It is time to stand up for the president in defense of his claim that the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign to help Trump win happened entirely innocently of his knowledge and those around him.

It really was just a “witch hunt,” and should be ended immediately.

And to go back to the beginning, all of this was really answered by Trump PR advisor Hope Hicks In 2016: “It never happened,” she said. “There was no communication between the campaign and any foreign entity during the campaign.”

Clearly, anything after that precise statement is just an attack on the president without foundation.

But to be fair to the disloyalists among us, let’s get those troubling facts, otherwise known by Trump followers as, “fake news,” disposed of for their own absurdity.

Yes, it is true that campaign advisor George Papadopoulos has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his interactions with foreign nationals who he thought were Russian government officials, all while representing the Trump campaign. So what? One contact means nothing.

And yes, Michael Flynn has pleaded guilty to lying about his contact with the Russian government and its full-time spy ambassador, Sergey Kislyak. But still, only two exceptions to the truth.

And, of course, Rick Gates, campaign advisor and Trump administration former staffer has pleaded guilty to, “conspiracy against the United States,” for lying about his conversations with Russian Intelligence agents, but you run into people in all the wrong places sometimes. It happens.

Of course, there were those troubling attempts to create a back-channel communication with the Russian government, hidden from U.S. intelligence, one made by none other than presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner, and another by a secret meeting in the Seychelles in early 2017 for the same purpose. But there could be reasons to talk to a foreign adversary secretly…right?

And then, to be completely honest, there was that meeting in Trump Tower, a meeting proposed by Russians to aid in their governments’ attempt to support the Trump campaign to provide “dirt” on his opponent, Hillary Clinton. Trump’s attorney, Michael Cohen, now claims Trump knew about the meeting to conspire with Russia to defeat Clinton, but who wouldn’t work with Russia to sway a U.S. election?

Following that meeting, there were two simple coincidences during the Trump campaign. The first came on July 27, 2016 when then candidate Trump asked Russia, “if you are listening,” to help find Clinton’s missing emails. Oddly, that very same day, Russia did just that, targeting Clinton’s personal office account. And that other curious, but totally innocent coincidence, when Access Hollywood released the “P-grabbing” tape and one hour later Wikileaks released the Podesta emails.

All that aside, does conspiracy to collude even matter? The Trump people have had a lot to say about that. First, Hope Hicks said the campaign never talked to Russians. Sarah Sanders later morphed that into, “to the best of our knowledge.”

By early 2017, that changed to there were no, “planned meetings,” with Russians that quickly changed to one planned meeting, but about adoptions. That warped into it being a planned meeting about the campaign, but nothing happened.

By December 2017, the president decided collusion was not even a crime, and his new attorney, Rudy Giuliani decided that even if information was exchanged, the campaign did not use it.

More recently, there was a second planned meeting acknowledged by the New York Times, but, again, nothing happened, maybe.

This week, the newest collusion argument by the Trump folks is that the president wasn’t in the meeting, and collusion is still not a crime.

You see, just a witch hunt.

 

Jim Crawford is a retired educator, political enthusiast and award-winning columnist living here in the Tri-State.