Trump and his campaign could be facing criminal charges on everything from election violations to bank fraud and cyber crimes if they are found to have conspired with Russia.
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Frank Figliuzzi, former FBI Asst. Director for Counterintelligence said on MSNBC’s Deadline: White House:
If you look in the dictionary, which I did, it says illegal cooperation or conspiracy. So really we should stop using the phrase collusion and just say criminal conspiracy. There is a host of criminal charges that could come into play here if it’s proven that there was so-called collusion. What are those charges? Look, if it’s proven that Russian money was flowing into the campaign, you’ve got election and campaign contribution violations. You have violations of the Emoluments Clause.
If they were masking the origin of the Russian money, then you could have bank fraud and wire fraud and money laundering, and there is conspiracy, and there is accessory after the fact depending they knew what was happening. Here’s the key on the hacking. If they can indeed show campaign officials gave a green light or knew or encouraged the hacking into the DNC, then you have the same violations, cybercrime, computer fraud and abuse charges we saw lobbed onto the Russian hackers, you see conspiracy charges against the president or his campaign officials. So it is about crime.
Rudy Giuliani’s claim that the Russia investigation is about collusion, not crime, doesn’t hold up. Collusion is a form of illegal cooperation or criminal conspiracy. The accurate term for what is being investigated is conspiracy or criminal conspiracy, so Trump’s claims of no collusion have as much bearing on this case as if he was saying no hot water. It is meaningless.
Trump and his campaign could be facing some serious criminal charges. Trump may not be charged with a crime while he is in office, but any one of those ten potential crimes would be enough to get him impeached.
The Special Counsel doesn’t need to get the Trump campaign on all ten. One or two would be enough to end his presidency, and potentially land Trump in prison.
For more discussion about this story join our Rachel Maddow and MSNBC group.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
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