The Trump Campaign With Russia Again

President Trump's Russia problem is getting even worse.

Late Midweek night, the Washington Mail reported that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had met with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak twice during the 2016 entrada, when he was serving as a Trump advisor. This is despite the fact that Sessions said in his confirmation hearing that "I did not have communications with the Russians" — while under oath.

This is a devastating revelation, as Sessions is nominally in charge of the FBI — which is investigating the links betwixt Trump'south team and Russian federation. Information technology as well comes on the heels of the recent New York Times piece reporting that members of Trump's campaign team and other "Trump associates" had "repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials" prior to the November vote. The calls were intercepted by US officials monitoring Russian intelligence, who then leaked their existence to the Times.

The Times report cautions that at that place's no evidence the Trump staff discussed Russian interference in the election — or that they fifty-fifty discussed Trump at all — and information technology doesn't disclose whether any electric current administration officials were among the staffers who had been in contact with Russia. So for all we know, Sessions was 1 of many administration officials who had spoken with the Russians.

And neither report explains what Sessions or the unnamed officials actually talked to the Russians about. Both terminate up raising more questions than they reply as a result.

And so what do we know, exactly, about the scandals surrounding Trump and Russia? A off-white amount — a disturbing corporeality, really.

That'southward considering there isn't just ane scandal involving Trump and Russia: There are, roughly, 3 different allegations, which are connected but are each more than or less distinct. I centers on Russian federation's interference in the election, another centers on just-resigned National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's improper contact with the Russian ambassador afterwards the election, and a 3rd involves potential blackmail material Russian intelligence may or may not have on the president.

The US government is currently investigating each of these scandals, but none are proven. There are varying degrees of public evidence for each of them.

Individually, the mere hint of whatsoever one of these scandals would be bad. Put together, though, they point to ane inescapable conclusion: Trump's unprecedented friendliness with Russia's dictator and willingness to tolerate staff with close Russia ties has already thrown his young administration into anarchy. None of this would be happening if Trump hadn't decided to buddy up with Vladimir Putin.

Trump made his bed. And at present his entire administration is lying in it.

Scandal one: Did the Trump entrada collude with Russia against Hillary Clinton?

Paul Manafort.

(Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

This get-go scandal actually got going after we found out about the hack of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in June 2016. Suspicion savage on Russia nigh immediately, given Trump'due south pro-Russian approach to foreign policy and Russia's long history of interfering in Western elections. As emails hacked from Clinton allies continued to leak to the press in a way that seemed designed to damage her campaign, these suspicions grew stronger.

At this point, the evidence that Russia is responsible is pretty conclusive. Private cybersecurity firms and researchers have linked some of the lawmaking in the hack to known Russian operations; there's consensus in the U.s.a. intelligence community that Russian federation'due south operation was designed in function to help Trump.

So here'due south the one thousand thousand-dollar question: Did Trump, or anyone on his squad, know near the hack targeting Clinton while information technology was going on? And did they plan their entrada strategy, which centered on "Crooked Hillary" and her emails, around Russian interference?

There's long been coexisting evidence to support this. In August, longtime conservative political operative and close Trump confidant Roger Stone said that he was in affect with WikiLeaks, the source through which Russia released the hacked emails to the public. On October two, Stone sent a tweet hinting he had inside knowledge that WikiLeaks was almost to torpedo Clinton'south campaign:

V days later, on October 7, WikiLeaks released the start tranche of emails hacked from pinnacle Clinton adjutant John Podesta.

Manafort, who was Trump'south campaign manager at the fourth dimension the first emails went public, as well has longstanding ties to the Russian state. He resigned in late August — correct in the middle of the campaign — subsequently a secret ledger was discovered with his name in it, suggesting he had quietly received $12.7 million betwixt 2007 and 2012 from Ukraine's pro-Russian former president, Viktor Yanukovych.

Manafort was the only Trump official identified past name in Tuesday's New York Times report, though he denied the allegations.

"I accept never knowingly spoken to Russian intelligence officers," Manafort told the Times reporters. "It'due south non similar these people wear badges that say, 'I'm a Russian intelligence officeholder.'"

Trump himself seemed to encourage Russian interest in the election. In a July 2016 press briefing, his final presser of the entrada, Trump publicly chosen on Russia to hack Clinton and publish emails from her private server.

"Russian federation, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the thirty,000 emails that are missing," Trump said. "I think you will probably be rewarded mightily past our press."

After the campaign was over, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov publicly admitted that members of Trump's "entourage" were in affect with Russia. "I cannot say that all of them, simply quite a few have been staying in touch with Russian representatives," he told the Russian news service Interfax.

The latest Sessions news shows that, without a doubt, Ryabkov was telling the truth.

Put this all together and two things get articulate. Offset, an unknown number of Trump entrada operatives and Trump-adjacent people were in touch with agents of the Russian government. Second, the Trump camp had no trouble with Russian interference in the election, and at times seemed to welcome information technology.

What nosotros don't know is whether there's a connection between those two things — that is, whether the Trump camp knew most the Russian hack while it was ongoing. There's no confirmation, in the Times or Mail service reports, to support this.

"The officials interviewed in contempo weeks said that, so far, they had seen no prove of such cooperation," the Times reports.

There is a smidgen of show outside of the calls to back up cooperation allegations. A dubious dossier put together by a former British intelligence operative, Christopher Steele, claims there was an "extensive conspiracy" between Trump and the Russians to weaken the Clinton campaign. The evidence comes entirely from testimony from anonymous sources, with picayune identifiable corroboration, and thus is very far from conclusive.

"Source E, an ethnic Russian shut associate of Republican Usa presidential candidate Donald TRUMP, admitted that there was a well-developed conspiracy betwixt them and the Russian leadership," Steele writes in the dossier. "This was managed of the TRUMP side by the Republican candidate'due south campaign manager, Paul MANAFORT."

Us intelligence and police enforcement agencies are all the same investigating the dossier, parts of which have obviously been deemed credible, equally well every bit the contacts betwixt Trump associates and Russian intelligence that were identified past the New York Times. The Sessions news has raised questions even amidst Republicans on Capitol Hill — three leading Congressional Republicans have already called on Sessions to recuse himself from the Russia investigation — so information technology's possible more questions volition come from that venue as well.

The question of whether the American president assisted in a Russian effort to interfere with the democratic process is still very much open.

Scandal ii: Flynn lied about his overtures to Russia. Did Trump?

Flynn.

(Mark Makela/Getty Images)

The second Trump scandal begins after the election was over, around Christmas. That'southward when Michael Flynn, Trump's pick for national security adviser, made a series of phone calls to Administrator Kislyak (aye, him once again). Flynn's charade over what was and was not discussed during those calls has gotten Flynn fired — just the outstanding question is who else knew about Flynn'southward calls and when they knew it.

On December 29, the Obama administration announced a series of new sanctions on Russian federation as punishment for its interference in the US presidential election. That same twenty-four hours, Flynn called Kislyak multiple times.

That Flynn would call Kislyak was not, itself, surprising: Like Manafort, he had longstanding ties to Russia. Flynn has spoken very positively about the prospect of partnering with Putin's regime to fight terrorism, and repeatedly appeared on Russia's English language-language propaganda outlet, RT. Flynn was so in with RT that he had been paid to give a oral communication at its 10th anniversary dinner in Moscow — where he sat at the head table with Putin himself.

The timing of the call, though, was an issue. If Flynn was calling Kislyak to tell him that the Trump administration would roll back Obama's new sanctions, then it would look like the Trump assistants was attempting to immunize Russia from punishment for its interference in the US election and undermine the Obama administration, which was nevertheless in power at the time.

Arguably, doing so would accept been illegal — an obscure 18th-century law, the Logan Act, prohibits people outside the executive branch from making foreign policy on behalf of the U.s. (though no one has ever been prosecuted under this act).

When news of the call first went public, on January 12, the Trump administration admitted that the two men spoke only denied that they spoke about sanctions. Trump press secretarial assistant Sean Spicer and Vice President Mike Pence both separately told reporters that the calls were a friendly exchange that grew out of Christmas greetings — a questionable story given that Russian Orthodox Christmas was really on Jan 9, 2017.

On Feb ix, this narrative fell autonomously. The Washington Post published a story confirming that Flynn had spoken to Kislyak most sanctions on Dec 29, and that FBI counterintelligence agents were investigating Flynn's contact with Russia. 2 sources told the Post that Flynn had strongly implied that the Trump assistants would be taking intendance of the sanctions.

The report also suggested that Flynn had lied to Pence personally, telling Pence he hadn't discussed sanctions with Kislyak, thus leading Pence to give false statements to reporters.

The Post's slice was the backbreaker for Flynn, who tendered his resignation on Feb 13. Only it wasn't the end of the trouble for the Trump administration.

For starters, we still don't know whether Flynn was interim alone. It'southward theoretically possible that Flynn reached out to Kislyak on his own, without consulting whatever other Trump assistants officials, and told him non to stress nearly sanctions. It's also possible that Flynn was interim with Trump's approval — that the Trump squad knew near the call's contents the whole time and and so lied to the American people (and maybe even Mike Pence) near it.

This would be a much, much bigger scandal than the phone call itself — it would mean that the president or key members of his squad deliberately hid the truth about the deportment and policies toward Russia. Right now, there'due south no public evidence either in favor or against that — but some members of Congress take called for an investigation into the effect.

It's also possible that Flynn was acting alone but the Trump administration found out near his sanctions chat earlier it went public — and so covered up the truth nearly it to save face.

In late January, acting Attorney General Sally Yates informed White House counsel Don McGahn that she believed Flynn was deceiving the Trump administration about the contents of his telephone call to Kislyak. At this indicate, we don't know who else in the administration McGahn told nigh Yates's alarm, or what they chose to do with that information. Trump officials are insisting that McGahn passed on the information to them quickly, but their story is confusing.

Finally, we don't really know why Flynn ultimately resigned from his mail, every bit the line out of the White House varies from official to official.

Spicer insisted, in a Tuesday press conference, that McGahn informed senior members of the assistants back in Jan, and that their trust in Flynn had been deteriorating for weeks, culminating in a dismissal from Trump.

But in a TV appearance the same day, White House adviser Kellyanne Conway told reporters that the president had been "loyal" to Flynn for the whole controversy, and that Flynn himself chose to resign on Monday dark to put an end to the controversy.

The most logical caption, as my colleague Matt Yglesias explains, is that Trump did indeed burn down Flynn, but did so only later on the Mail service story exposed his lie virtually the sanctions phone call publicly. This would advise that Trump was basically fine with Flynn reaching out to Russia and discussing sanctions — that is, McGahn's alarm didn't actually matter to him — and that it was merely the negative press that forced him to go rid of Flynn.

Trump'south own comments during a Wednesday press briefing propose this is the instance. He chosen Flynn a "wonderful human" and said that "it's really a sad thing" that Flynn was treated "very, very unfairly" in printing accounts of his actions.

If that's correct, information technology means that Trump didn't see Flynn's call itself equally a fireable criminal offence, which in plough suggests that Trump at to the lowest degree tacitly canonical of him reaching out to the Russians dorsum in December. Which, if truthful, would propose that the administration has been lying to the public for weeks.

All roads here lead dorsum to the same matter: allegations of a comprehend-up. FBI counterintelligence is nonetheless investigating Flynn, to see if Russia had whatever improper influence over him during his time in the administration. Information technology's likely that this investigation, together with whatever Congress decides to do, volition requite us more clarity on the real nature of Flynn's phone call.

Scandal 3: Does Russia have dirt on Trump?

(Suzanne Cordeiro/AFP/Getty Images and Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP/Getty Images)

This third scandal is, past far, the least supported of the three. It stems nigh entirely from anonymous allegations in the Steele dossier, and involves some deeply bizarre and hard-to-believe stuff.

We know that Trump has had business concern dealings in Russia for years, going back to efforts to open up a Trump hotel in Moscow during the Soviet era. Donald Trump Jr. said in 2008 that "Russians brand up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets."

In 2013, Trump traveled to Russia to host the Miss Universe pageant. Before he went, he tweeted this:

Do y'all think Putin volition be going to The Miss Universe Pageant in Nov in Moscow - if so, will he become my new best friend?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June nineteen, 2013

The point is that Trump, as a result of his business interests, has spent time in the country. This where the Steele dossier starts.

Co-ordinate to Steele's sources, Trump did some very naughty things during his visits to Russia — like hiring prostitutes to pee on a hotel bed that President Obama once slept in. Russian agents filmed these acts, co-ordinate to Steele's sources, and are wielding them to blackmail Trump into taking pro-Russian policy positions.

"Russian authorities has been cultivating, supporting and assisting TRUMP for at least 5 years. Aim, endorsed by PUTIN, has been to encourage splits and divisions in western brotherhood," Steele writes. "TRUMP's unorthodox beliefs in Russia over the years had provided the authorities there with plenty embarrassing material on the Republican presidential candidate to be able to blackmail him if they so wished."

Most of this stuff is completely uncorroborated. When my colleague Sean Illing asked an ex-CIA annotator, Aki Peritz, about the memo, Peritz was securely skeptical.

"Nosotros've no idea if any of this is true," Peritz said. "We don't know who these sources are. Information technology'south entirely probable that they're feeding the author of this report garbage, as often happens."

For this reason, mainstream media outlets had generally shied away from reporting on the Steele dossier — until Jan, when CNN reported that US intelligence services had determined that Steele and his sources were "credible." Top intelligence officials presented a summary of the dossier to Trump in an intelligence conference.

Sine then, investigations into the dossier's allegations have remained ongoing.

And so far, they have only been able to corroborate insignificant parts of it, like whether one Russian official talked to another on the appointment listed in the memo. And there's very fiddling hard evidence to support the allegations — especially the more than salacious ones — in the Steele dossier.

What nosotros know for certain: Trump's weird fondness for Russia has created fodder for years of investigation

Darren McCollester/Getty Images

So what we've got are 3 singled-out, just connected, scandals — each unproven but apparent enough that investigations from both the press and elements of the The states government are ongoing. Even if no damning data is uncovered, continued press coverage volition distract from Trump'due south noun agenda — and connected intelligence investigations volition fuel his counterproductive, dissentious feud with the intelligence community.

Basically, the Russian connexion will be a problem for Trump for the foreseeable future. And it's all his own mistake.

Trump didn't have to hire staff, like Manafort and Flynn, who had all-encompassing and well-documented ties to the Russian country. He didn't have to propose policies, like weakening America's commitment to NATO, that help Russian federation. He didn't have to repeatedly praise Putin in public over the course of the past several years, or call on Russia to hack Hillary Clinton'due south emails.

If Trump hadn't done these things, nearly of these scandals wouldn't exist. Sessions' meeting with Kislyak wouldn't have been nearly as controversial (to the indicate where he may take lied well-nigh it nether oath) had it not been for questions nigh Trump's choices nearly Russia. The scandals aren't "false news" or an intelligence community conspiracy; they stem directly from beliefs by Trump or his staff.

This is detrimental to Trump's ability to pursue his calendar. Presidents only have so many resources and people at their disposal. Getting bills through Congress, or crafting executive orders that tin survive court scrutiny, is hard work. When huge elements of the administration are busy fighting fires, dealing with damning press leaks and congressional investigations, and then they don't take time to brand major policy pushes.

And these Russian federation allegations are, make no mistake, huge. Veteran journalist Dan Rather wrote in a Facebook post two weeks ago that the various controversies have the potential to become bigger than Watergate:

On a 10 scale of armageddon for our form of regime, I would put Watergate at a ix. This Russia scandal is currently somewhere effectually a 5 or six, in my stance, but it is cascading in intensity seemingly by the hour. And we may look back and see, in the end, that it is at least as big as Watergate. It may get the measure by which all time to come scandals are judged. Information technology has all the necessary ingredients, and that is spooky.

Handling one scandal with that kind of potential is tiring enough for an administration. Handling iii split up ones at the aforementioned time — that's exhausting, especially for a White Firm every bit famously disorganized as Trump's.

Even if Trump survives these scandals, information technology'south possible his policy calendar won't.

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Lookout: How Vladimir Putin won Republicans' approval

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Source: https://www.vox.com/world/2017/2/15/14620560/trump-flynn-russia-campaign

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