This is a must read

[DemocratSinceBirth]

What did Trump know, and when did he know it?


Two things happened over the weekend that complicate our understanding of President Trump’s awareness of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The first is that Trump was interviewed by Fox News’s Jeanine Pirro. She raised the question of collusion — that is, whether elements of the Trump campaign assisted the Russian effort to influence the results of the 2016 election.

“After 18 months, not any kind of reference to any collusion,” Pirro said.

To which Trump replied:

“That is true, Jeanine. You have all these committees, everybody’s looking. There is no collusion. No phone calls — I had no phone calls, no meetings, no nothing. There is no collusion. I say it all the time. Anybody that asks. There is no collusion.”

For some time, it’s been unclear exactly what Trump means when he says there was “no collusion” (as he often does). In January, the New York Times’s Maggie Haberman asked press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders what exactly was meant when Trump used the term.

...


We’re asked to believe, too, that even if Trump had been informed about any or all of the Russian outreach efforts, that this doesn’t constitute collusion on the part of the president with the Russian interference effort. (Though earlier this year, his press secretary articulated that it would.)

There are two groups of people who know how valid Trump’s argument is. The first is Trump and his close family. The other, it seems fair to assume, is special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and his team.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/02/26/what-did-trump-know-and-when-did-he-know-it/?utm_term=.71a443756f3a

[Botany]

1. But what about Hillary's emails?

The next day, Papadopoulos emailed senior campaign adviser Stephen Miller and told him that he had “some interesting messages coming in from Moscow about a trip when the time is right.”

Is that where it ended? Did Papadopoulos tell the campaign specifically about the stolen email messages? The next month, he told it to Australian High Commissioner to Great Britain Alexander Downer over drinks in London. Once the DNC leaks began, Australia tipped off the FBI about the conversation with Papadopoulos, and the investigation began. Is it likely that Papadopoulos told a foreign diplomat about what he had learned — but never told anyone else in the campaign? That never got back to Trump? Despite Trump saying that he believed the Russians to be in possession of Clinton emails — which the DNC leaks that were public on July 27 were not?

snip

In July, campaign adviser Carter Page — the subject of the FBI surveillance warrant at the heart of the Nunes memo — traveled to Moscow with the campaign’s blessing. Two weeks later, Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer conducting research for Fusion GPS (on the dime of the DNC and Clinton’s campaign) was told that Page, too, had been informed of the existence of compromising material on Clinton. (The DNC leaks began three days later.)

Page denied meeting Kremlin official Igor Diveykin and told the House Intelligence Committee during testimony that he had only briefly greeted Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich during his trip.

After his return to the United States, though, Page sent the campaign a memo to say that he had spoken with Dvorkovich in a “private conversation” in which the deputy prime minister “expressed strong support for Mr. Trump.” He also sent an email to two campaign staffers saying that he would “send you guys a readout soon regarding some incredible insights and outreach I’ve received from a few Russian legislators and senior members” of the Putin administration.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

2. When Mueller proves he knew about Russian interference on his behalf that's when the "fun" starts

[volstork]

3. I think that's when

the bombing starts.