Q&A #2 -- Lottery Ad "Smoking Gun"?

"Stephen" asks:

Why don't you think that the CEO of Hill Holliday sending the scripts of the Lottery ads to the Cahill campaign - months before they actually aired - is a "smoking gun"?  

A Cahill campaign staffer sending a script TO Hill Holiday would be a smoking gun. A Cahill campaign staffer replying to Hill Holiday giving approval of a suggested script, or suggesting changes to a suggested script, would be a smoking gun. But an email from Hill Holiday to a Cahill campaign staffer proves only a decision by an outside vendor to leak information to the campaign, which doesn't prove any action or intent on the part of the campaign itself.

I certainly agree that we might easily infer more than is proven, but that's not what we mean by a "smoking gun."

And remember, we can guess that the emails and texts we've seen are as damaging as the Yobgoblins had in their posession -- from which we might infer that there was no return message giving approval of the script, etc.