Quote:
Originally Posted by David Sklansky
I doubt that there was actual collusion between Russia and Trump people because Russia didn't need them and because they would have been worried that the Americans would have exposed them in spite of their desire to elect Trump. And they would have been right since many Trump supporters would in fact have snitched, not because they were patriotic but because they wouldn't want to risk jail.
1) Once you've decided to hack the DNC, deploy thousands of fake twitter trolls, and use them to disseminate fake news about a US presidental campaign, you're already in some pretty dangerous territory wrt exposing your op. Getting some assistance from the Americans doesn't significantly increase the likelihood that the op gets discovered, especially when you keep in mind that:
2) If the allegations are true, the Russians didn't just randomly start calling people in the Manhattan phone book and ask them if they wanted to work on a Presidential campaign. Manafort, Page, Flynn, etc, all have long-standing relationships with the Russian govermnent and oligarchs. So, they would have had a chance to test these guys in other situations before dropping the super secret election plan on them.
And
3) There are obvious benefits to collusion that would not be available if the Russians just freelanced the op. Just off the top of my head, having access to internal polling data, messaging calendars, travel schedules, ad buys, etc, would all be beneficial.