The Steele Dossier on Trump Is Looking Increasingly Real

While many congressional Republicans appear hell bent on discrediting Robert Mueller and even the FBI as more Trump campaign figures have been indicted or struck pleas deals to go state's evidence against the Trump/Pence regime, other details seem to be pointing to a source of the GOP paranoia: the Steele dossier is looking more and more real and accurate in many of its accusations. With the GOP obsessed with placating its white supremacist and Christofascist base so as to avoid primary challenges and to retain an unfit individual in the Oval Office that will sign bills furthering the party's reverse Robin Hood agenda, the last thing the Republicans want to admit is that they have become the party of treason.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at the growing belief that much of the Steele dossier's contents are true:  

When news surfaced at the beginning of the year that British intelligence agent turned private investigator Christopher Steele had compiled a report on Donald Trump’s ties to Russia, news reports immediately treated its findings as radioactive. The implications of Steele’s reporting were spy-movie-unreal: Trump was the subject of Russian financial and even sexual blackmail, and he and his advisers had been openly colluding with Moscow. Two details in particular made the dossier seem suspect. First, its report that Trump had paid Russian prostitutes to urinate on a bed that had been used by Barack Obama. And second, the report alleged that Michael Cohen, a Trump crony with Russian contacts, had met in Prague with Russian intelligence officials. The golden-showers detail, while unconfirmed, seemed too bizarre to be plausible. And Cohen shot down the Prague allegation forcefully. The report of his meeting was “totally fake, totally inaccurate,” Cohen said, “I’m telling you emphatically that I’ve not been to Prague, I’ve never been to Czech [Republic], I’ve not been to Russia.” But this hardly settles the question. A congressional investigation is digging into whether Cohen is telling the truth about the alleged visit to Prague. “Cohen’s passport would not show any record of a visit to Prague if he entered the EU through Italy, traveled to the Czech Republic, and then returned to his point of EU entry,” reports Politico, in a passage that’s received less attention than merited. “A congressional official said the issue is ‘still active’ for investigators.”

Most reporters have treated the say-so of Cohen, a Trump hanger-on laden with extremely shady associations, as implicitly more credible than the reporting of a British intelligence agent with years of expertise. That is probably a mistake.

And what about the bit about the prostitutes? . . . . Brian Beutler made a fairly persuasive case that Trump has displayed during his presidency the exact same kind of pathological, self-destructive jealousy of Barack Obama (who had publicly humiliated Trump two years before the alleged incident).

As time goes by, more and more of the claims first reported by Steele have been borne out. In general, there is a split between the credibility afforded the dossier by the mainstream media and by intelligence professionals. The former treat it is gossip; the latter take it seriously.

[N]o doubt some of the tips Steele picked up are false. But we should probably be giving far more weight to the possibility that the darkest interpretation of Trump’s relations with Russia is actually true.

Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts with Russian Intelligence

Drip, drip, drip.  Perhaps it is still a little too premature, but I am starting to have a sense of déjà vu to the bad old Watergate days.  As was the case then, the question increasingly is "what did the president know and when did he know it."  With former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn's resignation not even 24 hours old, now the New York Times has broken the story that Trump campaign aides and associates had repeated contacts with Russian intelligence during the period that Russian hackers were breaking U.S. law and hacking DNC computers in order to throw the presidential campaign to Trump.  If these stories continue to unfold as they seem to be headed, my gut feeling that Trump is a possible traitor will be increasingly substantiated.  An independent investigation is urgently needed.  Here are highlights from the Times piece:

Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election, according to four current and former American officials.
American law enforcement and intelligence agencies intercepted the communications around the same time that they were discovering evidence that Russia was trying to disrupt the presidential election by hacking into the Democratic National Committee, three of the officials said. The intelligence agencies then sought to learn whether the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians on the hacking or other efforts to influence the election.
[T]he intercepts alarmed American intelligence and law enforcement agencies, in part because of the amount of contact that was occurring while Mr. Trump was speaking glowingly about the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin. At one point last summer, Mr. Trump said at a campaign event that he hoped Russian intelligence services had stolen Hillary Clinton’s emails and would make them public.
The officials said the intercepted communications were not limited to Trump campaign officials, and included other associates of Mr. Trump. On the Russian side, the contacts also included members of the Russian government outside of the intelligence services, the officials said. All of the current and former officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because the continuing investigation is classified.
The officials said that one of the advisers picked up on the calls was Paul Manafort, who was Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman for several months last year and had worked as a political consultant in Russia and Ukraine. The officials declined to identify the other Trump associates on the calls.The call logs and intercepted communications are part of a larger trove of information that the F.B.I. is sifting through as it investigates the links between Mr. Trump’s associates and the Russian government, as well as the D.N.C. hack, according to federal law enforcement officials. As part of its inquiry, the F.B.I. has obtained banking and travel records and conducted interviews, the officials said.Two days after the election in November, Sergei A. Ryabkov, the deputy Russian foreign minister, said that “there were contacts” during the campaign between Russian officials and Mr. Trump’s team.
“Obviously, we know most of the people from his entourage,” Mr. Ryabkov said in an interview with the Russian Interfax news agency.
The Trump transition team denied Mr. Ryabkov’s statement. “This is not accurate,” Hope Hicks, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump, said at the time.
The F.B.I. has closely examined at least three other people close to Mr. Trump, although it is unclear if their calls were intercepted. They are Carter Page, a businessman and former foreign policy adviser to the campaign; Roger Stone, a longtime Republican operative; and Mr. Flynn.As part of the inquiry, the F.B.I. is also trying to assess the credibility of information contained in a dossier that was given to the bureau last year by a former British intelligence operative. The dossier contained a raft of salacious allegations about connections between Mr. Trump, his associates and the Russian government. It also included unsubstantiated claims that the Russians had embarrassing videos that could be used to blackmail Mr. Trump.The F.B.I. investigation is proceeding at the same time that separate investigations into Russian interference in the election are gaining momentum on Capitol Hill. Those investigations, by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, are examining not only the Russian hacking but also any contacts that Mr. Trump’s team had with Russian officials during the campaign.
On Tuesday, top Republican lawmakers said that Mr. Flynn should be one focus of the investigation, and that he should be called to testify before Congress. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said that the news surrounding Mr. Flynn in recent days underscored “how many questions still remain unanswered to the American people more than three months after Election Day, including who was aware of what, and when.”
Mr. Warner said that Mr. Flynn’s resignation would not stop the committee “from continuing to investigate General Flynn, or any other campaign official who may have had inappropriate and improper contacts with Russian officials prior to the election.” 

Trump Lies In Response to Russian Allegations

Throughout the presidential campaign fact checkers found that Donald Trump lied some 76% of the time.  Not that it seemed to matter to his low information, racists and bigotry motivated base of support. Now, confronted with information that Russia has potentially salacious blackmail information on Trump or even worse that Trump and/or his staff may be guilty of treason, Der Fuhrer does what he always does and says it is all "Fake News."   One can only hope that this time the news media and allied foreign intelligence services will ignore Trumps lies and go for the jugular and take the man down.  I find Mike Pence very frightening, but he might be a safer alternative in some ways than the narcissistic, megalomaniac Trump.  A piece in Politico looks at the growing firestorm that I hope consumes Trump and ends his presidency in its infancy.  If Pence is implicated, it would be all the sweeter as the GOP becomes the party of treason.  Here are article highlights:

Ten days before he’s sworn in as president, Donald Trump is facing a potential crisis amid reports that U.S. intelligence officials delivered a report to the president-elect last week outlining allegations that Russia could have compromising information about him.

Although the details of these revelations remain murky and unverified, their publication Tuesday night, on the eve of Trump’s first news conference since July, is upsetting any post-election honeymoon and forcing him to confront what is, at best, an uncomfortable public relations fiasco and potentially a new geopolitical pressure point that could cast a shadow on his incoming administration.

“FAKE NEWS - A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT,” Trump tweeted at 8:19 p.m. Tuesday, more than two hours after the first reports began to surface.

On Tuesday evening, multiple reports attributed to anonymous sources contended that the nation’s four top intelligence chiefs informed President Barack Obama and Trump of allegations that Russia had collected compromising and tawdry personal information about the president-elect.

After the first report surfaced, BuzzFeed published the longer, unverified document that formed the basis of the two-page synopsis to the official report, which had been classified, that details the kompromat — a Russian term for compromising material — in graphic terms.

Trump, who survived a devastating scandal a month before the election after a tape surfaced of him bragging about his celebrity enabling him to get away with grabbing women's genitals, has had remarkable success pushing past controversies that would have sunk more conventional politicians and in counterpunching his adversaries.

But this situation is different — he's battling the nation's intelligence officers, not rival politicians. Now, it's not his campaign in turmoil but a nascent administration less than two weeks from inheriting the White House. And the stakes go beyond politics. With a matter of national security and geopolitical importance, Trump's uncanny ability to will his own, preferred alternative reality into being may meet its limits.

“I have no idea with Trump. You used to be able to say, ‘I think I know how this ends.’ But there's no way to know now,” said Jon Reinish, a Democratic strategist.

Neera Tanden, a longtime Clinton ally and the president of the Center for American Progress, said Tuesday evening the new allegations should be fully investigated.

“The intelligence dossier presents profoundly disturbing allegations; ones that should shake every American to the core,” she said in a statement.

The new allegations will provide fodder for critics hoping to block Trump’s planned realignment with Russia. The critics fear Trump could grant Moscow a freer hand in Syria, recognize Putin’s March 2014 annexation of Crimea, lift U.S. sanctions, and even call for a reduced NATO presence in Eastern Europe.

At a minimum, they are likely to make for uncomfortable moments at Wednesday’s confirmation hearing for Trump’s nominee to be secretary of state, Rex Tillerson. Several Russia hawks from both parties on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee were already primed to grill Tillerson on his own relationship with Putin — with whom he struck massive energy deals as CEO of ExxonMobil — as well as Trump’s plans for U.S.-Russia policy.

While Sen. Jeff Sessions, Trump’s nominee for attorney general, was grinding through the first day of a long confirmation hearing, lawmakers in another hearing room were questioning Comey. Asked by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) if his agency was currently investigating any possible contact between Trump’s campaign and Russian officials, Comey demurred, saying he couldn’t comment on the nature of any current investigations.

Hours later, the reports detailing the addendum to the official report revealed allegations of an ongoing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government. 

Again, I hope the irresponsible press will this time smell blood in the water and go on a feeding frenzy that ultimately takes Trump down - and hopefully Pence with him.