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, according to former law enforcement officials and others familiar with the investigation.
The inquiry carried explosive implications. Counterintelligence investigators had to consider whether the president’s own actions constituted a possible threat to national security. Agents also sought to determine whether Mr. Trump was knowingly working for Russia or had unwittingly fallen under Moscow’s influence.
The investigation the F.B.I. opened into Mr. Trump also had a criminal aspect, which has long been publicly known: whether his firing of Mr. Comey constituted obstruction of justice.
Agents and senior F.B.I. officials had grown suspicious of Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia during the 2016 campaign but held off on opening an investigation into him, the people said, in part because they were uncertain how to proceed with an inquiry of such sensitivity and magnitude. But the president’s activities before and after Mr. Comey’s firing in May 2017, particularly two instances in which Mr. Trump tied the Comey dismissal to the Russia investigation, helped prompt the counterintelligence aspect of the inquiry, the people said...
JESUS. (The link is to Daily Beast because WaPo is behind a paywall)
President Trump has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal details of his conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, The Washington Post reports. The president's efforts include reportedly taking possession of the notes of his own interpreter and instructing the linguist not to discuss what had transpired with other administration officials. The unusual behavior part of a broader pattern by the president of shielding his communications with Putin from public scrutiny, and even preventing high-ranking administration officials from fully knowing what he has told Putin—one of the United States’ main adversaries. As a result, U.S. officials said there is no detailed record, even in classified files, of Trump’s face-to-face interactions with the Russian leader at five locations over the past two years...
THESE ARE NOT THE ACTS OF A MAN WHO IS SUPPOSED TO REPRESENT THE NATIONAL SECURITY INTERESTS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
Let me refer to Adam L. Silverman at Balloon Juice:
Vladimir Putin, despite being not the greatest strategic thinker in history, has a very specific set of goals. Some are US specific. Some are EU and NATO specific. Some are regional. And some are global. As we’ve covered here over and over since the late spring of 2016 is that Putin wants to roll back US power by weakening the US and by demonstrating that the liberal democracy and attendant values that the US promotes globally is no better, and may in fact be worse, than the managed democracy he’s created in Russia around his authoritarian rule.
In regards to the US, Putin specifically wants to enflame political, social, religious, and ethnic grievances, which is why his cyber enabled information warfare targeted very specific groups over very specific issues. Often playing groups on both sides of an issue off against each other. He also wants to rollback US power projection. Specifically he wants the US military and defense posture to stop being expeditionary. Regionally in Europe he wants NATO weakened so he can reestablish the historic near abroad and sphere of influence that he believes are Russia’s due, including his claims on Crimea and Ukraine...
...(trump's) positions during the campaign and the actions he’s taken, in regards to domestic, foreign, national security, and economic affairs, have given Putin almost everything he wanted. The only thing he hasn’t gotten yet is the lifting of sanctions, but there have been efforts within the administration to chip away at and/or redefine them in the favor of Putin and the oligarchs he protects.
And this brings us back to the question: what, if anything, would the President be doing differently if we knew for certain that he was a Russian asset or agent?
And the answer I keep coming back to, every time I ask it of myself or discuss it with those who I’ve been collaborating with on tracking the Russian active measures and cyberwarfare campaign through open sources, is nothing. There is nothing the President would be doing differently. And that conclusion is one of the most disturbing I’ve ever come to in my professional career...
This is all I can see from here: trump is actively ignoring every American security protocol; trump is actively giving Russia intel and support, and has been trying to do more outside of established communications/channels; trump is committing acts of chaos and mismanagement on both the global and domestic stages that allow Putin and Russia to profit at our expense.
If any other American was doing this, we'd have arrested his/her ass on charges of espionage within 12.7 seconds. If we were at WAR with Russia, the charges would be treason.
And who's to say we are NOT at war with Russia right now? Just because our government hasn't officially declared it doesn't mean we aren't at war. Every action Russia has taken in the last 5-10 years - the computer hacks into our political and social systems, the subversion of our electoral process, the manipulation of Americans into breaking treaties and ending activities so that Russia can profit from our absences - have been acts of war against us.
Jesus. We need to start fighting back.
We need to arrest every fucking traitor working for Putin.
Starting with the Head Shitgibbon.
1 comment:
Let's see, the KGB agent autocrat in control of vast wealth with little or no restrictions on his actions with a burning desire to put the USSR back together, and the petulant malignant narcissist with daddy issues who never really thought about what the job of president was until he bumblefucked his way into the oval office.
How do you think it went down?
-Doug in Oakland
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