The Russian Grassy Knoll: Pulling Collusion Out Of The SSCI Hat

As I said yesterday: no, the SSCI report does not--contra the increasingly loony and pathetic left--show there was collusion after all:

   By now you’d think promoters of the Russia-Trump 2016 collusion myth would give up from embarrassment, but they’ve become like believers in the second JFK shooter on the grassy knoll. Note how they spin the lack of evidence in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s final report into a reprise of false accusations.
   At nearly 1,000 pages, Volume 5 purports to analyze “Russian efforts to influence the Trump campaign and the 2016 election.” The sheer volume of detail about Trump campaign officials’ interactions over decades with Russians and Ukrainians provided the opening for conspiracy theorists to pretend this proves the case. 
   It proves nothing of the sort. Special Counsel Robert Mueller spent two years hunting for a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, only to concur with House investigators that there was no evidence. The Senate report throws innuendo at everyone from Carter Page to Donald Trump Jr., and claims that former campaign manager Paul Manafort’s ties to Russians posed a “grave counterintelligence threat.”
   Perhaps, but interacting with foreigners is not a crime. The report repeats Mr. Mueller’s findings that Mr. Manafort shared polling data with a Russian foreign national, but neither investigation provides evidence this mattered. Six committee Republicans make this crucial point in an “additional comments” section, scoring the report for failing to “explicitly” state that “the Committee found no evidence that then-candidate Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with the Russian government.”