Now that we know the general direction Special Counsel Robert Mueller is moving in as it relates to the Russia investigation, MSNBC host Joy Reid invited a former Watergate prosecutor to explain what happens next.
Appearing on All in With Chris Hayes Wednesday evening, Nick Akerman discussed the meeting between Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, and Russian officials who said they had dirt on Hillary Clinton. Akerman noted:
“So we know a crime was committed, the only question is, ‘did the Trump campaign conspire with the Russians in order to throw the election to Donald Trump?’ All of the evidence here, all of the indications, indicate the answer is yes.
“And who is the person that’s communicating with both Guccifer 2.0 and Wikileaks? Roger Stone, Donald Trump’s main political operative.”
Next, Akerman carefully drew the lines of connection that he believes Mueller is now following:
“So to me if you look at the overall picture and the overall timeline, you clearly have a conspiracy, to basically steal the e-mails from the Democratic National Committee in order to throw the election to Donald Trump. You’ve got lots of indications that somewhere in this process the Trump campaign joined that conspiracy.
“It’s a conspiracy to violate the federal computer hacking law, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and that’s where I think all of this is going.”
Fellow guest Natasha Bertrand, a reporter for Business Insider who has been covering the Russian investigation since the beginning, agreed with Akerman, telling Reid:
“There is no way that Donald Trump Jr. — who tells his father everything and always has, from my own reporting and others reporting it’s been made very clear in business, in life in general, he always went to his dad for everything — was not telling his father about this very important meeting that he apparently was anticipating for a long time at Trump Tower, where his father was on that very day.
“I think this is something that goes overlooked is that Trump himself was at Trump Tower on June 9th and he was there supposedly around the time that this meeting occurred.”
While the word “collusion” has been used repeatedly, it’s important to realize that the real crime we’re talking about is a criminal conspiracy. And every single person who had a role that conspiracy will eventually be indicted, including Donald Trump.
Featured Image Via CNN
