The Trump-Russia “collusion” farce gets everything bass-ackwards.

As we’ve pointed out many times, collusion is not a crime; conspiracy is. To prove a conspiracy, you need more than mere association and collaborative action; you need an agreement to commit a specific statutory violation of penal law. Thus far, there is no indication that an actual crime has been committed.

Under the regulations for special-counsel appointments, there is supposed to be cause to believe a crime has been committed before a prosecutor is appointed. Yet, we have a prosecutor assigned to the case even though there is, as yet, no crime. The Justice Department has given this special counsel, Robert Mueller, carte blanche to hunt for a crime, notwithstanding that his jurisdiction is supposed to be circumscribed by the crime(s) that the Justice Department first specifies in appointing him – i.e., the suspected offenses trigger the appointment, the appointment is not supposed to trigger a search for suspected offenses.