Collusion may be impossible to prove; EU & Russia’s disinformation war; Russia’s national identity; and more

Decoding Mueller’s 17-month investigation has been a publicly frustrating exercise, as individual puzzle pieces, like Flynn’s sentencing memo, often don’t hint at the final assembled picture—nor even tell us if we’re looking at a single interlocking puzzle, in which all the pieces are related, or multiple, separate, unrelated ones.
The sheer breadth of alleged, unrelated criminality by so many different Trumpworld players—from Paul Manafort’s money laundering and European bribes to Michael Flynn’s Turkish conspiracies to Michael Cohen’s tax fraud to even the indictments of the first two members of Congress to endorse Trump, representatives Chris Collins and Duncan Hunter—make it particularly difficult to disentangle what might have transpired at Trump Tower and the White House.
Mueller’s investigation, though, has been remarkably focused and consistent straight through—zeroing in on five distinct investigative avenues: money laundering and Russian-linked business deals; the Russian government’s cyberattack on the DNC, other entities, and state-level voting systems; its related online information influence operations, by the Internet Research Agency; the sketchy contacts by Trump campaign and transition officials with Russia; and the separate question of whether Trump himself, or others, actively tried to obstruct justice by impeding the investigation of the above.
A sixth investigative avenue was opened this spring by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, where Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance laws by paying hush money to Stormy Daniels and others—which he says occurred at Trump’s instruction.
Mueller’s careful, methodical strategy often only reveals itself in hindsight, as the significance of previous steps becomes clear with subsequent ones. Examining today the totality of what Mueller and prosecutors have shown thus far illuminates numerous areas of clear interest.

Despite the massive revelations—and more than 300 pages of a “Mueller report” that has already been written through court filings—there remain very basic details we still don’t know.

The White House has no plan for confronting the Mueller Report (Elaina Plott, The Atlantic)
Nervous aides expect the president to lead the way, tweet up a storm—and, Rudy Giuliani promises, fight back.

Putin’s mouthpiece is center stage in the Mueller investigation (Amy Knight, Daily Beast)
According to Michael Cohen’s latest pleading, Dmitry Peskov was right in the middle of Trump’s efforts to build a tower in Moscow. So, who is this guy?

Felix Sater, the spy, criminal, and mafia-linked business executive tied to Trump, explained (Alex Ward, Vox)
He helped track Osama bin Laden — and secure a Trump Tower in Moscow.

EU raises funds to fight ‘disinformation war’ with Russia (Daniel Boffey, Guardian)
European commission to help member states recognize work of Kremlin ‘troll factories’

Election hacking will come to a ‘breaking point,’ says Dem strategist (The Hill)
Democratic strategist Estuardo Rodriguez warns election hacking will eventually come to a “breaking point,” saying the federal government needs to find a way to address cyber threats against the U.S.
“There’s going to be a breaking point where our government has to decide at what level is hacking beyond the national threat and an actual attack,” Rodriguez, principal at the Raben Group, told Hill.TV’s Krystal Ball and Buck Sexton during a “Rising” panel discussion on Wednesday.
“And decide how to take that on and how to respond to that,” he added.

Senate Intelligence Committee grilled Steve Bannon about Cambridge Analytica (Betsy Woodruff, Daily Beast)
The notorious ‘psychographic’ data firm remains of interest to Senate investigators—as does the former Trump strategist.

Russia’s bizarre new campaign to define its national identity (Gabby Deutch, The Atlantic)
A Kremlin-backed project to rename the country’s airports after historic Russian heroes tries to answer: What is Russia?