Activists have dubbed tomorrow, July 27, “Collusion Day” to mark the two-year anniversary of Donald Trump’s public invitation to Russia to hack Hillary Clinton's emails.
It seems like every week brings a new major story in the ongoing saga of the investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties with Russia. The media has eagerly scrutinized each new development as though it was a plot twist in a TV drama (which, to be fair, is perhaps a closer analogue to our present reality than any historical precedent).
Despite the wall-to-wall coverage, it has been difficult for the media to keep pace with it all, and they’re the ones whose full-time job is to follow the story. What about the rest of us who don’t have time for that?
If we wait for a pause in the action to step back and take stock of the big picture, we’ll be zooming around in flying cars long before we get to it, since the investigation shows no sign of slowing down. Tomorrow is Collusion Day, which marks the two-year anniversary of Trump’s public invitation to Russia to hack Hillary Clinton's emails, and it’s as good an opportunity as any to do just that.
There are obviously many things we do not yet know, and it’s tempting to expend all our energy speculating on the exciting and/or terrifying possibilities. But there’s actually a lot we already know but just haven’t given space to let sink in yet.
As Jonathan Chait put it in a recent analysis for New York Magazine:
while the body of publicly available information about the Russia scandal is already extensive, the way it has been delivered — scoop after scoop of discrete nuggets of information — has been disorienting and difficult to follow. What would it look like if it were reassembled into a single narrative, one that distinguished between fact and speculation but didn’t myopically focus on the most certain conclusions?
Chait is an established journalist, not a fringe conspiracy theorist. I won’t rehash his arguments here, but when he looked through the evidence, he identified plausible outcomes ranging from the bad to the very, very bad. In his worst case scenario, Trump has been influenced or compromised by Russia for decades, and is continuing to collude with the Kremlin even as president.
But again, we’re letting ourselves get sidetracked by speculation. What do we actually know right now?
A great deal, it turns out:
-
We know that Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, has been indicted on charges of money laundering.
-
We know that two of his former senior advisors — national security advisor Michael Flynn and foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos — have pleaded guilty to perjuring themselves to the FBI in connection with the investigation.
-
We know that Manafort, Jared Kushner, and Donald Trump Jr. met with a Russian lawyer promising dirt on Hillary Clinton, despite being told via email that the information “is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”
-
We know that Trump himself, two years ago tomorrow, urged Russia to hack Clinton, declaring at a news conference, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.”
Those are the known facts, agreed upon not just within the liberal bubble but also at Fox News. Take a moment to think about all that. How much more evidence do we need before we’re ready to take action?
If your answer to that question is “none,” there are steps you can take as part of #CollusionDay tomorrow. Call your U.S. Senators at 1-833-293-9454 and demand they support the Special Counsel Independence and Integrity Act, which would protect the Mueller investigation.
We may not yet know where the investigation will ultimately lead, but we don’t need to stand by idly waiting for every last detail to emerge. We already know the big picture, and if that doesn’t spur us to action, we have only ourselves to blame.
Samuel Breslow is an intern for Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest and fights the corrosive influence of corporate power. He grew up in New Hampshire and is majoring in sociology at Pomona College.