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Trump Is Compromised by Russia
Due to his transactional nature and his unceasing dishonesty with the American people concerning all things Russia, Donald J. Trump has been and continues to be a national security risk.
Many previously inexplicable Trump behaviors are beginning to make damned good sense now;
The constant "hoax" and "witch-hunt" pejoratives, Trumps ubiquitous praise of Putin, his reluctance to sanction Russia, his unwavering belief in the KGB Colonel regarding Russian election meddling, his secret Helsinki meeting with Putin, etc. etc.
Related: Cohen Lied. Here’s Why It Matters.
By Michelle Goldberg
The New York Times
11/29/18
One of the chief questions in the Trump-Russia scandal has been whether Vladimir Putin has leverage over the president of the United States, and, if so, what that leverage looks like. That’s also why evidence of Trump’s business involvement with Russia would be significant, as Trump himself acknowledged shortly before his inauguration, when he tweeted, “Russia has never tried to use leverage over me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA — NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!” We still don’t know for certain if Russia has used leverage over Trump. But there should no longer be any doubt that Russia has leverage over him. On Thursday morning, Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen — the former executive vice president of the Trump Organization — pleaded guilty to making false statements to Congress about efforts to build a Trump-branded property in Moscow that extended into the 2016 presidential campaign. Efforts to obtain Russian government approval for a Trump-branded development in Moscow went on until “approximately June 2016,” after Trump had effectively secured the Republican nomination for president. Cohen, Mueller’s document said, “discussed the status and progress of the Moscow project with Individual 1” more than three times. He also “briefed family members of Individual 1 within the company about the project.” [Note: Individual 1 is Donald J. Trump] So we now know that Trump lied to the American people about at least one part of his business relationship with Russia, a geopolitical foe that interfered in our election process on his behalf.
In a Jan. 11, 2017, news conference, Trump said that the “closest I came to Russia” was in selling a Palm Beach mansion to a Russian oligarch in 2008. While we’re just learning precisely how dishonest this was, Putin has known it all along. That means that throughout Trump’s campaign and presidency, Putin has had the power to plunge him into political crisis. “If the Russians are aware that senior American officials are publicly stating things that are not true, it’s a counterintelligence nightmare,” Adam Schiff, the California Democrat in line to take over the House Intelligence Committee, told me. As he points out, this issue contributed to former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s downfall. Flynn, you might remember, appeared to have lied to Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with the Russian ambassador. This alarmed Sally Yates, then the acting attorney general, because the Russians would have known that Flynn was deceiving Pence, and could have used that knowledge against him. “Logic would tell you that you don’t want the national security adviser to be in a position where the Russians have leverage over him,” Yates told the Senate last year. The same, said Schiff, “is true in spades for the president of the United States.” There are still many shoes to drop in this scandal. But even before those inquiries begin, we can see that Putin has been in possession of crucial information about Trump’s business interests that the president deliberately hid from the American people. In a normal political world, Republicans would have enough patriotism to find this alarming and humiliating. Every day of the Trump presidency is a national security emergency. The question now is whether Senate Republicans, who could actually do something about it, will ever be moved to care.
Due to his transactional nature and his unceasing dishonesty with the American people concerning all things Russia, Donald J. Trump has been and continues to be a national security risk.
Many previously inexplicable Trump behaviors are beginning to make damned good sense now;
The constant "hoax" and "witch-hunt" pejoratives, Trumps ubiquitous praise of Putin, his reluctance to sanction Russia, his unwavering belief in the KGB Colonel regarding Russian election meddling, his secret Helsinki meeting with Putin, etc. etc.
Related: Cohen Lied. Here’s Why It Matters.