Congressman, this is Meghan McCain.
You have claimed for years now that you have a smoking gun of evidence of collusion.
Your quote is “ample evidence of collusion.”
You said that.
But Robert Mueller and his investigation found that there is no collusion.
So can you share with us right here, right now on the View, the evidence you have and
explain why Mueller was wrong yesterday?
Well first of all, Mueller wasn’t wrong.
Mueller started off by saying, “we didn’t address the issue of collusion.”
So those who are saying no collusion, they’re just wrong—
But what’s your evidence?
You’ve been saying that on TV for years.
I will tell you.
I’ve also been telling you that the evidence is in plain sight, not hidden anywhere.
The Russians offered dirt on Hillary Clinton IN WRITING and sent it to Don Jr.
And Don Jr.’s response was IN WREITING and said, “As for your offer of foreign illegal
help, I would love it.”
He accepted the offer.
They set up a overt act in furtherance of that, the secret meeting in Trump Tower and
they lied about it.
You have an offer of illegal help, you have the acceptance of that offer, you have an
overt act in furtherance of that conspiracy.
That is, I think, by any rational American’s expectation, the personification of collusion.
Now, Bob Mueller had a different question he needed to analyze, which was ‘can I prove
each of the elements of the crime of conspiracy beyond a reasonable doubt?’
And as you know well before the Mueller report, I was pointing out to the public that there’s
a difference between what we understand as collusion and whether you can prove all of
the elements of crime.
And I think Mueller made that clear yesterday.
Would you consider yesterday a big win for Democrats?
You know, I would consider it a win for the American people that they got to hear from
the person who did the investigation.
They got to hear unfiltered by anybody else what he found.
You know, for the former Director the FBI and the special counsel to say, effectively
the president acted immorally, unethically, unpatriotically, and likely in a criminal
fashion, the American people needed to hear.
If you’re measuring whether this is a success in terms of whether this brings us closer
to impeachment or not, that was not my object in bringing him in.
My object was to find out what work did you do, what conclusions did you reach, and what
work do we need to do to follow up on counter-intelligence or compromised information to protect the
country.
This is Meghan McCain trying to catch House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff
with a gotcha moment that didn’t go QUITE as she planned.
And that’s because her claim, that there was “no collusion,” is just a White House
talking point.
It has no basis whatsoever in reality.
And to be honest, Meghan McCain doesn’t even need to look to the Mueller report to
find evidence of this—the American public has already been exposed to a slew of instances
of collusion in broad daylight.
We have, like Schiff said, the Trump Tower meeting, in which Don Jr., Kushner and Paul
Manafort met with a Kremlin-linked lawyer for dirt on Hillary Clinton.
And we might be numb to it by this point, but accepting dirt on a political opponent
from a foreign source is illegal, since it is considered a “thing of value.”
Beyond that, we already know that Paul Manfort, Trump’s campaign chairman, shared polling
data with Konstantin Kilimnik, who has ties to the Kremlin.
We already know that Mike Flynn, Trump’s national security adviser prior to him taking
office, had secret conservations with Russian ambassador Kislyak about lifting sanctions
on Russian officials, which is a violation of the Logan Act, prohibiting citizens from
interfering in foreign diplomacy.
And we already know that Trump himself went on national television and asked Russia to
hack Hillary Clinton’s emails—
Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.
I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.
And we’ve heard the excuses, that it was all just a joke, Democrats have no sense of
humor, Trump’s the best conservative comedian since …Dennis Miller?
But we later found out that despite Trump’s epic joke, Russians attempted to hack Hillary
Clinton and the DNC’s emails only HOURS later.
So I’m not sure if Meghan McCain thinks that because we already know about these instances
of collusion, that they somehow don’t COUNT anymore, but they absolutely do.
And granted, while the special counsel investigation might not have had enough evidence to prove
that these instances rose to the level of criminal conspiracy, that doesn’t mean it
all goes away.
That doesn’t mean Trump is completely absolved.
It means that the decision falls to Congress to decide whether or not to proceed with impeachment,
and with nearly 100 lawmakers currently in support of impeachment, it seems that it’s
well on its way.
But to make matters worse, while Republicans like Meghan McCain are on national television
denying that any collusion even occurred, Republicans just voted DOWN a slew of election
security bills in the Senate.
Two would have required campaigns to report to federal authorities any attempts by foreign
entities to interfere in US elections, and another would have protected the personal
accounts and devices of elected officials from hackers.
This, after the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded TODAY that election systems in all
50 states were targeted by Russia in 2016, largely undetected by state and federal officials,
and after Mueller’s testimony YESTERDAY confirming that Russian meddling efforts are
still ongoing.
So instead of Meghan McCain haranguing Adam Schiff by parroting lies from the White House,
she might want to ask her own party why it absolutely refuses to acknowledge the truth.