INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Washington: President Donald Trump again attacked Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe into Russia and the 2016 US election on Tuesday,
reiterating that his campaign did not collude with Moscow and saying collusion is not a crime anyway.Trump commented hours before his former
campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was due to go on trial on tax and bank fraud charges in Virginia
As the first trial in the 14-month Russia probe, the case throws a fresh spotlight on a federal criminal investigation that has dogged
Trump's presidency.Mueller is investigating whether Trump campaign officials worked with Moscow to try to sway the 2016 U.S
presidential election, something commonly referred to as collusion by the media and public officials."Collusion is not a crime, but that
doesn't matter because there was No Collusion (except by Crooked Hillary and the Democrats)!" Trump wrote on Twitter.While collusion is not
a technical legal charge, Mueller is probing any coordination between the Russian government and the Trump campaign, and could bring
conspiracy charges if he finds that any campaign member worked with Russia to break U.S
law.Legal experts said that working with a foreign national with the intent of influencing a U.S
election could violate multiple laws
"Collusion is basically a partnership in crime, which is conspiracy," said Randall Eliason, a former federal prosecutor and a law professor
at George Washington University.Trump has for months denied that the campaign colluded with Russia to try to engineer his victory against
Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, and he bristles at the suggestion he might owe his White House victory to Moscow.On Tuesday, he echoed
his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who said in television interviews on Monday that collusion is not a crime
The strategy may be the latest in Trump's efforts to strip legitimacy from the Mueller probe, which he has long denounced as a "witch
hunt."Russia has denied the finding of U.S
intelligence agencies last year that it interfered to sway the election to Trump."The reason the Trump troops are pounding the 'collusion is
not a crime' drum is because they colluded (better known as conspiracy, or aiding and abetting) and they want to get out in front of the
story to control the narrative!" John Dean, President Richard Nixon's legal counsel, wrote on Twitter.Manafort, 69, faces 18 criminal
counts, which center on allegations that he hid much of the $60 million he earned working for a pro-Russian politician in Ukraine in
undisclosed overseas bank accounts and failed to pay taxes on it.© Thomson Reuters 2018(Except for the headline, this story has not been
edited by TheIndianSubcontinent staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
