You're going to find those ties everywhere you look, with anyone and everyone who does business overseas. It's a global economy, and the Russians are players in it, as are all sorts of countries Mueller is looking into, like China, Israel, UAE, and a host of others. That's the nature of globalization.
Proving election collusion from that is a totally different thing however.
I never bought into the notion there was actual collusion in the sense that people in the campaign contacted foreign operatives and said, “Hey, let’s get together and win this election.†The Trump Tower meeting was bad optics, but is not proof of collusion in itself. Now, had they gotten the “dirt“ they were looking for and openly worked to remove sanctions once in office, you’d have a problematic quid pro quo.
IMO, they made some bad hiring decisions and rookie political mistakes during the campaign. That’s not a crime, but the obfuscation and unwillingness to own up to it invited the current scrutiny. Trump doesn’t easily admit to mistakes and surrounds himself with family or sycophants who will not challenge him. Eventually, that led to the investigation of what I believe will be Trump’s biggest problem - Michael Cohen.
Few people doubt that Trump had to make unsavory deals with people as a real estate developer in New York and various corners of the world. For decades, that was business as usual and worked for him. Unfortunately, I think some of those decisions and thinking bled into politics. Since he was never challenged on it, he and those around him figured it would remain so. Given the amount of material collected in the FBI seizure, that’s where we may find wrongdoing, ultimately.
