18 Reasons Trump Could be a Russian Asset

When asked during a Fox News, a/k/a the Trump Propagandaministerium, whether he was working for Russia, Donald Trump gave a rambling, convoluted non-responsive answer but never said a simple "no."  With two bombshell reports out last week and over the weekend, many Americans - other than Trump's cultist followers and Fox News viewers - are perhaps beginning to fully comprehend the magnitude of the danger that the Trump/Pence regime poses to the nation.  Conservative columnist and former Republican Max Boot has a column in the Washington Post that looks at the reasons by his own behavior Trump has signaled that he may well be a Russian asset.  Here are highlights:

On Friday, the New York Times reported that “in the days after President Trump fired James B. Comey as F.B.I. director, law enforcement officials became so concerned by the president’s behavior that they began investigating whether he had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests.” That investigation may well be continuing under the auspices of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. We don’t know what Mueller has learned. But we can look at the key, publicly available evidence that both supports and undercuts this explosive allegation.

Here is some of the evidence suggesting “Individual 1” could be a Russian “asset”:

— Trump has a long financial history with Russia. As summarized by Jonathan Chait in an invaluable New York magazine article: “From 2003 to 2017, people from the former USSR made 86 all-cash purchases — a red flag of potential money laundering — of Trump properties, totaling $109 million. In 2010, the private-wealth division of Deutsche Bank also loaned him hundreds of millions of dollars during the same period it was laundering billions in Russian money. ‘Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,’ said Donald Jr. in 2008. ‘We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia,’ boasted Eric Trump in 2014.”

These are the kind of financial entanglements that intelligence services such as the FSB typically use to ensnare foreigners, and they could leave Trump vulnerable to blackmail.

— The Russians interfered in the 2016 U.S. election to help elect Trump president.

— Trump encouraged the Russians to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails on July 27, 2016 (“Russia, if you’re listening”), on the very day that Russian intelligence hackers tried to attack Clinton’s personal and campaign servers.

— There were, according to the Moscow Project, “101 contacts between Trump’s team and Russia linked operatives,” and “the Trump team tried to cover up every single one of them.”

— The Trump campaign was full of individuals, such as Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates and Michael Flynn, with suspiciously close links to Moscow.

— Manafort, who ran the Trump campaign for free and was heavily in debt to a Russian oligarch, now admits to offering his Russian business partner, who is suspected of links to Russian intelligence, polling data that could have been used to target the Russian social media campaign on behalf of Trump.

— Trump associate Roger Stone, who was in contact with Russian conduit WikiLeaks, reportedly knew in advance that the Russians had hacked Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails.

— Once in office, Trump fired Comey to stop the investigation of the “Russia thing” — and then bragged about having done so to the Russian ambassador and foreign minister while also sharing with them top-secret information. . . . . Trump has been effectively protecting the Russians by trying to impede the investigation of their attack on the United States.— Trump has refused to consistently acknowledge that Russia interfered in the U.S. election or mobilize a government-wide effort to stop future interference.

— Like no previous president, Trump attacks and undermines the Justice Department and the FBI (“a cancer in our country”) — two institutions that stand on the front lines of combatting Russian espionage and influence operations in the United States.

— Again, like no previous president, Trump attacks and undermines the European Union and NATO . . . . The E.U. and NATO are the two major obstacles to Russian designs in Europe.

— Trump supports populist, pro-Russian leaders in Europe, such as Viktor Orban in Hungary and Marine Le Pen in France, just as the Russians do.

— Trump has praised Putin (“a strong leader”) while trashing just about everyone else from grade-B Hollywood celebrities to leaders of allied nations.

— Trump was utterly supine in his meetings with Putin, principally in Hamburg and Helsinki. Even more suspicious, according to a Post article on Saturday, Trump “has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal details of his conversations with . . . Putin, including on at least one occasion taking possession of the notes of his own interpreter and instructing the linguist not to discuss what had transpired with other administration officials. . . .

— Trump defends the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and repeats other pro-Russian talking points.

— Trump is pulling U.S. troops out of Syria, handing that country to Russia and its ally Iran.

— Trump has effectively done nothing in response to the Russian attack on Ukrainian ships in international waters, thereby encouraging greater Russian aggression.

— Trump is sowing chaos in the government, most recently with a record-breaking partial government shutdown and “acting” appointees in key posts such as the Defense Department and Justice Department, thus furthering a Russian objective of undermining its chief adversary.

Now that we’ve listed 18 reasons Trump could be a Russian asset, let’s look at the exculpatory evidence. . . . I can’t think of anything that would exonerate Trump aside from the difficulty of grasping what once would have seemed unimaginable: that a president of the United States could actually have been compromised by a hostile foreign power.

Making the Case: Without Russia, Trump Wouldn’t Have Won

A piece in the Washington Post makes an argument that might drive the malignant narcissist in the White House to have an aneurysm or heart attack were it to come to his attention (I won't speculate if that would be a good thing or a bad thing - readers can draw their own conclusions).  The thrust of the column?  The bottom line is that but for the actions of Russian hackers and Russian derived fake news, Donald Trump would not be in the White House. For an individual who can never admit his own failings and whose ego is insatiable, the premise of the article goes to his apparent core as an egomaniac and insufferable liar and braggart.  Yet, if you read the full piece it is hard to refute - notwithstanding GOP talking points, lies and attacks on "sour grapes" Democrats - that it is probably correct in its conclusion.  But for Putin/Russia, Clinton would now be in the White House and the ongoing national nightmare would not be happening.  Here are column highlights:

President Trump is willing, under duress, to briefly and begrudgingly admit that Russian “meddling” took place in 2016 before reverting to calling it a “big hoax.” But he always maintains that the plot against America had no impact; he describes it as a “Democrat excuse for losing the ’16 Election.” Faithfully echoing the president, other Republicans, such as House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), say it’s “clear” that the Russian interference “didn’t have a material effect on our elections.” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders even claims that the U.S. intelligence community reached that conclusion.

Not quite. Here is the intelligence community’s assessment, partially declassified in January 2017: “We did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election. The US Intelligence Community is charged with monitoring and assessing the intentions, capabilities, and actions of foreign actors; it does not analyze US political processes or US public opinion.” When then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo claimed last fall that “the intelligence community's assessment is that the Russian meddling that took place did not affect the outcome of the election,” his own agency rebuked him.

[O]utside experts who have examined the Kremlin campaign — which included stealing and sharing Democratic Party emails, spreading propaganda online and hacking state voter rolls — have concluded that it did affect an extremely close election decided by fewer than 80,000 votes in three states. Clint Watts, a former FBI agent, writes in his recent book, “Messing with the Enemy,” that “Russia absolutely influenced the U.S. presidential election,” especially in Michigan and Wisconsin, where Trump’s winning margin was less than 1 percent in each state. [W]e know its propaganda reached 126 million people via Facebook alone. A BuzzFeed analysis found that fake news stories on Facebook generated more social engagement in the last three months of the campaign than did legitimate articles: The “20 top-performing false election stories from hoax sites and hyperpartisan blogs generated 8,711,000 shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook.” Almost all of this “fake news” was either started or spread by Russian bots, . . . Elsewhere on social media, tens of thousands of Russian bots spread pro-Trump messages on Twitter, which has already notified about 1.4 million users that they interacted with Russian accounts. The Russian disinformation, propagating hashtags such as #Hillary4Prison and #MAGA, reflected what the Trump campaign was saying. Russia also hacked voting systems in at least 39 states, and while there is no evidence that vote tallies were changed, Russians may have used the stolen data to target their social media or shared the results with the Trump campaign. The Senate Intelligence Committee found that “in a small number of states” the Russians may have been able to “alter or delete voter registration data,” potentially disenfranchising Clinton voters. And then there was the crucial impact of the Russian hacks of Democratic documents disseminated primarily by WikiLeaks.

The first tranche of stolen documents — more than 19,000 emails and 8,000 attachments — was strategically released on July 22, 2016, three days before the Democratic convention. The second tranche of stolen documents was released on Oct. 7, just 29 minutes after The Post reported on the “Access Hollywood” videotape in which Trump is heard boasting about grabbing women by the genitals. A third release of stolen emails, on Oct. 11, revealed that Democratic operative Donna Brazile, while working at CNN, had provided debate questions to Clinton during the primaries and that senior Democratic operatives, who were themselves Catholics, had exchanged emails disparaging Republicans who cherry-picked their faith for political gain. This fueled Trump’s narrative that the election was “rigged” and that the “Clinton team” was, as he said, “viciously attacking Catholics and Evangelicals.” The latter charge, unfair as it was, proved especially important in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — swing states with lots of Catholic voters. Now, by contrast, Trump and his apologists pretend that the Russian intervention — including the WikiLeaks revelations — was no big deal. That beggars belief. Even if the Russians had failed, they still attacked our democracy. Yet they didn’t fail: Trump won. Watts concludes: “Without the Russian influence effort, I believe Trump would not have even been within striking distance of Clinton on Election Day.” That is the inconvenient truth the Putin Republicans won’t admit.

We are truly living a real life version of a spy thriller where the White House has been co-opted by a hostile foreign power.

GOP Congressman: Trump Is Being Manipulated by Putin

GOP Congressman - sounding the alarm over Putin's Manipulation of Trump.

While most Congressional Republicans are turning a blind eye to Donald Trump's treasonous behavior with Vladimir Putin and Russia, GOP Congressman Will Hurd, a former C.I.A. officer, who represents the 23rd District of Texas, is sounding the alarm.   It is refreshing to see at least one Republican loudly putting the welfare and interests of the nation ahead of yielding to treason solely to keep the GOP in power.  Hurd does have the advantage of understanding Russian asset manipulation well thanks to his days at the CIA, but after Trump's behavior in Europe and then Helsinki, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to recognize the fact that Trump is working to fulfill Putin's  wish list, not to benefit America.  In an op-ed in the New York Times, Hurd lets loose on the danger Trump poses to America.  Here are excerpts:

Over the course of my career as an undercover officer in the C.I.A., I saw Russian intelligence manipulate many people. I never thought I would see the day when an American president would be one of them.

[Trump] The president’s failure to defend the United States intelligence community’s unanimous conclusions of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and condemn Russian covert counterinfluence campaigns and his standing idle on the world stage while a Russian dictator spouted lies confused many but should concern all Americans. By playing into Vladimir Putin’s hands, the leader of the free world actively participated in a Russian disinformation campaign that legitimized Russian denial and weakened the credibility of the United States to both our friends and foes abroad.

As a member of Congress, a coequal branch of government designed by our founders to provide checks and balances on the executive branch, I believe that lawmakers must fulfill our oversight duty as well as keep the American people informed of the current danger.

Somehow many Americans have forgotten that Russia is our adversary, not our ally, and the reasons for today’s tensions go back much farther than the 2016 election. For more than a decade, Russia has meddled in elections around the world, supported brutal dictators and invaded sovereign nations — all to the detriment of United States interests. Mitt Romney had it right in 2012 when he told President Barack Obama that Russia was “without question our No. 1 geopolitical foe.” Our intelligence community has concluded with high confidence that President Putin personally ordered his security services to undertake an influence campaign aimed at undermining confidence in American democracy to sow chaos in our electoral system. Russia’s efforts to hack political organizations and state election boards are well documented, as are the Russian disinformation campaigns on social media platforms.

Russia is an adversary not just of the United States but of freedom-loving people everywhere. . . . From elections in Britain, France and Montenegro to invasions of Georgia and Ukraine, Moscow has pursued an aggressive foreign policy aimed at spreading disorder and expanding Russian influence in states formerly under the heel of Soviet Communism. These efforts weaken our allies and strengthen those who seek to undermine the democratic order that has helped prevent another world war in Europe since 1945.

Moreover, the threat of Russian meddling in United States elections is not behind us. Just last week, Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, cautioned that “the warning lights are blinking red” that Russia and other adversaries will undertake further cyberattacks on our digital infrastructure. This includes many of the energy companies in my home district in South and West Texas.

If necessary, Congress should take the lead on European security issues as it has in recent years. For example, during the Obama administration, Congress repeatedly pressed the president — using the power of the purse through appropriations bills — to send lethal weaponry to assist Ukraine in its fight against Russian-backed separatists.

Last year, Congress passed the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act to impose severe sanctions on Russia as retaliation for its meddling in our presidential election.

Additionally, Congress must act to give the men and women of our intelligence agencies the tools they need to confront Moscow and prevent this from happening in the future. We can start by sending the Intelligence Authorization Act to the president’s desk, which authorizes funding to support critical national security programs across the intelligence community. It also requires regular public reports on foreign threats to federal election campaigns before those elections take place, mandatory notification to Congress within 14 days after a determination has been made with moderate or high confidence that a foreign cyberintrusion or active measures campaign to influence a federal election has taken place, and reports to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees on past and continuing Russian influence campaigns.

Without action, we risk losing further credibility in international negotiations with both our friends and foes on critical trade deals, military alliances and nuclear arms.

In this dangerous geopolitical environment, we must be both vigilant and strong in responding to foreign threats. The challenges posed by Russia are no different, and I hope [Trump] the president shares my conviction that American strength, not weakness, is the best way to preserve a secure world in the face of adversaries like Russia.

Sadly, to date, Congressional Republicans have blocked the further actions that Hurd sees as crucial.  The question has to be why?  Has Putin also compromised the likes of Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell who seem to be dancing to Putin's tune as well.   True patriots need to be raising hell with Republicans and demanding that they act.

Russians Think Trump Might Be a Russian Asset

As noted in prior posts, Donald Trump's trip to Europe by all appearance focused on what the Soviet Union and now Russia have tried to accomplish for the last 72 years: breaking up the NATO alliance and making Russian aggression less likely to face a major military challenge. As noted previously, Germany has stated that given Trump's behavior, Europe needs to plan for its own future and not rely on a now unpredictable and unreliable America.  It's little wonder that many Russians are believing that Trump is a Putin asset.   Frankly, I am inclined to agree with them.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at the pieces that go into the puzzle of viewing Trump as an agent of Putin and, if the picture is true, a traitor.  Here are excerpts:

The most innocent explanations of Donald Trump’s shadowy relationship with Russia have grown increasingly fanciful, while the most paranoid interpretations have grown increasingly more plausible.

Indeed, in another one of dramatic juxtapositions that would have seemed ham-handed in a spy thriller, the latest scandalous revelations came out just as Trump could be seen carrying out what looks for all the world like his end of a pact with Moscow. If the president did have an objective on his trip to Europe — a premise that, it goes without saying, cannot be assumed — it was to crack up the American alliance with Western Europe. That happens to have been Russia’s primary diplomatic objective since the end of World War II. In Brussels, Trump refused to publicly affirm the Article 5 guarantee of the NATO charter — the foundation of the anti-Russian alliance, and the basis for Europe’s defense against Russian aggression. He directed his trademark wild diatribes against Germany, accusing it repeatedly of abusive trade relations, despite the fact that the United States does not have bilateral trade relations with that country. Amazingly, he kept up the abuse on Twitter after returning Stateside, while simultaneously defending Russia over its intervention in the American election.

The White House’s account of Kushner’s back-channel talks with Russia, as Will Saletan shrewdly points out, does not square with what the administration has said in the past, or what Russia says now.

Trump is easily manipulated by flattery, and instinctively drawn toward autocrats. His obvious warmth and comfort with the Saudis, who feted him in their palaces in a pleasantly dissent-free atmosphere, dissent being a crime punishable by death, presented an obvious contrast to his discomfort with the democratic leadership of America’s allies. Perhaps his fondness for Putin, while at odds with what was once a consensus bipartisan opposition to Russian aggression, simply reflects Trump’s natural moral instincts rather than a secret deal.

Yet the sinister explanations remain plausible, too. And increasingly so. Here is one sentence from the Post’s Friday-night bombshell that is worth thinking over: “The Post was first alerted in mid-December to the meeting by an anonymous letter, which said, among other things, that Kushner had talked to Kislyak about setting up the communications channel.”

The Post got this tip, from a source purporting to be inside the Trump transition, in December. It took until Memorial Day weekend for the newspaper to authenticate it. The small aside — “among other things” — casually tells readers that this explosive story was just one allegation in the letter. There is more to come.

For myself, things are to a point where I will assume that Trump and a Russian asset until it is proven otherwise.  Anyone who is innocent of such charges would not be acting as Trump has  acted.  Then, of course, there is the issue of his incessant lying. He does not deserve the benefit of the doubt - nor does anyone in his administration.