THERE WAS CONNIVING

Via Taylor Marsh.

From the foreword to Michael Cohen's Disloyal, publisher and issue date as yet unrevealed:

Both sides were wrong. I knew that the reality was much more complicated and dangerous. Trump had colluded with the Russians, but not in the sophisticated ways imagined by his detractors. I also knew that the Mueller investigation was not a witch-hunt. Trump had cheated in the election, with Russian connivance, as you will discover in these pages, because doing anything—and I mean anything—to “win” has always been his business model and way of life. Trump had also continued to pursue a major real estate deal in Moscow during the campaign. He attempted to insinuate himself into the world of President Vladimir Putin and his coterie of corrupt billionaire oligarchs. I know because I personally ran that deal and kept Trump and his children closely informed of all updates, even as the candidate blatantly lied to the American people saying, “there’s no Russian collusion, I have no dealings with Russia…there’s no Russia.” 

I really need to know what this means. I've long thought the collusion wasn't very formal, neither side quite knowing what the other was going to be getting up to (cf. Roger Stone trying to squeeze information out of WikiLeaks), and kind of haphazard, but does Cohen mean all that? What is "connivance"? 

It's more than "dealing" over the Trump Tower Moscow site, it's about the 2016 election and the cheating, and Trump's desire to "win" in scare quotes, and I think it's got to be more than the general press is expecting, but it's also something Mueller and Cummings (for the House Oversight Committee) and especially Schiff didn't think to ask him about?