Trump And Russia

The so-called "Steele Dossier" has largely been discredited. But, Max Boot writes, that doesn't mean that Donald Trump wasn't collaborating with the Russians to get elected:

Simply read the bipartisan findings of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on Russia’s election interference. The committee, then led by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), issued last year its fifth and final volume detailing even more extensive links between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign than had previously been known. (Lawfare has a helpful summary.)

The report notes that campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who was working for Trump for free, was in debt to a previous employer, Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, on whose behalf he had done “influence work for the Russian government.” While managing the campaign, Manafort remained in close touch with his business associate Konstantin Kilimnik, a “Russian intelligence officer” who may have been “connected to the GRU [Russian military intelligence] hack and leak operation targeting the 2016 U.S. election.” Manafort shared with Kilimnik internal campaign polling data that could have been useful to the Russians in their disinformation campaign.

That noise about stolen emails was very interesting:

The report also sheds further light on the connections between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks, which was used by Russian intelligence to release stolen Democratic emails. The report concludes: “The Trump Campaign took actions to obtain advance notice about WikiLeaks releases of Clinton emails…; created messaging strategies to promote and share the materials in anticipation of and following their release; and encouraged further theft of information and continued leaks.”

The key campaign middleman was Roger Stone, who refused to cooperate with investigators and was later pardoned, along with Manafort, by Trump. The report cites extensive evidence that, despite Trump’s denials, Stone kept Trump informed of his contacts with WikiLeaks.

Trump and his crew cannot claim they did not know where this stolen information was coming from. The report notes that “Trump and the Campaign continued to promote and disseminate the hacked WikiLeaks documents” even after the intelligence community publicly attributed the documents to a Russian operation. Rather than working with the FBI to protect U.S. security, the committee writes, “The Trump Campaign publicly undermined the attribution of the hack and-leak campaign to Russia, and was indifferent to whether it and WikiLeaks were furthering a Russian election interference effort.”-

Then there was that meeting to deliver dirt on Hillary Clinton:

The meeting was arranged by Russian oligarch Aras Agalarov and his son Emin Agalarov, Trump’s business partners in a lucrative 2013 beauty pageant in Moscow. (At least it was lucrative for Trump; the Agalarovs, according to the Senate report, apparently lost $10 million.) According to the report, the Agalarovs “have significant ties to Russian organized crime,” and the elder Agalarov has "significant ties to the Russian government, including to individuals involved in influence operations targeting the 2016 U.S. election.” 

From the beginning of Donald Trump's mad quest for power until its end in the capital riot, it's easy to connect the dots. Trump's model for the exercise of political power is rooted in Russia.

Image: NBC News

Look At The Connections

For the moment, Hurricane Harvey has taken the focus off Donald's Trump's connections with Russia. Ruth Marcus writes that it's important to keep your eyes on Trump's Russian business partners:

While he ran for president, Trump was simultaneously — and secretly — pursuing financial opportunities with a foreign adversary. Not just any adversary, but Russia, a country described by his party’s previous presidential nominee as the United States’ “No. 1 geopolitical foe.” And not just pursuing financial opportunities in Russia, but actively seeking the help of at least one senior Russian official to gain government approval for the project.

Once again: This is not okay. When you run for president, you cannot — you should not — put yourself in the position of using that candidacy as a door-opening business opportunity. You cannot — even if the prospect of winning seems remote — put yourself in a position of being financially beholden to a hostile foreign power.

Trump Tower Moscow was not another instance of Trump as unabashed cross-promoter-in-chief, like using the campaign press corps to help tout the reopening of his Scottish golf course. It represented something much more disturbing, even unpatriotic.

And recall what Trump said during the campaign about his Russian connections:

“For the record, I have ZERO investments in Russia,” he tweeted in July 2016. This past January, as Trump prepared to take office, he reiterated, “I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA — NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!” Shades of Bill Clinton — it depends on what the meaning of “have” is.  

And, after he assumed office, Trump still maintained he had no important ties to Russia:

As recently as his interview this summer with the New York Times, Trump disingenuously played down his financial interests in Russia. “I mean, it’s possible there’s a condo or something, so, you know, I sell a lot of condo units, and somebody from Russia buys a condo, who knows? . . . They said I own buildings in Russia. I don’t. They said I made money from Russia. I don’t. It’s not my thing. I don’t, I don’t do that. Over the years, I’ve looked at maybe doing a deal in Russia, but I never did one.” Including the one he was pursuing while running for president, but failed to mention.

The connections are there. They've been there for a long time. Hurricane Harvey is an opportunity for Trump to change the channel. Wise observers should not follow his lead.

Image: createdebate.com

Exactly What They'll Do

Donald Trump Jr. is proving the truth behind the old saw that the acorn doesn't fall far from the tree. The New York Times reports that:

Before arranging a meeting with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer he believed would offer him compromising information about Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump Jr. was informed in an email that the material was part of a Russian government effort to aid his father’s candidacy, according to three people with knowledge of the email.

The email to the younger Mr. Trump was sent by Rob Goldstone, a publicist and former British tabloid reporter who helped broker the June 2016 meeting. In a statement on Sunday, Mr. Trump acknowledged that he was interested in receiving damaging information about Mrs. Clinton, but gave no indication that he thought the lawyer might have been a Kremlin proxy.

According to the Times: 

Mr. Goldstone’s message, as described to The New York Times by the three people, indicates that the Russian government was the source of the potentially damaging information. It does not elaborate on the wider effort by Moscow to help the Trump campaign. 

When historians write the history of the Trump Administration, they will surely concentrate on its astounding ignorance and stupidity. They will probably point out that one of Trump's most serious errors was to declare open war on the press, calling it "the enemy of the American people."

They will note that Trump baited the press -- which led to their determination to take him down. And, in the end, that's exactly what they'll do.

Image: Movie  TV Tech Geeks