More proof the Trump-Russia collusion never happened

There is a key scene in the movie of the Tom Clancy thriller “The Hunt for Red October.”

A hot-headed Russian sub captain, hot on the trail of the Red October, a fictional ballistic missile submarine, and its defecting Captain Ramius, fires a torpedo over the objections of his lieutenants. Instead of hitting the Red October, the torpedo boomerangs and winds up heading straight for the sub that fired it. The last words of one angry lieutenant: “You arrogant ass! You’ve killed us!” And . . . boom.

The scene came to mind while reading this story in The Washington Post. The headline: “FBI has questioned Trump campaign adviser Carter Page at length in Russia probe.”

The story began this way:

Ohhhh noooooo!

What was missing from this Post story? And a successive Post story found here?

What was missing was proof. Proof of Trump’s collusion with the Russians to steal the 2016 election. There is a reason there was no proof. It never happened. After months of this fake news charade, there is zero evidence of this so-called Trump collusion.

So instead the focus is on, in this case, Carter Page. As it happens, I have heard directly from Mr. Page. Note well that he sat down with these FBI agents without a lawyer. Hardly the mark of a guilty man who has something to hide. Mr. Page has sent me his full statement on his time with the FBI, which he described as “too punchy” for the Post. The full statement reads this way:

Mr. Page also shared his letter with Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Senator Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Ranking Member Senator Mark Warner, D-Va. That letter is dated June 8, 2017, with subject “People in glass SCIF’s shouldn’t throw stones - Response to James Comey’s testimony,” reads in part:

There’s more in the letter, but you get the flavor. So what to make of it all?

Carter Page is adamant. He did nothing — zero — wrong. He has repeatedly asked for the opportunity to testify in public. When asked to meet with the FBI, repeatedly, he not only willingly complies but he shows up without a lawyer, instantly putting himself at risk.

This is the mark of an innocent man. By his own account, the sum of his contact with then-candidate Donald Trump was to show up at rallies. He has not even had a handshake from him. All of which says the obvious to any normal political observer who is awake. Not only did Page do nothing wrong — or we would surely have had that leaked long ago — but even if he wanted to, Carter Page had no ability whatsoever to “collude” and change the election.

As a Pennsylvanian who has spent a long time crisscrossing this state successively with a congressman, U.S. senator, and president, I know that the notion that Carter Page had the ability, much less the opportunity, to derail the Pennsylvania election system to his candidate of choice is not simply wildly wrong, it is bizarre. If this were doable, rest assured some conniving Pennsylvania Republican or Democrat running a campaign here would have done this years ago. The fact is that it can’t be done. Pennsylvania has 67 counties, with elections run by the individual counties and the precinct officials within those counties. It is preposterous to believe that Carter Page or anybody other than the voters of the Commonwealth delivered Pennsylvania into the Trump column on election day.

So now what? Next up in the headlines is onetime Trump adviser Roger Stone. Full disclosure, I worked with Roger as a colleague in the 1984 Reagan re-election campaign. Roger is many things. Controversial for sure. Smart. Very politically savvy. He too is not being allowed to testify in public in spite of his repeated requests. And what applies to Carter Page applies to Roger Stone. As smart as he is, there is no way Roger Stone could possibly have manipulated the elections in 67 Pennsylvania counties to make it swing to Trump. If Roger Stone knew Vladimir Putin as a lifelong poker playing buddy, he could not have gotten this done.

If any more proof is needed about Carter Page, Roger Stone, and ultimately President Trump’s non-collusion with the Russians, look no further then this statement from President Obama, as reported back in October 2016 by Reuters.

Well said, Mr. President! That is exactly right.

So. Again. What do we have here?

As my CNN colleague Van Jones said the other day when asked about the Russian “collusion” charge, this is a “nothingburger.” Carter Page could spend twice the time he has now quite voluntarily spent with the FBI, and the results would still be the same. There was no collusion with Donald Trump and the Russians.

But to recall again that scene from "The Hunt for Red October," what these multiple investigations have started to reveal is that it was the Obama administration — in the person of Attorney General Loretta Lynch — that tried to steer FBI Director Comey away from using the term “investigation” when talking about the FBI looking into the Clinton email fiasco and instead use a word acceptable to the Clinton campaign: a “matter.” They have also now revealed that President Obama himself was in fact concerned about Russian interference and, in the word of an Obama official, “choked” when it came to doing anything. Why? Because, apparently, he didn’t want to taint or impede what he thought was Hillary Clinton’s sure-thing victory.

In other words, the torpedo intended to sink the Trump presidency is now bearing down on the Obama presidency.

Sometimes you just can’t make it up.