> It does not say that explicitly. You claim it does, so prove it.

"The Office
considered in particular whether contacts between Trump Campaign officials and Russia-linked
individuals could trigger liability for the crime of conspiracy—either under statutes that have their
own conspiracy language (e.g., 18 U.S.C. §§ 1349, 1951(a)), or under the general conspiracy
statute (18 U.S.C. § 371). The investigation did not establish that the contacts described in Volume
I, Section IV, supra, amounted to an agreement to commit any substantive violation of federal
criminal law—including foreign-influence and campaign-finance laws, both of which are
discussed further below. The Office therefore did not charge any individual associated with the
Trump Campaign with conspiracy to commit a federal offense arising from Russia contacts, either
under a specific statute or under Section 371’s offenses clause.
The Office also did not charge any campaign official or associate with a conspiracy under
Section 371’s defraud clause. That clause criminalizes participating in an agreement to obstruct a
lawful function of the U.S. government or its agencies through deceitful or dishonest means. See
Dennis v. United States , 384 U.S. 855, 861 (1966); Hammerschmidt v. United States , 265 U.S.
182, 188 (1924); see also United States v. Concord Mgmt. & Consulting LLC, 347 F. Supp. 3d 38,
46 (D.D.C. 2018). The investigation did not establish any agreement among Campaign officials—
or between such officials and Russia-linked individuals—to interfere with or obstruct a lawful
function of a government agency during the campaign or transition period. And, as discussed in
Volume I, Section V.A, supra, the investigation did not identify evidence that any Campaign
official or associate knowingly and intentionally participated in the conspiracy to defraud that the
Office charged, namely, the active-measures conspiracy described in Volume I, Section II, supra.
Accordingly, the Office did not charge any Campaign associate or other U.S. person with
conspiracy to defraud the United States based on the Russia-related contacts described in Section
IV above."

It _also_ contains weasel wording to the effect that not finding evidence does not mean none exists, and talking about reasonable doubt when considering charging, but that's pretty meaningless because any circumstantial evidence falls under that category. There'd probably be more circumstantial evidence that Obama colluded with Putin to "hack the election" than Trump did, so making these bold *not exonerated* statements is ridiculous.

Adam Schiff, despite years lying and disseminating false information and conspiracy theories in an effort to overturn a democratic election from his privileged position in an intelligence committee, never elaborated on any of that alleged "ample evidence" that he repeatedly lied about seeing. Wouldn't he have tried to save some face if anything remotely compelling was actually there? There never was.

> It was clear pretty much immediately that Russia was engaged in a campaign to influence the election. That alone is a big deal. A genuine threat to our democracy. Folks were very concerned about foreign interference in our elections.

That's not evidence Trump colluded with Putin to hack the election. Obama actually was not concerned about it, after secretly promising Putin he would be "more flexible", he ordered US cyber security agency to stand down and cease countering Russia's cyber attacks in the lead up to the election.

https://news.yahoo.com/obama-cyber-chief-confirms-stand-orde...

While that was happening he was also lying to the American people about the election being absolutely secure and under no threats. There's far more circumstantial evidence he colluded with Putin to hack the election than Trump did, if that's the standard of "evidence" we're going by.

> Evidence that Trump and his campaign my have been involved started with Australia notifying the US that Papadopoulos (an adviser to Trump's campaign) might have known about the hacked emails before they were released. Papadopoulos had told Alexander Downer (an Australian diplomat) that Russia had acquired and could leak material that would be damaging to Clinton. The FBI started to dig in and found there were a lot of links between the Trump campaign and Russia (For examples see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Links_between_Trump_associates...).

Claims by some person that some other person claimed that they somehow knew about Russia having damaging information isn't evidence to open an investigation of treason on a political campaign.

> So here we had Trump, with all these connections to Russia, taking advantage of and benefiting directly from the criminal acts committed by Russia to influence the election. That isn't direct evidence that Trump or his campaign did anything criminal, but it's plenty of reason for an investigation.

This is just more handwaving about "all these connections". There's no actual evidence. Probable cause is more than just "oh a friend of a friend told me", or "oh he knew all these people". Imagine thinking that justified wiretapping and investigating a political campaign -- you could spy on anybody. Look at all Biden's connections and allegations about his links with foreign countries. Or Clinton's.

> I'm glad they did their job and investigated.

They never had solid probable cause for such a wide ranging investigation and it really looks like a politically motivated muck raking exercise, and a baseless conspiracy theory peddled by the DNC and their lackeys in the media and bureaucracy.

> For what it's worth, I'm actually glad Russia hacked the DNC and exposed the fact that they were/are corrupt. They ignored the will of democratic voters by selecting their preferred candidate before the primary and worked directly with Hillary's campaign to undermine her opposition to get her elected. Many people had already been suspecting that was true, but if not for the email hack we wouldn't have had the evidence to prove it.

There isn't even good evidence that it was Russia that exfiltrated the emails.