You Want Collusion? I'll Give You Collusion!

Yesterday in a comment I linked to the excellent Michael Smerconish interview with law prof Jonathan Turley. Now, Smerconish and Turley are both liberals, but they did chapter and verse on "collusion" and they both came to the same end point: Ain't no collusion. Turley said the obligatory nice things about what a straight arrow Mueller is, but he also went down the line on IG Michael Horowitz and AG Bill Barr. He couldn't praise those two guys highly enough. And then he pointed out something interesting: If you want to find collusion, look no further than Ukrainian involvement in the 2016 election. As Turley says, what Mueller has done a great job on has been exposing collusion with Ukrainians, but we're not hearing much about that. Watch the whole interview here--it's not long.

Of course, if you really want to find out about Ukrainian collusion, just read The Mechanics of Deception and you'll get enough detail on that to choke a horse. It's all out there--it's been out there for a long time--but some people don't want you to hear about that.

So, this morning at Powerline, Scott Johnson had a nice blog on A redaction mystery solved. It seems that Mueller's sentencing memorandum on Paul Manafort has redacted publicly available information. Why would he do that? Aren't redactions for, like, secret stuff? Ah, well, there's a bit of a story to that, but it's not long and it's not terribly complicated.

Marc Elias: A Reminder

A search of this blog reveals, remarkably, that there appear to be no references to Marc Elias, so this post will remedy that. And right up front I want to offer (FWIW) a hat tip to Mark Penn, the former "pollster and adviser" to Bill Clinton, whose (typically) excellent article on the Roger Stone indictment and arrest brought Elias specifically to my attention (Mueller’s selective prosecution of Stone, Venezuelan-style).

Who is Marc Elias, and why is he important for understanding the Russia Hoax? Wikipedia explains it lucidly:

Marc Erik Elias (born February 1, 1969)[1] is an American attorney. He is a partner at the law firm Perkins Coie LLP and head of its Political Law practice. He is the general counsel for Kamala Harris's 2020 presidential campaign. He worked in the same role for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign and for John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign. 

... 

He served as lead counsel for Senator Al Franken in the 2008 Minnesota Senate election recount and contest, the longest recount and contest in American history.[6] Elias has testified before committees in both houses of Congress and before the Federal Election Commission on campaign finance.[7] Elias has worked on voting rights and redistricting lawsuits in Virginia, Ohio, Nevada, Minnesota, New York, Wisconsin, Texas, Florida and North Carolina.[8] 

... 

In April 2015 Hillary Clinton engaged Elias as attorney of record for her 2016 presidential campaign.[5] According to The Washington Post, in April 2016, Elias hired Fusion GPS on behalf of the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign to complete the research that resulted in the Donald Trump–Russia dossier.[11] ...

Are you getting the picture? You've heard of Super Lawyers? Well, in the legal field of Democrat politics, or simply politics generally, Marc Elias is an 800 lb. gorilla.