Since you once again display a conveniently short memory, here's how Time Magazine summed it up (there are many, many other places that will tell you the same thing or you can go through all 600 pages of the Mueller report):flockofseagulls104 wrote: ↑Tue Jan 30, 2024 5:10 pmRight once again.silverscreenselect wrote: ↑Tue Jan 30, 2024 10:36 amIt was demonstrated in 2020 that Trump planned before the election to claim fraud if he lost. It's not "one side or the other" that does this. It's Republicans... every single time. That's their strategy for winning elections.
Must not have gotten your memo.
https://time.com/5610317/mueller-report ... breakdown/Mueller spent almost 200 pages describing “numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump Campaign.” He found that “a Russian entity carried out a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.” He also found that “a Russian intelligence service conducted computer-intrusion operations” against the Clinton campaign and then released stolen documents.
While Mueller was unable to establish a conspiracy between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians involved in this activity, he made it clear that “[a] statement that the investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts.” In fact, Mueller also wrote that the “investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.”
To find conspiracy, a prosecutor must establish beyond a reasonable doubt the elements of the crime: an agreement between at least two people, to commit a criminal offense and an overt act in furtherance of that agreement. One of the underlying criminal offenses that Mueller reviewed for conspiracy was campaign-finance violations. Mueller found that Trump campaign members Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner met with Russian nationals in Trump Tower in New York June 2016 for the purpose of receiving disparaging information about Clinton as part of “Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump,” according to an email message arranging the meeting. This meeting did not amount to a criminal offense, in part, because Mueller was unable to establish “willfulness,” that is, that the participants knew that their conduct was illegal. Mueller was also unable to conclude that the information was a “thing of value” that exceeded $25,000, the requirement for campaign finance to be a felony, as opposed to a civil violation of law. But the fact that the conduct did not technically amount to conspiracy does not mean that it was acceptable. Trump campaign members welcomed foreign influence into our election and then compromised themselves with the Russian government by covering it up.
Mueller found other contacts with Russia, such as the sharing of polling data about Midwestern states where Trump later won upset victories, conversations with the Russian ambassador to influence Russia’s response to sanctions imposed by the U.S. government in response to election interference, and communications with Wikileaks after it had received emails stolen by Russia. While none of these acts amounted to the crime of conspiracy, all could be described as “collusion.”
To sum up, Mueller found clear evidence that the Russians interfered. He found evidence that Trump's people "colluded" with the Russians as that word is commonly understood. He did not believe he could establish a conspiracy beyond a reasonable doubt necessary for a criminal conviction.
The various Democratic sources you quote said that Trump was not a "legitimate" president. There's plenty of evidence of that, far more than any evidence of fraud in any of Trump's election cases in 2020 (or anything brought out since then). The Democrats did not contest the results of the 2020 election; they did not file lawsuits; they did not select alternate slates of electors based on bogus fraud claims. Jerry Nadler said it best in one of the quotes, "The president-elect, although legally elected, is not legitimate." Republicans love to ignore the 200 pages of evidence cited by Mueller with a glib pronouncement; "No collusion." The facts differ from their conclusions.
