Thread by @SethAbramson

(SPOILER) Trump's multinational pre-election collusion (chief co-conspirators: 🇷🇺 , 🇸🇦, 🇮🇱, 🇦🇪) has its origin in two international events, which together offer a key to understanding the Trump-Russia scandal:

🇺🇦: 2014: Russian annexation of Crimea
🇮🇷: 2015: Iranian nuclear deal

🇺🇦: 2014: Russian annexation of Crimea

Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine led Obama and a global alliance to level sanctions on Russia. Russia knew Clinton would maintain Obama's sanctions and Trump wouldn't. Sunni powers in the Gulf saw sanctions gave them an "in" with Russia.

🇮🇷: 2015: Iranian nuclear deal

Obama and a global alliance made a nuclear deal with Iran with the aim of bringing peace to the Middle East. Some Arab nations and Israel opposed the deal on military and geopolitical grounds and felt Trump, not Clinton, would abandon Obama's deal.

🇺🇸: 2012: Trump decides to run for president

Mueller is now focused on when Trump decided to run for president. Why? Because it's clear Trump's attacks on Obama were part of an effort to signal publicly what Trump told many foreign powers privately—he would end Obama's policies.

🇷🇺🇸🇦🇮🇱🇦🇪: 2015 and 2016: Multiple nations collude with Trump

Nations upon whom Trump has been financially dependent—with others assisting—illegally aid Trump pre-election in an effort to create an anti-Iranian Middle East security alliance that Russia will be willing to support.

🇺🇸: 2017 and 2018: Mueller indicts Russians and Trump campaign colluders

Mueller has used indictments to get six key Trump colluders to talk: Flynn; Manafort; Gates; Cohen; Papadopoulos; Stone. Some of these colluders have given Mueller evidence for future collusion indictments.

💻: 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019: Citizens compile public evidence

Feeds like this one have compiled the evidence available in major-media reports from around the world—and going back years—to bring to Americans the content of the Mueller report in case the report never gets released.

📺: 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019: News follows daily outrages only

Cable news has been so focused on Trump's daily outrages—partly for ratings, partly because it's structurally ill-equipped to report complex stories—leaving Americans with little sense of the big picture on collusion.

🇶🇦🇹🇷🇪🇬🇧🇭🇭🇺: 2015, 2016, 2017: Other nations offer Trumps covert aid

The Trump-Russia case is made too complex for easy reporting due to its runtime (decades) and international scope, including major roles for agents from Qatar, Turkey, Egypt, Bahrain, Hungary, and other nations.

🇺🇸: 2019: Many Americans decide any news story too complex to easily summarize is a "conspiracy theory"

Trump's greatest aid in escaping responsibility for his illegal pre-election collusion, after media's inability to readily cover a story of this scope, is Americans' cynicism.

Some Key Trump-Russia Foreign Agents

🇷🇺: Putin, Kilimnik, Deripaska, Rybolovlev, Agalarov, Papadopoulos*
🇺🇦: Manafort*
🇮🇱: Netanyahu, Zamel, Birnbaum*
🇸🇦: MbS, al-Assiri, Nader*
🇦🇪: MbZ, Dahlan, Nader*
🇹🇷: Kian, Alptekin, Flynn*
🇭🇺: Orban
🇪🇬: el-Sisi

*Legally (not nationality).

Some Key American Trump-Russia Co-Conspirators/Enablers

🇺🇸: Bannon, Barrack, Clovis, Cohen, Conway, Corsi, Credico, Dearborn, Erickson (boyfriend of 🇷🇺: Butina), Gordon, Kushner, Mashburn, Mercer, Page, Prince, Sater, Schmitz, Sessions, Trump (Don), Trump (Eric), Trump (Ivanka).

Some Key Trump-Russia Co-Conspirators/Enablers from U.S. Allies

🇦🇺: Assange
🇬🇧: Farage, Banks, Dovey, Idris, Nix
🇬🇷: Kammenos
🇲🇹: Mifsud

(NB: This is an incomplete list, and focuses only on the most recognizable names in this category.)

🇬🇧: 2015, 2016, 2017: Trump's Data Firm Cambridge Analytica (CA) Faces Collusion Allegations

Mueller is now focused on how internal Trump campaign data got into Kremlin agents' hands; whether Trump's data firm colluded with WikiLeaks; and whether Israeli agents colluded with CA.

🇺🇸: 2019: Mueller's Theory of the Case

Based on his indictments and subject list (including 🇬🇧: Kaiser), Mueller sees nations with whom Trump had business interests using money and media to collude pre-election with Trump, hoping for sanctions relief and an end to the Iran deal.