. . .
Is it your understanding that the "Professor" and the "Niece" actually were Kremlin operators who made up these crazy personas and claimed to have Kremlin connections so that no one would suspect that they actually were from the Kremlin? That path has a huge number of twists and hairpin turns, although I suppose that anything is possible. A DEA agent posing as a DEA agent so that the drug runners won't suspect him of being a DEA agent is a difficult plot to follow.
Otherwise George colluded with no one capable of collusion.
Likewise if the Prof and the Niece were evil Russian spies and only colluded with someone with no influence over Trump's campaign, where is the law broken, or the damage done.
In this case our spies colluded with someone without the ability to reciprocate.
Mueller needs to establish that either the Professor or the Niece are Russian operatives, and, that George had considerable influence with the Trump Campaign, and that he was operating under their control and on their behalf.
That's a tough bar to pass.
Terry
Fair questions. I believe the NYT described a definite connection between Putin and the Prof.
But even if he turned out to be a total fake with no connections, the story presented still explains why the FBI felt an investigation was needed. Just as they found out about the DNC hack, before the public did, they're told by Australian intelligence that a Trump campaign operative was made aware of the Kremlin's posession of emails, before the FBI knew.
As for "Prof" Mifsud, let's go back to the NYT piece:
Mr. Papadopoulos met Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor at a now-defunct London academy who had valuable contacts with the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Mr. Mifsud showed little interest in Mr. Papadopoulos at first.
But when he found out he was a Trump campaign adviser, he latched onto him, according to court records and emails obtained by The New York Times. . . .
More important, Mr. Mifsud connected Mr. Papadopoulos to Ivan Timofeev, a program director for the prestigious Valdai Discussion Club, a gathering of academics that meets annually with Mr. Putin. The two men corresponded for months about how to connect the Russian government and the campaign. Records suggest that Mr. Timofeev, who has been described by Mr. Mueller’s team as an intermediary for the Russian Foreign Ministry, discussed the matter with the ministry’s former leader, Igor S. Ivanov, who is widely viewed in the United States as one of Russia’s elder statesmen.
So Popodoupolos did, in fact, have relevant Russian contacts.
Now, "collusion." This isn't a legal term. The relevant legal term is "conspiracy." Conspiracy is not an intuitively obvious crime on its own. To be guilty of conspiracy, no other underlying crime has to occur. If two people plan on and agree to commit a crime, they're guilty of conspiracy to commit that crime, whether the agreed-upon crime happens or not. And the legal penalty is the same as if the crime had happened.
This legal reality may not be justice, but it's legal reality.
So it's sufficient that two or more members of Trump's team agreed to seek assistance from foreign nationals. They're still guilty of conspiracy to violate campaign laws, even if they were being conned. There doesn't have to be any actual "opposition research" for them to obtain. They just have to believe they're going to obtain it.
We have solid evidence of this *already*, with Don Jr's e-mail discussing the infamous meeting at Trump tower with the Russian lawyer. The publicly-available evidence probably needs Flynn's personal testimony to nail this down "beyond a reasonable doubt."
Godspeed to Mr. Mueller. If he doesn't soon present the evidence sufficient to get a 2/3 vote in the Senate to remove Trump, the Korean peninsula may soon be radioactive. That's how I see it.