After insisting relentlessly there was no collusion between his campaign and Russia, the president shifted gears Tuesday morning and adopted the same language his lawyer Rudy Giuliani pitched on TV Monday.
NYT:
In the days after the 2016 presidential election, Donald J. Trump’s advisers had an unequivocal message about contacts between Russians and members of the campaign team: There were none.
In the ensuing months, as numerous such communications were revealed, the message changed: There was no collusion with Russia’s effort to disrupt the election.
On Monday, President Trump’s lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani consistently presented a third line of defense: Even if Mr. Trump did collude with the Russians, he committed no crime.
President Trump tweeted the following today:
Trump is correct in that the word "collusion" does not appear in U.S. law, but the crimes the president and his associates are facing do exist.
NYT:
Legal experts agree that is at least technically correct, as the federal criminal code does not detail a crime of “collusion.” Any possible crime, they said, would be a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russians to break laws regulating elections.
But some experts said the difference between “collusion” and “conspiracy” is semantic.
“It’s just a word choice,” said Julie O’Sullivan, a criminal law professor at Georgetown University. “I’m sure nobody in the Justice Department has ever investigated collusion, but they’ve certainly investigated conspiracy.
“And Rudy,” she said of Mr. Trump’s lawyer, a former associate attorney general and United States attorney in Manhattan, “knows better.”
How Trump Allies Shifted Their Defense as Evidence of Contacts With Russians Grew (NYT)