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Former Republican strategist Steve Schmidt came out and said that Trump colluded with Russia, the question now does it meet the standard for felony conspiracy.

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Schmidt said:

What we’ve known for a long time, was there collusion? Of course, there was. When the leading officials of the presidential campaign go to a meeting with Russian intelligence operatives for the purpose of receiving dirt on the Democratic Party’s nominee for president, they were colluding with a hostile foreign intelligence power. What I don’t know is does it meet the legal definition of felony conspiracy against the United States? And that’s what we’re going to find out over the course of the investigation.

But I know this for sure — on any of the campaigns that we worked on together and we worked on two presidential campaigns together, and I know for sure whether you’re talking about the senior people who we were in opposition against on the Obama campaign, on the John Kerry campaign, people that we know well. Not a single person on any of those campaigns around Barack Obama or John Kerry, if they were called and asked do you want to meet with Russian intelligence operatives, officials, people with ties to the Kremlin to get dirt on George W. Bush or John McCain, the answer would have been hell no, and they would have called the FBI.

It isn’t about collusion, but can Mueller prove it

Steve Schmidt nailed it. The Russia scandal is no longer about whether or not Trump colluded with Russia, but if the Special Counsel can prove that Trump campaign conspired with a hostile foreign power and committed a felony. The question isn’t did they or didn’t they, but if it can be proven in court that they did.

The investigation has moved beyond the basic questions of commission and into building court cases against those who will be accused of crimes.

Trump is freaking because the investigation has progressed. Donald Trump doesn’t need a PR effort anymore. He needs a good legal defense, and tweeting no collusion in all caps isn’t going to get the job done.

For more discussion about this story join our Rachel Maddow and MSNBC group.