The End of the Beginning - TPM [View all]

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One of the things we will be focusing on on the Russia front in 2018 is not simply breaking a lot of news but on narrating the bigger picture. It can be a difficult story to make sense of because it has so many tentacles.
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We are still only at the front end of this investigation. We still know only the outlines of what happened and how. But we are past any serious question about whether there was collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. There was. It’s no longer a matter of probability, even high probability. We know it from either undisputed facts or sworn statements from Trump associates now cooperating with the Mueller investigation.
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The oddity of that platform decision has always been that it’s just not that big a deal. No one pays attention to platforms. It’s certainly not some big ask Russia would have had even if you imagine a big, hard conspiracy that went right to the top. That’s not the way to see it. Russia was mounting a far-ranging effort throughout the campaign to elect Donald Trump. This involved theft, espionage, various kinds of covert and overt propaganda. They were reaching out to the Trump campaign offering help and they consistently got a welcoming response. They were assured Trump wanted a new deal with Russia and an end of sanctions.
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I say the end of the beginning because the core question about collusion has been answered in the affirmative. We know this. Any reasonable survey of the evidence now makes this clear. What remains uncertain is whether it was (improbably) limited to a few non-central members of the campaign or whether it went right to the top. - TPM