Turley: ‘You Have to Call Them as You See Them’ — ‘No Evidence’ of Trump-Russia Collusion

On Saturday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Smerconish,” George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley argued that it appears the Department of Justice special counsel probe headed up by former FBI Director Robert Mueller was unable to find evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

Turley walked through all the signs that suggested such collusion was unlikely and said even if some associated with the campaign did so, including Roger Stone, such activity is not illegal.

“It does,” he replied. “You have to call them as you see them. There is no evidence thus far of collusion between the Trump campaign and President Trump, and the Russians in hacking these computer systems. And moreover, it is quite unlikely if you were a KGB spymaster, would you really collude with Donald Trump and put yourself one tweet away from destruction on perhaps the most secret operation in recent history? The answer is, no. They wouldn’t do that.”

“Would you hold a hypersensitive meeting at Trump Tower with half the media downstairs?” he continued. “And not actually produce the evidence promised? Instead, talk about adoption? No. The most obvious explanation is probably the right one. There was not collusion in hacking the system. Now what appears to be the case is that [Roger] Stone wanted to get access to this information. That’s not illegal. Journalists, academics, political operative all try to get their hands on material like this, whether it’s whistleblowing, whether it came from one source or another. There’s nothing illegal in that.”

“And so, I think that so far, we’re one collusion short of making that case,” he added.

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor

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