fingertips. It just has to be uncovered.

“The key difference between this and Watergate is … at the time, you certainly didn’t have computers,” said Nick Ackerman, one of the prosecutors who probed the 1972 break-in at the Democratic party’s Watergate offices. “Rather than use burglars to break into the Democratic National headquarters, they used Russian hackers. ... The question is whether that was coordinated in any way with the Trump campaign. Their emails will answer that question, once the special counsel gets its hands on them.”

Kushner has reportedly turned over documents related to his campaign contacts with Russians to Mueller earlier this month, a voluntary move of cooperation between the White House senior adviser and the federal probe. Still, it remains unclear whether those documents include emails, as well as whether Kushner provided the entirety of his communications with Russians to the investigators. If he didn’t provide investigators the full details about his correspondences, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time the president’s son-in-law failed to disclose his Russian contacts (or his business interests, for that matter), having been forced to revise his government security clearance forms with at least 100 foreign contacts previously left off the list.

Even if he’s cooperating, Kushner may be lying about the campaign’s interactions with the Russians, and doing a terrible job of covering it up, according to Jill Wine-Banks, another former Watergate prosecutor. At issue is his response to the discovery of a June meeting in Trump Tower attended by Kushner, other Trump campaign officials and Russian operatives. The meeting was set up by Donald Trump Jr.; Kushner said he didn’t know what was going to be discussed and left early after being bored by the conversation.

“The data ... will make Kushner’s defense fall entirely apart,” Wine-Banks told Newsweek. “We know that statement was a total fabrication since the [Trump] campaign was looking for dirt on Hillary Clinton from the Russians … I have faith the grand jury will get down to the bottom of what really happened in that meeting.”

Also at issue is the Trump campaign’s involvement with Cambridge Analytica, the controversial data mining operation with apparent ties to Russia, which Kushner boasted was “brought in” to steer the campaign to victory.

“As far as Russian collision, right now there are two aspects: one is, did they micro target Hillary Clinton voters to suppress the vote?” Ackerman said. “We know that there was a data mining process that was done by Kushner out of Texas and we know that the Russians were doing targeting with Facebook and Twitter. The question is trying to compare the data sets to see if there was coordination between those two things.

“Email evidence already shows that the purpose of the meeting on June 9 was to bring incriminating evidence, supposedly emails about Clinton, to the campaign, but we don’t know exactly what they did with that evidence after that meeting,” Ackerman continued.

John Ziegler on possible evidence of collusion:

Why is Donald Trump reacting to Vlaimir Putin the way he has?

Because, if this was all bull crap, and there was nothing the Putin had on Trump; he was not compromised by Russia or by Putin at all; if only for political purposes, and Trump’s not an imbecile, he’s not brilliant but he’s not an imbecile and he clearly is a political person - he likes to be liked… he would be attacking Vladimir Putin at every opportunity.

..especially on the issue of their meddling in the election. That would be just the natural inclination. 

Now, not only is he not doing that, he’s done the opposite of that.

He has been complimentary of Putin at every opportunity. And there is no evidence that he has punished Putin at all, for Russia’s meddling, regardless of whether or not the Trump team colluded in that meddling.

And today, something even more startling than Trump’s prior ass-kissing of Putin and his unwillingness to address this issue directly, of meddling having occurred.

Trump is on his foreign trip, he met with Putin, and then he told the press, that Putin told him, that Russia had nothing to do with the meddling; that it was the democrats doing, supposedly Trump quoting Putin.

And then Trump went our of his way to bash, by name - by name - the former heads of several of our intelligence agencies - including James Comey, calling them hacks and liars!

And completely buying into the idea, that the persons telling him the truth are not the people working for our own intelligence agencies, including, by the way, people that are still working for our intelligence agencies, including every major member of Congress, anybody with any credibility on this issue, or our side, has said, it’s not even a question. Russia attempted to meddle in our elections.

8:03: It’s not even a question. Russia attempted to meddle in our elections. And Trump is publicly saying, “no, I don’t believe any of that because Vladimir Putin told me so.”  Seriously?

If Barack Obama had ever had a meeting with Vladimir Putin after winning re-election ..remember that election he won where he got caught telling .the Russian official tell Vladimir “I’ll have more flexibility after the election?” Remember that whole thing which the media buried, and should have been a massive scandal, the conservative media went ape crap over that little thing, frankly only little in comparison, that was a bid deal to me at the time ...

Sean Hannity

Can you imagine if after winning the 2012 election, Obama had met with Putin, and all of our intelligence agencies were saying that yeah, Putin helped Obama win; and Obama then came out and bashed those intelligence agencies of The United States of America and said, “I believe Putin because he seems very sincere in what he’s telling me”    ...can you imagine the reaction of the Republicans in Congress, can you imagine the so-called conservatives in media?    ...Sean Hannity would be live 24/7 outside of the White house.

Instead from the conservative media there is silence. In fact, if anything, they’ll support Putin and Russia because Trump told us to. They’ll be the one’s we’re supposed to believe over our own intelligence agencies. By the way, not a couple of them, all of them - with unanimity and certitude.

This comes in the backdrop of our own CIA director being forced to meet with a conspiracy nut-job, who claims that he has proof that the Democratic e-mail hack was an inside job. Remember the whole Seth Rich bullshit.

Trump forces his own CIA director to meet with this guy.

What’s the first thing this guy does? (and I’m not making this up folks).

But he goes right from meeting with the CIA director and then he does an interview with Russian TV! - the propaganda arm of Vladimir Putin and The Russian government. Not difficult math: Russian TV has a vested interest in convincing at least Trump’s cult that they didn’t do anything with regard to meddling in our election. So now, anybody that has a wack-job conspiracy theory that gets them off the hook, is going to be elevated. So, Trump is going out of his way to elevate this guy, give him credibility, he can say he met with the CIA director… probably gets him on FOX News channel a couple more times too. And Russian TV has an interest in elevating this story because it gets them off the hook…

And then Trump, a few days later, says, “ah Putin told me this didn’t happen, he seems sincere.” That’s almost a direct quote by the way.

Then it actually gets worse, because a Russian official at this meeting of world leaders was asked, “did Putin or Trump raise the issue about Russian meddling?” and their response was “no”. No?

Now to be clear, its the Russians speaking and unlike Trump, I don’t believe them. And two, there was another statement that was seemingly contradictory from another Russian official.

So, we don’t know for sure whether or not Trump really did address the issue of meddling with Putin, lets be clear though, the meeting was like five minutes…in five minutes, I doubt that Trump could do the pleasantries, grill him on Russia’s meddling in the elections, get convinced by Putin, nah, it wasn’t us, it was the Democrats ..then finish up with whatever other pleasantries there might have been, that seems like a stretch.

IF it is true that Donald Trump lied to the media and made up a story about him confronting Vladimir Putin in that meeting about them meddling in that election and then got convinced by Putin that he’s telling the truth and that our intelligence agencies are lying, if that was all made up, then there is no other way to logically interpret that reality than to believe that Trump colluded with the Russians in the 2016 election.

Ibid: “How can you blame China for taking advantage of people who have no clue (speaking of Americans)? I would have done the same.” - Donald Trump tweet.

“I would have done the same.”

Remember how Trump paid off the fraud settlement, some 25 mil for Trump University, after he was elected?

Being a dick for America would be one thing, but he’s a dick for himself.

The issue is that we have a President who is beholden, who is compromised by Vladimir Putin.

There are other stories in the past few days that further substantiate this whole narrative…

The idea that the Mike Flynn/Turkey story has gotten almost no play, largely because of Roy Moore, is mind blowing. This (Flynn) is the guy Donald Trump hired as our National Security Advisor!

Now Kushner’s “joking” that CNN should fire its staff because he doesn’t like the Russian probe coverage.