-You frequently hear people
like Rudy Giuliani say
"collusion is not a crime."
-I've been sitting here,
looking at the federal code,
trying to find collusion
as a crime.
-It's not.
-Collusion is not a crime.
I don't even know if that's a
crime, colluding about Russians.
-Well, there's not crimes called
"shooting someone
until they're dead."
The crime is called homicide.
There's no crime called
"breaking into someone's house
and stealing a laptop."
All right, that crime
is called burglary.
So, what matters in criminal law
is now the label
you put on something.
What matters are the facts
of what you do.
And so there's no crime
called "collusion."
The crime is called conspiracy.
And the thing about conspiracy
is you don't necessarily
have to succeed.
So, if there were conspiracy,
for example,
to influence the US election,
the government
wouldn't have to prove
that it actually tipped
the election one way or another.
All you have to prove
is the agreement,
the partnership in crime.
So, collusion is a crime.
It's called conspiracy
against the United States,
and there are two ways
it can be violated.
There is a conspiracy to commit
an offense
against the Unites States,
which is, basically,
an agreement
to commit any federal crime.
Bob Mueller has already
used that charge, for example,
when he charged the
Russian Intelligence operatives.
-The indictment charges
12 Russian military officers
by name
for conspiring to interfere
with the 2016
Presidential election.
11 of the defendants
are charged
with conspiring to hack into
computers, steal documents,
and release those documents
with the intent
to interfere
in the election.
-The second kind of conspiracy
is a conspiracy
to defraud
the United States,
and that can include agreements
to sort of thwart
or defeat lawful government
functions of the United States.
And Bob Mueller has used
that theory already, as well.
-13 Russian Nationals and 3
Russian companies
with a budget of more than $1.
2 million per month made
hundreds of fake
social media profiles,
posting attacks
on Hillary Clinton
while applauding Bernie Sanders
and then candidate Donald Trump.
-More than a dozen are charged
with conspiracy to tamper
with the election process
in an effort
to undermine confidence
in US democracy.
-The big outstanding question
and the big remaining thing
that Mueller is going
to determine is,
were members of the Trump
campaign or other Americans
involved with them in those
efforts to tip the election,
and if they were,
then they're potentially liable
for that exact same conspiracy.
Mueller has proceed in kind of
this classic
white-collar investigation,
where he's building cases
against lower-level people,
convincing them to plead guilty
or taking them to trial
in the case of Manafort,
and then flipping them,
and having them cooperate
against people
higher up on the food chain.
And the important thing
to remember about people
like Michael Flynn
and Michael Cohen, Rick Gates,
who's the deputy
campaign manager,
and others who are
cooperating --
we still really haven't seen
the fruits,
for the most part,
of that cooperation.
Evidence being gathered
by all these people
who are so deeply involved,
you know, is likely
helping build a case.
Whether that case is going
to result in,
you know, a report
or further indictments
still remains to be seen.
