Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that he believed the 2016 Donald Trump campaign did collude with the Russian government.
Anchor Dana Bash said, “You said that there was direct evidence of the fact that Donald Trump colluded with Russia back in 2016. Special Counsel Robert Mueller said in his report, quote, ‘The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government.’ Republicans argue that is proof that you used your position on the intelligence community to potentially mislead Americans, which is why you should not be on the intelligence community.”
Schiff said, “If you read the Mueller report, he makes clear in the first few pages of the report that he states no conclusion on whether Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with the Russians. But what he does find, and it is what we found in our investigation, that Donald Trump’s campaign manager was sharing internal campaign polling data and their strategy for key battleground states with an agent of Russian intelligence while that same unit of Russian intelligence was helping the Trump campaign, both with a hacking and a dumping operation, as well as a social media operation to elect Donald Trump. To most Americans, that is collusion. Whether it’s proof beyond a reasonable doubt to a crime of conspiracy, that’s what Bob Mueller was talking about. I’ve always distinguished between the two. Let me set the record straight. This is only one of a shifting series of rationalizations and pretexts that McCarthy is using.”
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