A short diary about a whopping and voluminous number of things Giuliani gets wrong. And I’m convinced he gets it deliberately wrong.
Collusion or Conspiracy?
Largely the same as to be practically interchangeable, except for one vital detail — when the indictments are written up, they’ll use the accepted legal term ‘conspiracy’. To sidestep falling into the rat trap set by wingnut framing, we should eschew ‘collusion’ and consider using ‘conspiracy’ too.
Is Collusion not a Crime?
It’s not. Technically, however, neither is ‘conspiracy’, in that a group of people can conspire to perpetrate a surprise birthday party. That’s stretching the legal meaning of both the words ‘conspiracy’, and ‘perpetrate’, but it’s all still perfectly valid English, and in the spirit of poesy, that sort of usage might well be quite desirable.
But note that you’ll always be adding a verb (perpetrate) followed by a noun (birthday party). Collusion/Conspiracy to perpetrate a surprise birthday party. Does that make the subject of the collusion (perpetrate the party) important? Yes it does.
Giuliani’s Misdirection
It makes that subject perhaps the most important point of major interest in the phrase. Here’s a comment of mine from earlier today:
I tell my RWNJ associates that collusion indeed is not a crime, but it’s collusion to do . . . what? . . . exactly?
And let’s look each other in the eye — the answer probably isn’t shoplifting at the dollar store.
Even when they write the indictment up using the legal term ‘conspiracy’, collusion to commit a crime is a crime.
So when Giuliani says that collusion is not a crime for the ninety-fourth time, answer back, “collusion to do what?” If nothing else, what’s being perpetrated in the WH, exactly, is the real question on all of our minds anyway.