David Frum: Collusion Is Worse Than a Crime

[babylonsister]

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/08/collusion-is-a-question-of-loyalty-not-legality/566606/

Collusion Is Worse Than a Crime
To debate whether Trump acted criminally is to miss the greater point: He’s a national-security threat.
David Frum
Aug 1, 2018


It’s a crime for a U.S. presidential campaign knowingly to receive—or even solicit—anything of value from any foreign entity. It’s a crime for anyone, campaign or not, to knowingly receive stolen data. In fact, receiving stolen data triggers a complex nexus of crimes, both state and federal. Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, and other top Trump aides met with a lawyer who identified herself as an agent of the Russian government offering damaging information about Hillary Clinton.

Lying to Congress is a crime, albeit one seldom prosecuted. Trump Jr. was under oath when he testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 17, 2017, that he did not tell his father about the Trump Tower meeting with the lawyer. “I wouldn’t have wasted his time with it,” he said. Should that testimony prove untrue, the younger Trump could also face perjury charges.

Money laundering is a crime. Tax evasion is a crime. Obstruction of justice is a crime. Lying to federal investigators is a crime.

snip//

“Collusion is not a crime” in the same way that a counter-intelligence investigation is not a criminal prosecution. Aspects of collusion may be criminal, but collusion itself is above all a threat to national security: the installation of a president beholden to some greater or lesser degree to a hostile foreign power.

The United States is a highly legalistic society. Public ethics debates are often reduced to technical legal arguments about the meanings of statutes. But in Trump-Russia, the most urgent concerns before the country are not prosecutable offenses but loyalty risks. During the Northern Ireland troubles of the 1980s, British police used to distinguish between those they ironically called “decent ordinary criminals” and IRA terrorists. It was—or should have been—obvious to anyone paying attention on voting day 2016 that Donald Trump was not an honest businessman. What has come further and further into the light since Election Day is something much more dangerous even than dishonesty.

[NewJeffCT]

1. excellent article

wish I could recommend it twice

[BlancheSplanchnik]

2. Excellent article!

I wonder if Frum said anything during the actual witch hunts and slanderous lies perpetrated against Hillary Clinton? For thirty years.

[BSdetect]

3. That is something the entire gop fostered. Vile hatred and lies.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

22. Yep. None of them ever look at themselves, never question themselves.

[triron]

4. I am liking Frum.

[oberliner]

6. Do you know who he is?

[oberliner]

5. When did David Frum cross over?

[babylonsister]

7. He's been writing

scathing critiques of the gop/dt for awhile now.

[YessirAtsaFact]

9. Frum is an old school Republican

Not a brainwashed Trumphole.

[ProfessorGAC]

10. Around The Time Of The Primary Campaign In 2016

Look, i don't like him either, but he didn't flip yesterday.

He's been on Maher twice railing against PINO in the last year alone.

[oberliner]

11. Yeah, I just wasn't sure when the flip happened

[ProfessorGAC]

15. IIRC, He Was Supporting Rubio

Could be wrong about that, but it shows his judgment is flawed, just not flawed enough to support the moron.

[Bayard]

16. He's been on MSNBC a number of times

[oberliner]

19. I get that he has flipped, I just wasn't sure when it happened

[salin]

20. At least since 2010.

He started giving warnings to the GOP that they needed to modernize. To participate in the Health Care hearings/policy formulation - as it was a problem that needed a solution - and could be part of reformulating what the GOP governance means in the Post Reagan era (thus implying - not the hard right turn it had taken).

Somewhere around then (or maybe closer to 2012) he warned the GOP that Fox news and the RW media complex was dangerous to the GOP as it was chasing dollars - and would pursue whatever that meant and that people might wake up too late to realize that they no longer direct the agenda but that the party and elected officials now are serving the RW media.

He got ostracized from the right. Kicked out of the think tank he worked for (I think he was at AEI but it could have been Cato). And eventually wound up as editor at The Atlantic. He has been an interesting figure to watch evolve.

Yes, I know he was a speech writer for W, and I believe he was credited with coining the phrase "Axis of Evil" Bush's first speech to the country after 911 (the one when we heard it - we all knew that Cheney was directed us back into Iraq in the near future.)

Would I vote for him for any elected office. No. Do I read some of his work? Yes. His recent book Trumpocracy is very good (I have it on audible and listened to it while commuting.)

[salin]

21. Contemperaneous Article (2010) from WaPo

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/25/AR2010032502336.html

[xor]

23. He didn't really crossover. He's still a conservative and he thinks invading Iraq was swell

He's just one of the many conservatives who may be wrong headed on many issues, but still have some sense of being an American and America values (despite being a Canadian???) I believe he said he voted for Clinton and urged others to do the same.

It actually amazes me how Trump has any real support, because pretty much anyone who liberal has disdain for Trump, and a huge number of conservatives also seem to dislike him. Perhaps I built myself an echo chamber, but almost anyone who has any sort of intelligent and nuanced thought processes - liberal or conservative - seems to not be a fan of Trump. So, I dunno what to make of how Trump has any popularity.

[bucolic_frolic]

8. Anyone with a heartbeat should have known all along

Every casino made money except Donald Trump's. The money was going somewhere. Using a business as a cash cow to milk is not a novel idea. Yet no one paid sufficient attention to this anomaly.

[moreland01]

12. I would change that.

Did Frum mean to say "It was obvious to anyone paying attention on voting day 2016 that DT was a "decent ordinary criminal"?

[dalton99a]

13. Donald Trump is a clear and present danger to America.

[FakeNoose]

14. Bookmarked and recommended

Thanks Babylonsister!

[Perseus]

17. Collusion IS a cime, the definition of "Collusion" is "Conspiacy"

Why do so many people continue to say that collusion may not be a crime? It is a crime, if you collude you conspire, how much clear is that?

Collusion IS "betrayal", and thus "treason"...I wish these people would find the definition of collusion, is just a Google away:

Collusion: secret or illegal cooperation or conspiracy, especially in order to cheat or deceive others.

[Biden My Time]

18. Great Article

Thank you for posting the link.

[sellitman]

24. Yes!

Recommended & kicked