The thing you have to keep in mind with sturg is that he’s very invested in this proffered image of rationality and evidence-based opinions...but only to extent that he tells you he is. On the field, so to speak, the results are a little different. He chose to **** the Seth Rich chicken because there was “no evidence” that Russia was behind the email thefts. So advancing an obvious conspiracy theory with zero factual underpinning was enough to outweigh the opinions of the intelligence and law enforcement communities, to say nothing of common sense based on past actions, because of...Iraq, I guess? So when evidence was presented in Federal court sufficient to indict specific individuals from the GRU for the hacks, his response was just to mushmouth a bit and pivot to “well, there’s no evidence of collusion.”
Sturg’s got no real interest in evidence, he’s just dug in on a position that’s become less and less tenable as time passes, and “evidence” is just a canard that takes advantage of the still large swathes of details that are still unknowable to the public. The fact that Trump and company have lied consistently and provably throughout the process—to the public, to investigators, to Congress—is apparently not suggestive enough of wrongdoing to start digging out of that hole. He’s staked out a rather safe position: unless Vladimir Putin is personally running Trump as an intelligence asset, there’s nothing to see. Just like Russia couldn’t have influenced the election unless they actually changed vote totals. I mean, it’s tiresome to me, and it seems like a hard way to go through life, but that’s the path he’s chosen.
