That way, there would be no need for a crime, since such investigations are just intelligence-gathering exercises. how to justify appointing a special counsel?Įasy: Make it a counterintelligence probe. And he knew that there was no proof that Trump had conspired in Russia’s cyberespionage. Rosenstein was lawyer enough to know that a president’s firing of an FBI director - a firing that Rosenstein himself had argued was justified - could not be an obstruction crime. Special counsels, however, are not supposed to be appointed unless there is a solid basis to believe a crime has been committed. Rosenstein wanted to appease them by appointing the special counsel they were demanding. Because he had written the memorandum originally used to justify Comey’s dismissal, congressional Democrats slammed him for complicity in what they portrayed as Trump’s obstruction of the Russia probe. After President Trump fired FBI director James Comey on May 9, 2017, and then shamefully talked Comey down for the consumption of Russian diplomats visiting the White House the next day, Rosenstein came under intense pressure. This commitment to ambiguity came in handy for Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein when he appointed Robert Mueller to be special counsel. It can refer to a conspiracy or to any arrangement people have together, including those that may be sleazy but non-criminal. Collusion just means concerted activity - it can be sinister or benign. Unable to establish conspiracy, Trump’s opposition settled on collusion. The best Obama’s notoriously politicized CIA could say was that Trump was Putin’s intended beneficiary. Yet, as thorough as the investigation was, no one could credibly say Trump was a participant in Russia’s malfeasance. The investigation was so high-level, so intense, that shortly before the election, there were confrontational conversations between CIA director John Brennan and his Russian counterpart, FSB chief Alexander Bortnikov, and later between President Obama and Russian president Putin. intelligence agencies had been working hard to understand the nature and extent of Kremlin-directed hacking operations for two years. By the time Trump won, the Bureau and U.S. The FBI first warned the Democratic National Committee about penetration of its servers in September 2015. The Russians apparently started hacking operations in 2014, long before Trump entered the race. But only a conspiracy - an agreement by two or more people to commit an actual criminal offense, such as hacking - would be a reasonable basis for prosecution or impeachment. Connections between denizens of Trump World and Putin’s circle might be very intriguing, and perhaps even politically scandalous. Those peddling the “Putin hacked the election” story have always lacked credible evidence that Trump was complicit in the Kremlin’s “cyber-espionage.” They could not show a criminal conspiracy. The reason for the collusion label is obvious. Readers of these columns know that the “collusion” label has been a pet peeve of your humble correspondent since the media-Democratic “Putin hacked the election” narrative followed hard on the declaration of Donald Trump’s victory in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, November 9, 2016.