I get that, but ...
So far, none of the (known) Papadopoulus stuff approaches that - the guilty plea stuff never mentioned anything financial. It was just "come, let's make nice on trips to Russia." (Maybe they left that out because he was The Wire guy, and they don't want to show their financial hand...yet.)
But also the (known) indictments for stuff going back to 2006, well before the campiagn, seem like routine money-laundering stuff (as if that's routine!?) .
So - so far I'm not seeing the financial connection. Maybe that comes in the future. But if all I ever hear is that Russians flooded the Marketplace of Ideas with "Clinton SUCKS!" e-posters, I'm yawning.
Or, I could go all "Grassy Knoll" on you - what if that Russian professor was a Clinton plant? What if the Clinton's set all this up? Ya know, Bendini, Lambert & Locke is just across the river from Arkansas....
Here is the possible criminal element that you may be missing,aside from the financial aspect...From a CNN analysis...
"But "[o]n or about" April 26, 2016, Papadopoulous again met with the Professor in a London hotel. The complaint reads that the Professor told him he had "just returned from a trip to Moscow where he had met with high-level Russian government officials" where he learned that the Russians "have dirt" on Hillary Clinton; "the Russians had emails of Clinton" -- "they have thousands of emails."
"This date is important because The Washington Post only first reported on June 14, 2016, that the hackers working for the Kremlin had penetrated the servers of the Democratic National Committee. And while this correspondence, first published by WikiLeaks in late July, days before the Democratic National Convention, was distinct from Clinton's personal emails and those she turned over to the FBI as part of the investigation into her use of a personal server to conduct government business while she was secretary of state, it nonetheless caused a scandal within the Democratic Party."
The Russians essentially told Pap in August that they had illegally obtained emails thru the hacking of the computer of a US citizen.A crime.
Pap passed that info on to people within the Trump Campaign,and neither Trump's people or Pap passed the info they had regarding a CRIME by a foreign power to the FBI.That borders on being an accomplice,and may potentially set the groundwork for an actual collusion charge.The only believable reason Pap/Trump's people had for with holding that info,is that they felt it benefitted them.Back to CNN's piece...
"The Trump campaign had been informed and were therefore cognizant of Moscow's cyberespionage against Clinton long before that operation was public knowledge and before the content of it was used to influence the US presidential election.
"What makes this especially problematic for the White House is that throughout the campaign and well into his presidency when he had access to classified intelligence, Trump has either denied or doubted or downplayed Russian involvement in the DNC and Podesta breaches. He has, inter alia, wondered if China was the real culprit, or a 400-pound person sitting on their bed, or maybe no one hacked the emails at all.
In fact, Trump first suggested the DNC hacked itself to distract from the ongoing FBI case into Clinton's personal server use. In late July 2016, he also told a press conference: "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing" from Clinton's server, a comment he later described as laced with sarcasm."
http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/30/opinions/how-team-trump-heard-russians-hacked-clinton-opinion-weiss/index.html
