Donald Trump Tweets 'Collusion Is Not a Crime', Echoing Rudy Giuliani's Defense

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For months, PresidentDonald Trumphas repeatedly and vehemently denied that his campaign conspired with Russia during the 2016 election. Now he appears to be launching a new line of defense — doubling down on his attorneyRudy Giuliani‘s claim that “collusion is not a crime.”

The tweet comes a day after Giuliani made the same claim in multiple television appearances.

“I don’t even know if that’s a crime, colluding about Russians,” Giuliani told CNN in one of the interviews. “You start analyzing the crime — the hacking is the crime. The president didn’t hack. He didn’t pay them for hacking.”

In another appearance onFox & Friends, Giuliani said, “I have been sitting here looking in the federal code trying to find collusion as a crime. Collusion is not a crime.”

Legal experts agree that collusion itself is not a federal crime. But according to Bloomberg,even if Trump wasn’t personally involved in Russian hacking efforts, he could still befound guilty of aiding and abettingif it’s proven that he counseled Russians to commit a federal hacking crime.

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Earlier this month, special counsel Robert Mueller indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers in connection with the hacking ofHillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee’s computer network. Mueller is also investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia and whether Trump has obstructed justice.

source: people.com