Opinion

Editorials: Rudy’s law school dunce cap; and Baseball!

July 30, 2018

Damning evidence about intent. A piece of a puzzle, others of which we have also seen.

“Collusion is not a crime”

The American president’s most prominent lawyer — for now at least — declared on the presidents main television propaganda channel that “Collusion is not a crime… The hacking is the crime. The president didn’t hack.”

We might go back into history and talk about Rudy Giuliani the prosecutor, a “War on Drugs” ground breaker in who was the top federal drug prosecutor in New York in 1973. Since his days serving the Nixon administration the verdict in that war is still not reversed. Giuliani may have sent a lot of people to prison but his side lost that war. Along the way, however, he surely learned something about US conspiracy laws, the invocation of which was how he made his living.

In 1975 Giuliani was moved off of the drug beat and gained some public prominence in the bribery prosecution of US Representative Bert Podell. The bribery charge did not stick but Podell was cornered into pleading guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States and violation of the federal conflict of interest law. It seems that the Democrat from Brooklyn agreed to a payoff but it could not be proven that such payment actually happened. But the federal conspiracy law casts a wide net:

18 USC §371. Conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud United States
If two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.
If, however, the offense, the commission of which is the object of the conspiracy, is a misdemeanor only, the punishment for such conspiracy shall not exceed the maximum punishment provided for such misdemeanor.

18 USC §1030. Fraud and related activity in connection with computers
(a) Whoever-
(6) knowingly and with intent to defraud traffics (as defined in section 1029) in any password or similar information through which a computer may be accessed without authorization, if-
(A) such trafficking affects interstate or foreign commerce …
shall be punished as provided in subsection (c) of this section.

There is no heading of “collusion” in US federal criminal law. But one who acts in concert with another person who hacks into somebody’s computer and traffics in the proceeds of that invasion, for the purpose of winning a public office that among other things includes the power to appoint the US Secretary of Commerce, or as Vladimir Putin more specifically wanted, to ease sanctions on Russia? That person has conspired to commit a computer crime.

Rudy Giuliani knows this. He is making law student flunkout arguments, much akin to the guy behind bars for felony murder who protests that he didn’t shoot the convenience store clerk in that robbery, he just drove the getaway car.

Giuliani, of course, has a backup position. In any case, he argues, there wasn’t any collusion. There is already a lot of evidence on the public record to suggest that there was. Mr. Mueller has alleged much more in indictments bringing charges that may some day have to be proven in court. Some of those who were participants in parts of this scheme have already pleaded guilty.

The ground is being prepared for the President of the United States to defend the untenable in expectation of damning new information to come. That’s what Giuliani’s lame argument is all about.