If you are just waking up to how scandalous the Trump-Russia story is, or if someone you know is just tuning in and needs to get caught up, I found a very good summary by Bill Moyers and Steve Harper that they published just a few days ago: The Trump-Russia Story Is Coming Together. Here’s How to Make Sense of It
Editor’s Note: The news is coming so fast and furious, from so many sources and in so many fragments, that it takes more than a scorecard to keep up with the Trump-Russia connection. It takes a timeline — a “map,” if you will, of where events and names and dates and deeds converge into a story that makes sense of the incredible scandal of the 2016 election and now of the Trump Administration
Summarizing a summary is something of a fool’s errand, but here’s my tl;dr on it. The starting point for the whole story is:
Steven Harper: Everything the Trump campaign told you about the connections between Trump and Russia was a lie
Harper does a good job of laying out the significant themes of the story. He identifies three main strands:
- Follow the money. This strand goes back many years, and includes public things like the Trump Tower Moscow project and the Magnitsky sanctions, but also Russian oligarchs, money laundering and shady real estate deals.
- Political operatives. There are far too many operatives who were part of or close to the campaign who were in some way connected to Russia. Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn are the most prominent names, but there were many others, from George Papadopoulos and Carter Page to pretty much everyone in Trump’s inner circle. We keep finding new connections and signs of sketchy meetings and actions.
- Digital operations. This is the WikiLeaks and Cambridge Analytica side of things, and Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon are both deep in it. Every contact between Russians and Kushner or Don Jr about Hillary’s hacked emails is part of this strand.
The bulk of the article is a conversation between Moyers and Harper discussing these strands and their import, the people involved, and potential legal strategies. Harper has a refreshing way of cutting through the bullshit and sticking to the facts. I won’t recreate that discussion here, but it’s worth reading the whole thing through.
As the article winds up, Harper describes the possible explanations for all this nearly unbelievable evidence. What are the least and most damning explanations that bracket the range of possibilities?
Moyers: What’s the most innocent explanation for everything we know? What if all of this was simply Trump’s inexperienced people trying to establish diplomatic rapport with the Russians and hoping to reset America’s connection with Moscow?
Harper: Well, the most innocent explanation would be a level of incompetence and ignorance and stupidity that I honestly don’t think anyone could credibly believe, because the most innocent explanation is that Russia was launching a very sophisticated, multipronged intelligence operation and succeeded, but they succeeded because of the blind ambition and greed of the Trump organization coupled with a lack of judgment and intelligence and a fundamental failure to take into regard anything that would remotely look like patriotism when it came to the defense of democracy, subjugating all of that to the need to win. That’s the most innocent explanation. And I just don’t think all of them are that stupid.
Moyers: So what’s the most damning explanation for everything we know?
Harper: The most damning explanation is that the Russians launched a sophisticated intelligence operation. They found willing partners up and down the line throughout the Trump organization. And up and down throughout the Trump organization, as the details of that intelligence operation became known, the participants lied about it, lied about its existence, lied about their personal involvement in it and now they are all facing serious criminal jeopardy as a result.
And for once, it’s nice to hear a serious news person state the obvious: we can’t assume the election was won fair and square, so stop saying it.
We keep hearing, “Yeah, but Trump was still legitimately elected, he won the election fair and square.” Now we’re realizing that that may not even be true. I don’t personally believe that to be true anymore. I rankle every time somebody says he won fair and square, because that’s become less obvious every day.
I am astounded that this article is a credible description of where we are in the USA at this moment. Every day it feels more like we are in a Phillip K Dick novel. But at least we have folks like Moyers and Harper to help us make sense of things.