offers from russian-affiliated individuals to assist the trump campaign. it is silent as to whether they accepted some of that assistance. it just simply says that they didn t coordinate and they weren t part of the conspiracy. and so i think one question that congress is really going to have to wrestle with is what level of activity is acceptable. otherwise we could go into the 2020 election with campaigns being under the impression that communication, some level of being in receipt of offers from foreign powers is okay, even if it doesn t rise to the level of criminal conspiracy. and as a national security lawyer, that doesn t sound right. hold on one second. in the instructions that robert mueller received from the then agenti agent acting attorney general, rod rosenstein, his instruction were to investigate any links and/or coordination there wasn t a word collusion. wasn t conspiracy. it was coordination between the russian government and
individuals associated with the campaign of president donald trump. so they investigated that, and on the issue of coordination, he concluded, mueller, there certainly wasn t enough coordination to justify criminal charges. to justify criminal charges. so what i m suggesting, there may be some gray space in between activity that is offers from a foreign power to assist a campaign. there is some space in between that, and what is criminal conspiracy. and i just think as a country, we need to think more about that. can i just back up what you just said, with a sentence from this report? because it s not this report the conclusions. the russians tried. they reached out. right. and it says, the special counsel did not find that the trump campaign or anyone associated conspired or coordinated with the russian government in these efforts, despite multiple offers from russian affiliated individuals to assist the trump campaign. and it s worth underscoring, we re not just talking
attacks. they re angry partisan democrats. they were trying to bring down the president and low and behold, they defended the president and found him basically not guilty on count one, and i think that shows that this was an impartial group. then we ought to show a lot of respect for their findings. whether we like it or not, and there are many, many people out there that are going to be extremely disappointed by this outcome. but this was a way, a good way a country settles significant disputes. we do it through the rule of law, and i think that s to be celebrated. it s clear, david, that the democrats on capitol hill are not happy with this conclusion that there was no collusion or conspiracy or cooperation between the trump campaign and the russians. well, i can understand why they re disappointed. they thought this was there have been so many things that have been suspicious about this, and when the president today
has concluded it s over. sort of. i mean, if you look at the basic pillars of the investigation, collusion with the russians, the special counsel says no. obstruction, the special counsel as we just discussed says over to the department of justice and the attorney general, and i think he s supportable on this. i support him and rosenstein said no. there is one word that doesn t appear significantly in the special counsel s final four-page document interpreted by the department of justice. money. what happened to manafort? money. what happened to gates? money. what happened to cohen? dirty money. when we re talking about exoneration of the president and his circle, we could talk about participation and conspiracy related to the election. we could talk about obstruction of the investigation, but if you look at indictments already, several of them, the most significant including manafort are money, and if you look at what the southern district is investigating, i suspect money.
which i thought was an inappropriate remark just a short while ago that this was an illegal takedown that failed. it s worth remembering that what set this investigation off, what triggered it was suspicious activity by people who worked in the trump campaign. and that was picked up by our counterintelligence people. that s when the ball started rolling toward this investigation. so i think we can question aspects of the investigation as jeffrey did and is an admirable summary of what was stated today. but i think nonetheless, we have had a fair now and a very thorough investigation, and on the fundamental question of a conspiracy, they just didn t find the evidence. and by the way, that s what the house intelligence committee has said, and the senate intelligence committee basically have said. they haven t found serious conspiracy. yeah. that s an important point as well.