You're jumping to quite a few unwarranted conclusions there.

(05-30-2017 12:39 PM)illiniowl Wrote:  It is a crime to hack into servers and emails. See the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. No one - and I mean no one at all, across the entire political spectrum - disputes that a crime was committed in the DNC hacking and leaking.

What if the supposedly "hacked" information walked out of the building on Seth Rich's thumb drive? Where is the crime there? At this point there is no hard evidence of a hack--no trail of evidence, nothing really but opinions based on soft and circumstantial evidence at best. And there has been no evidence to contradict alternative explanations that have been offered.

Quote:The only question is whether the hackers (the Russians) acted alone.

Aside from the question of whether there was an actual hack (and the democrats' reluctance to give the FBI access to their servers certainly raises some questions there), there is no hard evidence that the hackers (if any) were in fact Russian. You have the opinions of the intel community, based not upon hard evidence but upon the estimation that the procedures were consistent with prior Russian activities. I've seen nobody actually connect any dots with hard evidence. Have you?

Quote:If Team Trump actually colluded with the Russians toward that end, that's conspiracy at a minimum, and while I'm not going to look up the legal definition of treason, it would certainly fit my working definition. And I'm a card-carrying Republican.

Conspiracy to do what? Conspiracy is an inchoate crime that requires has to have an illegal objective, plus mens rea, in order to be criminal. See the following concise definition at: http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-cha...iracy.html

"A criminal conspiracy exists when two or more people agree to commit almost any unlawful act, then take some action toward its completion. The action taken need not itself be a crime, but it must indicate that those involved in the conspiracy knew of the plan and intended to break the law. One person may be charged with and convicted of both conspiracy and the underlying crime based on the same circumstances."

What is the illegal act that is the object of any conspiracy that you allege?

Before you go proclaiming treason, you might want to look up that definition.The relevant section on of the Constitution (Article II, Section 3) states the following:

"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court."

Did anyone levy war against the US? Did anyone adhere to an enemy? Give an enemy aid and comfort? What enemy?

Quote:I doubt they did collude, at the end of the day, but the "even if they did, so what?" defense is where I get off the train.

I agree with this. If there was collusion to commit an unlawful act, then I have no use for the "even if they did, so what" defense. I have no use for the same defense applied to Hillary and her non-secure server, et al, to be clear. Same rule cuts both ways.

But what we have so far is a (really fairly small) number of contacts between people with some connections--some loose, some tighter--to Trump or the Trump administration. For example, Jeff Sessions is not going to plot a conspiracy with one meeting with Russian diplomats in his office and another chance occurrence at an event that they both happened to attend, both events openly chronicled over a six month period. That's not how you do conspiracies. You have more meetings, closer together, and they're in secret. Now if Sessions had such meetings, then the question could legitimately be raised. But I've seen no evidence of that. Have you?