The question has never been if the campaign colluded; it certainly did so publicly when then-GOP nominee Donald Trump encouraged Russians in July 2016 to find Hillary Clinton’s emails and again in the closing days of the campaign when he talked up the WikiLeaks email dump.

Since Mueller began, we have learned there was collusion in private, as with the meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016 with Russians, who promised dirt on Clinton. Then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr. all attended. They were willing to work with Russian operatives in private to help sink Clinton and elevate Trump to the presidency. That’s a dictionary definition of collusion.

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No, the question still before us is how deep and wide was the collusion and whether Trump was involved or aware of such efforts. If he knew of the Russian contacts, his alleged efforts to obstruct justice, to derail then-FBI Director James B. Comey’s investigation and to threaten to do the same with regard to Mueller, become understandable — and highly problematic. A motive always helps with a charge of obstruction, although it’s not a legal requirement of the charge.

Drilling down on Papadopoulos’s plea, we see a Trump campaign operative engaged in a prolonged effort to obtain Clinton dirt from the Russians. Moreover, we know he kept a “senior policy advisor,” a “supervisory campaign official” and a “high-ranking official of the campaign” in the loop. That’s no less than three other Trump associates who were aware of and/or countenancing the effort to work with Russian officials to find “dirt” on Clinton.

The Lawfare Blog notes that Papadopoulos directly interacted with Trump about Russian contacts:

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The stipulation also contains some rather damaging information about President Trump himself. Papadopoulos says he attended a “national security” meeting on March 31, 2016, at which Trump himself was present, along with his other foreign policy advisers. In that meeting, Papadopoulos told the group that he had connections to arrange a meeting between Trump and Russian President Putin. This means that Trump either knew or should have known about his campaign’s effort to interface with Russia, even as news of various criminal hacking and attempts to interfere with the U.S. election were becoming public.

It’s not clear yet whether Trump also knew that Papadopoulos was on the hunt for information from the Russians about Clinton. However, Trump, if he was paying attention, knew there were contacts with the Russians, something he continually denied publicly. Did Trump forget he heard about contacts between his campaign and the Russians? He says he has an excellent memory, so that’s a problematic defense.

Papadopoulos also has stipulated that “other foreign policy” types were at the March 31 meeting. In the photo from the Trump campaign Web Site we see one of those who was in attendance was now-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who was named on March 3 chairman of Trump’s National Security Advisory Committee. You will recall he testified under oath he knew of no such contacts between the campaign and Russian officials. That will require explanation.