I have been a “cautious skeptic” of the Trump-Russia collusion case from the beginning. While I continue to criticize President Trump for innumerable egregious actions and utterances, the notion that he conspired with agents of the Kremlin to undermine our democracy is too far-fetched a premise to even be considered a plausible plotline in a John le Carre spy novel.

My assessment isn’t predicated on blind partisan loyalty or misguided belief in “witch hunt” conspiracy theories. Like many former experienced federal agents and prosecutors, I implicitly understand the familiar cadence, tempo, and chronology of investigations. I certainly don’t pretend to have all the facts in evidence, nor claim to be privy to the seemingly leak-proof thoughts of special counsel Robert Mueller, but the indictment roadmap laid out thus far is enlightening. Heavy on ancillary process crimes and glaringly light on any indication that any American willingly conspired with representatives of the Kremlin, my instincts tell me we are rapidly nearing the investigation’s finish line and it may ultimately leave the #Resistance feeling unsatiated.

The tempest in the teapot early Friday morning was the FBI’s arrest of the ubiquitous Roger Stone, a longtime friend and confidant of Trump. Stone was charged in a seven-count indictment handed down by Mueller’s grand jury, and related to the 2016 election attack.

But after sifting through the neat 24-page document (just the latest in a string of charging instruments aimed at Trump campaign consorts, by the Mueller team) I'm left wondering why there still appears to be no there there. Or, as former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy so aptly describes the indictment for National Review :



"It alleges no involvement — by Stone or the Trump campaign — in Russia’s hacking. The indictment’s focus, instead, is the WikiLeaks end of the enterprise — i.e., not the 'cyberespionage' of a foreign power that gave rise to the investigation, but the dissemination of the stolen emails after the hacking. And what do we learn? That the Trump campaign did not know what WikiLeaks had. That is, in addition to being uninvolved in Russia’s espionage, the Trump campaign was uninvolved in Julian Assange’s acquisition of what Russia stole."



Pearl-clutching aside, last time I checked, opposition research (the quest to acquire and disseminate “dirt” on one’s political opponents) has long been a time-honored tradition in this great republic. Absent evidence of collusion, and since it appears the Trump campaign had no advance knowledge of, or participation in, any efforts to illegally hack computers belonging to Democrats, we are, once again, left with mere process crimes.

Don’t get me wrong: crime is crime. Whether perjury, obstruction of justice, or witness tampering, these are serious violations of law and should be dealt with accordingly. But despite the fervent hopes and dreams of the Left, they are not indicia of any underlying collusion scheme – the purpose of the special counsel’s investigation in the first place.

Ergo, the only way the Trump Resistance may be able to take down the “monster” they loathe is through the quaint, old-fashioned, and quite effective method of showing up at the polls and voting him out.

James A. Gagliano (@JamesAGagliano) worked in the FBI for 25 years. He is a law enforcement analyst for CNN and an adjunct assistant professor in homeland security and criminal justice at St. John's University.