Summations Only

You know, if Steele believed the information in the dossier he might well be passionate that Donald Trump not be elected....

Russians charged over US 2016 election tamperingThirteen charged, 3 cases of wire fraud and 5 of aggravated identity theft.They’re accused of promoting Trump and Sanders against their rivals.Apparently they had a budget of $1 million per month.However there are no allegations of anyone in either campaign colluding with these Russians.

While the meeting took place and it is certain that the intent was to arrange a deal between the Trump campaign and the Russian government it’s not clear that they got any further than the meeting. It doesn’t seem that the Trump campaign got any dirt on Clinton - which is what the Russians offered to get the meeting.It’s pretty bad - there was an offer of collusion and Trump jr was definitely interested - but we haven’t seen the evidence that there was anything more than talk.

But was there an agreement to commit an illegal act ? The Russians committed illegal acts but you seem to be short on evidence that the Trump campaign agreed to any of them.This is not to say that there was no agreement, only that the evidence so far made public doesn’t show that.

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I guess we can differ on what constitutes an agreement and sufficient evidence, but boiled down this is what does it for me. From the emails between Goldstone and Donald Jr.:

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Goldstone: "The Crown prosecutor of Russia...offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary...and be very useful to your father."
Donald Jr.: "...I love it..."
And then they attended the meeting.

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I think that you are stretching. Is handing over information illegal in itself ?You may presume that it referred to illegally obtained information but that claim is not explicit in the email and I don’t see how you can prove that Trump jr thought it referred to illegally obtained information. (Even then the illegal act had already taken place)As I say it looks bad but it doesn’t rise to the level of proving conspiracy.

I’ll just point out that there seem to be serious questions over whether a document alleging misconduct by a Clinton donor should really be included. Eugene Volokh

Apparently a speaker from the Cato Institute tried to convince CPAC that immigration had net benefits.They didn’t want to hear that: data clashes with emotion

After working on an interim clearance Kushner hasn’t made the cut for the top clearance. BBCYou might ask why it took a year to get to this point. One reason: Trump hires the best people...

And Pompeo is put in his place. Whether that is good or bad news for the demoralised State department I don’t know.

She has experience of destroying evidence of illegal activity and getting away with it. Trump may be looking for some pointers.

It seems to be more nuanced than that. Which is unusual when talking about Trump.From the figures I have seen Trump is right if he’s only talking about trade in goods for 2017. Trade in services had a surplus, which claws back about a third of that (I think).For 2016 the surplus in services was actually larger than the deficit in goods, so the U.S. had an overall surplus that year.However, this figure seems to be historically quite low. In 2007 the deficit in goods was $68 billion.

John Dowd, leading Trump’s team dealing with the Mueller probe has resigned. BBC

The BBC reports that House Speaker Paul Ryan is leaving. Reportedly, the main reason was the frustrations of dealing with Trump.

Trump wrote his own health letterWho elected this guy?

Seeking to get it wound up and more BBC reportWe knew it was bad - but not that bad.