> you missed a lot of context there... starting with the sentence just before your selection where they make it clear they're not talking about "collusion" but about conspiracy. Not finding evidence for conspiracy is not the same thing as not finding evidence for collusion.

> "For that reason, this Office’s focus in resolving the question of joint criminal liability was on conspiracy as defined in federal law, not the commonly discussed term “collusion.”"

I didn't miss that, it just wasn't particularly relevant. The "that reason" was that it just isn't a rigorously defined legal term. The correct term to use is "conspiracy", as carefully explained in the context you missed.

> "As explained in Section IV above, the Office’s investigation uncovered evidence of numerous links (i.e., contacts) between Trump Campaign officials and individuals having or claiming to have ties to the Russian government."

Not evidence of collusion to break the law (aka conspiracy).

> "Finally, although the evidence of contacts between Campaign officials and Russia-affiliated individuals may not have been sufficient to establish or sustain criminal charges, several U.S. persons connected to the Campaign made false statements about those contacts and took other steps to obstruct the Office’s investigation and those of Congress."

Not of charges of conspiracy to hack the election though. Nobody ever claimed that out of hundreds of people in Trump's campaign or associated with him had never committed any crimes. I think the crimes (aside from the process crimes) they actually did find evidence for were things that had been committed before the people were associated with the campaign.

> This is part of the problem. They've got a ton of evidence of collusion. In this same section they make that clear by calling out the meeting between "campaign officials and Russians promising derogatory information on Hillary Clinton". That alone is evidence of collusion.

_What_ is evidence of collusion to illegally interfere in the election?

> When you say there's no evidence of collusion it's just wrong. The problem they had is that "collusion" itself isn't a crime you can charge someone with.

Colluding to hack the election absolutely is a criminal conspiracy that could be charged. That's what we're talking about here. There was no evidence for it.

Sure there was lots of evidence for lots of things that weren't crimes.

> They instead had to see if other crimes (like conspiracy) were committed in the course of the collusion that took place. Nothing they had was enough to meet that standard.

No, you misunderstand this entire aspect of the report. The Horowitz report was damning and said that evidence that was turned up by the investigation was continually exculpatory.

> Information from a trusted ally that one or more individuals working on Trump's campaign may have information about an attempt by a foreign nation to influence US elections sure is!

No, it isn't. It came from a foreign diplomat to a 3rd foreign country and related to alleged drunken boast that they thought Russia had dirt. That's not reasonable evidence of Trump colluding with Putin to hack the election. It just isn't. I can't fathom how you think that would be a reasonable system of justice, it sounds like some horrible communist police state.

> I guess we can disagree on if that should be enough information to investigate, but the FBI felt that it was. I suspect that people telling other people things is a pretty common way to gather intelligence and you'd probably find a lot of foreign intelligence the US government feels is actionable to be insufficient to warrant even an investigation.

No, these particular claims should almost certainly have been investigated for what they were. They were not evidence of Trump colluding with Putin to hack the election though so they absolutely should not have kicked off a full scale investigation into Trump and his entire presidential campaign. Not unless they turned up something further. Which it did not, as the Mueller report says, and the Horowitz report confirms.

> Um... amusing you're in the US literally every communication you have transmitted over a wire is being spied on. It's been true for ages. Same for everyone else in the US. I'm not saying that it's right, but in the US the justification for spying is not something our government is concerned about. Maybe you are right and they should need more evidence but with things as they right now, they had all the evidence they needed.

Wiretapping and unmasking doesn't get done as a matter of course. Well maybe it does and we don't know about it.

> Here you've made a pretty big claim that goes against the views of many experts: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cyber...

You actually misunderstand that article though, which is (not so) cleverly written to mislead people who are desperately looking for confirmation of their preconceived notions. They did not claim the Russians were the ones who exfiltrated those emails or leaked them. The claim was that they had compromised some of their systems.

"Since the documents have been posted anonymously, there is no clear way to prove their origin"

"It is also possible, researchers said, that someone else besides the Russians were inside the DNC’s network and had access to the same documents."

No claims were ever made about the documents. And nobody ever accused the DNC of running a competent or secure information technology outfit. You only have to look at the likes of their top people in Clinton and Podesta to find it more surprising to learn that Russia, China and others hadn't compromised their systems.

So no, I didn't make a pretty big claim at all. In fact the claim I made is completely supported by link you provided.

> It would take stronger evidence or at least a larger consensus of expert analysis to convince me otherwise. What convinced you?

Even though that link does support me in this case, I will say this though, lots of experts allegedly claimed there was strong evidence that Trump colluded with Putin to hack the election too. The claims about that evidence are just laughable too. At best it's just plausible.

Claims of "expertise" or "independence" on this subject are just worthless. Appeals to authority. What we have to look at is the actual evidence of our own eyes. If that is not provided, then it is not evidence. "Trust me bro" is not evidence. Not even from self-proclaimed independent experts, unfortunately.