How can I logically come to that conclusion? Easy. The allegations all came from Trump's political opponents and that should be taken with a grain of salt. They did this....because of their own political bias.
No, that's not a fair interpretation of the events and it's not even logic. The allegation of a possible Russian operative approaching the campaign began with a fellow named Mifsud in the spring of 2016 who befriended Papadopoulos and who claimed he knew people in high levels of the Russian government. In May of 2016, Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign official, told a foreign diplomat that he had knowledge that Russia had dirt on Hillary in the form of thousands of Hillary's emails. The allegation was witnessed to twice, and by two separate diplomats.
That is also documented in sworn testimony from the Mueller report:
Mifsud told Papadopoulos that he had met with high-level Russian government officials during his recent trip to Moscow. Mifsud also said that, on the trip, he learned that the Russians had obtained “dirt” on candidate Hillary Clinton. As Papadopoulos later stated to the FBI, Mifsud said that the “dirt” was in the form of “emails of Clinton,” and that they “have thousands of emails.”
Instead of a preliminary investigation to substantiate even one allegation....they launched into a full investigation into a candidate running for office without any shred of evidence.
That's a total misrepresentation of the facts. Prior to crossfire hurricane the FBI is already conducting a counterintelligence investigation into the Russian hack of the Whitehouse, the state department, the joint chiefs of staff, and the DNC. In mid-July 2016 Guccifer 2.0 is dumping hacked materials from the DNC so as to hurt the Hillary campaign, which of course is a federal crime happening in real-time.
At this same time, the FBI hears about Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign official, who was approached by someone with knowledge of Hillary emails that had been hacked. The FBI were therefore obligated to investigate whether the Russians were attempting to compromise the Trump campaign. The investigation wasn't even into candidate Trump, but whether his campaign was knowingly co-operating with Russian dissemination of Hacked material.
The standard for opening a full investigation is "an articulable factual basis for the investigation that reasonably indicates that ...
[a]n activity constituting a federal crime or a threat to the national security ... is or may be occurring ... and the investigation may obtain information relating to the activity.''
The FBI, as both a federal crime and an ongoing counter-intelligence matter, would have been derelict in their duty to not investigate a Russian attempt to infiltrate a Presidential campaign with the promise of hacked information.
That's why it ended without any evidence collusion either. Surely I don't have to explain the difference between evidence and allegation to you....do I?
No you don't have to explain the difference, thanks for asking though. Actually, the allegations turned out to be true, Russia did in fact have thousands of hacked emails from Hillary, and Papadopoulos was forming friendships with people indicating they could arrange high level meetings with Russia.
There is no conclusive evidence that Trump or his campaign conspired or coordinated in interference activities, but Roger stone did have a contact with WikiLeaks informing him what types of emails and when dumps of those hacked materials would happen. However, as pertains to collusion, what bothers me the most, is the email exchanges with Don jr. conveying that Russia secretly wanted to help Trump, which turned into the subsequent meeting at Trump tower, followed by the public denial of any knowledge of Russia involving themselves to help their campaign.
Again...do you understand the difference between evidence and allegation and why you wouldn't move forward on a full investigation on allegation without any evidence?
Well, I don't agree with that assessment because that's not even the case here. It was already known that crowd strike had determined it was Russia that hacked the DNC, so any information from two witnesses of a Trump campaign official being approached with knowledge of Hillary emails from Russia would need to be investigated. Particularly if the campaign official didn't notify the FBI knowing of its illegality.
