Collusion or Conspiracy?
Just wanted to share a little self-education I went foraging for today. If we care about politics these days, we certainly want to be clear about collusion.
Black's Law Dictionary defines collusion as "a deceitful agreement or compact between two or more persons, for the one party to bring an action against the other for some evil purpose, as to defraud a third party..." A conspiracy, on the other hand, is defined as "a combination or confederacy between two or more persons formed for the purposes of committing, by their joint efforts, some unlawful or criminal act, or some act which is innocent in itself, but becomes unlawful when done by the concerted action of the conspirators." Got it? You can have collusion without having a criminal conspiracy, but you can't have a criminal conspiracy without some sort of collusion.
"COLLUSION" is a political word, a media word, a polite word countless hacks have settled on.