Thread by @SethAbramson

(THREAD) What America has needed, in the year since the Mueller report was published, is an explanation of why Democrats and Republicans seem to be discussing *two different Russia scandals*. The answer? Because they *are*. This thread explains. I hope you'll read on and RETWEET.

1/ First, understand that Democrats call what special counsel Robert Mueller was investigating "the Trump-Russia scandal." Republicans call it "Russiagate." You can tell which scandal a person is discussing—and what their political leanings are—simply from the verbiage they use.

2/ Second, understand that Democrats correctly distinguish—as Mueller did—between "collusion" and "conspiracy." Any writing that fails to distinguish between collusion and conspiracy is either a Trumpist text or shoddy research. Only trust texts that distinguish between the two.

3/ "Conspiracy" is a federal criminal statute with a clear and narrow meaning. "Collusion" is an umbrella term that *includes* within it criminal conspiracy but also *much* that's either noncriminal *or* criminal but chargeable under a *different* federal statute than conspiracy.

4/ In the context of the Trump-Russia scandal, the word "conspiracy" is now used by basically everyone—Mueller's report and (partly because of this) both the left and right—to indicate a discrete and narrow band of potential criminal activity investigated by Mueller and his team.

5/ That band of activity—and the only useful meaning of "conspiracy" in the Trump-Russia scandal—is this: did Trump or his team conspire before-the-fact with Russian agents to hack the DNC, or conspire with Russian agents before-the-fact to wage a propaganda war—fraud—on America?

6/ This is what Mueller investigated. The result of his investigation was that—in part due to the withholding and destruction of evidence, as well as outright lies, by Trump and his team—"conspiracy" of the sort I just described could not be established beyond a reasonable doubt.

7/ "Beyond a reasonable doubt" is the highest standard of proof in the law, and roughly corresponds to "90% or greater certainty" that someone did something. So if a prosecutor is 85% sure someone did something, they'll say they "could not establish it beyond a reasonable doubt."

8/ However, Mueller's finding on "conspiracy" is immaterial for a different reason than the fact that it was fundamentally inconclusive and fundamentally thwarted by Trump and his team's obstruction: the "conspiracy" Mueller investigated *isn't the crime Trump's critics alleged*.

9/ And *this* is where we find that America—particularly those on the left and people like @ggreenwald and @mtaibbi—are separated by a common language: what the right calls "Russiagate" relates only to the issue Mueller investigated, which is irrelevant to Democratic allegations.

10/ I've written two books on Trump's foreign scandals—including Russia—and have never claimed there's proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump "conspired before-the-fact with the Kremlin to hack the DNC or wage a domestic propaganda war." But that's what Mueller investigated.

11/ So when the GOP says "Russiagate" is a hoax, they're effectively saying this: an allegation no one ever made against Trump turned out to be somewhere between 0% and 89% true—but we can't know more because the evidence needed to know more was withheld, destroyed or lied about.

12/ In that sense, I *agree* with the GOP: there's somewhere between 0% and 89% proof Trump did something no one ever accused him of doing, and we'll never know where in—or beyond—that range of proof the proof that exists resides due to criminal obstruction by Trump and his team.

13/ But *none* of this has *anything* to do with "the Trump-Russia scandal," which is what Democrats and those who understand the law, investigation, political science, and U.S. foreign policy refer to—essentially, all those who aren't children—when they discuss Trump's scandals.

14/ The "Trump-Russia scandal" is about "collusion," and asks the following questions: was Trump's foreign policy the result of bribery? Did Trump or his team illegally solicit foreign election interference? Did Trump or his team aid or abet—*after-the-fact*—an attack on America?

15/ What you'll note in the preceding tweet is that the "Trump-Russia scandal" Democrats speak about asks questions about *both* criminal *and* noncriminal behavior, and about a range of criminal conduct, and *does not allege* a before-the-fact hacking or propaganda "conspiracy."

16/ In 2017 I started insisting that if America didn't use *caution with its language* in discussing the Trump-Russia scandal, chaos would ensue. The media ignored me and others saying so—and chaos certainly ensured. Mueller's work became something we couldn't discuss coherently.

17/ So you had folks in media—regarded as "members of the left" by the GOP whether that's accurate or not—using the word "conspiracy" when they meant "collusion," with the result that it emboldened people on the right to say Mueller found "no collusion" when he *didn't say that*.

18/ Just so, you had members of the media using the word "proof" incorrectly. "Proof" is not synonymous (as why would it be) with the longer and different English concept of "proof beyond a reasonable doubt." "Proof" *actually* means any evidence tending to support a proposition.

19/ As a result of media not caring about language use, we had presumed leftists—actually just journalists—using "proof of collusion" to mean "proof beyond a reasonable doubt of conspiracy." Others used "proof of conspiracy" to mean "proof beyond a reasonable doubt of collusion."

20/ In other words, what media must have decided was mere semantics—which was actually infinitely more important than mere semantics—fully decimated America's ability to come to any common agreement about *what happened* in the biggest political scandal of our age. It was mayhem.

21/ So what does the Mueller report reveal? "Proof" of "collusion"—using these words *correctly*, as @ggreenwald and @mtaibbi insist on never doing though they know better—on nearly every page. That Trump and his campaign engaged in noncriminal collusive activity is 100% certain.

22/ But what about *criminal* collusive activity, i.e. violations of such statutes as bribery, fraud, obstruction, illegal solicitation, and aiding and abetting? Well—first—as to bribery, fraud, and aiding and abetting...Mueller took a pass. His report doesn't cover those issues.

23/ On illegal solicitation, Mueller considers it as to certain people, offering a legal analysis that a) underscores he considered the issue eminently arguable and b) *many* legal experts disagree with. The facts of the report would allow for an illegal solicitation prosecution.

24/ On obstruction—in this context another "collusive" crime with its own statute—Mueller felt himself *without the authority* to recommend prosecution (due to a DOJ ruling Barr supported before he didn't), and therefore referred the indictment (impeachment) decision to Congress.

25/ There are 2 categories of investigation no one discusses: 1) evidence of Trump being a threat to national security and compromised by a foreign power—which Mueller *referred to FBI counterintelligence and left out of his report*, and 2) evidence lost due to lying cooperators.

26/ As to the first category—is Trump a threat to national security due to conflicts of interest, leverage, business ambitions and plain venality—the public evidence says yes. The FBI remains mum. As to the second—well, that's where Flynn comes in. And Manafort. And Papadopoulos.

27/ Paul Manafort got a sweetheart deal because he could incriminate Trump. It's the same reason Trump tampered with Manafort backchannel, per the Mueller report and major-media reporting. And Trump won: Manafort shut up. He then played the same game with Flynn—and he won again.

28/ So *every time* you hear *anybody on the right* gloating about the result of the Russia investigation, *all they're saying* is that Bob Mueller—obstructed at every turn—failed to find 90% or greater proof of an allegation no one ever made.

And in that sense, they're "right."

29/ This is *also* the reason why *no one* on the left should ever engage *anyone* on the right on the Russia question—as there's literally no point to doing so.

All they're doing is using the wrong verbiage to declare victory over turf no one was fighting for. It's *imbecilic*.

30/ Everyone, in the heat of the moment, has at some point made errors of speech with the words "proof," "collusion," and "conspiracy." This is the internet—we get emotional. But some people have done so *habitually* and now—a year post-Mueller—no one should be doing it at *all*.

31/ So:

1⃣ If someone uses "proof" to mean "proof beyond a reasonable doubt"—rather than "any evidence"—walk away.
2⃣ If someone can't distinguish "collusion" and "conspiracy," walk away.
3⃣ If someone says Dems accused Trump of a *before-the-fact hacking conspiracy*, walk away.

32/ Further:

4⃣ If someone says "Russiagate," walk away *or* freely concede the narrow—irrelevant—point the person you're speaking with will seek to make (see Tweet 28 in this thread for its details).
5⃣ If someone doesn't know which crimes Dems *did* accuse Trump of, walk away.

33/ Some may wonder why I'm discussing this today, besides us being roughly a year off now from Mueller's report appearing. It's because—just today—Trump convened yet *another* event at which his cronies played all the rhetorical games I've just described here. This is *ongoing*.

34/ These rhetorical games are now joined by another: the silly conflation of politics and law that permits Trumpists to say that if a Trump political appointee manages to get someone off, it means that person must be deemed "exonerated" in the eyes of *everyone*, even attorneys.

35/ In fact, words like "exonerated" are reserved for findings by juries and (in some cases) judges—not political appointees. As importantly, "exonerated" is a technical term that doesn't apply to public discourse—we *often* consider people guilty who courts haven't found guilty.

36/ My larger point is one we should all be talking about daily—and frankly journalists should be talking about: Republicans and Democrats are *both* guilty of—albeit in very different ways—perverting the English language so that we can't use it to communicate or reach agreement.

37/ For years—even decades—it was *conservatives* making this complaint. They complained that the left (particularly academics) were creating new meanings for terms by abstracting their definitions beyond common usage. For instance, what it means to "silence" or "police" someone.

38/ Conservatives also complained that the left was coining new terms and then attacking people on the right when they failed to pick them up immediately. For instance, the decades-long shift from "Indian" to "Native American" to "indigenous" threw many on the right for a loop.

39/ There's a separate conversation to be had about whether these new meanings and coinages were too quickly deemed de rigueur in a nation where everyone is busy and has their own private struggles, but the simple fact is that the right decided that it had to use language to win.

40/ And now the right *is* winning—using language. It's confusing people on what "proof" means, what "collusion" and "conspiracy" mean, what "exonerated" means. And we on the left are letting them do it because—remarkably—we won't *talk about* the fact that they're doing it. /end